Kung Fu Panda - Gateway to Heresy?

Cute movie, but inherently anti-religious (well, anti most religions, as well as all occult practices).

The kids wanted to see it, so we went. It was fun. We laughed a lot (and my son and I once again annoyed my daughter by insisting we stay through the credits).

***Spoilers***

There is no secret ingredient. There is no secret on the scroll. There is no secret to life. No news (good or otherwise) that you need to hear to make sense of life. As Faith Hill sings, "The secret of life is that there ain't no secret."

But (most) religions would disagree. There is a secret, in the sense that there is something you need to know in order for you to understand What's Really Going On. Christianity says that something is the good news of Jesus Christ. Christians try really, really hard to share the secret (compared to occult groups who save the secret for an inner circle of initiates). Pop psychology is an industry based on people believing that there is some secret, some simple (or not so simple) thing that if they just knew, they'd be ok.

Kung Fu Panda teaches us that there is no secret. Life just is, and you live it. In some sense, it's the message of the Zen masters and the existentialists. In this view of things there is neither hope nor despair, there is just what is. Knowing that God created us, loves us despite our sins, has died to save us, and has prepared an eternal home for us with Him... that's the kind of stuff that would need to be revealed, maybe written on a scroll. But the scroll is blank, worse, it is vaguely reflective. All the revelation you get is yourself.

Fortunately, my kids didn't take that away from the movie at all. For them, it was just a light-hearted diversion on a too-warm summer's day. And so, we have a lot of fun joking about anything I cook. "So, did you like the secret ingredient?" "Dad, there is no secret ingredient!" "Oh yeah..."

But I can't help but wonder if subtle messages like this are seeds cast into the soil of the young, and one day they will bear fruit.

PS - Shout out to my brother whose birthday is today! Happy Day!