Anime Manga And Parenting

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5 where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Parenting, Ephesians 6, and the Christian Duty to Raise Children

Welcome to No Compromise Radio. It's Tuesday, I'm the Tuesday guy, Steve Cooley, sitting in for the vacationing, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, and you know, I thought I would do something that I actually know something about today, talking about parenting, some maybe biblical wisdom issues.

You know, we often hear from Ephesians chapter six, children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, parents like that, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

And then verse four, sometimes people bring this part up. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, which is good. Now, here's what I want to do. I want to just focus on this second part today, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

What does that mean? That can mean a lot of things and a lot of different situations, but I'd like to specifically look at a story that I read in Christianity Today, and it's about something called cosplay, costume play, costumed play.

And it really is live role playing. And it is based in large part on the anime and manga kind of culture, subcultures that come out of Japan. So I thought, now this is kind of an interesting thing because I do know something about gaming and having been playing serious games.

I mean, I started playing, I think I started playing chess when I was maybe about six. I moved on to other games, Monopoly and Life. And I used to really like easy money, but I could never get anybody to play.

But then when I was 12, I was introduced to something called war games. My friend Dennis Smith invited me over and we played a game called Stalingrad. And I could not believe it because I love history.

I love maps. And here it was in one package. Here we had a map of the Soviet Union and here was the German army on one side, this massive army of the Third Reich. And here was this massive army of the Soviet Union on the other side.

And we got to fight out the whole war in just a few hours. And I thought this was terrific. And I found out that we're all kinds of games that did this and really attempted to recreate history. And you could, I remember some of the boxes would say, can you do better than Patton or can you do better than Montgomery or whoever the general was, can you do better than Napoleon?

Now you get the opportunity. And it really was quite inviting to a young man who, like I said, loved history, loved all this kind of thing. And so I really spent much of my teen years either reading about these games or trying to play them or what have you.

And I still play them. I still collect them. My wife could testify about that. I have a substantial collection and I've really grown fond of one game in particular, but that's not the point. I know something about games.

I know something about game conventions. Before I got saved, I used to go to these massive gaming conventions in Los Angeles. We used to have them three times a year, sometimes more. There would be somewhere between, you know, a thousand, 2 ,000 people at these things and all kinds of games from card games to Monopoly.

It's where I first learned, by the way, that Monopoly could be played in an hour or less if you actually obeyed the rules. So there's your little footnote for the day. But I really love games. So I was intrigued by this article and this mom's approach to really parenting.

Now here's what she says. Costume play or cosplay has emerged as a colorful subculture of dress up and role play. Cosplay conventions are major events where tens of thousands of fans gather, united by their love of anime, manga, and these are types of Japanese animation, or their favorite comic books.

The popular Comic-Con International in San Diego recently took place, July 24th through 27th, will draw as many as 130 ,000 guests. So this is no small thing that I'm talking about here today on No Compromise Radio, WVNE.

There are a lot of kids who are caught up in this. And I really, I just wonder about it. Let me just keep reading here. About five years ago, my daughter became interested in cosplay and created her first costume to attend a convention.

Since then, we have made countless trips to the craft store as I learned to sew, trace, and glue, create patterns from scratch, and apply stage makeup. My husband and I, transformed by her vision and design, even joined her as fellow Pokemon characters.

We looked the part enough to get stopped for photos, but had to fake it a bit because our Pokemon knowledge is extremely limited. Now, I just want to first note here, my husband and I transformed by her vision and design.

So my question, you know, going back to the scripture here, and I'm just asking this as a question. Again, being someone who loves games, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Well, I happen to know that these things frequently take place over the weekends because that's when people can get there.

And I'm not going to say that I would never do anything on a Sunday other than go to church. But I think if you want to make this a way of life, I think this is really difficult. I mean, I'd still love to be candid.

I'd love to be playing games all the time. I just can't do that. First of all, because it really wouldn't sit too well with my profession, you know, profession. Brothers, we're not professionals. You know, being a pastor, you just can't be gone every Sunday playing games.

But here's the other thing. You know, if you love Christ Jesus, and you understand that you need to be involved in the local church, then you're not going to be gone a lot anyway. But I just kind of wonder about this, you know, going on as a lifestyle.

