Christian, the compass of suffering points true north to God’s eternal dwelling place. Therefore, “build not your nest here,” but seek and “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).19 Your Lord will graciously sustain and bear you through your pain and suffering in this life, and in his timing, usher you into his presence, where there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain (Revelation 21:4).

The English Puritans and their Scottish counterparts, the Covenanters, experienced intense suffering. Along with their contemporaries, they faced the normal hardships of the seventeenth-century world: plagues, illnesses, and the deaths of infants, children, and women in childbirth. In addition to these, however, many of the Puritans endured deep and persistent persecution.
The Stuart monarchs (1603–1685) — James I, Charles I, and Charles II — viewed the Puritans as threats to and seditious rebels of the English Commonwealth due to their refusal to conform to the Church of England and their attempts to bring “further reformation” to the Church. As a result, the magistrates fined, dismembered, and incarcerated Puritans for not adhering to the Book of Common Prayer and the various ceremonies of the Church of England. In spite of the cruel, abusive mistreatment that they received at the hand of their tormentors, these Puritans demonstrated courageous resolve and Christian perseverance as they remained steadfast in their devotion to their Lord Jesus Christ.
Though our own hardships may not be the same, we can learn and apply three valuable lessons about suffering from the Puritans’ thoroughly biblical reflections on the trials they endured. Applying these lessons to our own circumstances helps us to recognize them as purifying fires meant to prove the genuineness of our faith and increase our affection for Christ.
A More Precious Christ
The Puritans teach us, first, that suffering can be a catalyst to understanding and experiencing the inestimable value of Christ, which in turn leads to an active, perpetual treasuring of Christ above all else. In the midst of his suffering, the Covenanter Samuel Rutherford was able to see and embrace Christ as his “Pearl.” Christ was so precious to him that he refused to “exchange the joy of my bonds and imprisonment for Christ with all the joy of this dirty and foul-skinned world.”1
For the Puritans, suffering was a purifying agent to “aggravate sinne” so that “sinne bee the sowrest, and Christ the sweetest, of all things.”2 Richard Sibbes asserts that suffering yields a “bruising” that enables a Christian to “prize Christ above all.”3 When all is prosperous, it is more difficult to see the treasure that Christ is, but when trials come, “nothing comforts [the soul] like the riches of Christ. . . . Nothing makes a Christian sing care away, like the riches of Christ.”4 Even as suffering batters the body or the mind of Christ’s disciple, the soul can become more enamored with the beauty of Christ.
Severe Mercy
Second, the Puritans reinforce the truth that God is the divine Author over suffering. Nothing in this life, including suffering, eludes the sovereign will of God. Therefore, Christians are to “question not but there is a favourable design in [suffering] towards you.”5 God uses suffering for his divine purposes, which include the good and growth of his children, thus displaying at one and the same time his sovereignty and covenant love. In the Lord’s sovereign hands, suffering becomes a divine, gracious means of sanctification, by which “God is but killing your lusts.”6
God’s love permeates the suffering of his elect. Every trial that his elect encounter discloses the warmth, sweetness, and affection of the Father. He does not intend to hurt or destroy.
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Paul seems to assume his readers are already aware of their role in the final judgment. He twice asks the rhetorical question, “Do you not know?” And yet, if it weren’t for this very passage, how many Christians today would know? What exactly does it mean that we will judge the world and the angels? 

The apostle Paul delivers several stinging rebukes to the believers at Corinth over the course of his first epistle. But perhaps the most interesting comes in 1 Corinthians 6:2–3. There we learn that due to their divisiveness and worldliness, the Corinthians have compromised their Christian identity by pursuing selfish gain through litigation against one another in secular courts. Such conduct betrays values that are no different from their pagan neighbors, so Paul reminds them of their ultimate destiny in Christ in order to expose the absurdity of their conduct.
When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! (1 Cor. 6:2–3)
It’s an argument from the greater to the lesser. If they will one day judge the world and the angels, shouldn’t they be capable of handling relatively minor disputes among themselves?
