My wife and I have a group of other young couples that we like to invite over for dinner and games from time to time. Many of us are at the age where we have jobs that have us still working odd hours. If we invited our friends over, they may have to decline due to some work one of them may have. If they did that and my wife asked why can they not make it, I could be honest and say, “One of them has to work late.” I could also say, “They can’t make it because they don’t believe in fun.” The second statement was obviously very wrong. If I choose this second option, what I will have done is create a strawman argument. I have misrepresented our friends. This is a common theme towards Christians in the media in general, and especially with public school material.

In many works you will read, you will see religious figures painted in a light that shows them as hostile, elitist, and even evil. You will often see religious practitioners depicted as behind in time, dull witted, and close minded. We need to realize that these are strawmen. They are false representations. It is true that many will claim the name of Christ to push their narrative, and we can read Matthew 7 to see how Jesus responds to them and how you can respond to such texts too. This group hardly represents Christianity at large, but in our literature books they will be the only representation of Christians that the public school will give. They do not paint followers of Christ with honesty. Do the Christians you know look like the ones in these books? Of course they do not. Followers of Christ will be painted as stupid and or close minded in these books. Your textbooks will overlook that the geniuses you read about like Mendel, Euler, Newton, Carver, Pascal, and other pursuers of knowledge called themselves Christians and were motivated by their Faith to understand God’s creation. This detail is left out since textbook authors would consider religious affiliations of these individuals to be irrelevant and contradictory to the purpose and agenda they are trying to push.

So why do we have this strawman? When we read these books, we are in a large sense entering the author’s mind. We are not only seeing their brilliance, we are seeing their personal view of society. We see their lens of society, which is not only shaped by their literary geniuses but also by their brokenness. We are seeing their biases, questions, doubts, and views. We are seeing a person's personal view of society that is rarely accurate due to their brokenness and hurts. Many of the popular novels we read in school come from individuals who had gone through terrible events. We can and should learn empathy as we read these stories, but we should not take their personal experiences as proof of fact alone. Nor should we seek to be like these individuals. We can hurt, empathize, and be happy for them, but that does not mean we have to take what they say as truth. Nor should we try to be influenced by them. Many of these authors had mental health issues and some even committed suicide after their works were published. These are the individuals youth are being pushed to be influenced by. They may have written beautiful poetry, but before we have our youth submerged in their works we need to be aware of these authors' depressive episodes and suicidal tendencies, and ask what the effects will be from having our youth repeatedly studying such works. Now that we know some of why Christians are slandered and Christian ideals are doubted in the book we read, we should ask, “why are our youth being made to read them?” When we read these stories, I would encourage you to read about the author beforehand and try to see what biases and views their stories will carry as a result. As Christians, we should be careful of what we consume. That does not mean we are to be ignorant, we find truth and knowledge wonderful. We should not pursue books, tv, or other media that would lead to sin though. Ignorance of sin is possibly the only acceptable ignorance.