My wife recently rented a movie. She figured Won't You Be My Neighbor? would be clean and interesting. How bad could a documentary on Fred Rogers be? She was right. It was a clean show, an upfront documentary made with historical and current interviews from Rogers and those who knew him and worked with him.
He was an interesting fellow. One thing they stressed was that Fred Rogers -- the man -- was the same person as Mr. Rogers -- the television presence. It wasn't an act; he really was a nice guy. One thing I learned was a real surprise to me. Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. Yeah, go figure. Rogers had a passion for the welfare of children. He chose to do television work for children's programming instead of going to seminary as he had planned. The work was hard, so he took a break and went back to seminary. He was ordained as a minister of the United Presbyterian Church (UPC) in 1963. (Today it's now the PCUSA.) Mister Rogers' Neighborhood came about in 1968.
Rogers was known as a man of faith. He wouldn't "eat anything that had a mother," a vegetarian for both health and ethical reasons. He offered messages that he believed were inspired by the core tenets of Christianity, but wouldn't speak about his faith on air. He believed an example was a more powerful teacher than teaching or preaching verbally. His primary message throughout his career was two-fold: "Love your neighbor and love yourself."
Fred Rogers was a nice guy, but I was saddened to hear his primary message. Oh, sure, that "love your neighbor" thing is obviously good; Jesus agreed. But Rogers left it as a rule, a principle, a command, so to speak, but offered no support. He included the second greatest command and left off the first -- love God (Matt 22:37-40). He substituted, instead, Satan's best message -- love yourself. Such a wonderful principle -- love -- but devoid of the source (1 John 4:8).
Fred Rogers was a nice guy who treated people well and seemed to genuinely care about kids. He actually lived the way he suggested others live. He epitomized the saying, "Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary use words." He never used words. I was sad to see that an ordained Presbyterian minister with access to children felt it was important not to tell them about Jesus. Paul charged Timothy to "preach the word," specifying "in season and out of season," and urging him to "reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching" (2 Tim 4:1-2). I'm disappointed that an ordained minister, seminary trained, didn't know that and felt that "love yourself" was a better message that Christ. I'm disappointed that, to the nice Mr. Rogers, Jesus was not the answer.
7 comments:
Maybe that whole "Preach the gospel, if necessary use words.", isn't as true as people would like to believe it is.
To use the Mr Rodgers example, if he'd been actually preaching the gospel wordlessly, then it seems like his status as a minister wouldn't have been so much of a surprise to people and that he wouldn't be quite so popular.
Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, that whole "if necessary use words" thing is actually not something that he never said and, if we take Scripture at its face value, "if necessary" is all the time. We often miss that we have to live it, but we always need to preach it with words.
"I'm disappointed that an ordained minister, seminary trained, didn't know that and felt that "love yourself" was a better message that Christ."
I'm disappointed in many ordained ministers and other seminary trained people who don't seem to truly support Biblical teaching. False priests.
I usually ignore this stuff ... don't even read it. You know, the "keep it friendly" rule. But it was basically a one-line response and I couldn't avoid seeing it. So now, apparently, it is Pharisaical for a Christian to want Jesus to be first, for a Christian to want an ordained minister to preach Jesus. Sometimes I just don't get this at all.
What, are you nuts? You think that an ordained Christian minister should talk about Jesus. Next your going to say that ordained Christian ministers need to acknowledge the existence of Jesus.
That’s crazy talk.
I don't understand how urging people to talk about Jesus is "pharasaical" since they urged people not to talk about Jesus. I'll never understand, I suppose.
Because calling someone pharisaical is the progressive Christian version of the political progressive use of racist. They are both used indiscriminately enough to render them meaningless and pointless.
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