Children Under Pressure
“Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.” Colossians 3:20-21
Children are under a lot of pressure in our fast-paced world today. They can hardly be kids anymore. I remember as a child that I didn’t worry about many things. I never wanted to be anything other than a little girl who plays with dolls, plays with my friends, and especially my cousin who was the same age as I was. School was school–you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Most of my teachers in elementary school were Christians. We had Bible reading, prayer, the pledge of allegiance, and sang songs which exemplified the greatness of our nation: “My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.” No one got their shorts all in a wad because we loved our country and were patriotic. Our parents didn’t have to worry about what we were being taught because we were taught the subjects that we needed to progress to the next grade and on to higher learning. That is what school is for, right?
None of us were perfect, that’s for sure, but we at least had common sense. We knew that we were to respect our teachers and our parents. Children also have a responsibility to obey their parents in all things. Loving parents discipline their children in order to help them grow into responsible adults. It is the desire of Christian parents to rear their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4) so that hopefully they will come to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. In II John 4, John was writing to a believer and her children and wrote that he rejoiced because her children were “walking in truth”. A Christian parent has no greater joy than knowing that their children have come to faith in Jesus Christ and are walking with Him, growing into men and women who love the Lord and are rearing their own children in the knowledge of Him and the gospel. If a child isn’t taught to obey his parents, he won’t obey the Lord either.
In his letter, Paul warned fathers to not provoke their children to anger because it could cause them to be discouraged. A harsh and critical parent, one who treats the child as if he or she can do nothing right, who constantly harps on every little thing, and who has very little praise for the child is in danger of rearing a child to have very low self-esteem, very little incentive, and it can harm the child’s view of God, believing God to be a vengeful tyrant who seeks to punish, rather than a loving God who seeks to forgive. Rearing children is the hardest job in the world. No parent gets it 100 per cent right. It is a challenge to balance praise and punishment in just the correct amounts so as not to cause the child to think that the world revolves around him or her or for him or her to feel so inferior that he or she feels unloved and unwanted. Sadly, the latter is where many children find themselves today.
There are multitudes of children being reared by a single parent, sometimes through no fault of the parent, but most of the time by way of divorce or conceiving out of wedlock. Single parents, as hard as they try, cannot give children the attention they need so the children seek for it among their peers, in gangs, in drugs, and in promiscuity. Fatherless boys turn to gangs to seek acceptance by other males. Girls seek the affirmation of a father by giving themselves to young men, resulting in bearing children who also do not have the influence of a loving father in the home. This only perpetuates a vicious cycle. Then there are those who choose the abortion route which deep down only adds to their shame and misery.
The importance of a loving, caring and godly father in the home can’t be overstated. Unfortunately, secular government can’t see the forest for the trees, that is, they refused to look at the core of the problems of crime, homelessness, school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, and poverty as the lack of laving fathers in the home. Instead, they throw money at the problem which hasn’t made any positive difference, but actually has exacerbated the problem. They claim that the problem is caused by a lack of jobs and poverty, but what else can one expect when there is no father in the home who is responsible for taking care of his family?
The government’s idea of marriage is no longer a man, his wife, and their children, but rather whatever people decide it to be. The government’s idea of education is not education, but rather indoctrination to ungodly ideas and policies which are causing great harm to the family unit, the unit which God initiated in the beginning. I have read online that in some areas of the nation, children are being told to not listen to their parents, but only to their teachers because they supposedly know what is best for the child. One politician even called parents, “Stupid” because they are concerned about what their children are subjected to in the classroom. Teaching begins in the home when a child is an infant. In order to counterbalance the garbage being propagated upon our children and grandchildren, we must teach them about God, Jesus Christ, the gospel, and the right way to conduct their lives. They are surely not going to hear it in the classroom.