I watched the video once.
Then I watched it again because surely I had misunderstood what I was seeing.
A man was being marched down the aisle of a church at gunpoint during Vacation Bible School. Around him, children chanted, “Take him out!” and “Blow him up!”
This wasn’t a movie.
It wasn’t a military training exercise.
It wasn’t satire.
It was Vacation Bible School.
Let that sink in.
Vacation Bible School is supposed to be where children learn that they are loved. It should be where they hear stories about kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and hope. It should be where they discover that every person bears the image of God.
Instead, these children were being encouraged to cheer for violence.
“When adults hand children imaginary enemies and encourage them to shout for someone’s destruction — even symbolically — we should not be surprised when they begin to divide the world into people worth loving and people worth eliminating.”
Misty Gay
Some will argue it was “just a skit.” But children don’t learn through disclaimers. They learn through examples. They remember what adults celebrate. They absorb what earns applause.
As I watched that video, I couldn’t help but think of my Great Gran.
She never stepped behind a pulpit. She never held a microphone. She never put on a production to teach us about faith.
Every morning, she sat at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee, her well-worn Bible open before her. She always said the most important words in Scripture were the ones printed in red. “Those are Jesus’ words,” she’d remind me. “Start there.”
She believed the church wasn’t confined to four walls. “My church is right here in my kitchen,” she’d say, laying a weathered hand across the pages of her Bible.
She taught me that following Jesus looked less like winning battles and more like feeding neighbors, offering forgiveness, caring for the hurting, and treating every person with dignity. She didn’t preach fear. She practiced love.
That was her sermon. And it has lasted far longer than any skit ever could.
When adults hand children imaginary enemies and encourage them to shout for someone’s destruction — even symbolically — we should not be surprised when they begin to divide the world into people worth loving and people worth eliminating.
The irony is almost unbearable.
The Jesus I read about never handed His followers weapons.
He stopped Peter from using one.
He told His followers to love their enemies.
To pray for those who persecuted them.
To forgive seventy times seven.
To turn the other cheek.
To welcome children — not frighten them into spiritual warfare.
Somewhere along the way, parts of American Christianity traded the teachings of Jesus for the language of conquest. The church has become so consumed with defeating “the enemy” that we’ve forgotten who Jesus said our neighbors are.
And now that rhetoric has reached our children.
If your first instinct after seeing that video is to defend the church instead of asking whether something has gone terribly wrong, then perhaps we’ve become more loyal to institutions than to Christ Himself.
This isn’t about politics.
It isn’t about denominations.
It isn’t even about one church.
It’s about the stories we hand to the next generation.
When children associate faith with fear...
When they associate righteousness with domination...
When they associate God with violence...
We shouldn’t be surprised if they grow up believing that cruelty is holy.
Children deserve better than that. They deserve a faith that teaches courage without hatred.
Conviction without cruelty.
Justice without vengeance.
Strength without violence.
When I think about the faith that shaped me, I don’t remember elaborate productions or dramatic performances. I remember an old woman in a modest Eastern Kentucky kitchen, quietly reading the words of Jesus before the sun had fully climbed over the hills. I remember the smell of coffee. The creak of her chair. The gentleness in her voice. Those moments taught me more about God than any spectacle ever could.
If the church cannot be the safest place for a child to learn about love, then we have wandered very far from the carpenter who welcomed children into His arms and warned adults not to cause them harm.
Maybe the question isn’t whether the skit went too far.
Maybe the question is how we arrived at a place where anyone thought it belonged in Vacation Bible School in the first place.
