Index To Our Country.. Our Children

A majority of today’s teenagers attended church when they were young children or adolescents – most of them attending on a regular basis. A new survey from the Barna Research Group explores what these teens say they received from their church when they were younger... the study’s director, George Barna summed it up as follows..

“less than one out of every ten churched teenagers has a biblical worldview. The result of their involvement at a church is that they can recite some religious facts, they made some friends, and they had fun. That’s wonderful, but we also find that most of them have neither accepted Christ as their savior nor altered the basis on which they make their moral and ethical decisions in life. For most teenagers who have spent years attending church activities their faith is not integrated into who they are and how they live. Most of the young people who claim they developed an understanding of the Bible that enables them to make decisions based on biblical principles show no evidence of using that understanding in relation to the core beliefs and lifestyle choices that we studied.”...   (emphasis added)
 

We live in a new generation, with new challenges before us and seemingly with new rules to guide us along the days of our lives. One of the greatest responsibilities that could be endowed upon a human being is that of raising a child. It is not an easy task and one that many people fail at miserably.

The days of the paddle and spankings are long gone, replaced by complacency and a “don’t do that, with a smile” attitude. Viewers of popular television “talk shows” see angry 9 and 10 year olds mouthing off at their parents, using profanity, smoking, drinking and using violence as a tool to get what they want. Parents in last desperate attempts to get their children under control turn to programs like “Scared Straight” or “Youth Boot Camp”. Parenting has been replaced by ‘friendship’ and we are leaving youngsters bewildered, disrespectful and uncaring of anything their parents have to say.

However the largest parental problem one sees in the world today is the problem of negligence. Parents, with their hands tied in the area of discipline, or too busy or self-absorbed simply leave their children to bring themselves up; too often with tragic results. This, sadly, is equally and even more deeply evident in the homes and churches of the Christian following today. Many readers would sit back shocked at this statement and point to the multitudes of Bible study groups, youth ministries, Christian clubs and schools that have mushroomed across the nation. Before you turn away and dismiss the claim that a large majority of the Christian world is negligent of its parenting duties, read the following verse from the Book of Deuteronomy.

Deut 11:18-19 "Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” (Emphasis added).

How many Christian parents actually sit down and discuss the Word of God with their Children? How many ensure that their teenager is well grounded in Scripture? The answer, you may be surprised to learn, is very very few. We are content instead to send them to Sunday School while we fellowship in church, with other mature adults. We dispatch them to youth groups, using the excuse that they will be more comfortable among people their own ages. And while that may very well be true, it is also true that very few people want to take on the responsibility of teaching the Word and Law of God to a child, pre-teen or teenager. So we shuffle them off to their own separate area of the Church and go on with our agenda of worship.

Deuteronomy does not instruct us to hand over the instruction of our children, in the matter of God’s law, to others. Much the opposite, it commands us to diligently instruct our children speaking of them (the Laws of God) when you sit in your house. If one is to take the literal meaning of these words we are to teach our children, speak of the Law in our homes from dusk till dawn and even during the course of our various daily commutes. So what is our response to this charge of the Bible? We take our children to youth or Sunday school and expect them to learn all they need to know about the Way of God from a youth pastor and each other. And then we wonder why they don’t get it?

Has one ever wondered why churches today are building “youth centers” filled with games and activities dedicated to the youth? Why Churches have rooms, wings and even buildings that contain everything a youngster would desire, from comic books to ping-pong tables to basketball courts to cartoons on big screen for the very young? The explanation I have heard from many a Christian is that it attracts the youth; they go where they have ‘fun’ and it keeps them out of trouble. All these are noble and good intentions but what about the general idea of Sunday school/youth center being about learning the Word and Laws of God? The truth is that while youth centers do keep the young people occupied and they are fun…. that is all they are…. a convenient way for parents to pass the buck on teaching their kids the Scriptures and a way to clear the “sanctuary” of boisterous children.

A large percentage of the youth whose parents dutifully shipped them off to Sunday school or youth group have very little knowledge of the Scripture and even less understanding of the Word of God. In an attempt to shift the blame you will hear the old adage, you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. So when it boils right down to it, it becomes the youngster’s fault for not studying the Bible when surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex, arcade games, table tennis tables and basketball courts.

On the flip side however, you will never see a sanctuary anywhere in the nation that has big screen television with the super bowl on, popular secular reading material, bowling lanes or a full service bar. I am sure that those things would serve as an attraction to lost adults from the secular world; causing them to come into the sanctuary and out of the trouble in the material world. Thus arises the question, why the double standard?

The answer is simple. We have created a society that treats youngsters like halfwits and yet we expect them to perform and behave as mature adults. The message we are sending is that the only way to get youth into church is by making it fun, yet in our effort to attract them from the secular world we have conformed to such a great extent that the Word of God is lost and going to ‘youth group’ has become another form of entertainment. The Law of God is not ‘fun’ and to uncompromisingly believe that the only way to teach it to youth is to make it so, is to claim that the horse can never be thirsty enough to want to drink from the river. From a very early age children seek answers, teenagers only find those life puzzles more confusing and young adults are on a very difficult voyage of discovery. They are inclined to want to have fun, but the majority of them would be willing to forgo the entertainment if we would be willing to take the time to show them the answers so clearly laid out in the Word of an ever loving Father.

The training of a child is done in the home, not in a separate wing of the church. The duty of raising a child in the ways of the Lord fall on the shoulders of the parents who chose to bring that child into the world, not on the shoulders of a youth minister, teacher or anyone else. We fail to communicate with our youngsters because we fail to try. At the end of time, when the Judge is seated on His throne He will not seek account of our children from a youth group … He will seek account from the ones who called themselves parents.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Pro 22:6.

We have space to mention but four of the principal duties delegated to parents. First, to instruct their children. “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deut 6:6,7). This work is far too important to allocate unto others: parents, and not Sunday School teachers, are divinely required to educate their little ones. Nor is this to be an occasional or sporadic thing, but one that is to have constant attention. The glorious character of God, the requirements of His holy law, the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the wondrous gift of His Son, and the fearful doom which is the certain portion of all who despise and reject Him, are to be brought repeatedly before the minds of the little ones. “They are too young to understand such things” is the devil’s argument to deter you from discharging your duty. (A.W. Pink).

ALSO SEE

 GetTheKidsOut.org ..Mission: Assist Christians to work within their own denominations to alert parents of the staggering loss of faith and morals in children who attend the officially neutral “public schools,” and help them find ways to move children into Christian education, whether in campus schools or homeschooling.

AND

Christian Education Awareness Network (CEANet)The Christian Education Awareness Network (CEANet) is an E-mail list and web site which provide members with articles, essays, and other related sources which demonstrate a need to restore education as a parental/Church ministry.

Our Country..Our Children

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