She says, some people may wonder why I decided to cosplay with my daughter, or even let her get involved with such an unusual hobby in the first place. Now, again, I don't think it's terrible. I think there are some aspects of it that might be fine.

I just kind of wonder, because I've seen how all-consuming this kind of lifestyle can be for some young people. And I wonder if this just doesn't wind up leading to, you know, a lot of these kids, well, I'll get more into this.

I think a lot of kids at this age, teen years, tend to be a little bit introverted. And I wonder if this just doesn't make it worse. Because what you really do in this hobby, this cosplay, is you take on a different role, and you act as if you are that other person.

So is it helping develop you as a person, or are you learning to act more naturally as pretending that you're someone else? And I don't know if that's really a good idea. She says, the worst of the cosplay critics worry that this subculture represents something dangerous, cultish, and strange.

I speak to you as a cosplay convert, a parent who has come to see great value in my daughter's interest in this fun, in this fun, imaginative, costumed world. Well, I'm no expert on Japan or Japanese culture.

I do know that it is decidedly different than our own. I spent a little more than a year in Okinawa, Japan. And as I would walk the streets, I was surprised. I mean, I'd read some books, novels, which I think accurately depicted the Japanese culture, the mindset, which is different than ours.

It's different than a Western mindset in a number of ways. The whole idea of saving face or losing face or bringing shame on someone else and the problems associated with that. It is a different culture.

Well, that said, the ideas that they have about sex are radically different. I mean, I don't know if this still holds true, but it was perfectly acceptable, for example, in much of the literature that I read, to be a, what we would call now, you know, in the parlance, a sex worker.

In America, we might tend to think of them as prostitutes, but there's a whole line of thought in the Japanese culture that this is fine and acceptable. And, you know, to just show the kind of, I remember once, I won't sully your mind with all the details, but seeing a stereo poster.

Now, just out on the street, you know, for anybody to see a stereo poster that showed a partially unclad woman. And I just thought, and far more than we would ever show in the United States. I mean, it would get that company in all kinds of trouble here in the States.

And it was just no big deal because they just have a dramatically different. So as I'm reading this and I'm thinking about anime and manga, and I'm like, okay, how much, if I had a child who was interested in this, would I want them to be involved in this?

You know, and how much would I encourage them to be out in this world? Probably not very much. This is just me. This is just my opinion. But this just does not seem like the way to go to me. Do I have a verse that says, thou shalt not know, but this might be problematic.

Let me keep reading here. This mom writes, to start, conventions generally maintain a family-friendly atmosphere with video games, discussion panels, costume pageants, photo sessions, and other activities.

But you know what? I would note that it's all devoid of the gospel, the Bible, anything. And it may be family-friendly in some ways. Now, I've been to family-friendly game conventions. There was one in Pennsylvania years ago that I went to.

But it was all board games. No role-playing, no anime, no manga. It was just board games. And it was pretty blase, you know. But listen to what she says. While parents may notice some cosplay, or some cosplayers in sexy costumes revealing cleavage, corsets, and short shorts, most con-goers, convention-goers, focus on accuracy and imagination over sex appeal.

Well, that's certainly wonderful. Most do. Now, just imagine sending your teenage boy off to this. I think she might have a whole different take on this because this is not the kind of atmosphere I would want to send my son to.

Outsiders may be concerned about some of the characters and the evil depicted in certain series. Listen to this. But the themes of cosplay ultimately relate back to classic storytelling archetypes, the ongoing struggle between good and evil, heroes and villains, light and dark, okay?

I understand that. But here's the problem with all that. This is very foreign to the gospel. This is very Eastern mystic. This is Eastern mysticism. This is kind of the yin and the yang, the light and the dark.

This is, you know, kind of Buddhism. This is anything but, you know, or Taoism. These are the kind of Eastern mystical religions. This is anything but a Christian worldview where we know that Christ always wins.

This is not something she says, you know, this is some key to the gospel. How does she phrase it here? Not to mention that it is a message pivotal to the gospel. Well, I understand, you know, if you want to talk about light and dark, we could say that the light came into the world and the dark, you know, did not apprehend it.