What makes the passage so surprising is Paul seems to assume his readers are already aware of their role in the final judgment. He twice asks the rhetorical question, “Do you not know?” And yet, if it weren’t for this very passage, how many Christians today would know? What exactly does it mean that we will judge the world and the angels? What else does the Bible have to say about this? And what does this mean for us practically today?
Commentators through the centuries have offered several interpretations of this judgment of the saints. These can be broken down into three major options, followed by a fourth that expands on the third.
1. Judgment by Example
This view goes back to early church fathers like John Chrysostom, as well as a number of early Reformed commentators like Wolfgang Musculus. The idea here is that believers will not actively exercise judgment, since this is believed to be a prerogative of Christ (see John 5:22). Rather, it is the example of their faith that will condemn unbelievers. Jesus makes a similar point when he declares that the Ninevites and the queen of Sheba, who responded with repentance and wisdom in their day, will rise up at the judgment to condemn the wickedness of his contemporary generation (Matt. 12:41–42).
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The problem gets worse. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a form of political Oneism, because it denies individual distinction. The concept of individual rights is a political form of Twoism, that is, it affirms that every individual, made in the image of God with rights from the Creator, is different and distinct and deserves the right of free speech. Since there is no longer common civic ground, various forms of Twoism must simply be annihilated. CRT will make it happen.

We rarely pay attention to one of the most shocking warnings Jesus ever gave: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea (Mark 9:14). This is the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, speaking to everyone, addressing everyone as whoever.
One of the great signs of degradation in our present culture is the attack progressivism has made and is making on our children. The Puritans in Massachusetts in 1647 “ordered that every township in this jurisdiction after the Lord hath increased them to fifty households shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read. . . .” via the teaching of the Bible.[1] Our Puritan forebears doubtless sought to put into practice the biblical exhortation: “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).
Three hundred years later, John Dewey (1859–1952), the leading force in public education in the early twentieth century, rejected his Puritan Christian up-bringing, converted to atheism and proposed for education a philosophy of human-centered progressivism and socialism.[2] This man, who made American secular education what it is today, signed on to the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, which, in its very first point, states: “Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.”[3] A century later, this affirmation—“self-existing and not created”— lies at the very heart of what is now taught to our children in the public schools. It defines what is socially and morally acceptable, namely the denial and rejection of God the Creator, which leads, in turn, to unbridled adultery, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, trans-sexualism and the loss of individual identity, human worth, and civil rights.
Through public education, Christians are deeply influenced by secular culture. To be sure, home-schooling and Christian day schools play a role in protecting our believing children, but not all Christian parents can afford such schooling. Ninety percent of Americans who consider themselves Christians send their children to public schools.[4] The results are inevitable. Sixty percent of twenty-somethings who were churched as teens are now disengaged from the church,[5] doubtless the result of the secularism taught in public schools. In a certain sense, with the invasive power of the internet and social media, there is no sure way to keep young children from hearing and being influenced by the ideology of contemporary progressivism. As Christian parents and grandparents, we must at least try to protect and educate our progeny by facing and discussing these issues head on with our children and grandchildren.
Our children are caused to sin in three areas today: in theology, sexuality, and sociology.
Theology 
Our schools deny God as Creator not just by outright affirmations of secularism, but also by the “scientific” worship of matter as self-creating, eternal and evolving. Dewey, an evolutionist, is celebrated in today’s public-school science classrooms. In the case Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005), the U.S. courts barred intelligent design from the nation’s classrooms, declaring it to be unconstitutional. If God is just an ancient myth and science is an infallible source for understanding the universe, then little wonder our children, as they mature, find the Christian faith unbelievable. Those who lead them deliberately down that path are certainly “without excuse” (Rom 1:20). But we and our children must also resist unbelief and take seriously, both at home and at church, the responsibility to instruct our children carefully and thoroughly in God’s Word and to set an example of purity, love, faith, and Holy-Spirit power as we live with and pray for them until they move into full adulthood. Part of our responsibility is to help them analyze and answer the propositions they receive from outside sources.
