Don’t Sacrifice Your Children
To all the Christian parents who still have your kids drinking from the filthy waters of public education, you also need to repent. Stop sending your children to Baal. Stop sending your children to Caesar. Go and get your kids and give them the education they deserve. Christian children have a right to a Christian education, and one day you’ll have to give an account to Jesus Christ himself. You already know this and therefore have no excuse. To whom much is given, much is required.
About 12 years ago, my wife and I decided to pull our kids from the government school system and commit to giving them a home education. When we did that, some of our friends and family members thought we were crazy: “What do you mean you’re homeschooling?”
We explained to them that God’s Word commands us to raise our children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” We explained that every successful student becomes like his teacher, just as Jesus said, “Every disciple who is fully trained will be just like his Master.”
We told them them that because we didn’t want a godless, anti-Christian, government-run school system to disciple our children, we were willing to sacrifice up to half our total income to protect the hearts and minds of our little ones. Some nodded of course with eyebrows lifted, eyes glazed over, and the little corners of their mouths pointed downward. But that was okay. We knew they didn’t understand. We knew we would have to bear the shame of stepping out in faith and obedience to God’s Word. We knew we would be characterized as religious fanatics and regarded as overzealous and extreme.
But you know what? Today more than ever we are proud of the decision we made. Our walk with the Lord has been greatly strengthened and our faith has been confirmed time and again throughout the past 12 years. Especially, as we look around at the current state and condition of our nation, we know that we did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. The degeneracy of public education is manifest.
In the picture below you can see just how far we’ve fallen. What “show and tell” used to be and what it is today is a clear testimony to the absolute corruption of our society.
And no, this is not one of those “I told you so” kind of rants.
Related Posts:
You Might also like
-
The Hidden War
In speaking out against abortion, therefore, we must not forget that few other sins cause more heartache or anguish of soul. Very few women today are offered viable alternatives, and almost none of them are pointed to God, who alone can answer their need. A woman who has had an abortion suffers great torment of conscience, and her isolation and endless pain can be healed only at the cross – only by finding Christ. Christians need to feel the immeasurable pain that so many women bear in their hearts for their lost children. Who of us can cast the first stone? (John 8:7) Woe to us if we ever become cold toward a woman who has had an abortion!
Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. Psalm 22:9–11
Almost a century ago, in response to the idea of “modern” family planning, Eberhard Arnold wrote, “In our families we hope for as many children as God gives. We praise God’s creative power and welcome large families as one of his great gifts.”1
What would he say now, in an era where contraception is standard practice and millions of unborn children are legally murdered every year? Where is our joy in children, and in family life? Our thankfulness for God’s gifts? Where is our reverence for life and our compassion for those who are least able to defend themselves? Jesus is very clear that no one can enter the kingdom unless he or she becomes like a child.
Sex without regard for the gift of life is wrong.
The spirit of our age is diametrically opposed not only to the childlike spirit but even to children themselves.2 It is a spirit of death, and it can be seen everywhere in modern society: in the rise of murder and suicide rates, in widespread domestic violence, in abortion, the death penalty, and euthanasia. Our culture seems bent on going the way of death, of taking into its own hands what is God’s domain. And it is not only the State that is at fault.
How many churches sanction the murder of unborn children under the guise of supporting women’s rights? The sexual “liberation” of our society has sowed tremendous destruction. It is a false liberation built on the selfish pursuit of satisfaction and pleasure. It ignores discipline, responsibility, and the real freedom that these can bring. In the words of Stanley Hauerwas, it mirrors “a profound lack of confidence that we have anything worthy to pass on to a new generation…We are willing our deaths.”3
The majority of people today have no qualms of conscience when the life of a tiny being is prevented or destroyed. Once considered the greatest blessing God can give, children are now considered in terms of their cost: they are a “burden” and a “threat” to the freedom and happiness of the individual.
In a true marriage, there is a close connection between married love and new life (Mal. 2:15). When husband and wife become one flesh, it should always be with the reverent recognition that through it new life may be formed. In this way their sexual union becomes an expression of creative love, a covenant that serves life. But how many couples view sex in this way? For most, the pill has made intercourse a casual act, divorced from responsibility and supposedly free of consequence.
As Christians, we must be willing to speak out against the contraceptive mentality that has infected our society. Too many couples have bought into the popular mindset of sexual indulgence and family planning on demand, throwing to the wind the virtues of self-control and trust. Sex for its own sake, even in marriage, not only cheapens sexual intercourse but erodes the foundation of self-giving love necessary for raising children. To engage in sexual pleasure as an end in itself, without regard for the gift of life, is wrong. It means closing the door to children, and thus despising both the gift and the Giver (Job 1:21). As Mother Teresa once said:
In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self, and so it destroys the gift of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other, as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception.4
Routine contraception undermines the fulfillment and fruition of two who are one flesh, and because of this we should feel revulsion toward the attitude that consistently seeks to avoid the responsibility of bearing children.
None of this is to suggest that we are to bring children into the world irresponsibly or at the risk of the mother’s health and well-being. The size of one’s family and the spacing of children is a matter of tremendous responsibility. It is something for each couple to consider before God, with prayer and reverence. Having children too closely together can place an especially difficult burden on the mother. This is an area where a husband has to show loving respect and understanding for his wife. Again, it is vital that a couple turn together to God and place their uncertainties and fears before him in faith (Matt. 7:7–8). If we are open to God’s leading, I am confident that he will show us the way.
To abort any child is to mock God.
