Responsibility for Training Children | Ep. 4

You know, so I'm saying I would be insane to send my children to Harvard, right? Although I think they could handle it intellectually. Okay, but I wouldn't do it because Harvard has a different worldview and that worldview is baked into the philosophy department and into mathematics.

Into every area of worldview, right? You're entrusting them to professors who are not gonna say oh wear it on their sleeve. This is my agenda. Yeah and.

And Welcome to off the cuff. My name is Joe Gormley. Average Joe Gormley asking average joke Questions that other Christians might care about of our pastor Jeff clear. Welcome to off the cuff. And today we're gonna talk about the Christian life again as we.

When Children Should Be Required to Attend Church

It's all I've been doing life. It's all about the Christian life. It's all about exegeting the culture, but Gonna start off with our first question. So at what age should kids Be allowed to not go to church.

Be allowed. Like that's like a proof at what age should kids be allowed? So, okay. So the idea here is they've stopped wanting to go to church, right? Right, right. And at what point does the parent stop fighting them right and making forcing them to go?

I'm thinking this this question must have came from that Cultural idea that you know, just let them let them find themselves and let them. You can't force it. Don't force the kids. Don't impose your views.

You could always you know.

What do you think of that? I think that as long as a child Mm-hmm or a teenager or even a young adult is living under the roof the headship of a family. And it's particularly of the the husband the father right in the home.

The father should set what the family does sure like we are a Christian family, right? There's a such thing as a Christian family, right? And this is what our family is right now. If somebody's old enough to Rebel against that family headship and structure then they're old enough to have a house of their own.

Yeah, otherwise they're under this headship and we'll need to come to church. So they're not gonna reach an age at 13. Yeah, or 15 or 16 where the husband should abdicate his headship over The family right and let this child sit at home and watch online or whatever.

So are you insinuating that that headship might denote accountability for the father? Oh, wow.

Yeah, so headship there is authority right because that's what we're talking about with head over the body kind of thing. Mm-hmm. But with every authority comes Responsibility sure, which is the part that people so easily.

Yeah, I wanted to throw out. Yeah. So yeah, he has a responsibility and so now as soon as you have a child Who doesn't want to go worship the Lord Jesus Christ, right? You know that there's a problem sure.

What's the the heart issue here? What's going on? Yeah. And so I think this is a chance for the the father to double down in his Accountability and begin to seek the Lord and say God why does my child?

Not love the Lord with all his heart soul mind and strength and want to be part of the body so yeah, it's a chance to.

So do some heart searching. So I think I hear you saying that that could be some enabling of sin, but also would it be sin for the father to say.

Do whatever you want, you know, oh, yeah. Yeah. So if he doesn't hold the child accountable. Mm-hmm, then then that's on him. It's like any other manager that Let's say you're a manager in a business and you have an employee who's who's messing up, right?

Well, that's the employees fault. Well, once the employer learns of that and As long as he doesn't give feedback doesn't coach and direct now, it's now it's his problem now. He hasn't managed. Well, right in the same way in a home that yeah, it's his accountability and If he's letting this child stay home because the child wants to stay home.

That's on him. Yeah, you know, that's that's sin in his camp now as well as in the life of the child.

Yes, so that would probably bleed into questions about what is a father and a mother responsible for in the home as far as Training teaching their children and the fear and admonition of the Lord wouldn't.

What do they have to do?

Like what's what should be a standard in today's culture, especially last time we spoke about patriarchy, right? And what a scary word right. Father rule, you know, right that concept a Father is the one who is given the authority.

And the responsibility for the spiritual life of that home. Yeah, so what does that look like? There should be prayer in the home. Some would do it like more of a formal worship service even you know, the the Puritan tradition was basically.

To read a chapter of the Bible. Mm-hmm. They wouldn't emphasize like something long. It wouldn't be a 30 or 45 minute thing. It'd be 10 or 15 minutes. The father would read a chapter of the Bible. Ask a couple questions and make sure the kids are understanding.

Sing a hymn. Yeah, pray and then you begin your day might be 10 or 15 minutes. They would call it family worship. Okay, actually, so there would be family worship in the home and then again right before bed there would be the same kind of prayer a chapter of the Bible a song and.

