Give Your Child a Spine

Watching the recent outbreak of violent protests causes us to ask one very important question: “Where did these unhinged young people come from?

The answer is disturbing, but it’s true; these frenzied French-fries came from us. We are the reason they cannot discern reality from fantasy. We are the reason they only have their “hearts” as their compasses. We are the reason because we have taught them to put their feelings above objective truth.

While we were all arguing over whether or not we should be feeding their bodies organic grapes, their minds were being fed godless trash. Instead of shooing them away from popular dogma, instead of shielding them from a curriculum that was bent on their demise at the expense of a global agenda, we told them to watch TV and get out of our hair, or worse, to do their homework.

It’s shameful to witness so many walking around with only a litany of slogans and soundbites to defend their positions (the “f” word seems to be their singular argument), but they didn’t get where they are by accident. There was a deliberate effort over at least 12 years to turn their minds into mush so they could be molded and shaped by their professors and the media.

It is just like the old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” We shouldn’t expect to be enjoying embroidered silk purses when we have raised a sounder of swine. Yes, they have made their own choices, but there is little room for the clicking of tongues on our part if we were not paying much attention when they were growing up.

But these are now “adults,” beyond the reach of our influence. While we can’t do much about the generation that is currently breaking windows and torching cars, we can do something about the one that is coming up.

We can make a difference. We can be the reason they walk upright, on their own two feet, sure of where they stand on the important issues of our day.

 

Not only this, but we can give them, not an emotional compass, but a moral compass based on eternal truth.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

John 8:32

Then we can equip them so that they will be able to articulate that truth and become a positive influence on the society in which they live.

This will not be easy. There is a whole world geared towards the destruction of these little ones. But we must realize that truth is stronger than lies, and taking up this task ensures the strength and power of God will follow.

Here are some keys to success:

Pray.

Daily, hourly, with fervor and passion. Those who are against Christ and His plans for mankind are passionately committed, let us overtake them with a more dedicated response.

Here is a powerful way to go about it:

Live.

Be a picture of fortitude and character. It is one thing to hear a remote truth, it is another to see it lived out before one’s eyes.

Pour it on.

Deceit wars against honesty, and fighting back it is like climbing a mountain of sand; it takes two steps to go one step forward. This is where deliberate effort must be in place. Every chance we get we must be inculcating principles based on God’s Word.

Take a cue from our destroyers. They use every means to ensure children will spend hours ingesting their propaganda, we should be countering their messages with everything we have. The movies we watch, the social media we pay attention to, the books we read, and the company we keep need to be working together to reinforce the benevolent message of God’s truth.

Don’t make it too easy.

Part of the reason young people are willing to pillage and burn is because they have no concept of the value of things based on hard work.

It’s the old story of Dad’s car. A teen doesn’t mind denting or scratching up the family vehicle, but just watch him with a car he paid for by his own hard work. He buffs and polishes that “beauty,” even if it is ugly and barely runs. He also begins to value his parents’ car, realizing just how hard it was to come by.

As a child continues to work hard for the other privileges and possessions in his life, as he witnesses the struggle of other people, the lessons he has learned from watching his parents and listening to the good advice they have tried to pass on to him begin to take hold. Instead of adding to the suffering of the world, he wants to become part of the remedy.

Don’t pay for a liberal college education.

It truly is an amazing phenomenon. Parents work, sweat, and toil, even mortgage the family home, so that their children can be packed off to college where they learn to hate their parents.

It’s not just incidental, it’s part of the curriculum. It has been recorded that faculty meet to discuss the importance and of pulling students away from their stodgy family mores. They have discovered that the less connection youth have with the past, with the values that older people have learned through the realities of hard knocks, the easier it is to fill their minds with fluff.

It is difficult for adults to realize how college indoctrination works without taking into account the fact that most students live as wards of the university. Clubs must be “recognized,” dormitories are ruled by university-trained leaders. Healthcare is dispensed, in the first instance, by university employees—along with birth control and heaps of politically correct “guidance.” Students generally eat at common messes and join together more often than not only in university approved settings. This is why large state universities can actually be less damaging to students than their more rigorous counterparts—they afford students the opportunity to opt-out of campus culture altogether, by simply going to class, then going home to associate with family and friends from church or other local associations. Otherwise, students are literally immersed in political correctness, with banners, lectures, mandatory sessions, and posters above the urinals preaching the official line on race, sex, and “social justice.”

The Imaginative Conservative

According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college.

–from the description of Arum and Roksa’s  Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

Look for alternatives. Maybe a trade school is a better solution, or even a school that offers a distance program so that the influence is less intense. There are actually a few institutions left that are more conservative than others, but you have to do your homework.

The only reason professors and administrators continue to operate the way they do with impunity is because they continue to be paid. What if attendance numbers, along with tuition dollars, began to drop? As the real world came crashing in they would have to face facts, which just might cause them to change the way higher education is done in this country.

The change may have started already–consider this article in the National Review.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges. It should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.

John Taylor Gatto

This post only touches on the work that must be done. There are also numerous tools and resources I would like to share. Perhaps these will be the topics of future installments…

print

11 thoughts on “Give Your Child a Spine”

  1. I couldn’t agree more! I would also add that many of us don’t shield our children from the CHURCH. In that I mean we take our children to churches that are SO COMPROMISED and look and act just like the world! Not following scripture and yet we not only tolerate it…we SUPPORT it…we ENCOURAGE it and it confuses the children!!
    I would say it confuses plenty of adults and WE are spineless and do no make a stand on Gods word and say– ENOUGH.
    This is truly a problem.
    God bless
    Mrs.O

    Reply
    • Great point! I think we have been guilty of that ourselves, with dire results. I wish we could kick out all of our dependence on the wisdom of the world (i.e. psychological counseling when the Holy Spirit and the Word of God should be our sufficiency–shame on us!). I think God is waking us all up, bless His name!

      Reply
  2. Our family has had dire results as well, but praise God He leads us into all truth. He strengthens us to make changes.
    Blessings
    Mrs.O

    Reply
  3. As always, thank you for devoting time to truth and sharing your wisdom. I find so much comfort and advice within this wonderful place. I am so grateful for the work that God does through you.

    Reply
  4. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes!

    I have tried to teach my kiddos not to make decisions based on their “emotions”. Emotions wax and wane. Don’t believe me? Walk into a public high school cafeteria on Monday and make a note of who is in “love”. Go back into that same cafeteria a week later. Yep…. feelings change.

    We should strive to make decisions based on truth. Things that never change. The only thing I know that never changes is God and His Holy Word. Make your decisions based on that and they will be good ones.

    Reply
    • This is so very true–especially at younger ages when emotions seem so out of control. I’m always so thankful that God’s word is eternal and unchanging!

      Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.