The contraceptive mentality is but one of the manifestations of the spirit of death that makes new life so unwelcome in so many homes. Everywhere in society today there is a hidden war going on, a war against life. So many little souls are desecrated. And of those who are not prevented by contraception from entering the world, how many are callously destroyed by abortion!
The prevalence of abortion in our society is so great that it makes Herod’s slaughter of the Innocents tame in comparison. Abortion is murder – there are no exceptions. If there were, the message of the gospels would be inconsistent and meaningless. Even the Old Testament makes it clear that God hates the shedding of innocent blood (Prov. 6:16–17). Abortion destroys life and mocks God, in whose image every unborn baby is created.
In the Old Testament there are numerous passages that speak of God’s active presence in every human life, even while it is still being formed in the womb. In Genesis 4:1 after Eve conceives and gives birth to Cain, she says, “With the help of the Lord, I have brought forth a man.” She does not say, “With the help of Adam,” but “with the Lord.”
Read More
Related Posts: -
Techno-Slavery
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned.
I recently sat in on a presentation delivered by the president of a prominent evangelical seminary. The topic was discipling the next generation–what some have nicknamed “the smartphone generation.” At one point, our presenter pulled out his own device. “The next generation will not remember a time without one of these,” he said.
That Zoomers are inured to supercomputers in their pockets is not shocking. But the point is usually meant as a set-up for a more audacious–but no less fashionable–assertion: because the next generation won’t remember a time without smartphones, they can’t imagine a future without them.
Hence, the countless articles from evangelicals about discernment and technology, all assuming a kind of techno-inevitability. These typically present as a moderated position between two extremes–a “third way” between total adoption and extreme luddism. Many writers have recently questioned the third way approach to politics. It’s time to do the same with technology.
In his insightful critique of a “third-way” approach to politics, James R. Wood focuses on retrieving the telos of politics itself. The same can be done–and is being done–for technology, especially with an eye toward emerging technologies like AI. But it is also important that we apply such questions to current technologies–even devices like smartphones which so many of us have grown accustomed to. As Jon Askonas points out in his essay, “Why Conservatism Failed,” it was the adoption of new technologies like the Pill that did more to transform the household than anything else. Like a steroid to a muscle, technology causes the nascent power of the idea to explode. Transgenderism lay dormant in academic circles for a while but has now arrived in mainstream culture largely because of innovation and advancement in sex-reassignment surgeries.
That Christians today are departing from historic Christian teaching about sex, gender, and contraception in the time it takes to fill a prescription or set-up an appointment is a warning to us today. What if the next major technological shift to threaten Christian discipleship isn’t sitting in some R&D lab but in our homes right now?
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned.
Smartphones aren’t conducive to freedom.
Everyone from Patrick Deneen to Death Cab for Cutie has discovered the crushing yoke of expectations placed on us by smartphones. So much was evident when I compared my life with a smartphone to someone without one.
As a user, I had special access to life online. I was accessible whenever and wherever. Every bit of content in the world was at my fingertips. And yet, I was far less free than the typical Amish man–an example Deneen employs in Why Liberalism Failed.
The Amish man’s religious views preclude him from owning a smartphone among many other modern devices. He has no internet access, no email, no social media, no online identity. And yet, he rises with the sun and sets his plow down as he wishes. He lives and dies by the fruits of his own labors. He joins his family every night for dinner, undistracted by emails or texts from a workaholic boss. He doesn’t receive a barrage of push notifications warning him of social media trends or new seasons of Netflix shows.
Read More
Related Posts: -
To Make Reading Great Again, Schools Must go Back to Teaching Phonics
Truly reforming reading instruction would have to involve reforming teacher training and promoting a completely different pedagogy, one focused on student learning instead of student engagement. Incoming elementary teachers need to recognize just how formative those early years are and make the most of the time they have with their students. It’s not enough to keep them busy and amused, they must actually teach them and hold them accountable on what they’re learning.
In the pages of The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof recently took on the problem of illiteracy among American students. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), two-thirds of fourth graders across the country are not reading at grade level. While not a huge jump from two years ago (2 percent), and with the increase most likely attributable to Covid learning loss, that’s still an enormous number of students struggling despite innumerable campaigns to foster reading.
Those of us teaching English can attest that this issue is not limited to fourth graders, but can be easily seen at all grade levels, even in the Gifted and Talented and Advanced Placement classes. Today’s students read far less than those of previous generations and struggle with completing basic reading tasks. I wasn’t much of a reader myself, nor was the expectation very high at the public school I attended, but I still marvel at how many more novels I read than some of my students in AP Language and Composition, who confess they haven’t read a whole book since elementary school. This definitely hurts them as they try to pass their AP exams and score high on the SAT, and I have to spend much of the year modeling how to read with them.
Like most people on the left, Kristof has always supported public schools and continues to push for ever more funding, but even he is shocked by the failure of educators to follow the data to teach reading properly: “the United States has adopted reading strategies that just don’t work very well and … we haven’t relied enough on a simple starting point — helping kids learn to sound out words with phonics.”
For too long, teachers have relied on using sight-words with younger children, using flash cards and pictures to help students learn to read instead of teaching them the different sounds that letters make. In the first few years, the sight-word method seems more effective than teaching phonics, since these kids seem to be able to identify longer, more advanced vocabulary right away, not the two- and three-letter words featured in phonics beginner books. However, this advantage soon evaporates as students read longer texts with more unfamiliar vocabulary that they haven’t already memorized. By the time they reach middle school and high school, the challenges become so overwhelming that some of them are even diagnosed with dyslexia or other reading disorders.
Read More
Related Posts: