TLP 399: What Makes Children Naturally Racist

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So, if we want to help our children fight against this natural predisposition that could potentially lead to racist thoughts in the future, we must teach our children what

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God says about… Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents.

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Now, finally, before we get to today's topic, I recently attended the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors annual conference, and it was fantastic, as always.

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to learn more. Okay, so last time we talked about some reasons that all children are born into this world incapable of being racist, but we also want to grapple with the realities that cause these same children to start hating people because of their ethnicities.

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As always, free episode notes and transcripts are linked in the description of this show. Two episodes ago, we talked about how children understand justice and injustice and how to teach our kids to think biblically about them.

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During that episode, we acknowledged that due to the image of God in our kids, they correctly understand certain elements about justice and injustice.

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However, we also discovered that due to their sin natures, children very much misunderstand justice and injustice at the exact same time.

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In a similar way, on our last episode, we saw that the image of God in our children causes them to be naturally friendly, curious, and able to appreciate beauty.

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Those character traits, when nurtured and not influenced by sin, make children truly colorblind.

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However, just like our sin natures cause us to pervert God's understanding of justice and injustice, our sinful flesh is going to twist and adulterate our ability to be friendly, curious, and appreciate

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God's beauty. So today we're going to discuss just three sinful character traits that all children have to one degree or another that when nurtured and encouraged can easily turn into that which is commonly known as racism.

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And if you're wondering when I'm going to finally define racism, because, you know, I always define my terms,

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I will be defining racism culturally and biblically on our next episode when we discuss teaching your children what the

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Bible says about racism. Number one, due to their sinful flesh, all children are naturally superficial.

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Now, I don't intend for this to come across as some pejorative slight. On one side, children are superficial in that they don't have deep knowledge and understanding about any topics.

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However, it's important to note that our sin nature encourages us to be superficial because it's easier and we can make it line up with our own preconceived notions.

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This is why children are wants to make snap judgments based off their very limited information and then act accordingly.

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A perfect example of this is anytime a child has told their mom or dad that the parent doesn't love the child. A simple moment of reflection would have unearthed countless proofs of their parental love, but the child is responding to a moment in time, a consequence perhaps, a singular act in which they feel justified to conclude that mom and dad don't love them.

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A good biblical example of this is Joseph's brothers. You know the story. Joseph's brothers plan to kill him but end up selling him into slavery instead.

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According to God's plan and timing, Joseph goes from a slave to a prisoner to the second in command of Egypt where God miraculously uses him to save the known world from a famine.

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Part of that known world was Joseph's family who eventually moved to Egypt and thrived under the watchful care of Joseph. But then one day,

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Joseph's dad dies and in Genesis 50, 15, the brothers think to themselves, quote, it may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him, unquote.

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These guys were so superficial that they completely missed the fact that Joseph had already poured love and affection on them in cartloads.

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He had proven over and over that he loved his brothers and wouldn't do a thing to harm them or their families.

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Their superficiality led them to jump to a very wrong conclusion that made them afraid of Joseph. Now, what if that fear had been allowed to ferment?

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It may have eventually exhibited itself in anger over what Joseph may do and even hatred for Joseph even though he had done nothing to deserve it.

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Superficiality is ignorance and since it's ignorant, it can easily oversimplify ideas and jump to extreme conclusions, and our sinful flesh will grab onto anything it can to justify itself.

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When a child is allowed to persist in their superficiality, they will become more and more judgmental with less and less evidence to support their conclusions.

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Now this doesn't immediately make anyone racist, but it definitely sets the stage for it. Coming to ridiculous conclusions about an individual or people group based solely on the behavior of a representative few is a very simple step for the superficial individual too arrogant to exercise theologic in order to work through the diverse and multifaceted situation in front of them.

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Racists are clearly a very superficial, ignorant group who choose to discriminate against people based solely on the color of their skin.

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It's actually as if they wanted the entire world to know just how superficial they are by focusing on the single most superficial thing about any person, their color.

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Now, obviously we're all born into superficiality and it's not inherently sinful because finite beings have to learn things, but it's always sinful to foolishly use our superficial assumptions to judge and hate people.

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This is why it's the Lord's will that we grow, mature, learn, and deepen in our thinking. First Corinthians 13 11 says, when

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I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man,

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I did away with childish things. Second Peter 3 18 tells us to grow in the grace and knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Hebrews 5 12 -14 explains, for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

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You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child.

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But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

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And we should all seek to follow the example of Jesus in all things. And Luke 2 40 says that he himself grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.

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It's therefore imperative that we help our children move deeper in their understanding. This is one very important facet of teaching them how to think.

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We encourage them to increase their knowledge and understanding of the subject, and obviously what

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God has to say about it, so that they can come to a Christ -honoring conclusion. If we don't do this, if instead we do our children's thinking for them, they will continue in their superficiality, and it's very possible that superficiality will cause them to form judgments about people for all the wrong reasons, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to discover they allowed themselves to start hating people for foolish, skin -level reasons.

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2. Due to their sinful flesh, all children are naturally selfish. 2

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Timothy 3 2 warns us that men will be lovers of self, and that selfishness will cause them to be lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self -control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power.

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On the flip side, Philippians 2 3 commands us to do nothing from selfishness, but instead with humility of mind regard one another as more important than ourselves.

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Children are inherently selfish because we're all born into this world spiritually dead. That means we do whatever we believe is best.

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Now I know how difficult it can be to look at that sweet, adorable little lamb and see them as inherently selfish. We don't really have the time to prove it today, so I'm going to suggest you listen to our

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Parenting a Zombie series. In that series, we cover a bunch of passages that help us see that our children are, in fact, inherently selfish, and there's a link in the description so that you can easily access part one of that series.

