300
I made a rare trip to the cinema last night to see 300. Call me a big romantic softie, but I found it thoroughly inspiring.
© Warner Bros.
If you strip away the stunning visual spectacle and the nearly non-stop graphic (novel) violence, you find a very simple story. One of the big themes of the story is How a Boy Becomes a Man.
© Warner Bros.
I think the Spartan way was about 90% horrible, but the fact is that they, like most cultures of that time, had a definite community process for turning children into adults. By contrast, we, the modern western world which has taken so much from the Greeks, have all but lost the idea of training for adulthood and rites of passage. The more consistent message we get in our culture is: stay young and irresponsible for as long as possible.
We have schools which serve the purpose of inserting knowledge and socialising children with their peers. We have churches that do basically the same thing. We have universities which occasionally teach young people how to think. But that is not enough, not by a long shot.
Of course, pointing out a cultural failure is easy. I say we do something about it.
The bible tells us to train up children in the way they should go. It was built in to the Hebrew Law and culture, and it covered every area of life, knowing God, career, charity, warfare, sex, family life, etc.
This training up is the responsibility of parents, family and community — the Church. What do you think?
- Are we lacking something in our culture?
- How do we go about putting it back in?
- Who do you know that is successfully doing the job?
29 March 2007 Jeff Gill
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