It’s a normal Tuesday morning. You have your work bag in one hand a travel mug of coffee in the other as you enter the garage. But instead of seeing your Tacoma parked where you left it, it has been disassembled. Every piece of it is there – you think! – but the transmission sits off to one side, doors are scattered on the floor, a tailpipe pokes up through a pile of seats, and so on. You call to out to your wife, “Honey, something happened to my truck!” When she comes to investigate, she looks at your and says, “It all looks there to me!”
Just as there is a difference between an assembled and functional vehicle, so there is a difference between a Christianity that is assembled and functional and a Christianity that is simply a pile of random truth statements. The way that we assemble our beliefs about the way the world works is what functionally “drives” our lives, and this is called a worldview. A worldview gives power, momentum, drive, and direction to the believer. The sobering reality of our age is that only a small percentage of those claiming to be Christians have a consistently Christian worldview.
There was a time in the history of the West when a Christian worldview prevailed. Even historical figures like Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin acknowledged a Creator God who had designed a moral universe. We, however, are raising children at a point in history when that Christian worldview has been fragmented. It has been chipped away at until all that the world offers us is a shrinking sliver of space where we acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ on Sunday morning.
This reality was highlighted to me several years ago when I was up in Michigan and reading the editorial section of the Ann Arbor news. The author was bemoaning the involvement of the Church in a variety of social issues and said something to the effect that the Church was perfectly free to tell people about God, but it needed to stay out of issues like abortion and gay marriage. To him, God had no authority to speak to the unborn baby (who is created in His image) or the nature of marriage (which is a picture of Christ and His Church). That editorial was written over a decade ago, and if anything the secular world has stepped on the gas pedal much harder since then.
We could quite easily hit some of the highlights of how this has happened. In the 19th century, German higher criticism found its way into American seminaries and undermined the authority of the Bible. This attack on the authority and inerrancy of Scripture was aligned with supposed archeological studies that undermined the narrative of the Old Testament. In the early twentieth century, the Scopes trial swayed the public towards accepting Darwinism as a reasonable explanation for the origins of life. As the 20th century wore on, the Vietnam war sparked a decades long distrust of institutions and created a pattern of generational division. The role of the natural family was supplanted by secular institutions such as government schools and welfare. The sexual revolution of the 1960’s that wreaked so much havoc on individuals, families, and the unborn has produced a culture that can no longer tell the difference between male and female.
The sometimes spoken and sometimes implied question I have been periodically asked is, “Why bring kids into this mess?” My wife and I have brought five children into this mess and we are not afraid. We do, however, recognize the need to equip our children to cling to truth in a world that has lost its mind. They are going to stand out. They are going to be scrutinized. We are going to have to raise holistically Christian kids who acknowledge the Lordship of Christ over every aspect of life.
“𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵, 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘚𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘳𝘺, 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘦!” ― 𝘈𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘮 𝘒𝘶𝘺𝘱𝘦𝘳
There are reasons to be confident. Foremost among those reasons is that Christ rose from the dead and really is Lord over all. Our risen and living Savior will cast down Darwinism and Communism and Post-Modernism and every other -ism that exalts itself against the name of Jesus. The “new atheists” are dead or doddering old men, but the Ancient of Days lives forevermore.
We should also be confident because we have better answers. It turns out that lunacy and stupidity and ignorance make for terrible taskmasters. Christian marriage is full of glory while sexual license is full of shame and scars. Children are a joy to be experienced, not a burden to be discarded. Masculinity and femininity are crowns and tiaras to be worn, not bartered away for a self-determined sexual identity. Living under the Lordship of Christ is like being a servant of Solomon: happy are His subjects!
“𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥.” (― 𝘕𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘗𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘦𝘺, 𝘛𝘰𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩: 𝘓𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘊𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘊𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘺)
And lastly, we should be confident because we have powerful tools at our disposal. I am thankful that we have resources that are not available in other parts of the United States, much less other parts of the world. One of these resources is Christian education, where our children are taught truth under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We don’t have to police what is taught in the classrooms of GDA. If we are to raise children who have a consistent, holistic biblical worldview, they will need to understand how the parts and pieces of life fit together.
They will need to understand that God has written a book with Words as well as a book that stretches across the heavens, grows in the soil on which we trod, and dwells in the deep and unexplored parts of the ocean. And they will need to know that these two books never contradict one another, but interpret one another.
