There was a spoiled brat in the New Testament, too. He had lots of money and an outsized sense of his own merit. (Did his parents tell him he was special from his youth?) This young man came to Jesus with a question about salvation. The Scripture says that Jesus took him seriously and “looking at him, loved him.” (Mark 10:21)

Vivid among my childhood memories is Roald Dahl’s juvenile novel, Charlie and Chocolate Factory.

For those whose fourth grade teachers didn’t read it aloud on September afternoons (or who, like me, were too young for the 1971 Gene Wilder film and too old for Tim Burton’s remake in 2005) it is the story of impoverished Charlie Bucket, who wins a tour of the Wonka Chocolate Factory.

Along with Charlie, four other children find winning golden tickets in their candy bars. The rest is the story of how these other children encounter disaster and disqualify themselves from the grand prize.

These other children are spoiled brats. One girl screams for her daddy to capture one of the factory’s nut-cracking squirrels, then, mid-tantrum, falls down the garbage chute. A boy lies on his fat belly and drinks straight from a chocolate river, getting sucked into the fudge production line in the process. A third child steals experimental gum and turns blue.

To every young reader, the thesis of Dahl’s book is simple: spoiled kids get what they deserve. And that makes us happy.

We don’t change much when we grow up, either.

Not long ago, I found myself watching a 2010 episode of ABC’s reality show Supernanny.  In the series, Jo Frost, a no-nonsense Mary Poppins, arrives at the homes of undisciplined children and their exasperated parents and teaches everyone a lesson.  Why do I like this show? Because it makes me feel like a better parent.

The kids on Supernanny are so horrible, and their parents so clueless, even my feeble efforts as a mom seem Solomonic.

We parents love to feel smug, and nothing gives us that warm glow of Pharisaism like the kid in Aisle 10 loudly demanding a new Xbox game—and the mom who actually buys it.

Leslie Leyland Fields, in a Christianity Today article, “The Myth of the Perfect Parent,” refers to our misplaced hope that parents are “graded on a curve.” She’s talking about guilt over other, seemingly perfect kids: holding up exemplary children makes us feel bad. But the reverse is also true: looking at bad kids makes us feel good.  If we can find a worse kid than our own, we think we’re doing okay.

And we are voyeurs at heart.  We are the Pharisee in the temple who prayed, “’God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’” (Luke 18: 11) We like knowing the juicy details of what’s wrong with other people.

So, when an article like Elizabeth Kolbert’s recent review in The New Yorker, “Spoiled Rotten,” comes out, we eat it up. It’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for grownups.

In her article, Kolbert reviews several recent books addressing American children behaving badly. The books are written by anthropologists, psychologists, and moms. The review amounts to a perverse take on Bill Cosby’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”  In these books, real life kids refuse to tie their own shoes, fail to walk unaided to the bathtub, and beg their parents to buy an accumulation of 248 dolls.

“Spoiled,” to Kolbert, means primarily three things for kids: gross materialism, freedom from responsibility, and an inflated sense of self that results in a reversal of family authority structures. Kolbert hypothesizes that children like this are an American problem.

She quotes a Time/CNN poll from 2001 that says fully two-thirds of American parents believe their children are spoiled. In her review, she offers a few suggestions for why this is: the poor economy, the pursuit of academics at the cost of everything else, even evolution.

But the “why” that interests me is why we have nine new books about spoiled brats.

One answer, of course, is that this is a genuine trend which bears analysis. Another is that the parents of such children are looking for help. But a third—one I find in my own heart—is that we can’t resist a story about spoiled kids.

We love to hate them. We love how right they make us feel by comparison. We love it when they get what they deserve.

(Anyone who has ever invited a family for dinner only to have the parents stand benignly by while their kids jump on the guest bed, draw on the coffee table with markers, and hide broccoli in the bathroom will understand the allure.)

But by lampooning naughty kids and their clueless parents, we feed our own pride at the cost of objectifying them. In fact, the Gospel has much to say to spoiled children—and to their adult incarnations.

To the children featured in Life at Home in the Twenty First Century, which offers a glimpse into the toy-choked households of middle America, the Gospel holds out an unfading treasure. To the child who, in the words of psychologist Madeline Levine, “puts a strong emphasis on being special” the Gospel explains nothing less than imago dei. And to the overgrown ones stuck in Sally Koslow’s “adultescence” the Gospel presents challenge and reward with eternal implications.

Washing our hands of these kids is spiritually irresponsible. The stack of books in Kolbert’s review is probably predictive: if a brat hasn’t moved in next door to you yet, he will soon.

There was a spoiled brat in the New Testament, too. He had lots of money and an outsized sense of his own merit. (Did his parents tell him he was special from his youth?) This young man came to Jesus with a question about salvation. The Scripture says that Jesus took him seriously and “looking at him, loved him.” (Mark 10:21)

We can do no less.

@Copyright 2011 Megan Evans Hill – used with permission

Megan is a PCA ‘Preacher’s Kid’ married to Rob Hill who is pastor of St. Paul Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Jackson, MS   She and her mom, Patsy Evans, blog at Sunday Women.