There has been a significant increase in the content labeled “Christian” in the last few years. This can be both good and bad, especially for young people. It’s good, because we finally have quite a few options of content that isn’t filled with cursing and the encouragement of participating in various sins with the accompanying mocking of those who don’t participate or are Christians.
On the other hand, there is often a lot of sloppy and even wrong or dangerous theology in some books, articles and shows (and even song lyrics). It’s highly likely your young Bible students believe that anything labeled Christian is endorsed by God and they don’t have to filter it through scripture. Unfortunately, that’s how so many people who are Christians have been tricked into believing false teaching – whether it’s intentional or not.
There is an activity you can do with your Bible students to begin teaching them how to filter “Christian” content through scripture. You will need a copy of an article or book for everyone in your class or a clip from a Christian movie or song (with copies of the written lyrics). The activity is more fun if you can afford red, yellow and green highlighters for every student, but you can just have them mark things with the words.
Choose a section that you know has some theology in it that is definitely unbiblical for the first exercise. It’s even better if the passage also has something in it that on the surface sounds good, but taken out of context or in a different way, could be problematic.
Ask the students to highlight or write down the sentences that are “green” or 100% in line with scripture. Sentences that are debatable for some reason should be highlighted in yellow or written in a yellow column. Those that are unbiblical should be highlighted in red.
After students have marked the passage, have them share their reasoning for their choices. Encourage them to find scriptures that support their decisions. As students become more comfortable with the exercise, make the passages they mark more complex, cover different or longer genres and encourage more use of scripture in their rationales for their choices.
You don’t need to do this exercise every week, but you should do it often enough that students become comfortable filtering whatever they read through scripture. You can also use the technique as part of a book club that focuses on both non-fiction and fiction Christian books. Make it fun by mixing in song lyrics and movie clips from time to time. Give them enough opportunities to practice that they can tell you the questions and accurately mark passages with ease. It’s a great way to protect them from false teaching.