children's show theology:: entry 04

i went back and renamed some of my old blogs to fit into this new little blog-series: children's show theology. this is when i sit on my sofa eating crackers with jane and think about how a kid's show illustrates the character of God-


jane likes to watch this show on pbs called super why!
its all about reading and spelling, which are two of jane’s passions right now.
they don’t make toys for super why, so I actually went to the hardware store and craft store and made some for her! I thought that they turned out pretty cool, but she is sort of over them right now.


anyhow, the show is about this boy-superhero named super-why. whenever he has a super-big problem, he and his friends (the super-readers) “take a look in a book!” they open up a fairy tale and then step into the story and interact with the characters and learn from their stories. oftentimes, a character in a story is doing something wrong and super-why seems to ask them why they are doing this. oftentimes they feel like they have no control over their actions. they say, “its says right here in my story…” and then they show super-why the text of their story book and how it dictates their decisions and behaviors. super-why then takes his “why-writer” (one of the toys that I made for jane) and then zaps one of the words out of the story and then replaces it with another. he changes the end of the story all-together.


I was watching this show with jane the other day and this frog was wasting water. super-why asked him why and he said, “I can’t help it! it says right here in my story, “the frog wastes water.” super-why changed the word “wastes” to the word “shares.” and the story was changed. it had a new ending.


I started thinking about the many people that I meet that feel trapped in their circumstances. its almost as if I can hear them saying, “I have to make these choices, its says so right here in my story.” “I have to misbehave or chase boys or destroy my relationships or abuse substances or whatever because my story has been written, I can’t change it.”


we need a hero.
we need someone with the power to change the words of our stories so that the endings are different. we need a hero to step into our stories and remind us that they are not set in stone. do we have the courage and the energy to see our stories change?


Christ stepped out of eternity into the human story. the ending of our stories can be different now- not just on an eternal level, but for today as well.
"why-writer, WRITE!"