Teaching Child Blasphemy is NOT OKAY!

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I’m upset. Yesterday I was watching some young techie on TV with my daughter. This young kid grossly blasphemed! I won’t even hint what he said. I was furious and turned off the tv. I wasn’t only furious at the blasphemy this young tech uttered, but I was furious that my 13 year old daughter still wanted to watch the tv show! She was not outraged and disgusted by this horrible blasphemy that was uttered against her Lord! “Freedom of speech” was the retort she used against my protest. Now, I know my daughter was speaking out of a childish ignorance. But if I heard these same horrible words spoken against my Lord at her age I think my response against it might have been a bit stronger. Am I doing something wrong as a parent? In addition, my daughter felt it comfortable to make two jokes against God that were out of place. I tried to tell her that she should not talk about God like that. God is totally holy. We do not talk about God as if He was a human. We fear God. What she said was not all that horrible but it was definitely not acceptable. I must be doing something wrong as a parent. I would appreciate some advice. Thank you.
By the way, my daughter is a good kid. We pray together and we have read the bible together; but not enough. She was not born into the Catholic Church. She was baptized in a Protestant denomination and she is allowed to attend Sunday School at my Parish.
 
Umm… I’m not sure how to respond to this. Could you at least hint at what was said? Or what show was this? What time was it (before or after watershed)? What channel? Was it a one-time occurrence, or does this happen all the time on the show? For that matter, was it a TV show, a movie, a TV movie, a TV special, etc.?
 
It was a one time thing with the TV. We never watched it before. I will not utter what he said but it was wrong. I find a lot of young people will utter such blasphemy online. It’s so wrong.
 
AnotherMe said:
It was a one time thing with the TV. We never watched it before. I will not utter what he said but it was wrong. I find a lot of young people will utter such blasphemy online. It’s so wrong.
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What show? What channel? Before or after watershed? Not even hinting at it, or giving us an idea of what was said?
 
Razanir said:
What show? What channel? Before or after watershed? Not even hinting at it, or giving us an idea of what was said?
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I honestly don’t know what show it was. The guy was talking about creating video games. He was a young techie guy. We just changed cable companies so it was a new show. I suppose I can ask my kid. But I would rather not.
 
AnotherMe said:
I honestly don’t know what show it was. The guy was talking about creating video games. He was a young techie guy. We just changed cable companies so it was a new show. I suppose I can ask my kid. But I would rather not.
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Anything? Not even a time or channel?
 
AnotherMe said:
I honestly don’t know what show it was. The guy was talking about creating video games. He was a young techie guy. We just changed cable companies so it was a new show. I suppose I can ask my kid. But I would rather not.
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Then it’s really impossible for anyone here to give any advice or have an opinion, except not to watch that particular show again.
 
Since you don’t like what was said on the show, don’t watch it anymore. The people who make the show have a right to say what they want, and everyone else has a right to chose not to listen to it. Since we don’t know what was said, there isn’t anything else to say.
 
**Sorry I did not make my question clearer. If I could edit my original question I would.
My point was, how could I make my child understand that it’s not okay for people to blaspheme. Not that the guy blasphemed, but that my child should be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and be outraged when she/he hears such horrible utterances. That was my question. 🙂

By the way, the movie was on Netflix and was about techies who design games.**
 
Was he saying offensive things about God? Jesus? Mary? Using the name of the Lord in vain?

Can you give us a category of blasphemy, at least?

God Bless
 
AnotherMe said:
**Sorry I did not make my question clearer. If I could edit my original question I would.
My point was, how could I make my child understand that it’s not okay for people to blaspheme. Not that the guy blasphemed, but that my child should be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and be outraged when she/he hears such horrible utterances. That was my question. 🙂

By the way, the movie was on Netflix and was about techies who design games.**
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I think that you and your daughter are running on two different wavelengths here. I’m sure that she agrees with you that blasphemy is not ok. Where you disagree is on whether or not she should be outraged or continue to watch the movie.

Honestly, I think you should give your 13 year old a break. You’ve taught her that all sorts of things are wrong: lying, murder, adultery, rape, cheating, stealing, etc. But you (presumably) don’t insist that she be ‘outraged’ when those things happen in movies, much less that she stops watching it.

Trust that she knows your family values and has a good head on her shoulders.
 
The bigger the fuss you make, the more she will rebel against you.

And the more you forbid something, the more she will desire it.

These are two good child-rearing principles that you might want to think about.

I would suggest that if this happens again. you react for yourself, but not expect your daughter to share your feelings of horror. E.g., say, “Oh, my goodness! I can’t believe that he said that! What a terrible thing to say about the Lord Jesus! I don’t want to watch this anymore.”

Then stop talking, leave the room, and allow your daughter to think about what you have said and done.