You know, the people hate the light, they love their sin. But this is like saying Star Wars has messages that are pivotal to the gospel. It doesn't, by the way. She says, so as a Christian mom, I not only allow my daughter to cosplay, I encourage it.

Okay? I celebrate how these teens, often considered outsiders in high school, now have their own community extending beyond the internet realm to meet in person. These geeks and nerds, as they cheerfully label themselves.

And by the way, I would cheerfully label myself a geek and a nerd. That's who I am. I mean, you don't like the kind of games I like. You know, you don't want to play these games that some of them have, you know, super intense rule books.

I think the most incredible rule book I ever read was probably a couple hundred pages long. You know, I mean, I played Starfleet Battles where you have to learn how to control your own starship. And this is on a board, not, you know, and fire photon torpedoes and overload them and avoid, you know, drones and, you know, all these different, all that kind of stuff.

Listen, I am a geek, geek, geek. I confess to being a geek. That said, and again, knowing something about this culture, knowing something about the people that go and play this, this isn't like a bunch of Christian kids getting together.

There are a lot of issues here with, you know, you put a lot of unsaved geeks together and they're going to act like unsaved people. And they're going to be quite clever about it because they're geeks, they're nerds.

That's what they do. But she says they're smart, witty and sarcastic. And I'm going, yeah, I recognize all that. These would have been my friends in high school. I get it. They have created a place where they can celebrate, welcome and value one another.

In a post about cosplay last year, Think Christian pointed out the psychological parallels between cosplay dress up and the biblical metaphor of putting on the armor of God. That leaves me speechless.

There is no comparison between Ephesians chapter six and what Paul is talking about there. And dress up, this woman, this psychologist, says that, you know, this allows people to express greater confidence and communicate more readily when they're dressed up as a strong character.

And I'm like, okay, how do we teach our kids the Bible? How do we teach them to think and act rightly? Because here's the point. As your kids get older, it shifts. Your relationship with them changes.

It's not just do as I say, although you never want to just do that anyway, order your kids around. But it's teaching them to think critically, to think for themselves. It's more of a discipleship relationship.

Sometimes you let them make their own decisions and you let them fail, but you know, you're alongside them so you can right the ship as it were. This is a prescription, sorry, for disaster in this sense.

You're not teaching your daughter, with all due respect, to grow up. You're not teaching her what it means to be an adult. Now, maybe you do it in other ways, I don't know, but listen to what she says here.

In my family, our shared involvement in cosplay helps us break through that distance, the distance between teenagers and their kids. When we work on a costume, talk about anime, or watch a show, we are creating a shared experience that is helping us remain bonded through her teenage years.

Now, I can relate to this. My kids are grown up now, but that means I did have teenage kids. And I remember what I would try to do to stay bonded with them. One of the things I did was I would take them out on dates, my daughters, I'd take them out on dates, just me and one daughter.

Why would I do that? Well, because a wise man once told me that they're going to find affection from a man, and it's either gonna be from their father or from some cretin. That's not exactly what he said, but I'll paraphrase.

And so I wanted to be involved in my daughter's lives. And I remember one of them expressing an interest in the high school football team, not to play, but she was doing the statistics and whatnot. And eventually that led to us going to a bunch of games.

And we'd sit there and watch them. And you know what? It was fun. I mean, would I ordinarily have gone to watch a high school football game? No. But, you know, at least I understood it and they were excited about it and they got to, they would hang out with their other friends from high school and it was good.

It was, you know, it was fun. We did other things too. And I mean, we would watch, certainly we watched shows together. We, you know, went out to the movies together. We'd even do midnight showings. I remember going to midnight showings of the Lord of the Rings things.

You know, when my wife would just go, I can't stay up and I'd go, I'll go, you know. Yes, it's important to maintain those bonds, to keep the communication open. And, you know, I'm not going to say I was perfect in any way.

And please don't ask my kids. They'd probably tell you I wasn't perfect. But listen, you can't let your kid dictate what happens. And, you know, if they want to get involved in something that you think is unusual, well, it may be okay.

I just don't think that you orient your life so much around it. I mean, this is not, I just don't think this is a good way to go here. She says, well, many parents worry that our children's obsession with technology is killing their imaginations.

