Dipped, Rolled, & Deep Fried
By Bret McAtee The Covenant News ~ June 13, 2008
God’s word teaches us that we are to teach our children in the ways of the covenant. In Deuteronomy 6 the description of that teaching process clearly communicates that this teaching is to be intense, thorough, and deliberate. Clearly God understood that He made us in such a way that if we were to eventually be adults that loved Him and walked in His ways we would have to start as children who were taught to love Him and walk in His ways. Clearly God understood that covenant community survives by passing the tradition down to the children.
So what do most American Christians do? They do all they can to make sure that the covenant community survives by exposing God’s covenant seed to a teaching process that is intense, thorough, and deliberate. Most American Christians expend great energy to make sure that the covenant community survives by making sure the traditions and ways of the covenant community are passed down to their children. The problem, of course, is that the covenant community that American Christians are concerned with maintaining is not the covenant community of God’s people but rather the covenant community of an alien god. Christians send their children to government schools and what happens to those children at Government schools is precisely what is explained in Deuteronomy 6, with the minor exception that instead of being taught the ways of the God of the Bible our covenant seed is taught the ways of some molech god.
Step back and think about it. When we send our children to government schools we are effectively dipping and saturating them into an alien covenant that is dedicated to not allowing the mentioning of the name of the Lord of the true covenant. If you include transportation time we do this at the tune of 40 hours a week. If you add extra-curriculum school activity the hours go up proportionally. Now add the factors of how all that they are learning in the government schools is being reinforced by the culture swirling around them and how they are anchored into the false covenant through the roots of the friends that they make in the government schools – friends who share their training – and it is not a wonder that God’s covenant seed grow up pledging allegiance to a god who is not god.
So, we dip and saturate our children in an alien covenant by sending them to the schools of foreign gods. We never explain to them, because most don’t know themselves, the whole idea of Worldview and critical thinking. After dipping and saturating them in the covenant of an alien god we roll them in the breadcrumbs of a culture that is opposed to God and then we deep fry them into this god hating life and worldview by allowing their affections to be anchored in relationships with other believers of this faith we have forced them to embrace.
Then, in order to speak good things to ourselves about what godly parents we are we force them to go to Church with us on Sunday where, in most cases, the message that they are receiving from the government schools and from the culture is again reinforced only this time with a shiny Jesus wax coating to cover it all. As the children get older they begin to wonder about the whole relevance of this ‘Church thing,’ and so 50-80% of them leave when they graduate from High School never to return. And many of the ones who stayed probably should have left with their compatriots.
People, all of this can’t be fixed or balanced by 20 minutes of family devotions around the table in the evening or even by an hour of Bible reading before bedtime. You don’t cleanse a fine cloth that has been dipped and saturated in oil for hours and hours by dipping it briefly in clean water only to put it back again into the oil solution.
Let me say it as plainly as I can. If you dip and saturate your children into the false covenant of an alien god they are going to grow up and be the adherents of that alien god. Sure, the God of the Bible does rescue some but to count on His rescuing some of our covenant seed when we raise them in plain disobedience by placing them into the hands of false priests (School teachers who are not epistemologically self-consciously Christian)is to ‘tempt the Lord thy God.’
And the real kicker is, is that some Christian parents after they have done all this to God’s seed are genuinely shocked and mortified when their little Suzy gets knocked up or when their Johnny gets busted for bumping off the corner gas station or when little Bobby couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Christianity or when little Dot goes on to college and comes home and approvingly tells her parents about her Lesbian suite mates, or when little Alex raises their grandchildren on Nightmare on Elm street movies and Brat dollies or when little Lydia spends her life trying to earn God’s favor.
We can wail all we want about this culture but until we start training and keeping our children it is all wailing into the void.
Postscript – I think one reason (there are many) that we have arrived at this point is because of revivalism. Revivalism communicated that God could do in one jolt what He commands us to do throughout the raising of our children. Revivalism, with one Holy Spirit jolt, could instantly make up for our failings as parents to raise our children in the way of the covenant. Revivalism disconnected in our thinking God’s cause and effect. Whereas God said, “Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it,” we said, “Let just anybody train up our children and trust God to give them a Holy Spirit revival jolt when they get older.” Through revivalism training was disconnected from conversion.
Pastor Bret McAtee writes on www.backwaterreport.com and is from Charlotte, Michigan where he dwells with his perfect wife, dazzling children and where he prays daily for Reformation in the West.