The next few weeks will pull us all into focus, on the family. Moms will get the shout-out on May 12th; dads will be similarly celebrated a month later, on June 16th. Meanwhile, students will end their year of academic emphasis while graduates among them will mark the completion of a stage of study that will open their horizon to their next season. Hallmark stock will climb as warm expressions of support are offered by friends and family toward those important players in life. That’s all the stuff of perfect world dreams; what’s really going on right now, as our culture continues to devolve?
Most moms and dads who are followers of Jesus – across all demographic categories – agree about one thing: raising kids is the toughest assignment in their lifetime personal agenda. The ground rules have been confirmed in both Old and New Testaments. From Solomon, Proverbs:
“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (22:6)
Paul backs that up – 1000 years later – with specifics:
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4)
America today is conflicted about what constitutes success, at the individual level. Career achievement; home ownership; noteworthy travel; upward mobility; status memberships; growing investments; early retirement; dynastic wealth transfer: all milestones on the road to elite-hood. Check those boxes; then do a personal inventory as your final quarter of life commences. Did you win, or lose?
If you claim Jesus as your Lord and Savior, the first marker of meaning will be the measure of faith that has been effectively transferred to your progeny. How’s that going, today, for you?
The current breaking news from universities across the country – both public and private – tells the story of our nation’s next generation: the battle for the hearts and minds of young adults has been won by the evil competition. The first 100 colleges established in America were Christian and biblical. Their mission was to ensure the literacy and theology of church leaders. Today, none of those 100 continue in faith. Instead of using the Bible as foundational for all learning, the rejection of biblical truth is now a universal precedent for academic acceptance and advancement.
Over the last 40 years, Cheri and I made a deliberate decision to prioritize our family – children and grandchildren – to ensure that they would finish their formal education with a biblical world view, and no personal debt. Nice, but defendable homes (mortgage-free by 50); upscale cars, bought used; no toys-with-motors; controlled appetites for extravagance, but comfortable: all for a greater purpose.
Private Christian education – for our kids and grandkids – ensuring that their homerooms would not be espousing different doctrines than our home embraced. For college, they could go rogue and choose a secular school, but we weren’t going to sacrifice financially for them to be sacrificed on the altars of modern thought; no subsidy from us to go off the reservation. So far, so good; just one more grandson to go, and he’s on-track.
Too many contemporary Evangelicals are ambivalent about their kids’/grandkids’ college considerations. How will you ensure that your downline will finish their higher education without being corrupted by the god of this World in the classrooms – and the campuses – that are currently under his control? Do you see what’s happening across the country as a result of shutting-down the Scriptures?
A team of savvy educators – led by Dr. Perry Glanzer, a professor at Baylor University – has authored the newly-released their study: Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide. In it, they evaluate 250+ colleges/universities that identify as Christian but have myriad differences in exhibiting that distinction. Click here to read Dr. Glanzer’s summary of their findings.
The greatest investments that Cheri and I have ever made have been Kingdom focused: raising up two generations beyond us to know and serve the Lord Jesus, and investing in ministries that make the Great Commission come alive for our family (church), and to peoples/nations that stretch to the frontiers, waiting to hear the Gospel. Care to join us?
Bob Shank
Yes! On point (once again)! Great emphasis on the Christian education. We also need to remember that more is caught than taught, we need to be leading the way forward and setting the bar for the downline.