Our culture (even most Christians) will look down upon those who choose to shelter their children from the messed up/ backwards culture we live in. How ironic. They complain about everything that is wrong with the youth today yet they oppose parents who refuse to let their children partake in the very culture that is anti-christianity, anti-values and anti-morals. How did we get here? I mean, who dropped the ball? I see  a lot of older people complain about our generation but I have some ugly news (truth) to fill you in folks…YOU dropped the ball. No, this is not the blame game…this is hard truth and honesty. For a moment lets examine ourselves and the way we trained our kids. Send them off to school, did you? Spent but a few minutes in ACTUAL dialogue with your little ones as they grew up because you were so busy working, and cooking when you got home you didn’t have enough time to REALLY dig deep into that child’s soul and give them the foundation they needed…am I right? You allowed them to watch secular tv, listen to secular music and wear all the hip clothing everyone else did, just because you felt so guilty for not being around you overcompensated with “making them happy”…? Are you still wondering how we got here? I am not.

Older folks, don’t complain about our generation because YOU were the ones who raised us! 🙂 SAD but true!

Now, to the newer generation of parents…to you I say: WHY? Why are you raising your child just like unbelievers do? Oh, you take them to church? WOW! What’s that? You do an occasional bible study with them? Hmmm. Thought provoking. As believers our goal is to be more like Christ as we undergo the sanctification process. That doesn’t mean you allow your children to blend in with the world for the sake of evangelism. The biggest excuse I have ever heard on why parents allow the their children to do/watch/listen to the things they do is ” They are called to be salt and light, and besides we can’t shelter them because they wont know how to live in the “real” world.” Apparently God wants us to live in an unreal world. What is the “real world” to you? Being cool and accepted by a bunch of brats at school that don’t know the first thing about acting un-foolish?!  Not getting into too much trouble during middle school and high school? Not sleeping around too much, or at least not getting anyone pregnant? Or how about not drinking too much? Sounds to me like a bunch of mediocre expectations to pave the way to a mediocre kid.

I am going to let you in on a little secret…the “real world is not what society tells you it is. The REAL world is what God defines it to be. And He has outlined HOW we are to live in THIS world. LIVE IN the WORLD NOT of the world. Meaning, you are alive in this present cosmos but DO NOT be tainted by it. Be separate. BE SET APART! Instead, we are confusing our children to kingdom come because in one hand we allow all this behavior OF the world while we tell them not to be of the world. HUH? By your actions you send a message. Don’t think they will listen to your words and ignore your actions. By example you are leading them to be lukewarm. By example you are introducing them to lukewarm christianity because in all honesty the kind of Christianity people like the Duggars live is just, well, too radical. I mean, no cable? They don’t date in high school and have NO desire to? They let God decide how many children to bless them with? The girls uphold the highest standards when it comes to modesty. They don’t listen to secular music or read teen bop?!!!

CRAZY! I know! Not so much…that’s the way it is in our home. I don’t want kids that blend in. I want kids that will set the standard for others when they are in public. I want kids so grounded in truth and their love for the Savior, their desires will be that of Jesus.

Whoever said that kids need to be exposed to the garbage our culture has to offer in order to be “prepared” for the “real world” is a moron (fool) to say the least. They don’t have any idea what the “real world” is and how radical the call of the Savior is. His call is to be His disciple, not just His convert. To DIE to self and follow HIM. If you do not take this call to parenthood seriously, you will find yourself 10 years down the road asking what went wrong. Don’t treat your child like an adult. A child is not to be salt and light beloved, a child is to be discipled. They are to be protected and influenced by godly and wholesome things only! Childhood is a time to build character and integrity, to set a solid foundation of biblical morals and values that will influence every decision your child will make for the rest of his life. Who is he being influenced by? The atheistic public school system? Secular TV, that seeks to brain wash your kids into having sex at 9 years old (don’t tell me that cartoon channels are exempt). Hannah Montana perhaps? Who is their “idol”? The answers to these questions will tell you if you are raising a worldly child with some Jesus sprinkled on top or if you are seeking to raise genuine disciples. As for me and my house, we will continue to raise our children “sheltered” from this sick culture that seeks nothing more than to destroy our children’s innocence and to ensnare them in addictions from a young age.

This was my FB status today in response to someone stating that our kids ought to be ready for the real world and being around unbelievers…when I posted about  homeschooling and the fact that christian schools are looking more and more like public schools when it comes to morals/values…

The call to be salt and light in the world was never given to a child. Children are overexposed to way too much garbage these days. Moreover, you can’t honestly tell me the Duggar kids don’t know how to function in the ” real world”. They do! They were protected from the garbage and taught discernment in their home by their mother and father. They didn’t have to go to any institution to know how to deal with unbelievers. A child was never given the call to save anyone and to that effect no one can ” save” anyone. When you send your child off to school you are setting them up for disaster. God never gave the authority to the government or anyone else to train a child but the parents alone! A child that is away from their parents 8-10 hours a day by the very definition are not being raised by their parents. I don’t need to experience homosexuality to be ale to witness to a homosexual. I don’t need to expose my child to a lot of things in order to equip them to live in the ” real world”. We have a lot of mixed up and messed up Christianity today because Christians continue to use the excuse of a child being salt and light and sending their kids off to the atheist government to be indoctrinated to hate God. You don’t stand a chance as a parent is you only get to influence them on the weekends and a few hours at night. We impact society by training our own children as God expects us to, to be SEPARATE, not to blend in for the sake of evangelism. To be radical and untainted by the world. When that child become an adult their solid foundation has been established at home and they will be more than equipped to share the gospel by the way they live. I know a lot of Christians that act just like unbelievers in order to ” reach” them and that is not only a disservice to the Lord, is not biblical christianity. So I will continue to raise my kids in a bubble, and away from all the garbage s culture has to offer. I have a 10-year-old that was raised that way and he is completely different from all the other 10 year olds I have known. He loves the Lord, does not conform to anyone’s pattern…takes his bible to school to read on his spare time not because anyone told him to, but because he loves the bible. Has never said a bad word and reads books on integrity ( by choice) after school. So if you ask me, it works! The bible works! Protecting your children from this dysfunctional, messed up ungodly culture works!

In closing, I know 14-year-old girls who profess Christ…have Christian parents and they are dating, wearing tiny shorts, being disrespectful to parents, using make up etc. HOW their parents do not see what’s coming is beyond my comprehension. Do not be alarmed to find that your kids walk away from the faith when they are older because chances are they never saw real faith lived out on their homes to begin with. How is a child supposed to want to be set apart if parents have no such desire in their personal lives? The problem is not the children! The problem is the lack of biblical parenting from so-called “Christians”.

This culture has nothing but foolishness to offer my precious children. It doesn’t equip them to honor or serve the Lord, it calls them to resist the Creator, to rebel against parents and do defy all morals and values. Why would I want my children to be exposed to that? They are very fragile when they are growing up…that is the time to learn right vs wrong and absolute truth. There is no absolute truth in our culture, and without absolute truth you have an “everything goes” culture, I don’t want any part of. When God called us to be set apart, that’s what He meant. Not to blend in and have some label on the side that spells “Christian on weekends”. To be set apart is to have nothing to do with the rest, what/who you are being set apart FROM. Do not look like them, do not talk like them, do not listen or watch what they do but be the opposite of what our culture suggests. Lukewarm christianity is rampant in our country and if you don’t take a radical stance against it, you will be sucked right into it.