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,
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.
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