And on so that kind of thing is under the jurisdiction of the dad. He has to initiate that now. That doesn't mean that the mom isn't a teacher as well. But that kind of authority structure and and the structuring of what they're going to do right needs to come from the dad.

Yeah, I mean, yeah the the idea of accountability. Even if you're not the one committing the sin, you're still accountable. For the organization, right? Yeah, the CEO is accountable for right the organization.

The pastors accountable for the organization.

Right. Yeah, and it could be that. Even the wife isn't on board with that and doesn't want the husband to lead in that way. Which means he's gonna have to stand up to her. Yeah in a private conversation away from the kids.

But to say that this is what our home has to be right and hopefully in the beautiful thing is when you have both husband And wife that love the Lord God. And want this and and I think most Christian women sure would love to see their husband step up more.

Right in family worship and in in leading the home that way. Yeah, we would hope so. Yeah. Yeah.

You'd hope so. Yeah, but but you know these kids that you know, I I'm not gonna quote any statistics I don't have any ready, but they say that huge percentages of Children leaving evangelical quote-unquote.

Evangelical churches going off to school or secondary education or college. They're falling away.

Why So Many Children Leave the Church

What what what is lacking? Okay. Well, there's a book written by Ken Ham Answers in Genesis called already gone. Oh. And the idea here is that when we see this falling away when kids go off to college.

Yeah, it's because they were already gone probably by 8th or 9th grade, right? They were believing their indoctrination that the world is has evolved. Mm-hmm. And so they believe evolution they do not believe Genesis 1 to 11, right?

They take Scripture as generally fairytale. Yeah, and there's another book called weed in the church, which I don't fully agree with as a book but it points out. And it that's a call here. It's called weed in the church weed W-e-e-d w-e-e-d and it's not talking about marijuana, right?

Right. It's talking about Youth ministry. Yeah, it calls youth ministry itself a weed in the church. Oh, yeah, and so it advocates that you shouldn't differentiate by age and have you know Kids classes and then all the way up to high school.

Meanwhile church is happening in the sanctuary where you have teenagers worshiping. Yeah together in their little groups, right? Right, because what you're doing there is you're not integrating. This is integrative family worship.

Yeah, you're not integrating the family in the worship of God. So why would they continue once they're off to college? They were never part of the church. They were part of this like little sub stratum, you know youth ministry, right?

So this author calls it a weed. Mm-hmm. I think there is some place for kids ministries. Like I I don't think it would be beneficial when I'm teaching the ordo salutis on Sunday morning. Okay for a six-year-old to be there because I'm preaching to the sheep.

I'm preaching to mature Christians. Okay, I think up into a certain age, but I would like to see a ten-year-old Begin and that's when I really saw like my son. Yeah, nine ten years old being able to track right with the sermon right at that point put him in the sermon I don't want teenagers having their own worship service that I want them listening to the sermon.

Is that common? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's yeah, very common a lot of times youth groups meeting while church is going on. Okay for their youth they even have worship of their own and all kinds of things like that.

It's like a mega church phenomenon.

Okay, yeah.

That would be the extreme case but even so let's say you just have youth ministry as a function of your church. Mm-hmm how many parents are trusting that their kids are being Educated biblically for that hour a week and they're just farming it out.

Yep to the youth ministry. That's the youth ministers job, you know, or they send their kids to Christian school thinking. All right. Well, you know, we're paying this money for them to get a biblical worldview.

Oh, yeah. So and the thing that's missing in all cases here Is that the father and the mother right are not raising their children in the admonition of the Lord?

Yeah training up in the way they should go. Well, you know, I mean how big a problem is it that we can't defend our own? Scripture we can't defend. I mean I think of I know one of the topics we're gonna get into eventually.

Right and and you know, I thought I thought some people that well, how do you how do you defend slavery? Can you defend biblical slavery? You know, can you defend? Stoning a kid at the gate, right, you know things like that and You know people can't do it.

No, you know, yeah, I mean how important is it that we're able to Explain that to people. Yeah why it was just right.

Theonomy and the Moral Continuity of Scripture

So many questions wrapped up in that with theonomy. What is different what it what is. Where are there? Discontinuities between the law as given to Israel right and The law that we have in the New Testament, right?

