Does Anyone Else Remember The Story Keepers?

 

The Story Keepers is a children’s cartoon produced by Zondervan and Focus on the Family that ran from 1995-1997. I have vivid childhood memories of watching this show Friday mornings. It follows the adventures of Christians in first century Rome as they dodge the authorities to share the gospel.

I was surprised to learn that there were only thirteen episodes. For whatever reason, when I was a kid, I thought there were so many episodes I would never see every single one.  Although it is shorter than I remembered it was by no means incomplete. These thirteen episodes tell a complete story and end on a four-part Easter special. 

The animation for the present of 64AD is more goofy and fun, but the animation changes to different more elegant and artistic styles when it is focusing on a gospel story being told. For example the parable of the good samaritan is very angular and has dark earthy tones while the story of the calming of the sea is more fluid and uses blue and cool tones. 

Rome 64 AD

The first handful of episodes are more goofy and campy than the later ones. The animation also increased in quality the longer the show went on.  I think it took them a little bit to find their style, but even then I enjoyed the earlier episodes despite how absurd (or maybe because) they were.

The characters don’t fall into the boxes and tropes that I usually see in Christian fiction. Ben the Baker, our protagonist, and his wife are fostering several children whose parents have gone missing during the great fire of Rome. These children have a differing range of optimism and they aren’t always happy and hopeful that they will see their parents again. Some like Marcus, the youngest, are absolutely confident that their parents are out there waiting for them, while others like his older brother, Justin, are not. 

The Christians are not portrayed as being perfect and happy all the time, they disagree with one another,  they make mistakes because they are prideful and refuse to listen, sometimes with huge consequences.  Also, they struggle to be completely true to their faith. In the first episode, Tacticus, a sympathetic guard, advises Zak, one of Ben’s foster-children awaiting execution, to just proclaim Nero as a god because he has seen many Christians do so and their lives were spared.

Words cannot describe how much I despised this man. 

Not all non-Christians are super villains. The only two completely unsympathetic pagan characters are the major villains Nihilus (yes there was a villain named Nihilus this show is not very subtle in that regard) and Nero.

However, they are evil because the latter is a narcissist with a god-complex and the former is an unscrupulous follower of said narcissist. Although I hated Nero and Nihlus, it’s in the best way possible; they are entertaining and take over every scene they are in. Did mention? Nero is played by Tim Curry.

My favorite character is Tacticus who *spoilers* eventually converts to Christianity. However, he does not hear one gospel story and immediately asks to be baptized. He starts as an honorable man before he converts, and it takes the course of the series for him to believe in Jesus. I appreciate this more as an adult than I did as a child because in real life, most people who change their beliefs take time, and are not bad people before and after they make this change.

All episodes can be watched for free on YouTube here. If you have kids, I especially recommend you show it to them. The Story Keepers is up there with VeggieTales as one of the best Christian children’s shows ever produced

Who Killed Jesus?

 

An almost universally agreed upon fact by both Christian and secular scholars is that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under the orders of Pontius Pilate in the early first century likely around 30-33 AD/CE.

But what caused Jesus to be crucified?

Who killed him?

 The short and literal answer is the Romans who carried out Pilate’s orders. It does not matter if Pilate attempted to wash his hands of the act, he was still the one who bent over to the will of the mob. He may as well have been the one to drive the nails into Christ’s hands and feet.

However, since  the fledgling days of Christianity many have pointed their finger at the Jews. It was the religious authorities of the first century who were unhappy with how Jesus was teaching and handed him over to the Roman authorities.  Never mind that Jesus and most of his first followers were Jews, in many unfortunate cases, Christians have attempted to seek revenge against them. 

At the end of the day, arguing over who is responsible for Jesus’ death and seeking “justice” for him, is completely missing the point and purpose of his sacrifice, and ignores the hard truth.

I, Melanie, killed Jesus.

 It was for my and the sins of everyone who ever lived that he died, but this is by no means a reason for despair or to attempt to harm oneself or seek out punishment. 

My mother once told me, we should not be doling out justice for Jesus or avenging his death.  Our salvation did not come without a price, but it is also important to remember what the sacrifice gave us. My mother also told me, if I were to look up at Jesus from the foot of the cross he would not say. “Look what you did to me.” 

His words would be, “I did this for you.”

It was not Pilate, but it was my sins who condemned thee to death. -St. Alphonsus Ligouri 

Deadly Flowers: A Book Review

 

        

         Deadly Flowers is a middle-grade novel that follows Kata, a stellar student at ninja academy for girls. Kata has the honor of being assigned her first solo mission, an assassination. However, upon realizing that her target is a little boy, Kata has second thoughts about her mission and has to make a difficult choice.   I have very mixed feelings about this book, but I still prefer to start with what I liked first.

         The author certainly did her research when writing about the ninja. As a self-identified ninja enthusiast, I enjoyed it. I feel she could have gone a little further with the factual information about the ninja and the like, but I do know that the average reader may not appreciate this the same way I would and it’s a story not an encyclopedia.

         The beginning set at school and were my favorite parts. I liked how the girls, who are mostly orphans, looked out for each other in their own ways and the nicknames they gave to their instructors behind their backs. It all made the school feel more like a real place.

What didn’t work for me:

           Kata’s arrogance blew my mind. She’s a fifteen-year-old ninja who has been training her entire life. I think she should be allowed to have some confidence, but to a point. She constantly thinks about how she is so much better than her two companions, and mentions how it has been years since she has been punished at school for failing even the most difficult of an exercise because she is just that amazing. Speaking of her two companions, Kata has a strong disdain towards Saiko. Kata reminds the reader of this dislike every other page. In my opinion, I see it as believable that someone like Kata may not click with someone like Saiko immediately. However, we do not need the narrator to more or less say “I don’t like this person” nearly every time the character breathes. (That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it did happen enough to grow tiresome).

Towards the end of the book, the characters seem to only take action because the plot needs to keep moving so people need to do things. I don’t want to spoil anything so I will leave it at that.

         My final gripe is the way the book handles foreshadowing. During the story, things happen that may make a critical reader raise an eyebrow. That is okay. What is not okay to me is that when this comes to fruition, the narration reminds us of every single moment that led up to this. Stuff the reader is already aware of. This bothered me because it came across more like the writing saying, “You are too simple to remember what happened so I am going to remind you.”

         Deadly Flowers is okay. I feel it actually could have used more information on the Ninja, but I know I am just an enthusiast so this might not be the opinion of the average reader. The action scenes (mostly blow-by-blow descriptions) could also use some work, but it is not the main focus of the book.

I will admit that a lot of my issues with this book are personal pet peeves of mine, foreshadowing, the main character’s personality, etc so I would say if you read this and think what bothered me would probably bother you as well, then this book might not be for you. However, if my concerns don’t seem like that big of a deal then I think it would not hurt at all to give it a try.