Our Christian children (perhaps especially those in public schools) need to be taught some of the latest discoveries in science. Though secular sources are never ultimate, it can be helpful for our children to realize that certain leaders of scientific naturalism are now convinced by the powerful logic of theism and intelligent design. “The heavens declare the glory of God, day after day they pour forth speech” (Ps 19). The work of Stephen C. Meyer needs to be made known more widely. I recommend his book Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe (Harper Row, 2021) and his lecture on You Tube, “God and the Origin of the Universe.”
Unlike the Creator, matter is not eternal because the natural universe has a beginning. Erwin Hubble’s discovery of an expanding universe via the red shift from a single beginning, shows this. Hubble’s findings convinced even Albert Einstein. Darwin did not explain how life originated but tried to imagine how new forms of life evolved from previous forms of life. But if the universe and matter have a beginning, then the real mystery of life—the origin of the universe—is not solved by evolution.
What has caused the undermining of naturalism in our time? The discovery in the 50s of the information-bearing properties of the genetic code expressed in DNA, is a mystery the materialist understanding of life cannot explain. Stephen Meyer states: “Just as the Rosetta Stone points to the activity of an ancient scribe, and the software in a computer program points to a programmer, so the digital code within the DNA molecule suggests the activity of a designing mind in the origin of life.”[6] The origin is an intelligent personal mind.
One non-Christian Yale micro-biologist, Professor David Gelerntner, faced with the sophistication and complexity of DNA, wrestled with Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt, which holds that “Our uniform experience of cause and effect shows that intelligent design is the only known cause of the origin of large amounts of functionally specified digital information.”[7] Though Gelerntner does not accept Meyer’s conclusions that the only “feasible [explanation] is intelligent design,” he does recognize that specific “digital information,” such as DNA codes that are intended for one purpose only might indeed lead one to consider not only intelligent design but even an “intelligent designer.” After reading Stephen Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt (2013), this leading scientist states: “Stephen Meyer’s thoughtful and meticulous Darwin’s Doubt convinced me that Darwin has failed.”[8] The ongoing discussion among current scientists is encouraging. Over a thousand PhD scientists declare themselves publicly as “evolution skeptics.”[9] This may lead some to seek the real intelligent designer, our infinite yet personal God, who created the universe and humans, male and female, in his image.
Our children need to know that Psalm 33:6,9 was right all the time: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all the hosts of them by the breath of his power…for he spoke, and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm.” What some have recently learned in reflection on science begins to fit the biblical doctrine of creation. We need to encourage our junior high and high school students to become familiar enough with such debates that they can speak up confidently in their classrooms.
Sexuality
“‘Drag Queen Story Hours’ Expose Pre-Schoolers to What Some Parents Call ‘Gender Insanity.’” This article’s title suggests that the insanity probably lies more with parents who think the experience of adult drag is broadening to their children’s little minds and so happily bring them along to the local public library. They believe the event “captures the imagination and play of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive and diverse role models.”[10] The library “system’s youth and family services manager” justifies the event in a similar way: “We wanted to make sure we cover a wide variety of interests and speak to all members of our community.”
The National Sexuality Education Standards, according to the Centers of Disease Control, propose to mid-grade school children, in vivid and often pornographic forms, that all sex acts are valid except vaginal intercourse (which produces pregnancy). For the sake of decorum I will simply cite an article that readers can peruse as factual proof.[11]
Here are some of the sexually explicit books (for toddlers to teens) that appear on school reading lists on the subject of homosexuality and transgenderism:

Gender Queer, an illustrated memoir, contains explicit illustrations of oral sex and masturbation.
The novel Lawn Boycontains graphic descriptions of sex between men and children.
George contains explicit illustrations of men engaging in homosexual acts.
A further category is transgender booksfor children of all ages, including Neither, describing to infants a land of “this and that,” of “neither,” and of “both.”
Another book’s title declares that It Feels Good to Be Yourself, no matter what your gender identity is.

