"You took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these you sacrificed to them to be devoured. As if your whorings were not enough! You slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering to them." (NKJ)
There are cultures that have sacrificed children to their gods, literally taking the children to an altar and slitting their throats or bashing their heads in. In those cases, it was done in order to appease the gods and to make life more comfortable, more doable. There are cultures in this world now that leave their babies along the roads to die or who put them into garbage dumps in order to make life more doable.
America is one of those cultures.
But we do far worse than that for we also sacrifice our living children, believing that as long as we are granting them life we are doing something wonderful for them. And yet we refuse to protect them while they are alive, also in the name of having a life that is more comfortable. How do we do that? We send them to public schools.
Several years ago, I was at a Christian university in the South talking about the changes that were coming to California public schools. This was long before transgender students were allowed access to either restroom or before the LGTBQ agenda was being fully promoted in California. And I warned the Christian teachers/parents at this university that abrupt culture changes were coming to all public schools in America. I warned them to get their children out of the public schools and into either Christian private schools or homeschooling.
They all laughed and ignored me. In one voice they told me that such changes weren’t in their public schools and would never be there. Unfortunately, I was right and they were wrong. I take no thrill in knowing I was right. But I grieve for the children.
The American Church had the opportunity, more than 100 years ago, to influence public schools. It was after the Scopes Trial in 1925 that American Christians had an opportunity to make serious changes in public schools . . . and it never happened. Most Christians these days don’t even know what the Scopes Trial was and that’s the shame of it because when we lose our history, we also lose where we are today or how we got there.
The Scopes Trial eventually determined that evolution could be taught in public schools. But it wasn’t just a matter of scientific theory; it was a matter of culture. The Scopes Trial was the beachhead and Christians surrendered. How, you might say? We surrendered because we continued to send our children to public school rather than to pull them out en mass and demand that the government respond to what we knew to be true. And that was the beginning.
Everyday, Christian parents surrender their children to public schools, which is to say they surrender them to the schemes of Satan. Public schools are no longer even responsive to voters, to the will of the majority. Public schools are now the instrument of those who hate Christianity. Everyday our young, impressionable children are sent into an environment that hates the Lord Jesus, that teaches against Christian values, and that is determined to own the minds and wills of the students within the school doors. And everyday we lose a little bit of our children until eventually we have lost them entirely.
There is no way to fight against this except to remove our children. How long we will have even that option is questionable. So many lies are believed even by adult Christians about what "proper" schooling is. The Church has lost and in that loss, we are losing the next generations. It is a culture change that seems impossible to thwart. Is it too late?
No, but the battle is arduous and the costs will be high! We have to ask ourselves if we are willing to fight for our children and our grandchildren. We have to ask ourselves if we are willing to sacrifice ourselves so that our children will not be sacrificed.
So what can we do?
We must reevaluate what it means to be a disciple of Christ. It can no longer be that we simply live a "good" life and hang out at church on Sunday. Christianity was never meant to be a once-a-week activity. It must permeate all of our lives, all of our choices, all of our decisions. Here are some things that we must seriously consider doing:
• Turn off the media. That means canceling the cable TV, stop going to movies, limit significantly what we see and interact with on the Internet. Why? Because most of it, as innocent as it seems, is deadly to our spiritual lives.
• Set goals to spend much more time in the Word and in prayer. "Much more" means at least an hour a day to start and more as we develop the discipline to do so. As a culture, we are much more concerned about physical health than spiritual health. The apostle Paul wrote:
"Spend your time and energy in training yourself for spiritual fitness. Physical exercise has some value, but spiritual exercise is much more important, for it promises a reward in both this life and the next. This is true, and everyone should accept it." (1 Timothy 4:7b-9 NLT).
• Rethink everything about your resources, financial and otherwise. Figure out the way to either homeschool your children or send them to a private Christian school. If you are a grandparent, think about how you can help your adult children with this. We don’t need two cars; we don’t need cable TV; we don’t need expensive smart phones. What we need are Christian young people who are learning about how to serve the Lord in a pagan society.
Right now we are sacrificing our children so that we can go to the gym, drink Starbucks, have a second job (to pay for the TV, the phones, the vacations, the larger homes), save for retirement. Think about why you are doing what you are doing. Are your children’s future really worth it? My children are adults and I failed them in many ways. I wish that I had known then what I know now. I would have made such different choices. As a Church, we need to rethink what we are doing. Do we really need so many staff pastors at our churches rather than having a Christian school that is tuition-free? Why doesn’t every church have a Christian school or cop-op with other churches to have one? Why isn’t homeschooling taught from every pulpit? Christian public school teachers won’t be insulted. We know what’s going on inside the schools; we’re there! (I’m there as a missionary, not because I think public schools are where our children need to be.)
Jesus loved the children! He told His disciples not to keep the children from Him. But we are doing just that! Aren’t you ready for a change? I am!
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com
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