I have heard through family and friends that many are
lamenting the fact that their kids are now at home due to school closures.
There is apparently some stress or crisis resulting from the family being
brought together and forced to spend long hours in each other's company. It's a
sad commentary on the degenerate state of the family in this society and
apparently within the Church that echoes it.
It reminds me of many working women who are perhaps in their
fifties and their husbands on reaching their sixties retire and are at home.
For some wives this is a crisis as apparently their marriages are so flimsy
that they're only able to function when they spend long periods separated from
each other and wrapped up in their jobs and independent lives. And the same has
become true with regard to children. Parents actually want to be away from
them. They want the children to have their own lives outside the home.
I wish I could say I was surprised but I wasn't when I heard
a similar report regarding the problem of children on the local Evangelical
radio station, a report addressing the stress and challenges of having your
kids at home during this period of school closures.
The lame discussion was in fact a revelation of failed
parenting and a domestic model more wed to the world than to the pattern
established by the New Testament. Theologically the discussion fell off the
cliff as there were continued appeals to using the time to foster a
relationship with your child and witness to them etc., essentially outreach to
your pagan kids.
It was the bankrupt Baptistic theology of Evangelicalism on
display, an individualistic theology that cannot place the family in a
doctrinal framework and has little place or understanding for children as part
of the Church.
Evangelicals seek to bring their children to the moment of decision
and a conversion experience... one rooted in crisis which for the most part
assumes that the child will need to have rebellious thoughts and inclinations
(an embrace of the world) in order to come out of the world and into the
Church. A somewhat schizophrenic theology it's rooted in a misread and
misappropriation of certain texts combined with a defective soteriology rooted
in subjective experience, a perilously weak definition of saving faith and a
minimalist concept of Justification that seeks to magnify God's grace but in
fact misrepresents it, cheapens it and effectively eliminates the role of the
Holy Spirit as well as the process of sanctification.
The New Testament reckons children as part of the Church and
the Kingdom, concepts which in the Old Testament are often expressed in terms
of Covenant. The language of union and corporate fellowship with Christ is multi-faceted.
Salvation is presented from different angles and by means of different terms
and concepts that have played out through redemptive-history. The New Testament
is clear that the children of believers (as has always been the case) are part
of the covenant promise and the New Testament simply assumes they are part of
the Church, its meetings and its life. In other words it assumes they are
Christians, they are saved. The language surrounding baptism and the language
contained within the book of Acts only amplifies this and demonstrates that God
works through families and that Church membership (outwardly and temporally expressed
in Baptism and Communion) includes children.
The problem for Evangelicals is that they have rejected the
doctrine of apostasy and the legitimacy of the warnings that are replete
throughout the New Testament. A constant even recurring theme, they have (due
to rationalistically rooted theological commitments) chosen to explain these literally
dozens of passages away and have famously misused and misappropriated a single
passage in 1 John 2 to trump all others, a passage that doesn't actually say
what they think it says.
In the end they are left with what are tantamount to pagan children that they attempt to woo
and entertain through adolescence. They inconsistently raise them to know the
ways of God, hoping that they will have some kind of experience along the way.
Of course if the children are unregenerate they cannot embrace the things of
God as we're told in Romans 8.5-8, the unregenerate man is hostile to these
things. They hope for a conversion moment or decision at which point the child
or teen is reckoned as forever saved. They have condemned the doctrine of
Baptismal Regeneration and yet have embraced what some have rightly called
Decisional Regeneration. Go through a small ritual, say the right words and voilá!, the person is forever saved,
regardless of the life they live.
And yet as I, my wife and many others who grew up in those
circles can testify the 'conversion' of the teen years is often an attempt to
appease parents. In my case I was unregenerate and hostile to the faith and yet
wanted to please my father and get him off my back. In the case of my wife, she
admits it was a confusing time because she had always believed and had always
repented and trusted in Christ. The crisis of conversion for her was something of
a forced moment, a going-through-the-motions event in order to fulfill what was
expected of her and it generated no small amount of frustration and confusion.
Baptists (Evangelicals) will contend that what I advocate
brings unregenerate people into the Church, in other words children of
believers who haven't yet had a proper conversion experience (as they
understand it). Well, we know their system does that very thing and is no
safeguard. Additionally it simply does not represent New Testament doctrine. Is
it possible that unregenerate children may grow up in the Church? Of course it
is and yet once again if the Word is being faithfully preached and parents and
elders are doing their job that unregenerate state will become manifest. The
child or youth will be brought to the point of crisis and will either repent
and turn to Christ or ultimately they will fall away at which point they are to
be no longer reckoned as Christians.
