Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
From one book-loving nerd to the next, happy banned books week! No surprise, there are a few questionable books on the most-challenged books list (by The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom).
Skippyjon Jones, for one, a cat that pretends he’s a dog is accused of “misrepresenting” culture. I’m sorry, but we have a cat pretending to be a dog–if anything, this ought to be the foremost qualifier for misrepresentation. When did Skippyjon become the ambassador for politically correct behavior? Holy frijoles!
Of course Dav Pilkey and his Captain Underpants made the list, and like I say–rue the day that man got a publisher! Potty humor obviously has no limits, and Pilkey will take all your seven year old boys’ book order money to the bank. Count on it.
The majority of books are banned for sex–and here I’d just like to say that if you are going to be talking of such things, mightn’t it be better to address an adult crowd? Who puts such a heavy book in the hands of a child? We have labor laws because kids shouldn’t have to bear certain responsibilities…Are children allowed no protection when it comes to adult topics?
I was innocently putting books into my weekly take-home stack and picked up the picture book A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. This book was displayed face-out on the shelf and had a cute picture, so it made it home with me. Halfway through reading it on our couch, I realized it wasn’t quite three year old little girl material. Sarcasm, politics, and same-sex relationships just don’t sing the same tune as one-minute Disney bedtime stories.
There were also a couple of books on teen suicide–something I’m pretty sure depressed kids ought not to be studying. Toward the bottom of the list was one called Two Boys Kissing, complete with a photo cover of the very thing–just in case you weren’t sure what the book was about.
This is nothing new; nothing new under the sun. I roll my eyes at the public library vibe because I’ve lived in enough places to know they are all the same. Banned books week is menial, a minute drop in the bucket. One more free speech flag to pump the air of propaganda. When I visited the New York library gift shop in March, the cashier showed me a sold-out postcard of RuPaul, even though there were dozens of other portraits of famous New Yorkers to choose from. Public libraries are the outest and proudest of publicly funded entities. Even if they are on the furthermost fringe of all progressive thinking, they are still the best thing about paying taxes. I love libraries for the books–sharing is my favorite!
Folks, let them normalize whatever bizarre behavior they like–this world is passing away. It will try and get you worked up one way or another. You will fall in line with the crowd that cheers for banned books, or you will feel slightly offended if not hotly in favor of burning them. Either way, it is exactly what the deceiver of the world, the “prince of the power of the air” wants to stir up. He wants you to take your eyes off the prize. He wants to stir animosity–an unnecessary battle between the indecently proud and the too-good, holier-than-thous. Don’t waste your breath–or matches.
If you want to do something so outrageous, completely unheard of–I’ll tell you a secret about a book that is so bad, so banned, that whole governments have deleted it from online retailers. This book is being rewritten and printed to reinforce fascist dependency. In China, a nation of over one billion people, even references to this book are being hunted down and deleted from non-religious textbooks and literature. This book has the power to bind people together, divide thoughts and feelings, withstand persecution and hate. It brings people to their knees and then raises them up with purpose. Censoring it–eliminating it–only increases its power. Smugglers risk their lives to bring it into closed countries. It’s not banned in America, yet hardly anyone cares enough to read it unless it shows up in their Facebook feed, a single scripted-font verse on a stock beach photo background.
I wonder if America ought to ban Bibles, so we might see how precious God’s word is. I wonder if tomorrow, all the Bibles in our homes were gathered up by the government and burned, who would be our Denzel Washington, our Eli, to remind us what this precious book said. Do you survive on this daily bread? Is it a lamp unto your feet? Is it written on your heart? Do you take every opportunity to read it to your children?
I wonder about Josiah the king and his excitement when the scrolls were found in the temple. How he unrolled them and read them to his people and they all tore their clothes in anguish at having strayed so far from God. How they stood up and vowed to take the book seriously.
David wrote a psalm, the longest one in the Bible, every single line declaring the sweetness of God’s word. Ezekiel ate it; it tasted like honey.
In China, in 2019, they are locking folks up in prison who “incite subversion” simply by reading–and obeying–the words in this book. For Chinese Christians, there is no bigger boon to their faith than a black market Bible.
Perhaps the librarians will never display it face-out on the shelves. But there’s a good chance you have one getting dusty on your own shelf at home. Break out the banned books, it’s time for a revelation.
