I read a great deal so must make fairly frequent trips to Barnes and Noble to ensure a good supply of books. Yesterday I was going through the wide center aisle carefully as I do love a bargain. A young man of perhaps 17 was browsing along side of me. He picked up The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and the complete Sherlock Holmes cannon by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I must admit that I thought them both to be great selections, The Chronicles of Narnia is an old childhood favorite of mine, and I've enjoyed every Sherlock Holmes story Doyle wrote.

A short while later the young man's father came by to go over his selections. It was obvious that the father approved of neither selection and asked the young man why he was not looking in the Christian section.

With a bit of time and discussion the young man was able to convince his father that C.S. Lewis was a Christian so he was allowed to purchase The Chronicles of Narnia. The Sherlock Holmes collection though had to be put back on the shelf and the father led his son over to the Christian section to pick another book.

The father was obviously seeking to protect his son from non-Christian influences, from 'heretical' ideas, and one must assume from the 'evils' of sexual portrayal.

From a practical standpoint, the father is an idiot, and he failed in his simple goal. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his masterpieces in Victorian England. Surely his stories of Sherlock Holmes are less 'racy' than many of the stories that would be found by modern authors in the Christian section.

The father's practical failure was not what I found bothersome in the entire display though. What was troubling to me was the attempt to hide our shared culture from the young man. The willful attempt by a father to keep his son ignorant.

Lack of knowledge is never a virtue.

As I wrote above, The Chronicles of Narnia is a fine book. It is also though a book intended for very small children. I first read it during the brief time I attended Public School, sometime between kindergarten and the third grade. It can be fun to re-visit books we loved in the past, but the young man I encountered yesterday will certainly learn nothing about the world from the book he was allowed to purchase.

A father who prevents his almost adult offspring from reading anything but either very young children's books, or specifically Christian books is creating a young adult who will leave the family home knowing nothing of the world around him. The young man will not know about other cultures, other belief systems, even the diverse ways of living embraced throughout our own nation. He will be unprepared to meet those who are different, unprepared to confront adult life.

I truly pity the young man if he should be the least bit different from the Christian ideal portrayed in Christian books for if he is, he will, due to his inability to read of the wider world, believe himself to be alone, view himself as a freak.

Ignorance is never a virtue. The western world learned that fact sometime in the middle ages, perhaps 1000 years ago. Christians before that time tried to limit their reading to only that which was 'safe,' just like the father I saw yesterday. As a result the western world lost everything. The knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans was lost. Tremendous knowledge held by the Islamic world at that time was hidden away from the west.

Eventually things changed. The pursuit of knowledge became important again, slowly ever so slowly; the people of Western Europe stopped spending their nights shivering in superstitious fear, huddling together under huts made of sticks and mud. The west regained its lost knowledge, picked up more from the Islamic world, and built the marvel that is our world today.

It is amazing to me that in our modern world, in Barnes and Noble, in Woodinville Washington, I was able to encounter a father just as ignorant and stupid as were the peasants of England in the year 900AD.

I feel sorry for the young man, for everything he has missed out upon, and I worry about the society that will in a year or two have to cope with a young adult who lacks the intellectual tools to make a positive contribution to the world around himself.