Written about the educational situation in the UK, the following quote is also what many US schools promote:
Much of culture nowadays assumes sex is just for play. Porn is sold as something that is light-hearted and fun; teenagers are encouraged to “experiment” as long as it’s “with consent”; schools are now teaching explicit sex education, including programmes such as “All About Me,” which discusses self-stimulation from age 6. Some 99% of 12–15 year-olds are online in the UK. A recent survey found that 94% of children had been exposed to porn by the age of 14. And yet 75% of parents believe their children are not viewing pornography online.[12]
Such deliberate attempts to cause “little ones to sin” by proposing at tender ages immoral sexual thoughts and actions will doubtless produce generations of hardened adults for whom sexual purity is meaningless. Our children need to know, understand, and believe the serious theological analysis of God as the unique image by which we understand our sexuality. The difference between the sexes is reflective of the essence of the gospel, of God as Trinity, and of Christ’s love for the Church. Only by the gospel can we hope to save our rising generations from utter moral degradation. We must not allow our children to be exposed to such poisonous material.
Sociology and Critical Race Theory 
Something is happening in the classroom that has never happened before. Another tenet of the Humanist Manifesto to which Dewey signed his name was a socialized and cooperative economic order. Dewey was a great admirer of Soviet communism and atheism. He was happy to endorse radical socialism. Bringing about this social revolution in our day is the teaching of Critical Race Theory, by which people are being indoctrinated across the land—in government, business, the military and higher education, but also in grade schools and kindergartens. One Tennessee mom recently warned Williamson County parents that her seven-year-old daughter came home from school saying, “I’m ashamed that I’m White.” Her daughter asked, “Is there something wrong with me? Why am I hated so much?” The mother is considering putting her seven-year-old in therapy.[13] The child is being encouraged by her teachers to be ashamed of the color of her skin.[14] One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, states: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.”[15] This is a sin, the sin of the use and mistreatment for political ends of vulnerable children. When a government sets its sights on corrupting children’s souls, it no longer has any legitimacy. Children can be taken from their parents and their gender forcefully reassigned.[16] Radical theories of racism and politically motivated propaganda have no place in the classroom. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently declared that parents should not be the “primary stakeholder” in their children’s education.[17] This repeats BLM’s Marxist website which declared: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”[18] Vladimir Lenin, a precursor of progressivism, is reputed to have said: “Give me four years to teach children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”[19] According to Don Feder, “For Marxists, killing the family is the key to everything. The war on the family isn’t peripheral; it’s central to the revolution.”[20] But Scripture teaches that children are born into families, not into governments. This notion of the powerful state is converting our schools into centers of ideological and political indoctrination contrary to the norms of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian way of life.
The problem gets worse. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a form of political Oneism, because it denies individual distinction. The concept of individual rights is a political form of Twoism, that is, it affirms that every individual, made in the image of God with rights from the Creator, is different and distinct and deserves the right of free speech. Since there is no longer common civic ground, various forms of Twoism must simply be annihilated. CRT will make it happen.
In a more overtly religious frame, the California Department of Education recently voted on a new statewide “ethnic studies” curriculum (inspired by CRT) that advocates for the “decolonization” [actually the dechristianization] of American society via the elevation and worship of the old Aztec gods of South America.Since the United States was founded on a “Eurocentric, white supremacist [racist, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous], capitalist [classist], patriarchal [sexist and misogynistic], heteropatriarchal [homophobic], and anthropocentric paradigm brought from Europe,” and since White Christians committed “theocide” against indigenous tribes, killing the Aztec and Mayan gods and replacing them with Christianity, now the God of Christianity must go—all in the service of a left-wing political ideology to be imposed upon California’s entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million children.[21] The goal is for children to attain “critical consciousness” and, consequently, to develop the capacity to overthrow their oppressors. The ultimate goal is to “decolonize” American society, cancel white Christian culture, and bring about the “regeneration of indigenous spirituality.”[22] The curriculum suggests the chanting of prayers that invoke the deity Tezkatlipoka, an Aztec god that was honored with human sacrifices, “to be used as energizers to bring the class together, build unity around ethnic studies principles and values, and to reinvigorate the class.”[23]
The assault on children is also an assault on parents. A new memorandum issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland to the FBI and federal prosecutors across the country threatens concerned parents who have been showing up at school-board meetings to protest the teaching of CRT and pornographic sex. The memo condemns “threats of violence” but adds “other forms of intimidation and harassment,”[24] making heated opposition on the part of parents into a possibly punishable offence. This is pure political intimidation.[25] The irony is that their indoctrinated children are taught to believe that their parents are to blame for the state of social injustice.