Is it just a complete parallel or are there some things that discontinue? Yeah, right as we go. That's one of the big questions. But one thing that I think very few people have wrestled with is that what was moral and just Mm-hmm in the Old Testament would still be moral and just today right because God doesn't change.

No, so right, right. So if we're not preaching he doesn't change. And you know, hey atheists have Google too. Right. Yes, and to him and they you know, they yeah, you know, there's there they got their own clobber verses.

Oh sure, they accuse us of clobber verses. Yep. And so that's that first Peter 315, right? Yeah, always be ready to give an answer. Yeah, don't go in that direction because we got to save that for another episode.

Yeah, yeah. So today, what are we focusing on? What do we get?

I think I think I think it's great to focus on on kids in the church and okay and Going to you know, maybe maybe getting them prepared. How do you how do you get them prepared in the home? You were talking about yeah, you know what the Puritans used to do, you know, what are you seeing in our church that's working?

Well, one of the things I recently Preached on as an intro to a sermon was the New England primer. Yeah, and I actually told parents buy yourself a copy of it and train your children. Maybe just it's the Westminster Catechism is what's and then the London Baptist Confession both kind of were similar in how they Catechized or how they trained up children but working through.

Something like that would be good. One of the things in the New England primer that they have is Met Bible memory verses according to letters and my mom did this with me. Okay. So my mom was actually much more active in training me in scripture than my dad was because he was out working.

Which was good, right, you know, but when I was home as it as a little one we would memorize scripture, so A to Z Bible verses is a tremendous tool. In fact, I have a little book here if anybody wants to ever borrow it or take a look at it.

It's an A to Z Bible memory book for kids. Okay. So by that I mean like a all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Okay, be believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved so all the way down through the alphabet.

So things like that scripture memory a regular pattern of Bible reading one of the things I did with both of my kids is we have a 10 volume set of Bible stories, right? It's it's good. It walks through the entire Bible, but it's written at a level for children, right?

It tells it more like a story and and puts it in small chapters of and you just go from Adam and Eve all the way to Revelation. Wow so I went through that a couple of times with my kids when they were young just kind of Bedtime stories would always be from those books right and just work your way through the Bible that way.

So that needs to that falls on the shoulders of the parents to do that a child isn't just thinking Oh, let me go read the Bible. Yeah, right, you know. You just got to be active to think this is when the kid falls away when they go to college as the majority do.

Right, right. That's on your shoulders as a parent. Yeah, you know that's hard to understand and there's other reasons that could happen it might not be that you neglected Devotions. Yeah, but if you neglected devotions, right?

There's a connection with.

Your child falling away. Yes. Yes. Let's talk about college. Yeah. I mean, do we even want to send our kids to college anymore? I mean, I know I have a tendency to notice that people who didn't go to college.

Hmm. Have a Have a different vision of they really want their kids to go to college. Is that something they should be hoping for. Is that is that the. I mean, it's not the goal.

There's something else. That's the goal, right? Right? Yeah, so it's it used to be like the high mark. You've got to go to college, but how much better for some boys would it be that they learn a trade?

Yeah, you know and why would there be shame in that like that's great to work with your hands and to be productive that way. Um. You'd be insane to send your son or your daughter that you raised in the faith to Harvard.

Choosing a College Without Losing a Biblical Worldview

Mmm, or Princeton. Wow, or you know any of these? Schools were insane. It's such a harsh word. That's okay. So if they're gonna take a philosophy class. Yes, then they're going to learn from Michael Sandel at Harvard.

Yeah, his class theory of justice is online and I watch it. It's a YouTube series 13 parts. Where he's training the young mind in philosophy love of wisdom, right sure and he walks through the different philosophers and indoctrinates the children because they're still yet unformed in you know being independent in their thinking.

To the point where you can watch the course and see that everybody is generally agreeing. An entire room full of groupthink, okay in a theory of justice, which absolutely fundamentally contradicts biblical justice.

Wow, so how is that not insane you spend your whole life? Yeah. Indoctrinating these children in truth right in biblical justice. And if you if you're honest with yourself, you probably have not done the kind of job that the Puritans did sure, right?

