Disney, cults and the Gospel

Yesterday was a "daddy day" with my girls so we headed off to the children's  library in town. After our obligatory time in the play bank, kithchen and puppet theater we searched for our books and a movie. I found an awesome book Jambo Watoto!  about two little kids meeting animals in Tanzania along with a few others. Olivia picked out Disney's The Frog Prince for her movie. I had never seen it but she had the princess on one of her bathing suits and I try and let Olivia see diversity in color and strong female role models as often as I can.
We sat down and started to watch. The movie went back today.

Why daddy? (crying)
There are things in it that God does not like honey. I love you and love protects. We can find another one.

What hit me? Am I some kind of hyper-orthodox-christian-freak? No, I'm a dad who has promised before God to raise my children to love Him with their hearts, minds, souls and strength.

I take this job seriously, but we still have fun. But as I watched a "bad" voodoo priest trying to kill people with charms and change others with the blood of humans promising souls to demons I rightly freaked out. And when the two cursed hero's search for the "good" voodoo princess to break the charm I rightly freaked out as well.

I will be in East Africa in a couple of weeks sharing Jesus with people who worship snakes and others who visit real witch doctors and wear charms to ward off spirits and give them health. My wife will be a single mom while I am gone and my two young daughters will have to say goodbye to daddy. It will cost our family and others thousands of dollars to bring the message 20,000 miles away that witchcraft is bad and it is not of God. Yes, I freaked out with good reason.

...but God had the final say in all of it. My friend and I have been looking for the Gospel Message in crazy movies; Christ alone being able to save us apart from anything we can or wish to do. So I was wrestling with God today about this one thinking I had found a film that God did not speak into...and then He showed me.

The frog prince and his lady frog finally make their way to the "good" voodoo princess, but the clock has struck, Mardi Gras is over, and the kiss of a princess can't save the frog anymore. Odi, the voodoo princess can do nothing to reverse the curse...so Tianna kisses the cursed frog anyway for she has found true love...and poof they become who they were meant to be.

The Gospel, did you see it?

God, who is love is the only thing that can reverse the curse on us and the world. God demonstrated his love in this way; while we were yet still frogs, He sent His one and only Son to face the kiss of death on the cross for us. Love brought Jesus back from the cursed tomb and turned him, and us, into the resurrected people we are supposed to be.

We didn't have to hunt for love or the cure. He found us...

so why the h*ll are so many of use kissing frogs and living in swamps instead of kissing Jesus?