And as painful as it is to say, if they're unregenerate we
don't want them in the Church and part of its life. They don't belong there.
This too is a struggle for those whose ecclesiology is rooted in performance, numbers
and attracting the world. An examination of the New Testament reveals that this
approach and understanding of the Church is unknown and thus to be rejected.
We are to raise our children in the Lord. They are part and
parcel members of the Body of Christ. Raising our children is not a burden to
borne. Having them home is not a crisis. It's the norm and to be expected. The
idea that we hand them over to the world for education and mentorship is a lie
born of the pit and only finds traction in the misguided and malformed theology
of Baptistic Evangelicalism. Our children are members of the Kingdom and should
be raised as Christians. In accordance with the example of the New Testament
and its doctrine they are baptised and as such are reckoned part of the Body of
Christ. Many at this point mistakenly and confusedly bring in the question of
election. Election is a comfort to us and whether they (or us) are elect is
something we will know in time, something that will become evident in terms of
whether or not the Christian perseveres.
No, we according to the promise that was made unto us and our
children baptise them and raise them in the Lord. The family unit of married
father and mother along with holy children is basic to the Church and a
critical means utilised by the Holy Spirit to extend the Kingdom. Our families
are mini-kingdoms as it were a testimony to the lost world and also a sign of
their condemnation. Our families are citadels of peace, of Zion and should
stand in stark contrast with the lost world and its brokenness, its failed
marriages, its sundered families, its breakdown of parental authority and
obedience on the part of the children. While beyond the scope of this essay,
this also touches on the question of the woman's role in the home, a New
Testament teaching rejected by modern feminist-embracing Evangelicals.
The Evangelical programme dealing with the crisis of parents
having to 'deal' with their children being at home is an indictment of the
movement, its worldliness and its rotten unbiblical theology. Do we witness to
our children? Of course we do. We all need to hear the gospel every day and see
it lived out. There's never a point in time when that is no longer the case.
Contrary to the theology of Evangelicalism, repentance and faith are not
one-time events but constant manifestations of trust and obedience signifying a
new life.
If parents are struggling to connect with their children it's
because they have failed as parents, they have been misled and have abdicated
their duty and responsibility. They have for the sake of money, respect and
security sold out their families for cheap gold that will not stand in the fire
and is a treasure that has no place in heaven.
The fact that professed Christian mothers would consider what
is natural to be a burden or crisis... to have their children home with them...
is a sign of a movement that has completely lost its way and has succumbed to
the world. The fact that their theology resonates more with the worldly mindset
and posture toward children is a sure warning, a sign that the movement has
been deeply infiltrated by the enemy and his designs.
Take heed and all the more as the Confessionalists are often
but a step behind. Their theology has always been more or less on the same
footing and all the more in recent times. Many of their thinkers will attempt
to address these Evangelical deficiencies but often to no effect and at best
they have constructed weak and contrived theologies which seek to split hairs
in order to navigate the language of Scripture. They speak of covenant members
who aren't Christians and other such absurdities, mixing and confusing decretal
concepts with temporal means and realities. The larger Evangelical movement
continues to struggle with defection and apostasy, losing their children during
high school and college years. Some have finally realised that you can't hand
your children over to the world and think they're not going to come out
thinking like the good Babylonians they've been trained to be. The answer for
many (including Confessionalists) is worldview training, a sometimes intense
philosophical programme that seeks to integrate the world's knowledge with some
form of Evangelical and Confessional theology (and often Right-wing politics)
hoping to root the young person in the faith even while they are prepared to
interact with the world and live successfully. As a consequence they can feel
good about being a soldier, banker, politician or academic because they have a
theological framework that allows them (contrary to New Testament expectation) to
legitimately function and flourish within the world system.
And yet as indicated this too represents something less than
Biblical fidelity in the realm of thought and life. And they are still losing
their children or in other cases have created agents of social change and
political activism that demonstrate little vital spirituality. I see, hear and
encounter such persons on a regular basis and it scares me for as society faces
crisis and collapse I'm not sure how these people are going to respond and
behave. Their inclinations are flesh-driven, politically rather than
spiritually rooted and as such are given to vengeance, violence and
manipulation. They project themselves as the world and more or less act like
it.
More than ever we need a return to Scripture and the
intellectual and doctrinal frameworks the New Testament itself provides. It may
mean we have to question and perhaps reject some of the perceived 'glory' that
is the Protestant heritage. Such rejections do not suggest rapprochement with
the abomination of Rome but there is another way and listening to the radio and
the bankrupt theology of Evangelicalism I am reminded of it every day.