I haven't right, you know, so I'm saying I would be insane to send my children to Harvard, right? Although I think they could handle it intellectually. Okay, but I wouldn't do it because Harvard has a different worldview and that worldview is baked into the philosophy department and into mathematics.

Into every area of worldview, right? You're entrusting them to professors who are not gonna say Oh wear it on their sleeve. This is my agenda. Yeah, but if you actually look at their voting record and their their political affiliations, it's 99

Yeah left, right. Why would you send them? That's insane. That is utterly insane, right? And they're so in Florida the unit University of Florida was taken over recently by Ben Sasse as the president he's a Republican congressman, you know and Seems to be of the Jim Jordan kind of conservative variety.

Okay, and I'm thinking that's awesome now when that happened there was this massive protest in the student hall and all these students mobilizing against the Homophobia and bigotry and you know every ism and phobia that they could ascribe to Ben Sasse.

Okay, okay I would expect that the University of Florida right now. Yeah is conservative enough in some departments. To not be insane to send your kid there. Wow.

Wow, so now Ben Sasse is. So what about Christian colleges? Yeah, do we are all Christian colleges alike?

No, not at all. There's a lot of woke conservative Christian schools. Mmm, even ones that you thought were were solid, you know, how long did Liberty employ Karen swallow prior? Yeah, well then she's now moved on to To another seminary because they finally got rid of her.

Okay, but Even Liberty isn't safe. Yeah now Liberty's good. Yeah, and probably a majority of the professors are gonna be solid. You know born-again evangelical trustworthy. Yeah teachers. And I would send my kid to Liberty.

Yeah. But I wouldn't think that they're safe there, right? You know and it depends you wouldn't send them unprepared unprepared and it also depends a lot on their friend group that they make there. That will probably have as much of an infant, you know influence on them as the the teachers.

Which ones do you know of that are? Trustworthy at this point. I don't trust anything at all.

I the only way if I if the only way I would send my child to College is if they live in my home and I can see what's going on every night. They're commuting. So I think so that was gonna be my next question.

I was gonna say which college close to home. Here in South Jersey, yeah, you know. Greater, Philadelphia, where would you send? Yeah, I would say Cairn.

Okay. Yeah, but I don't know that that would be unqualified either. Yeah. You still don't want to live in in a dorm? No, Karen. Ah. Life is this whole I would probably prefer commuting. Yeah. Well, that's the dad speaking like yeah, you know.

Yeah dorm life. That's a whole other thing. So, I don't know what what happens at any given college. I do know that talking to Tim Robinson who just graduated from Cairn. Okay that he has a very high view.

I know Tom Allen had been a professor there for a long time. Sure and guy had the whole New Testament memorized. So remember going around. Wow. Wow. Yeah, just solid solid guys like that right now. They have dolls.

Oh, who's a theologian. Good in some ways, but now I've become a little bit Questioning some of his his stuff. Keith. What's his name? It's kind of the head of the theology department. I appreciated something that he said in a an EF.

He's EFCA. I think he is because they had him at a theology refresher and I found him to be more helpful than the other people presenting okay, but He was kind of into some of the authors that I I look at with kind of more of a jaundiced eye.

Yeah, so I I'm not just entirely trusting of the Cairn Bible and theology department. Let alone what's happening if there's a social where I think they got rid of their social work department. Yeah, because that's where the liberalism tends to oh, yeah, and you psychology.

Oh, man. Yes psychology social work women's studies. Yeah. They would not have that. Well, I mean if they have that at Cairn, oh, they would yeah, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you you can tell my wife actually just took my daughter.

The night we had the congregational meeting. They were at a college fair, right? And they my wife was able to look at the course offerings of. What they in the departments that they have and just point out look you can tell where they are that they have this you know.

Collectivistic kind of course on race or gender or whatever like, you know where they stand, right? You can just they just wear it right on their sleeve. Yeah, that was one up in New York. So just rule them out and then when you ask the recruiter.

Where did you guys fall with the George Floyd 2020 situation? And they're like, well, we didn't take a side. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, but that's a problem. That's what we call the gray church, right? Like the great when you don't take a side.

