To Ban or Not to Ban -- FPC sermon excerpt

In January of last year, the Merriam Webster Dictionary was banned in a California elementary school.

I’m not kidding. The dictionary.

The reason was that the dictionary ventured into territory that many parents would consider to be rated PG-13. Merriam Webster provided a clear and concise definition of a certain sex act.

“It’s just not age appropriate,” said a representative of the district. Out of respect for families at FPC with young children, I will not report the particular word and definition.

But the dictionary was not alone. Other books recently removed include:

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? This children’s book was banned in 2010 by the Texas Board of Education. The author Bill Martin has the same name as an obscure Marxist theorist, and no one bothered to check if they are actually the same person. They are not.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. This moving diary of a victim of the Holocaust was pulled from a Virginia school last year for “sexually explicit” themes.

Two of Ernest Hemingway’s classic books. A Farewell to Arms was banned for sexual content, while For Whom the Bell Tolls was deemed to be pro-communist.

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. Yanked from a Florida elementary school because it “promotes disrespect, horror, and violence.”

Perhaps it’s time for these school systems to take a deep breath … and a cold shower. Most Americans can understand restrictions on books such as Howard Stern’s Private Parts. Not appropriate for every age, clearly. But the Merriam Webster Dictionary?

How are kids going to look up the word “ban”?

Book-banning is nothing new in American life, and concern about sexuality is usually the match that lights the fire. The list of books barred by schools and libraries over the years includes The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, frequently censored from 1789 to the early 20th century. In particular, people objected to the essay “Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress.” In it, Franklin lists the many ways that older women are superior in … let’s see, shall I say … matters of the heart?

The list also includes classics such as Madame Bovary (1856), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), and Lolita (1955), banned because of their sexual content. Even Peter Benchley’s Jaws (1974) is black-listed, not because of excessive gore but because of too much sex.

Sometimes it seems that only one thing matters when the question is asked, “To Ban or Not to Ban?”

Sexual content.

Our discomfort with sexual content is unfortunate, because it causes us to miss the wider value of these banned books, and to see the role that sexual material plays in the larger story. What decision would a review board make if it came across the following lines in a classic text?

The woman says, “Your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out; therefore the maidens love you. I held him, and would not let him go until I brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.”

The man says, “Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies. How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice.”

And the woman says, “My beloved thrust his hand into the opening, and my inmost being yearned for him. I arose to open to my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the handles of the bolt …. I am faint with love.”

Pretty steamy stuff. So what do you think?

To ban or not to ban?

These words come from Holy Scripture, from the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s (1:2-3, 3:4, 4:5, 4:10, 5:4-5, 8).

Be careful what you ban.

The Song of Solomon is full of sexual material, but it is not a dirty book. Instead, the passionate longings of its characters give us important insights into the nature of human desire, and the nature of God’s desire for us. Our Lord does not simply tolerate us — weak and fallible creatures that we are. Instead, God has a passion for each one of us, and a hunger to be intimately involved with us.