This is a description of how to teach through EXAMPLE rather than words. I’m very serious here–the more WORDS you speak, the more your daughter will close her ears and her brain and shut you out.

DO NOT lecture her!

And do NOT try to tell her to feel the same way that you do. She has probably heard the same kind of language over and over again at her school from both peers and teachers, yes, even if she is in a Christian school. She might be tuning this kind of thing out, and it doesn’t shock her at all. If you tell her that she should be feeling a certain way, and she doesn’t feel it at all, she will think that something is horribly wrong with her and that she is a terrible sinner. She isn’t–she’s just an inexperienced kid–but don’t YOU tell her that! She wants to think that she is almost an adult.

Again, I am very serious–when she sees YOU, her beloved mother, react in an emotional, hurt way to an insult against the Lord Jesus, she will have to think over what she has just heard, and decide for herself whether she trusts YOU or the person on TV that she doesn’t even know.

She probably won’t walk away from the TV the first time you do this because she needs time to think it over and mull over what she has heard on TV and how you reacted to it.

But I’m willing to bet that the NEXT time, she WILL walk away, and she will come to you and say, “I can’t believe what that person said on the TV show. It was so insulting to Jesus. I’m not going to watch it anymore.”

And you will praise her and tell her that she’s doing the right thing.

This kind of teaching is so much more effective with older children and teenagers than lecturing, imposing lists of rules, forbidding things, etc.
 
The difference between your teenage years and your daughters, is the world. You had ‘the world’ too but it’s a new world now. Now, blasphemy is accepted and even pushed. We are called bigots for not caving to it. Your daughter is being influenced by the world regularly and parents today have a harder task to influence our children in the faith.

We can’t win them to faith with anger or force. I would encourage you not to say “we don’t ____” right after your daughter did _____. Clearly she does do ____ because she just did it. It’s inaccurate to claim that “we” when she just did. Children aren’t stupid and they see this. It makes it seem like we parents are out of touch and not living in reality. My husband has a bad habit of saying the same thing to our kids. I think it’s the way that his parents spoke to him so he just repeats it.

You will win your daughter over in faith through love, relationship and truth.
 
AnotherMe said:
**Sorry I did not make my question clearer. If I could edit my original question I would.
My point was, how could I make my child understand that it’s not okay for people to blaspheme. Not that the guy blasphemed, but that my child should be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and be outraged when she/he hears such horrible utterances. That was my question. 🙂

By the way, the movie was on Netflix and was about techies who design games.**
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Since it’s on Netflix, you should be able to find it under “Recently Watched”. Given that, you can probably find its title and movie rating.

And as other posters have pointed out, you’ll do a better job of teaching her not to blaspheme by telling her not to and setting a good example yourself, than you would be trying to avoid any and all blasphemy in the media.

And I know it’s not quite the same thing, but sometimes swearing, at least, is necessary for the story. I don’t know anyone who thinks the King’s Speech, for instance, would be a better or more poignant story without that one scene that brought it up from possibly even PG to R.

Or consider Les Miserables. I don’t know anyone here who would actually support prostitution, but that scene in the movie was fairly chaste, and did a good job of showing just how destitute Fantine had become.
 
The person on the tv show has no responsibility to teach your child not to blaspheme. She is right that he has a right to say whatever he wants (or that the shows producers or the censors allow). You can certainly not watch if the language used bothers you.
It is your responsibility to teach your child how to speak and what you will allow to be said in your home. I reccomend that you think about how you’ve been going about that so far. It doesn’t seem as if your child agrees. Or possibly she is just more aware that it is not possible to police everyone’s speech and that she is willing to pick her battles and this show wasn’t it.
 
AnotherMe said:
I’m upset. Yesterday I was watching some young techie on TV with my daughter. This young kid grossly blasphemed! I won’t even hint what he said. I was furious and turned off the tv. I wasn’t only furious at the blasphemy this young tech uttered, but I was furious that my 13 year old daughter still wanted to watch the tv show! She was not outraged and disgusted by this horrible blasphemy that was uttered against her Lord! “Freedom of speech” was the retort she used against my protest. Now, I know my daughter was speaking out of a childish ignorance. But if I heard these same horrible words spoken against my Lord at her age I think my response against it might have been a bit stronger. Am I doing something wrong as a parent? In addition, my daughter felt it comfortable to make two jokes against God that were out of place. I tried to tell her that she should not talk about God like that. God is totally holy. We do not talk about God as if He was a human. We fear God. What she said was not all that horrible but it was definitely not acceptable. I must be doing something wrong as a parent. I would appreciate some advice. Thank you.
By the way, my daughter is a good kid. We pray together and we have read the bible together; but not enough. She was not born into the Catholic Church. She was baptized in a Protestant denomination and she is allowed to attend Sunday School at my Parish.
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I would use the contemporary parlance and explain that to talk flippantly about the Almighty in the presence of those who believe in God as the source of all holiness is a form of hate speech. Even those who do not believe in God must recognize this; they would not be slow to realize that you do not insult someone’s mother or other revered person. She must think about how much more keenly felt and keenly defended this principle must be when the revered person is divine and held to be revered over all that is to be held in reverence.