You're just trying to have your kind of sit in the middle. Yeah, there's red. Yeah, and then there's blue. Yeah, and if you just want to be gray, right, it means you're not willing to say the hard things about abortion and gender and Sexuality sure economics.

There's many that will not say that socialism is evil a lot of pastors. Ah. Wow, because that's a political issue. That's just a matter of economic preference. So where do they come down on thou shalt not steal?

Right. Yes. What they have stealing nabots vineyard.

Preparing Children for Cultural Pressure

So yeah, you mentioned a couple of things and I guess we only have a few minutes left. But I think I think you know going back to what you were responsible to teach your kids. Yes. When do you bring these things in to your children's knowledge?

I mean, you you know, you don't get past Genesis without some pretty Culturally relevant stuff. Yes, right, you know, yeah. Joseph's being chased around the room by his employers wife. Yes, and I've read that the little children many times and sometimes I'm praying, you know, yeah.

Go the wrong way. Yeah, what do you do? So? Yeah, you want to be age-appropriate? So we would start with like little videos like a superbook. I know that's old school. I know it's produced by TVN. Yeah, and those movies were great, you know.

It's just like little kids learning what the stories are talking about it and and you're watching if you see something that's a little theologically Off you can correct that. You know, so the those sort of things.

Yeah, you don't necessarily want to just dive right into lamentations and describe little toddlers Falling dead in the street from hunger and thirst and you're gonna give them nightmares. When they're super young you want to just be a little bit discriminating.

I don't think you would just read cover-to-cover. But you do begin when they're young. You know age-appropriate and then I think at some point parents seem to just sort of check out like I've done my part.

Send them off to college. They'll learn there. So just kind of circling back to that conversation. You've got it. I think see them through to like age in this culture. Yeah age 25 26. Sure. You're still really discipling them and they're getting on their own and then they're establishing a home of their own.

Isn't that part of our learning more as we're discipling our kids. We're strengthening our own. Oh, yeah. I have a knowledge and absolutely. Yeah.

Just asking questions like while you're driving I think my kids think it's because I'm a pastor the kind of things that I throw out like yeah a pastor would would see that or but I think everybody every Christian should do that just.

We don't shelter so our kids are teenagers now, right. They know everything that's going on in the world and all of these cultural controversies. And they understand why these things are wrong. Yeah, because they're going they're in the world, right?

We're not of it. They're gonna see things they're gonna hear jokes from their friends. They're going to be aware of what's happening. And if you're not willing to talk about sex and talk about all of these things, they're getting it from somewhere, right?

They're not getting it from the biblical worldview, but they are they are hearing.

Well, even if they go to the library, I live in Cherry Hill and they had five-year-olds out there with signs. Yeah chanting LGBTQ we love you. And I mean, yeah, you're they're gonna run into it. Yes.

Yeah, so we got to prepare.

We've got and maybe that's the theme of this particular off-the-cuff. Yeah that We're talking about responsibility this week last week. We talked more about authority. Yeah, that headship implies that it's more of a patriarchal situation but that means Responsibility.

Yeah dads need to step up and wives as well under the headship of their husband. They have a huge role in this. In fact, my mom took that role. Okay, but it was delegated as well you know my dad's out there my dad was driving a School bus in the morning and doing a paper route before that throwing out newspapers.

Okay, drive the kids. I remember one time he brought the school bus home in front of our house. Yeah he was working so hard just to pay the bills because he was a realtor and if you're not making a lot of sales You got to get other good other things and then eventually he did really well in real estate.

Mm-hmm. He had to work a lot of hours. Mm-hmm. So it was the mom that was home with us, right? And so there was kind of a delegated situation there where it was my mom teaching us the a-to-z Bible verses and You know, we would do read through the Bible in a year.

We the first book I read was one of those kind of like children's Bibles. Okay that you read through. It's up to the parents to make that happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, isn't that neat? We didn't plan this it was off the cuff.

Last week was Authority and this week was accountability. Or was it responsibility. Responsibility. Accountability, right? Fantastic. Well, that's it for this episode of off the cuff. Come back next time.

We'll we'll ask Pastor Jeff Cleaver some more questions. Thanks again.