Cosplay represents a 21st century hobby that is a creative, constructive endeavor. Together, now see, okay, let me just stop there. What is she actually learning? She may be learning some social skills.

I can't really argue about that. But, and I'll just say this, I'm not trying to, you know, push historical war gaming. I mean, there are games, I think it's funny that people don't know about this stuff.

I would think homeschoolers would love this. There are games like Here I Stand, which is a game really representative of the time period right after the Reformation when the Catholic Church really tried to stomp out the Reformation.

And, you know, it also shows the Ottoman Empire coming up from the South. And so you've got these different factions, you've got the Pope handing out edicts and all this stuff, and this isn't a game. And you can play all these different powers and they all have their different interests and it's a way to learn about history.

That's my point. And I'm like, okay, what do you learn from anime and manga? I'm still waiting for an answer on that. I mean, I think I'd be waiting a long time for an answer on that. You know, you learn about maybe Japanese culture.

You might, I don't know, it's like asking me, what do you learn from comic books? The answer is you don't learn anything of, not only not of eternal value, but you're not gonna learn much that's gonna help you in the real world.

And, you know, sometimes we have to steer our kids, I wouldn't say completely away from things like this, but I think you wanna get them into more positive things. I mean, I do know people that have kind of lost themselves in this world.

And I think that is a real problem. If you're, you know, I don't know anything about this family, but if your kid is in their 20s and still wanting to do this five, six, eight times a year, I think you've got a problem.

And, you know, there are people probably still, if we went to one of these events, and maybe I should just so I could watch it, but I think if you went to one of these events, you might find people in their 30s still doing this.

And we have a generation now that does not grow up. And to just kind of coddle them like this, I don't think this is the right way to go. Sorry, I'm really sorry. I don't mean to be judgmental, you know, or come down on you, but I just would not do this.

She says here, most importantly, I'm showing that I value her and her interests. I might not completely understand everything that she loves, but I love her. I agree with that. And I don't think you have to understand everything that your kid's like.

I don't think you have to, you know, sit down on the Xbox and play with them or whatever. But I do think all these things have to have parameters around them. And, you know, there are more important things than this.

So I don't know. I just find this a very curious thing to write about in a Christian magazine and to encourage other people to do this. No way. She has some tips, five quick tips for cosplay parents. Number one, no compromise right now.

This is from Christianity Today. Enjoy the bonding experience. Reserve judgment. I don't understand or appreciate all the anime, series, games, or movies, but I do enjoy the creativity of making a costume out of odd bits.

Okay. Bring out your inner perfectionist. That's number two. This is an activity where details matter and you want to get things exactly right. Okay. Help select the costumes. Well, that could be good, especially, you know, if your daughter, if your daughter's wanting to wear something inappropriate, I guess that'd be really great.

And number four, realize that some screening may be needed. Not all material is appropriate for children or younger teens. And this is what I'm getting at. You know, there's a lot of trust that would have to go into this.

She says her daughter's been doing this for five years. Well, when did it start? You know, and when do you just kind of let her go? And when do you realize that she's not maturing at a reasonable rate?

And maybe she is, but maybe this is retarding her growth. Maybe it's holding her back. And I think ultimately, the spiritual health of any child has to be the number one concern. You know, what's she doing at church?

Is she involved there? What kind of conversations do you have with her about the gospel? What kind of, you know, response does she have? I would encourage all parents when they sit at the dinner table to have biblical conversations.

How does she respond to all those things? Is she checked out? You know, does she just kind of humor you so that she can run off and do this anime and manga stuff? You know, is this the focal point of her life?

And if it is, you know, I mean, who knows? Teenagers, you know, not all teenagers are saved, but certainly I just don't think this is the kind of thing that you really want to just turn kids loose on.

You want to raise them up as Ephesians 6, 4 says, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You want them to learn what the Bible says. And I just think that this is a potential, just a black hole.

And I just don't know why you would encourage and push your kids in this direction. I think it's a real potential danger. Again, I'm Steve Cooley. This is the Tuesday guy sitting in for Mike Abendroth, who's off on vacation.

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.