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Whose Are the Children?
By Mark Roth on January 19, 2009 at 12:37 pm
“Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?” (Ezekiel 16:20, 21).
God considers the children we bear His. Therefore, He holds us responsible for what we do with them. We dare not cause them nor allow them to pass through the fire of Molech or any other heathen influence or environment. We must bring them back to God.
How can we send them to be taught by people who are not given over to God to be controlled and directed by Him in all of life and in all the activities associated with it? How do we think that such will teach our children to live godly lives and to place on God their complete dependence? How will they teach our children to seek and follow the lowly Nazarene in everything in life? This is impossible.
Some will answer that they do not expect such teachers to teach our children the fear of God and to instruct them in the ways of the Lord. Such parents reason that they themselves will teach their children those things at home and that the schoolteachers will teach them other things. This is an utter impossibility. We must understand that any teaching that our children receive will include with it, directly or indirectly, moral and religious training also. The character of the person set before the children, to whom they are expected to look for instruction of any kind, is to them an ideal set up by their parents by the very fact that they have been sent to him to learn of him. That is the very force and nature of a teaching and learning situation.
No teacher can teach any subject without at times giving a viewpoint on moral and spiritual matters. Every person knows what he thinks is right and wrong and has a basis for thinking so. Also, every person has the desire, more of less, to defend and promote that position. Everyone feels a sense of responsibility to express his views to help solve the ills of society. Most teachers of public schools are committed to some community association, lodge, civic organization, or church club which has goals of community improvement. They feel a loyalty to these goals. They express them (often freely) to their pupils. They cannot help but influence the thinking of children.
Let us face it. Every person has a god or gods that he serves. He serves that god everywhere he goes. He serves him in the classroom if he is a teacher. He influences his pupils to appreciate that god and tries to lead them to serve him. Whether he does it consciously or unconsciously, he does it. Have we ever seen it otherwise?
Furthermore, every institution is set up to serve a god. If the school is not set up to serve the purposes of the Lord God who made the heaves and the earth, it is set up to serve the purposes of another god. The source of the philosophies of all other gods, of course, is Satan. The total influence will be geared to influence the pupils to appreciate and serve his purposes and work to his ends. It will lead our children from the ways of our Lord God.
Make no mistake about it! God alone is God in all the earth, and there is none other. In the Book of Isaiah He declares it again and again. If we see clearly that we cannot separate between spiritual and material in our own lives, then we will also see that we cannot do this in the teaching and training of our children.
The Lord says in our text for this writing, “Thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou haste borne unto me…my children.” They are His. We are stewards to do with them. Do we think that He would end them to the public schools or worldly (so-called Christian) schools? If He were the father in the home, where would He send the children to school? Think it over. It is a very practical approach to the whole question. We are stewards of these children, taking care of them for God.
We will be asked to give account to God for them. When He ask, “What did you do to teach My children to fear My Name and tremble at My Word?” what will you say? You will have to answer, “We tried to teach them that at home, but we found it necessary to send them to the unbelievers (Philistines, Amorites, Hittites, Egyptians) to educate them in the material things so that they could make a significant contribution to the world in the culture in which they found themselves. Without this training, they would have found it difficult to make a respectable living. And then, too, we wanted to be good stewards of the money You gave us. So inasmuch as the State offered to train them, we felt You would be pleased if we would take advantage of the offer.”
Think of it! How will that sound to God? What will He say about it? Will you think then that the answer that you give is intelligent? It is the reasoning of the worldly mind. See what the Bible says. Find many other nuggets of truth like our text to guide your thinking in the fear of God instead of in the wisdom and fear of the worldly-wise around you.
Be a man! Stand up for God! Be an Abraham, a Job, a Daniel, a Noah! There are indeed few who are standing for God in the godless society. Fear God. Keep His commandments. Love the truth. And God will establish you and your family in His kingdom.
excerpted from Preparing Children for School and Life
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