You See Dry Bones

You Chris Rock fans will get the title of this post.

I was taking  a walk in the park today when I started thinking about my kids. I started thinking and praying about them growing up to become great men who loved Jesus with their whole hearts. I want them to grow up not caring much about what others think of them and caring greatly about what Jesus thinks of them. I want my boys to be missionaries to their culture, wherever that may be.

Then I started thinking about the people I know.

I have some co-workers and friends whose parents did not care about such things. This is not to say their parents did not care about their kids, or that they were not Christians (debatable). These are people whose parents made statements like the following:

I do not want to force a religion on my children. I do not want them indoctrinated from a young age. This will make them free to make their own choices as adults.

This is a popular view in parenting. Some idiot wrote a book in which he said (and I paraphrase):

Raising your kids with any kind of religious dogma is child abuse.

Lets start by diagnosing what is philosophically wrong with both of these statements.

Not forcing religion on a child or indoctrinating them with religion is still an indoctrination. In some cases, it is also forcing. You are forcing your child to “figure it out for themselves.” While they can make their own choices as adults, you are providing no parental guidance. This is your indoctrination, that your child is to be alone and unguided.

The second phrase is ridiculous because raising your child without a religious world view is in fact a religion. It is a religion of one making themselves a god and being in complete control.

I would argue in favor of teaching children doctrines and philosophies.

To let your child run out into the world without teaching them is like giving them the keys to a car and not teaching them how to drive. In doing so, we would produce very bad drivers. Sure, we could expect our kids to get the basics down, but overall, they would still be bad drivers.

Or worse, mediocre.

The main problem with Western Christians is the mediocrity and passivity associated with us. We tend to be well known for boycotts and hate than love and evangelism. Shoot, most of us cannot even portray a consistent worldview or knowledge of the Scriptures. We pick and choose which parts of the Bible we want to believe and ignore the rest. We memorize only those verses we agree with. Many of us do not even understand the ramifications of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

If you assumed I was going to indoctrinate my children, you are right.

I want them to be articulate and sound in philosophy. I want them to be passionate, zealous, and obsessive Christ followers.

-Don-