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Listen, I know, none of this is pretty, but it's all how we're born into this world. Now again, selfishness does not make anyone inherently racist, but left to itself, selfishness grows exponentially.

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If I want something and I'm not getting it, and I superficially see you and people like you as the reason

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I can't get what I want, it won't be long before I start treating you with disdain and contempt. And I don't even need to prove that selfishness causes those behaviors.

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Anyone who has ever spent any amount of time around junior high girls has seen this play out. So, if we want to help our children fight against this natural predisposition that could potentially lead to racist thoughts in the future, we must teach our children what

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God says about selfishness, spirit control, love, humility, kindness, and care.

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As our children mature into a Christ -focused life, they will start caring more for the needs of others. We read

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Philippians 2 .3 earlier, and 2 .4 reads, do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

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Paul then commands us to have the mind of Christ and follow his perfect example of selfless loving humility.

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Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men.

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Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Thinking like Christ is the only way our children will overcome their natural predisposition to superficiality and selfishness, because according to Psalm 51 .5,

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everyone is conceived in sin as the fleshly nature is passed down to us from Adam, and that sin causes us to want to remain superficial and selfishly use that superficiality against others.

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And lastly, number three, due to their sinful flesh, all children are naturally hateful.

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Again, I get that if this is your first time with us, it may be hard to swallow that children are inherently hateful.

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Most of our listeners have been with us for a while, though, and many of them have heard the foundational series we did called

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The Four Family Loves. They've also likely heard How to Rear a Hateful Kid and the two -part series,

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The Ten Things All Parents Should Hate. Each of those episodes unpacks a biblical understanding of love and hate, and I would strongly recommend you study the biblical data before jumping to any conclusions.

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So allow me to present the clearest biblical evidence to this point. In John 14, 15, Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

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The Greek word translated love is agapeo, often referred to as agape love. If love is to want and work toward another's best interest, then the best thing we can do for Jesus is obey

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His commands. If we choose not to obey His commands, it's due to the fact that we don't love

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Him. If we don't love someone, we hate them. Now, the English definition of hatred requires strong aversion and disgust and hostility, but the biblical understanding of hatred is that we set ourselves against something.

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This is why not all hatred is inherently sinful. Setting yourself against something wicked is good, but setting yourself against God is sin.

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The biblical understanding of hate can also refer to loving something less than something else. Again, the other episodes

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I reference will provide many more scriptures to help you align your understanding of love and hate with God's definitions.

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The point I'm trying to make today is that since we are all born in sin, and since we are incapable of biblical agape love, and since we're selfish, we care more about what we want than we do what others want.

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This is why we have to be commanded all throughout the Bible to love, because we don't do it naturally. Hatred is natural to us.

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Now, racism is the definition of hatred. When an individual selfishly sets themselves against a people group simply because of the superficial color of their skin, they are being racist.

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They are not being loving. They are not humbly seeking others' best good. They aren't allowing themselves to see the situation in mature theological light.

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Just like we parent our children out of superficiality into deeper biblical thinking, just like we must parent our children out of selfishness into humility, if we want our kids to reject racism and truly love everyone in his life, including his enemies, then we must help parent them out of their natural predisposition to hatred.

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Of course, when I say parent them, quote, out of, I'm not suggesting that, like crawling out of a box, our kids will one day no longer struggle with those temptations.

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That's not how it works. If we're alive, we all struggle with superficiality, selfishness, and hatred.

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Those are the roots of every sin we commit. What I mean is that we continuously parent our children from one degree of maturity to another.

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The very first step is to introduce them to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Without spiritual life, our kids will never know what it is to truly, biblically love someone.

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Without the love of God pouring into their lives, they will never be able to pour it out into others' lives. And once our kids are born again, we must guide them through their sanctification, discipling them to know

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God's word, understand it, and live it. Now let me be clear. No genuine follower of Christ, no genuine blood -bought child of God will be a racist.

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Now that's not to say that we may not sinfully choose to hate someone from time to time, and then humbly repent when we see our own sin.

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I'm talking about a wholesale racist who decidedly hates a people group because of their ancestry. How can

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I say that no Christian can be a racist? Listen carefully to John's words in 1 John 3.

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Little children, make sure no one deceives you. The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous.

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The one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

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No one who is born of God practices sin, because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.

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By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

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Verses 14 -17 say, We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren.

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He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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We know love by this, that he, referring to God, laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

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But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

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And verse 23 declares, This is the commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.

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And then listen to 1 John 4, starting in verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows

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God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent his only begotten

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Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love. Not that we loved

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God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

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No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

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By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit. We have seen and testified that the

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Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

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We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

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By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also we are in this world.

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There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

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We love because he first loved us. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar, for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love

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God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that the one who loves

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God should also love his brother. And when Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors, he was asked, who is our neighbor?

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Jesus then highlighted one of the most racially charged issues of the day by relating the parable of the Good Samaritan.

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The answer is clear. No genuine Christian can be a racist. If someone is a true racist, he cannot be a

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Christian. Now we're going to talk much more about this in far more detail next time. We're going to define racism, we're going to learn much more about what the

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Bible has to say on the subject, and we're going to discuss how to teach your children to think biblically about the idea of race.

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For now, we must all accept that our children do in fact have natural, fleshly predispositions that could turn into racism if we don't address it.

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And as we've been learning, the only way to address them is to introduce our children to God's truth and love and disciple them to be mature followers of Christ.

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Please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets, and remember that you can always reach out to Counselor at TruthLoveParent .com

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or call 828 -423 -0894 if you need specific family help.

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If we want our children to reject racism and grow up into Christ, we must parent in truth and love.

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To that end, please join us next time as we learn to teach our children what the Bible says about racism.

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Truth. Love. Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.