Friday, November 29, 2013

Brave - Child's and Parents Responsibility

Brave - Child's and Parents Responsibility



I’ll start with the background of the story of Brave.

Brave is a Scottish coming of age tale about a young princess, Merida who wants to live life her way. Overall she is a good kid at heart. She feels constrained by the rules of her mother, Queen Elinor.

Queen Elinor only wants the best for her daughter. She wants Merida to grow up well educated, well-mannered and well suited to take the throne as Queen someday. Queen Elinor sets high standards for herself and for Merida.

When Merida comes of age to be married, according to the customs of the clans King Fergas, Merida’s father and Queen Elinor host a tournament to see which of the first born sons of the other clans will win Merida’s hand.

Merida rebels and tries to make the point she wants to choose her own fate and path in life and does not feel she is ready to marry yet. Queen Elinor is angered and Merida runs away after slashing a tapestry apart. The picture on the tapestry is of King Fergas, Queen Elinor and Merida when she was younger. The tapestry is cut right where Merida and Queen Elinor’s hands come together.

Led by the wisps Merida ends up at a “wood carver’s cottage” and finds out the old lady carver is actually a witch. In fact she is the witch that figures into a legend that Queen Elinor told Merida earlier. Merida asks the witch to make a spell to “change” her mother. Merida’s intent is to find a way to change her mother’s heart on the marriage but there is no evil intent in Merida’s request.

Merida returns to the castle to find her mother and give her the spell (a “gamey” tasting cake). The spell turns Queen Elinor and Merida’s 3 younger brothers (triplets) into bears! Merida and Queen Elinor return to the cottage in the woods to find the witch gone. There is a message and Merida finds she has just 2 days to “mend the bond that was torn apart”.

As mother and daughter travel together to attempt to solve the riddle of how to change Elinor back they start to mend their relationship. Merida figures that the torn bond the witch talked about was the tapestry and gets her mother to return to the castle to fix it. Merdia gives a speech attempting to distract the room full of Scottish warriors so Elinor can get past them. She starts out saying she is going to give in and chose a husband but her mother, still a bear through jesters letting Merida know she agrees that Merida is not ready to marry and to stand firm.

Shortly after this King Fergas (the Bear King) sees Queen Elinor the bear in his castle and the chase is on! Fergas thinks Elinor the bear killed his beloved wife Elinor! The movie ends with Merida riding to the rescue with her little brothers (bears) on her great Clydesdale horse mending the tapestry as the sun is rising on the 2nd day. She must reach her mother and she believes mending the tare in the tapestry will break the spell.

The spell is not broken by the mending of the tapestry but in the mending of the relationship between mother and daughter. Only the healing of the relationship can change Elinor and the boys back.

Now there is more to the story of Brave but for the needs of this post I’ll not go into them.

How can this tale be related to the Bible? Easily! Ephesians 6:1-4!
NIV 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” – which is the first commandment with a promise – 3 “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” 4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Most Christian parents teach their children Ephesians 6:1 and often 6:2 but most neglect 6:3 and hardly any teach their child verse 4 and don’t give it much thought themselves. So let’s break it down and think about this entire section. Never just take verses out of context.

Teaching Eph. 6:1 alone is like beating your child on the head. “Child do whatever your parents say or God is going to smite you!” That is not true! Read on! Eph. 6:2 & 3 tell us that we should respect and honor our parents and further says we will be blessed if we do! The true meaning of Eph. 6:1-3 is not to threaten children with God’s punishment if they do not obey their parents. It is to let children know that God has placed parents in a place of responsibility for them and that if the child follows they will be blessed by God.

Merida did not obey, honor or respect her mother. Her father kind of helped with that bad behavior because he tolerated, allowed and in fact encouraged her rebellious behavior to a point. The sideways looks and finally the full rebellion lead Merida to sin and finally into grave danger. Merida was not evil she was just being a normal, willful and highly intelligent young lady.

Now for Eph. 6:4. This is what I find to be the key to good Christian parenting. It is also one of the hardest things to do. Do not drive your child to anger. Instead teach them the ways of the Lord. Show them how to live a Godly life. This pertains to both Fathers and Mothers.

How do parents drive their children to anger? Let’s look at Queen Elinor. She disapproved of Merida’s interest in archery, hunting and outdoors. She was always correcting and truly picking at Merida. She corrected her posture, every hair out of place and most of the words you heard during the movie were of reproof. She made rules and demanded they be adhered to without considering how Merida felt about it. Elinor planned on setting up a marriage without realizing how that would crush Merida’s spirit. Her desire was for the best for her daughter but in truth she missed out on who Merida truly was.

King Fergas is not innocent either! He encourage disobedience by not showing a unified front with Queen Elinor to Merida. He only partly agreed with the rules Elinor set in place but did not take the effort to work with her on the rules. He just agreed with Elinor in world but when Merida cried out it was unfair he agreed with Merida. He actually encouraged behavior Elinor disliked by doing things such as giving her a bow and praising her abilities at archery and climbing.

How do we as real life regular parents push our children to anger and rebellion? If you do not respect your child’s abilities and interests they will be forced to do it behind your back or in spite of you. Are your rules consistent? If a child does not have consistent rules and consequences they are confused about what you want and will give up trying to follow the rules. Have you relooked at the rules you made to see if it is time to change them because your child has grown and is more responsible? You don’t want to let a 5 year old cross the street by themselves but a 10-12 year old may be responsible enough to do so. (All depends on the child and the street.) You may have given them freedoms thinking they had shown themselves responsible for them. Maybe they broke the rules and you need to take away a few freedoms until they show they are ready for them. I have heard Christian parents tell their child no to something and then say “Just to prove I can.” (“You must listen to me,
I’m the Queen!”) I feel that is the quickest way to push a child to rebellion! Say yes when you can and no when you must! Where there are both a mother and father in the family work together to set rules and agree on consequences. Be a unified front! That way you are a strong foundation for your child to build on.

Relationships between parent and child are important and vital to the child growing up emotionally strong and able to cope with life as an adult. Relationships are fragile and easily damaged by outside forces as well as poor judgment and bad behavior. Relationships can only be renewed/mended when both parties desire it and work at forgiving and forging a new relationship built on mutual trust, respect and understand.


I will be honest and say I've failed in many ways as a parent. I’m praying and working on mending the relationship with my child. I tried to live by what I learned from these verses and know it is not easy.

Welcome to Pixie's Faith

Welcome to my 2nd blog! Besides PixiePranks-PansTinkerBell.Blogspot.com I have decided to start a 2nd blog!

Why two? Why not just put all my thought and energy into one blog? Both of my blogs will have Disney as a key point but my second blog will be directed at how Disney, and in particular Disney Movies can be used to learn and teach Biblical lessons. I’m making them separate because some people are not interested in a Biblical view.

I will not do the movies in any particular order but just go through them as they pop up.


I have never gone to Bible School or Seminary but I grew up with one of the best pastors and Biblical scholars, Dr. J. Vernon McGee. I learned from him how to open my mind and heart to God’s leading in my reading. I learned that when the verse start with begins with “therefore” you better find out what the “therefore” is there for!