I would agree with the posters that said that behavior that is sinful to a shocking degree is sometimes depicted somewhat directly in art, rather than indirectly. It must be done carefully if it is done, though, so that the message that this is shocking and unacceptable are also conveyed. Having said that, direct depictions of that nature are generally not appropriate for the young, who are too vulnerable to picking up habits of speech and action from songs and dramatic depictions that they see.
 
You had never seen this show or movie before, you became outraged at something someone on the show said; correctly might I add if it was inappropriate. At the point of offense you tuned out so to speak, all you know is what was said offended your sensibilities. Now lets look at things a bit more holistically. You are so offended by what was said that you have stated in this thread you don’t want to talk to your daughter about it not even to ask her what show it was. IMHO you are cutting off the lines of communication. Further you said it was techie show on how to make video games. Is it possible your daughter has an interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)? STEM is still a collection of fields that have very low numbers of women working and studying them. if she really has an interest, its worth exploring more.

I am respectfully asking you to consider that your daughter was watching the show not because she was okay with what the guy said but because she has an interest in the larger subject matter. If this is the case, with your help she could be exposed to much better quality programming, books and web shows that will feed her interest. Let this misunderstanding start a conversation not stop one.
 
I have to admit that I’m kind of hesitant to come down in favor of the OP because we still don’t know exactly what was said or done on the television show.

I gave my advice earlier in a general sense, and I stand by it. It would apply no matter what the parental definition of “blasphemy” is.

But I think we all need to be careful not to assume too much.

I knew plenty of Protestants who considered “Gosh” and “Golly” and “Gee whillikers!” to be unspeakable blasphemies! And I know people who believe that saying or writing, “OMG!” is blasphemy.

I also know that the J.I. Packer crowd believes that ANY image/depiction of Jesus is breaking the Ten Commandments. If the OP believes this, then a cartoon image of Jesus might appear as horrible blasphemy to her.

The OP mentioned that we shouldn’t treat God as though He is a human. Well, Jesus WAS fully human, so if the television show depicted Jesus enjoying a Big Mac and fries, that’s not blasphemous. Kind of silly, but that’s what a lot of kid shows are like–silly humor!

Some people don’t believe in wearing pictures of Jesus, Mary, or the saints on a t-shirt, button, etc. They consider that blasphemy.

And some people believe that Jesus, Mary, or the saints should never, ever be used in a joke or a humorous skit. I’m not in that camp. I believe that there are some wonderfully funny skits and jokes in which Jesus appears.

Some people don’t believe that dancing is ever appropriate for Christians, so a dance about Jesus would be considered “blasphemous.”

Some people don’t believe that rock music can ever be used by Christians, so rock songs about Jesus would be considered “blasphemous.”

And we’ve all seen people here on CAF who don’t even write the name of God or Jesus. They consider that blasphemy.

I believe that everyone should be able to make up their mind and draw their own line. But we shouldn’t expect everyone else to agree with us if we believe that saying “gee” or making a “Nutcracker Jesus” is blasphemy (my grown children made one for me, and it’s precious!)

I would really like a better idea of what was said/done on that television show.
 
One thing I like to consider when some movie or TV show does anything that is offensive to the faith is this: how is the offending character portrayed in the program? What is the context?

For example, in the popular TV show “Family Guy”, Peter, one of the lead characters, frequently says very offensive things. But in the show, Peter is usually portrayed as a drunken, unintelligent buffoon whose offensive remarks frequently alienate his friends and make him unpopular. In fact, many episodes are variations of the same plot line: Peter offends someone close to him with his remarks or actions and spends the rest of the program trying to make up for it. One could argue that, in certain cases, it might actually be a POSITIVE thing to see a show that portrays offensive people as unintelligent and unpopular.
 
Of course, on the other side of the coin, if the blasphemy is portrayed as funny and cool by the smart, popular characters on the show, then it’s not so good.

If your daughter considers Jesus to be her guide, protector, and savior, then she needs no extra help from you to be offended at the TV program. Rather than coming down negatively on blasphemy in the outside world, breathe a sigh of relief that you are making your daughter’s faith formation such an important priority in her life. I think that your daughter’s relationship to Christ will be much more helpful for her make the right interpretations about offenses to God in the future than a speech or restrictions from her mother.
 
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