Watch Your Tracts

We were riding in the car the other day when, from the back seat, my 9-year–old asks “Dad, what’s lust?”

"An interesting question", I think to myself. He probably heard it from a bible verse or something. So, I give him a definition like “It means wanting something really bad --So bad that just wanting it becomes a sin.”

“Ok”, he replies. Good. He’s satisfied with the answer. Moving on now.

Later that day, on the return trip, I get this one. “Dad, what’s shacking?”

HUH? “You mean a ‘shack’, like a small house?”

“No,” he says, “shack-ING", emphasizing the last syllable, "Shacking. What is it?”

I look at my wife. She's in the front seat, wearing the ‘No more network TV for the kids’ look. She decides to take this one on: “It’s when two people live together, but they are not married to each other.”

“Oh”, he says seriously, with the tone of a 9-year-old who knows something bad when he hears it.

Mom and I look at each other, self satisfied, “Yea, we’re doing something right”, with the mental tongue click and wink.

He’s not done now, though. “What’s gay?”

Quickly, I respond with “It means ‘happy’. Where are you getting these questions??”

“Oh,” he matter-of-factly replies, “it’s just a book I’m reading.”

Then he launches the real zinger: “What’s HO - MO - sex - u - ality”, he sounds out, impressively.

That’s it. “WHAT ARE YOU READING?” The truck swerves as I look over my shoulder at my son.

“Dad! It’s just this comic book that I got at church”. As if either the words ‘comic book’ or ‘church’ would excuse any impropriety in owning such an interesting book.

There it was, in his sweaty, little, inquisitive hands. A Chick comic.

Now, if you’ve grown up in little, conservative, evangelical churches like myself, you will probably remember Chick tracts (maybe your church still has that little wire stand in the foyer, chock full of Chick tracts). Perhaps you remember them fondly because you haven’t seen one since you were a kid. Or, maybe these tracts scared you (Remember “This Was Your Life”, where they beamed all the bad deeds you did in life on a big-screen TV for all of heaven to see?). These tracts seem innocent enough --at least I used to think they were. Now, through an adults’ eyes, I see them a bit differently.

Needless to say, the Chick tract collection will be sequestered until we can read and approve them. Or, maybe I will just toss the whole lot… In fact, I know I will. I now hate Chick.

So, thanks Jack Chick for introducing some more wasn’t-quite-ready-to-have-to-explain-that-to-my-kids vocabulary to our household. Between you and the lady down the street, I won’t have to worry that my kids will grow up ignorant of all the ills of this world, or the FCC’s seven forbidden words.