We need to pray that the millions of brain-washed children, as they reach adulthood, will not do to their children and to their fellow citizens what the prophet Isaiah says of the ancient pagans: Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children(Isaiah13:18). In the light of what the pagan culture is doing to children, Jesus’ love for them must give to believers in these difficult days a firm resolve, whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice, to protect their children from false ideology, to bring them up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord,” and to faithfully proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in an apostate culture (Ephesians 6:4).
We leave to God’s wisdom the use of millstones.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] https://parkviewchristianschool.org/2018/06/05/sending-christian-children-to-public-schools-what-the-results-show.
[2] https://www.pbs.org/onlyateacher/john.html.
[3] https://parkviewchristianschool.org/2018/06/05/sending-christian-children-to-public-schools-what-the-results-show.
[4] Art.cit.
[5] Art.cit.
[6] Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis, 6.
[7] Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt (pdf version, 343/568).
[8] https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/giving-up-darwin.
[9] https://www.discovery.org/a/number-one-of-our-stories-of-2019.
[10] https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2018/august/drag-queen-story-hours-expose-pre-schoolers-to-what-some-parents-call-gender-insanity.
[11] Nick Bell, “New Sex Ed ‘Common Core’ Would Force Explicit Images, Gender Mayhem, and Abortion on Kids,” The Federalist  (Oct 12, 2021).
[12] ”How to sex-proof your children,” https://christianconcern.com/resource/how-to-sex-proof-your-children.
[13] Christ Butler, “Williamson County Parents Warn Critical Race Theory Has Already Entered their Public School System.” https://tennesseestar.com/ April 22. 2021.
[14] https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2021/7/why-is-critical-race-theory-dangerous-for-our-kids.
[15] Bari Weiss, “Woke Kids: The Miseducation of America’s Elite,” March 9, 20121 City Journal.
[16] Rich Sweir, “Shocking Video: Educators Push Racism and Extremist ‘White Privilege’ Propaganda on Children,” BARBWIRE (5 June, 2014): See http://barbwire.com/2014/06/05/shocking-video-educators-push-racism-extremist-white-privilege-propaganda-children/#Uqd0DHgOOdfFtKGq.99.
[17] https://www.wnd.com/2021/10/bidens-education-secretary-parents-not-primary-stakeholder-kids-education/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=wnd-breaking&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=breaking&ats_es=%5B-MD5-%5D.
[18] Though BLM took down its website in order to conceal its Marxist beliefs, others preserved it. See https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/left-locked-life-and-death-struggle-family-don-feder/.
[19] https://www.quora.com/How-relevant-do-you-think-these-words-are-Give-me-four-years-to-teach-the-children-and-the-seed-I-have-sown-will-never-be-uprooted-by-Vladimir-Lenin.
[20] https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/left-locked-life-and-death-struggle-family-don-feder/.
[21] https://www.city-journal.org/calif-ethnic-studies-curriculum-accuses-christianity-of-theocide.
[22] https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-students-pray-aztec-gods-school-lawsuit.
[23] Art.cit.
[24] https://www.justice.gov/ag/page/file/1438986/download.
[25] Gerard Baker, Merrick Garland Has a List, and You’re Probably on It (WSJ, Oct 11, 2021). See also Michael Cutler. “Targeting American Parents-Biden administration finds new ‘domestic terrorists,’” Frontpagemagazine (Oct 12, 2021).