This article was written by Patrice Lewis of Rural Revolution and originally published at WND.com.
Recently while reading Acts 2, this verse leaped out at me: “With many other words he [Peter] warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’”
The reason this caught my attention is because we are about to launch our oldest child (who is now 19) into the world. Soon she will be on her own, mingling with new people in new places. She will face temptations, she will experience different lifestyles, she will be challenged by others whose morals and values she does not share, and she will make mistakes.
In short, she will be launched into a corrupt generation.
I’m a history buff, so I’m fully aware that virtually every generation throughout the ages has been called corrupt by someone (usually the elders). And the elders are generally right: Every generation has its degree of corruption. We are certainly no exception.
But there are differences today that worry me. In the days of old, it might shock some to see a husband and wife holding hands. Now the astonishment is that someone bothered to marry at all. Race riots are this weekend’s low-cost entertainment. Wardrobe “malfunctions” are scored for creativity. Living on the dole in your parent’s home, while agitating for more welfare, is laudable.
This got me thinking: How can we save ourselves from this corrupt generation? Or more specifically, how can we save our children?
Some groups have taken these words to their literal end and created an entire subculture divorced from “the world,” such as the Amish.
Without really planning it, my husband and I sort of did the same thing. By living rural and by homeschooling our daughters, we have effectively removed them from the “real” world of easy drugs, casual sex, gutter morals, rebellious behavior and other ills of adolescence.
We didn’t embark on this lifestyle with those goals in mind, but as our kids got older we began to realize the value of these choices.
A few years ago my WND editor published a column called “Too lazy NOT to homeschool.” In it he said: “Sure, homeschooling is a lot of work, especially for the mother, but it doesn’t compare with the work needed to effectively deprogram a child who is not homeschooled. … Do the math. If a child is subject to the current atheistic indoctrination that passes for education in the government schools for six hours a day, how many hours would his or her parents have to spend to undo that influence?”
Later in the column, he wrote, “Parents, and especially fathers, are called to provide their children spiritual instruction (see Deuteronomy 6: 4-9); we are not to leave it to hired professionals and expect them to miraculously wash away the imprint of today’s American youth culture.”
When our girls were babies, we moved heaven and earth to avoid putting them in day care. We worked weird hours, lived in poverty and adopted a home-based routine to make sure they always had parental care. Homeschooling was a natural extension of this lifestyle.
At the time, none of this was due to particularly strong opinions about education or peer pressure (those concerns came later). But at some level it made sense that the longer our kids were away from our influence, the more likely we would be dealing with behavioral repercussions we didn’t want, especially as they grew older.
I don’t mean we’ve kept our girls isolated or ignorant. As parents, that would be a foolish and naïve thing to do. But we’ve tried to impart to our kids what is beautiful and worthy in the world, and what is foolish and wasteful and detrimental.
In short, we felt we had a responsibility to make sure our daughters were safe from this corrupt generation until they’re old enough to make their own decisions. To this end, we tried to make sure our girls were raised IN but not OF this world.
What does that mean, IN but not OF? The way I see it, it means we’re involved in our culture and community, but we do not necessarily adopt its values.
Throughout the last 19 years, this course of action has proved worthwhile since it seems that society’s efforts have become ever more aggressive in removing kids from the devious clutches of their parents in order to mold and shape them into “acceptable” citizens.
Parents can no longer trust that schools will reflect the values they hold dear, or teach things of value to kids. Instead, schools indoctrinate children into attitudes entirely antithetical to the standards of their parents and the moral standards needed for a functional society, thus setting the scene for rebellion and strife.
In such “worldly” schools, history is rewritten, falsehoods are taught, faith is mocked, purity is sneered at, morals are dismissed, and standards are lowered. Children are humiliated and subdued until they come into conformity with worldly standards, which cause strife and rebellion and anger between parents and offspring. Wheeeee.
And after formal schooling, the progressive education continues in movies, on television and in music. You might call them refresher courses in moral decay. But we’re not especially worried about our girls becoming contaminated by this junk because we taught them as Proverbs 22:6 states: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
As Christians throughout the world spend this week in contemplation of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross, we are once again blessed to have our family IN but not OF a world that dismisses the significance of the most important event in history. Those who would sneer or mock our faith don’t bother us. We try to keep our “eyes on the prize” (Luke 9:62) and dismiss the influences of the corrupt generation as unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Remember that the risen Son of God means that those who believe will not perish and will be saved from this corrupt generation.
No Comment