c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) “Can I watch that movie?” asks my 9-year-old son.

His question concerns the latest James Bond video, “The World Is Not Enough.”

I am going through a bout of wondering what cultural fare we are feeding our child. We don’t watch television or hang around the mall. We try to emphasize family, school and faith. But we don’t keep our doors locked against the world. He needs to learn values, not fear of modernity.

So what about this movie? It is a typical Bond flick of the Pierce Brosnan era: unusual chase scenes, exotic weapons, colorful explosions, interesting villains, casual seductions, women who are strong and independent and yet need to be rescued, and, in a new twist, spy chief “M” showing a maternal side.

I figure he can sort through the weaponry and villainy. The Bond flicks have come a long way in their portrayal of women. No more bimbos waiting breathlessly for Bond to save and then savor their hides. The seductions are more comic book than real. So is the violence.

But there is always this sense, even in the era of Brosnan cool, that deep questions can be resolved by violence or by sex, or, ideally, violence followed by sex. It’s an Armani-clad update on an ancient theme: the victorious warrior gets to bed the babe. The perfect trophy.

I am well aware that evil comes “from within,” as Jesus said. But what feeds and forms the human heart?

I doubt we become murderers because we read about murders. If cultural exposure to human failings spawned human failings, literature would have to be outlawed and even Scripture locked away.

The best children’s books, in my view, aren’t those that portray life as one squeaky-clean cheerfulness after another, but Robert Louis Stevenson wrestling with a sick child’s loneliness, Maurice Sendak visualizing a child’s fearful fascination with monsters, and the “Berenstain Bears” grappling with human failings like avarice, envy and pride.

Children learn values from parents and grandparents, or those who take such intimate roles in their lives. The book that is read to a child matters less than the delight of being read to or the missed delight from being ignored.

A Charles Dickens story about a brute doesn’t produce brutishness; a child learns violence by being abused or observing abuse firsthand. A child learns to respect or disrespect the opposite sex, not through James Bond or gangster rap, but by watching how Mom and Dad treat each other.

A child learns to love by being loved. A child learns to shut down by being ignored or abused. A child learns values at the kitchen table.

Movies and books present potent images. So do television, music, newspapers and advertisements. But we cannot create a moral society by banning books or rating movies. Teaching a child isn’t that easy. We learn from each other, most especially from the people who are closest to us. We learn as much by bad example as by good example, as long as some trustworthy person helps us see the difference.

Jesus had little use for the traditional laws of his people. Obeying dietary laws wouldn’t produce goodness. Nor did he show any interest in promulgating new rules. The church’s determination to legislate morality seems sad and bizarre in contrast to Jesus’ example.

Jesus taught goodness by being good himself, and by urging his followers to love each other. Those who want to justify bigotry and barriers can always find a Scripture somewhere to support their claims. But Jesus himself, teaching through example, showed respect for all, even outcasts and sinners. He welcomed women to his inner circle and children to his side. He valued honesty. He valued sacrifice. He took the side of victims. And he did so, not through pronouncements, but through shaping his own life.

If morality were easy to teach, we could paste the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls and be done with it. We could demand prayer before high school games. But when parents turn Word and piety into a political shouting match, does their child learn faith and decency, or hatred and smugness?

My son will learn far more from me than from James Bond.

DEA END EHRICH