Dear BPCWA worshipper, We have thus far seen how the world can affect even sound Christians in a conservative church. We have grown so used to being in the world that we have unknowingly learnt the world’s ways. This week we want to consider how we can fall into the snare of worldliness in bringing up children. When this happens, we not just inculcate worldliness in ourselves, but set the firm foundations for it for generations to come. This can happen to parents bringing up worldly seed, or it could be us who have been brought up as worldly seed by our parents.

5) We give our children to the world. Weigh your life and actions as a parent honestly and ask yourself before you are asked at the judgement seat – are you bringing up your children for the world or are you bringing up godly seed? Aren’t you just following the rat race to have what the world has, putting your children in this or that program because everyone around you does the same, to serve the gods of this world? “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” (Eze 16:20) to God? Certainly not! We are horrified at what the children of Israel did in the Old Testament to the idols. They did not necessarily turn away fully from the LORD God of Israel while worshipping these other gods. Are we repeating that today in our homes, all the while coming to a conservative church? Will your children who are brought up to worship this world’s good end up despising the commandments and statutes of the LORD who has given these children into your hand? God says that no one can love God and mammon at the same time. Time will tell, but by that time it may be too late for regrets.

5a) We allow our children to be devoured by idols. During the Old Testament, God judged the Israelites for sacrificing their children to false gods. Today, many Christian parents deliver God’s young ones into the hands of the idols of the world. With the world’s values so dear to our hearts, we teach our children to bow to these idols. With our love for the world affecting our lifestyle and our families, we bring them up getting used to the same experiences and aspiring for themselves the same (if not better) standard of living. It is a downward spiral through the generations. Worldly parents live a life filled with expensive devices and appliances not within the reach and not found in most average households, don’t know how and can’t live a normal life or how to do things without them. Our children see these as the norm and the only acceptable way to live, a pattern to follow for themselves when they are adults. Is it a surprise then that our children expect such a home in future and set their goals on these trappings of luxuries? To do otherwise is to “downgrade” their standard of living, since they never learned otherwise when they were young and don’t think it is possible to do so. Hence, when our children grow up, they must have dual-income households to finance and equip their own homes likewise with at least the same trappings of luxuries that the world offers. Luxuries are not a problem in itself. But when the child is unwilling to live without it and would choose to compromise in their Christian walk in order to have these things in their lives, that is when the world has become an idol. To those who do not have even basic life skills, today’s key concern of inflationary costs of living will hit the children hardest. Not only have these children been accustomed to living with luxuries and “nice to have” stuff, they are also unable to do simple household tasks themselves, tasks which they now have to pay more to secure as compared to others who have not been spoilt with “the good life”. While cost of living increases may hit all, these children will be even more susceptible because these costs are now compounded. A well-paid dual-income household is deemed a needed “essential” to maintain these higher costs of living. A vicious cycle of worldly parents training worldly children ensues. Luxuries are considered as necessities of life. Give us this day our daily bread may be a prayer our children may utter on their lips, but probably not in their hearts due to the lives they’ve grown accustomed to. When children are such, what can parents do but to support and encourage even worldly choices, because the parents have lost the moral authority to say otherwise even if they feel it is not the most biblically excellent choice. 

5b)We train our children to sacrifice God, not sacrifice to God. How do we do this without realising? We are certainly not against studying and good results. But we may unconsciously be constantly drumming into our children to “study hard so that you can get a good job”, but we hardly would tell them to study the Word of God hard and be a good Christian when the Bible emphasizes it – “study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Ti 2:15). We may continually remind our children to do their school homework, but even the bare minimum of reminding them to know their Sunday School memory verse is not something we care to remind them of during the 6 days of the week. Is it any wonder that God is not a priority in our children’s life? The selection of the schools for our children is not based upon what is best for their spiritual good but about prestige, and where they can have their talents developed to the full worldly potential to be materially successful in life.

5c)We let the world train them. Once we get them into the school of our choice, we leave it to the schools and their friends there to continue to inculcate the world’s system into their tender hearts. We fail when we put in little to no effort and time to talk to them and check if what they learned in school and from their friends is counter to God’s teachings and steer them back onto the strait and narrow path, let alone try to conscientiously develop in their hearts a love for God. We fail to inculcate in them a spiritual interest in God by hardly conducting family worship to talk about God and spiritual things. Outside of school hours, we fill our children’s schedules with additional sports and other enrichment programs but mind little if these leave them (and you, because you have to shuttle them around for the many programs) too tired to go to church or be attentive at church. We are not against school programs. But we have become worldly when such extra-curricular programs are non-negotiable but going to church is optional. We are so busy that both husband and wife hardly have any spiritual conversations, much less teach our children spiritual things. What a pattern of worldly family life we are bringing them up to see and follow in their families! At best, we ferry them to and from church and think we have done our part – the church is supposed to bring them up spiritually. If they go astray, we console ourselves by thinking that we cannot be blamed – the children chose their own lives and it was out of our control. Nay, but that was not all their lives that it was so, dear parent. What did you teach them by your words, examples, and pursuits during those years when their hearts were tender for God’s things?  Did you nurture that little heart towards God when it was tender or feed them with the “delights” of the world since the world teaches us that the best age to train them in worldly excellence is to start them from young? Did you teach them to adore the world and to follow hard after it? Instead, our children spend most of their time alone with their media and gadgets, taking in the world’s values and being sucked in the vortex of worldly entertainment so freely available to them online or with their friends. Our failure as parents in the above is how we allow worldliness to take over our children’s lives while growing up in a conservative church. Our children will then think that this is how things are supposed to be in a Christian realm and to demand more is just being extremist! God asks, “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?” May God help to stop being worldly in our bringing up of God’s children which He has placed in our homes. Remember that God’s wisdom works both ways – for spiritual ways or for worldly ways. How are we training our children?

Pr 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old,
he will not depart from it.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor