How Can I Protect My Child from State Indoctrination?
00:00:00.000 | A Christian man, a husband and a father who lives in Sweden writes in with today's question.
00:00:08.880 | "Hello Pastor John, I love this podcast and your teachings.
00:00:11.880 | I live in Sweden, a coercive country.
00:00:15.800 | Socialists in a lot of ways, homeschooling exemptions for religious convictions were
00:00:20.200 | outlawed here not long ago.
00:00:21.980 | We must send our children to school or the government threatens to take them away from
00:00:25.760 | us.
00:00:26.760 | The United States forces children to begin preschool when they're just six years old.
00:00:30.240 | Christian schools are practically illegal and a school may have a Christian profile,
00:00:34.040 | but it's a meaningless title.
00:00:35.940 | These few Christian schools are still not allowed to be religious or teach a Christian
00:00:39.680 | worldview.
00:00:40.680 | They're still forced by law to abide to the same teaching plan as secular atheistic schools
00:00:46.600 | to give children a secular education and must even teach our children LGBTQ as a positive
00:00:52.440 | norm.
00:00:53.440 | In such a country, Pastor John, how should we parent?"
00:00:59.040 | Let me try to build up a case or an understanding from the more basic and broad principle to
00:01:06.600 | the immediate application to a parent in Sweden faced with this kind of difficult challenge.
00:01:12.880 | I would start at the bottom by affirming that God has assigned to parents, parents, not
00:01:20.720 | the state, parents, the rearing and shaping of the minds and hearts of the children in
00:01:27.600 | the knowledge of God and in how to live that out in the world.
00:01:31.840 | I would base that on text like Ephesians 6.4, "Fathers, bring up your children in the discipline
00:01:37.920 | and the instruction of the Lord," and Deuteronomy 6, 6, and 7, and the book of Proverbs that
00:01:43.760 | focuses on the teaching of fathers and mothers as foundational for life.
00:01:49.560 | And of course, parents have always known that they need help from others in many ways, church,
00:01:58.400 | community, for example, with expertise that they don't have to build into their children.
00:02:04.640 | And that's not an implication of just modern living, the technical age.
00:02:11.040 | Paul's parents in the first century, Paul's parents saw fit to supplement what he got
00:02:16.640 | at home from Lois and Eunice—his dad was not a believer—with the education "at
00:02:23.520 | the feet of Gamaliel" in Acts 22.3.
00:02:27.080 | So that's not a new principle.
00:02:28.880 | So parents and those that parents partner with to build into their children what they
00:02:34.240 | need for life, that's the first principle.
00:02:37.200 | That's a given, I think, for Christians.
00:02:39.520 | The second principle I would lay down is that God has ordained for there to be a thing like
00:02:47.680 | government and state, and that government wields the sword, Romans 13.4, meaning that
00:02:55.480 | the government can enforce laws with coercion, fines, imprisonment, bodily harm, death.
00:03:03.360 | And this government is to have the good of its people at heart, 1 Peter 2.14, which implies
00:03:10.280 | that it will have a compelling interest in whether its people are educated, at least
00:03:14.960 | educated enough to make society function.
00:03:18.320 | Just imagine what would happen if in modern societies no one could read, no one could
00:03:25.640 | do basic arithmetic, not to mention be able to think critically in regard to the vast
00:03:31.160 | complexities of what make the infrastructure of cities function.
00:03:35.560 | My goodness, I was thinking last winter in Minneapolis, we had this spate of weather
00:03:41.800 | that was like 10, 20 below zero for days on end.
00:03:45.720 | I thought if the infrastructure of this city broke, we'd freeze to death.
00:03:49.920 | We really would.
00:03:51.120 | So it really matters to the government who cares about the welfare of its working that
00:03:57.560 | there be basic education and more than basic.
00:04:02.560 | The third principle, though, and really important in this situation, would be that this compelling
00:04:08.820 | interest of governments to have an educated population becomes evil.
00:04:13.400 | It becomes evil when it preempts the more foundational right of the family to educate
00:04:20.800 | its children.
00:04:21.800 | In other words, governments, I would argue, should find a way to encourage an educated
00:04:30.440 | populace by respecting the rights of families and promoting multiple avenues of all kinds
00:04:38.660 | of lower and higher education as parents seek out ways to partner with those who have expertise
00:04:45.640 | in equipping their children to function wisely and morally and productively in the world,
00:04:52.160 | which now with those three basic principles that I would lay down brings us to the situation
00:04:59.480 | in Sweden and parenting there.
00:05:02.680 | And of course, Sweden is not the only country in the world which, according to these principles,
00:05:10.040 | overreaches in their intrusion upon the rights of families.
00:05:15.400 | I know at least two families right here in Minneapolis who came from another country
00:05:21.400 | in Europe precisely because they forbade homeschooling and required state education with all of its
00:05:30.840 | indoctrination of the modern worldview.
00:05:35.080 | Millions of Christians, millions of Christians around the world have lived and do live in
00:05:41.880 | oppressive regimes that have such overweening power that they can overreach their God-given
00:05:51.840 | role and enforce that overreach with the power of imprisonment and death.
00:05:58.880 | So this is not unusual.
00:06:01.160 | This is common throughout the world and has always been common.
00:06:05.000 | So I see three possibilities today for Christian families, say, in a situation like this family
00:06:11.560 | finds itself in Sweden.
00:06:14.620 | One is emigration out of their country to a more free society, an option that probably
00:06:22.680 | simply does not exist for most families for many reasons, including increasingly restrictive
00:06:29.200 | immigration laws and lots of other things that would make that not only difficult but
00:06:35.760 | unwise probably.
00:06:38.120 | Second, keep your children out of schools and run the risk of losing them.
00:06:43.400 | We've read, I mean, in recent years we saw in the news families in Sweden where that
00:06:48.160 | happened.
00:06:49.160 | They took away five kids from the parents because they wouldn't send them to public
00:06:55.240 | schools.
00:06:56.240 | Now, that's a massive risk and probably most parents are simply not going to say, "No,
00:07:02.800 | that would be worth it."
00:07:03.800 | No, it probably wouldn't be worth it.
00:07:06.480 | Keep your kids and risk the education, which now brings me to my third option, which is
00:07:13.320 | the one most families probably will follow and will more or less, I think, rightly have
00:07:19.800 | to follow, namely that a radically Christian education at home alongside the state education,
00:07:29.160 | which is going to be diametrically opposed in many ways, will be needed in order to build
00:07:35.160 | into the children's lives two deep and unshakable convictions.
00:07:40.960 | This is the goal now.
00:07:42.520 | One, that Jesus, the kind of person he is, the kind of amazing salvation he offers, is
00:07:49.920 | better than anything they will meet in school or anywhere else among their peers.
00:07:58.480 | That's the first conviction.
00:07:59.480 | They want to build into these kids with this radical Christian education at home and in
00:08:04.320 | the church and among friends.
00:08:07.160 | Second, that the way of Jesus, the lifestyle of Jesus that he teaches and models, calls
00:08:13.760 | for, is better, better, better, better than any lifestyle offered at school or in the
00:08:22.040 | media.
00:08:23.040 | This is not different.
00:08:26.080 | This is not a different kind of parenting in any culture, but I would think that in
00:08:32.160 | a situation where children are forced to be indoctrinated with unbiblical views of what
00:08:40.320 | is true and false and right and wrong and beautiful and ugly, the intentionality of
00:08:46.440 | the parents' Christian education at home would be greater and more urgent to build
00:08:53.920 | the mindset into our children from the earliest age that we really are not part of this system.
00:09:01.800 | It feels like it would—I think that's true here in America, but parents don't
00:09:06.600 | feel it.
00:09:07.600 | They don't feel it.
00:09:08.600 | They increasingly know it's true, but we felt like we belong here for so long, we
00:09:13.920 | don't feel like we're really not part of the system.
00:09:16.720 | It is our system, sort of, and that's increasingly not the case.
00:09:20.480 | Well, in Sweden, they've declared it's not the case.
00:09:24.200 | So I think there's this greater intentionality where we actually teach our children we live
00:09:32.080 | in a coercive, unbiblical, unjust system.
00:09:37.560 | We teach them that.
00:09:38.560 | I mean, that would be considered unpatriotic in some countries, and Americans consider
00:09:43.320 | it unpatriotic in large measure today, and increasingly they shouldn't.
00:09:48.060 | So in Sweden, I would think you've got to teach your kids from the get-go that we live
00:09:53.360 | in a system where they are compelling us to do what they ought not to be compelling us
00:10:00.880 | to do.
00:10:01.880 | The kids have that mindset from the beginning.
00:10:04.940 | And what I would stress for this Christian father is that the great challenge is to make
00:10:10.760 | that sense of alienation from the state and from the culture, make it clear without becoming
00:10:19.480 | bitter or acrimonious or sullen or fearful, but instead modeling for the children abounding
00:10:30.760 | joy in Christ, great confidence in his sovereignty over evil, coercive regimes, tremendous hope
00:10:42.560 | that even under these constraints, Christ is able to show himself and his way as far
00:10:52.280 | more deeply satisfying and finally rewarding than anything this present world offers.
00:11:01.520 | That's the great challenge.
00:11:04.020 | The biblical commands to rejoice always and to give thanks in everything, indeed for everything
00:11:11.200 | in Ephesians 5, were spoken.
00:11:14.560 | Those commands to rejoice and give thanks were spoken in situations profoundly oppressive
00:11:21.880 | and embattled.
00:11:23.620 | So the great challenge in parenting is to be a certain kind of person who is so confident
00:11:33.200 | in the power and wisdom and goodness of King Jesus, President Jesus, Premier Jesus, Prime
00:11:41.480 | Minister Jesus, that our joy is indomitable.
00:11:46.960 | The children must be shown that the way of Jesus is most joyful, even if it is a painful
00:11:57.120 | way, a self-denying way, a narrow way that leads to life.
00:12:02.880 | And I would just add one more thing, and I'm sure this father knows this probably better
00:12:08.040 | than I do.
00:12:10.080 | Families shouldn't be fighting this battle with their kids, that is, not against their
00:12:15.320 | kids, but alongside their kids to show them the truth.
00:12:18.780 | They shouldn't be fighting this battle alone.
00:12:22.160 | If possible, they should be gathering in healthy churches, surrounded by other families with
00:12:27.840 | similar hopes and longings.
00:12:31.080 | Young people love to have friends, and the power of peer pressure is enormous.
00:12:37.880 | The Bible says that bad company corrupts good morals, so we need to pray earnestly that
00:12:44.960 | God would raise up for our children other Christian friends.
00:12:51.000 | And we must band together as Christian parents to help each other provide the kind of alternatives
00:12:58.840 | for our children and young people that they can enjoy, so that when they're offered
00:13:05.960 | alternatives that would not be healthy from their non-Christian peers, they are able to
00:13:11.720 | stand.
00:13:13.800 | There is no safe place in the world to raise children, not in America for sure, not in
00:13:21.720 | Sweden, not in China, not in North Korea.
00:13:25.400 | There's no safe place to raise Christian children, children who will treasure Christ
00:13:29.960 | above everything.
00:13:31.840 | Only God can work the miracle in the hearts of our children that we long for.
00:13:37.120 | So with all of our teaching and all of our modeling and all of our friendships and church
00:13:44.680 | and all of our rejoicing, we must pray without ceasing for the miracle of regeneration in
00:13:50.720 | our children.
00:13:51.720 | Yeah, that's a great point.
00:13:53.160 | There is no safe place in the world to raise children, and location change is not a simple
00:13:59.240 | fix, especially with the influence of digital media all around our kids, no matter where
00:14:03.080 | they are today.
00:14:04.080 | I feel that desperation as a homeschooling dad in the States even.
00:14:07.280 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:14:08.280 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:14:09.720 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast.
00:14:13.960 | Do all that at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:14:15.440 | Well, God's love is being undermined all over the world right now, and I'm not talking
00:14:22.760 | about an undermining of his love by the world or by secular culture.
00:14:27.320 | The love of God is being undermined by professing Christians, pastors, and churches that claim
00:14:33.480 | to be advocating for nothing more than the love of God.
00:14:37.160 | It's a fascinating and important phenomenon to see up close, and we will next time on
00:14:41.600 | Wednesday.
00:14:42.600 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you back here on Wednesday when we look at
00:14:45.000 | how churches sabotage God's love.
00:14:48.560 | We'll see you then.
00:14:49.760 | Bye.
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