Curious George: Dangerous for children?

By Clint Bishard

Jesus Created Ministries

For more than 60 years, the Curious George children’s book series has entertained America’s children.  This seemingly innocent story of a curious monkey whose curiosity occasionally gets him into trouble would seem acceptable material for any age.  Even the Family Movie Guide had the recent Curious George movie down as “Go see”.  Therefore, my wife and I recently took two of our children to enjoy what should have been a family friendly movie.

I will admit that the Curious George movie was entertaining not only for our children, but also for us.  However, what was disappointing was the clearly evolutionary messages throughout the movie.  The movie reinforced the view that man and lower life forms shared common ancestors multiple times, including the reference to Australopithecus (which some evolutionists claim to be a link between man and ape), life in the past being a constant struggle in the development of man, the references to cave men Og and Grog, the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man joke, and the common ancestor comment for different animals.  Additionally, several other references such as the exclamation “Mother Science” did not set well either.  It is clear this movie had more of an agenda than just showing a curious monkey getting into trouble.

I wish I could say that the evolutionary overtones of the Curious George movie were a recent Hollywood revision of the originals.  However, after a little investigation, I found this was not the case.  Hans Rey, the Jewish creator of the Curious George children’s storybook, had studied philosophy and the natural sciences in Germany.  He was brought up in the environment of WWI and pre-WWII Europe.  By WWII, most of Europe had given itself to evolutionary teaching and was suffering the consequences of this worldview (evolutionary thinking was a basis of the socialist and communist political systems and a motivation for Hitler’s policies).  Hans Rey was a product of this environment and this worldview can be seen in his children’s books.  For example, “Curious George and the Dinosaur” clearly teaches children that the earth is millions of years old and gives a prehistoric view for dinosaurs.  Additionally, Christ is removed from Christmas in the book “Curious George Learns the Alphabet” by stating that the word for X is Xmas and “Santa stands for Xmas”.  It is ironic that America, which had mostly resisted evolutionary teaching in Han’s day with the majority professing Christ, became the haven for Hans Rey and his wife Margret as they escaped Hitler’s grasp just shortly before WWII.

            Although these issues in the Curious George movie and books may seem insignificant to most, Christians should be more discerning and realize that the worldview we shape for our children will have a significant impact for the rest of their lives.  A worldview that includes millions of years and death before sin (destroying the Biblical view of origins), and removes Christ from Christmas is a worldview that is proving very destructive as seen in our current culture.  Our culture is in desperate need of being taught the proper worldview starting in the book of Genesis.  They need to know that God originally created a perfect world and that death/disease/suffering/etc. was the result of Adam’s sin (see Gen 1-3 & Rom 5:12).  Biblically, death should be viewed is an enemy and can only be overcome by a personal faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.