The Resistance – Word and Prayer – Part 2B

Yesterday we sought to argue for the need for a commitment to the Word and prayer as a foundational step in building Christian Resistance. These are the weapons we have given the battle against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Today we continue with some practical changes we can make to family and personal life.

What practical changes can we make to our lives to build our resistance on the supernatural power of the Spirit and the Word? The following list is obviously not exhaustive, but I hope there will be something of value for you in what follows.

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Don’t Be This Parent

Here is a quote from Father Hunger by Douglas Wilson. He is commenting on what often happens when parents finally ask for outside help after experiencing persistent long term parenting difficulties.

When parents finally get real help from someone who is willing to be honest about what is going on in their family, and how they got to where they are, it is in the highest degree likely that father or mother, or both, will be offended. Part of the reason why they have gotten this far without hearing what they need to hear is that many of their friends instinctively know this. The temptation for the struggling parent will be to think that the person who finally speaks up “doesn’t understand,” or “has a simplistic approach,” or “doesn’t know the family dynamics,” and so on. And the longer it takes for someone to finally say something, the more it seems like an intervention when it finally does happen.

Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger

A Father’s Words

Words of reassurance, offered or withheld, are monumental in a child’s growth. Words of encouragement, or exhortation, or patient teaching, are the same. When a child has grown up under the devastation of unremitting harshness (and sometimes not so unwitting), or the devastation of neglect, the one thing a father may not say is that it “was not that big a deal.” Of course it was a big deal. The child is (hopefully) going to be praying the Lord’s Prayer for the rest of his life. What will naturally, readily, come to mind whenever he starts, whenever he says, “Our father…”? What does that mean to him in his bones, and who taught it to him?

Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger

The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #11

For some time we have been working our way through the Directory of Private Worship. What put me on this track was a sermon where this directory was mentioned, along with the concept that family worship was taken so seriously by the Church that fathers who did not ensure their family engaged in it could be admonished and even debarred from the Lord’s supper. Today we move to the eleventh stipulation.

XI. Besides the ordinary duties in families, which are above mentioned, extraordinary duties, both of humiliation and thanksgiving, are to be carefully performed in families, when the Lord, by extraordinary occasions, (private or publick,) calleth for them.

Though the language is somewhat archaic, I think the general idea is likely clear to most readers. From time to time, it is important for families to go above and beyond normal Bible reading and prayer in their family worship. There are special occasions where it may be necessary for families to humble themselves before God, perhaps in repentance over sin, or even in sorrow over a nation’s sin. Recent laws and proposed laws in New Zealand might be examples of such occasions. At other times, when God works mightily on behalf of his people, special thanksgiving might be appropriate. I’m not sure whether the framers of this directory would have held to special traditions of thanksgiving around the celebration of Christmas and Easter, but I think these are a great way opportunity for both humiliation and celebration in family worship. Both my wife and I were not brought up in ritual following families. Sure there were some traditions, but we have tried to extend this a bit as we raise our children. One that has become a helpful tradition is a celebration of the last supper / Passover meal where we eat roast lamb, drink wine (or grape juice for the children!), wash each other’s feet and read the Passion story.

A Culture of Life vs A Culture of Death

One of the fascinating but predictable things about rebellion against the true and living God is the way it always devolves into lies and death. Since Satan is the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning, this should not surprise us. We see the rebellion of our father Adam was founded on Satan’s lies and ultimately caused the slow murder of Adam and all his progeny. Those in Satan’s kingdom employ his methods. Thus very early on we have Cain murdering his brother in envy and Lamech murdering a young man for insulting him. Yet Satan’s influence is not limited to individuals. Cultures that embrace rebellion against the living God grow more and more like their father the devil. They too embrace lies and death. The Pharaoh of Moses’ day embraced the lie of his own divinity and murdered countless young Hebrew boys. The Canaanites embraced Molech and sacrificed their own children to their ultimate ruin.

Our secular culture in its haste towards the abyss more and more manifests its diabolical nature. Its language is full of lies. We have transwomen, marriage equality, antiracism, gender affirmation, social justice and economic equality. A transwoman is a man. Marriage equality? A homosexual union can never be a true marriage. Anti-racism is actual racism. Gender affirmation is the attempted destruction of the image of God in an individual as male or female. Social justice is injustice. Economic equality is stealing. You get the idea. Our secular culture only lies when it speaks.

Then we have secular culture’s embrace of death. Abortion is our euphemistic term for child sacrifice. In New Zealand, 18% of known pregnancies in 2019 ended in an abortion. We’ve also introduced euthanasia. And our suicide rate amongst youth is horrendous, but surely given the culture of death celebrated, and our nihilistic outlook, unsurprising. Secular culture is killing itself off. They see children as a threat to the environment. Recently Meghan and Harry won an award for their decision to have only two children. Environment worshipping secularists even promise to have no children for the sake of the planet. In this, the secularists plant the seeds of their own destruction.

The secularist trumpets their rebellion with slogans such as ‘a woman’s right to choose’, and ‘I was born in the wrong body’, but their embrace of this culture of lies and death is actually evidence of God handing them over to wrath and judgment. They will not be fruitful. Their culture will dwindle and decline. In contrast, this world will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. Fruitfulness and blessing come to those who love the Lord their God. They will inherit the earth. Those who love God, for whom Christ is king produce a culture of life. Having children for us is part of the calling to dominion under Christ. That is why faithful Christians tend to have more children than nihilistic secularists. We are hopeful. This world belongs to our Lord. It will be restored and we will reign with him over his creation.

What is life for?

What is life for? Why do we work? If Christians cannot remember the answers, then we are lost indeed. Work is not something you are supposed to balance against the claims of your family. Unless you are one of those few whose talents are required in a broad way for the common good of multitudes, if you are not working in the first instance for your family, then something is severely out of order. We live in comforts that the richest aristocrats not very long ago could never have dreamed of, and yet we claim that we are too poor to have more than a child or two. The truth is the reverse: we are too rich to have more than a child to too, too committed to work for work’s sake and to the purchase of prestige, mansions, the “best” schools, and toys for grown-ups.

Anthony Esolen – Out of the Ashes

They have no great joy to show for it

We must say to ourselves, “We will not subject our children to the new thing in the world, having them spend vast tracts of their waking hours in the company of people who do not love them and who will not, a few years later, even remember their names. We will not hang our children by the ropes of our ambition and avarice. We will not institutionalize them at age three so that we may place them in a ‘good school system,’ that mythical beast, at age six. We will not mount the treadmill. We do not care what our ‘betters’ think. They have no great joy to show for all their sweat and grumbling.”

Anthony Esolen in Out of the Ashes

Reddit Parenting Advice #4

Today we continue our series on Reddit parenting advice. Dear readers, you may think I look long and hard to find particularly egregious postings, but I assure you I generally take the first one that appears when I view the parenting subreddit. It seems there are plenty of people out there who need advice, but most prefer to rant about their situations rather than take responsibility. Today we have a rant about the cost of childcare. 

So we pay $297 (USD) for my five month old to go to daycare 5 days a week. If we want him dropped down to 3 days (because we’re having a hard time affording full time) its $245. So it goes from $59 a day to $81. We only save $50 a week and still have to figure out where he goes the other two days. And we don’t qualify for government assistance. We both work full time with my husband working overtime every weekend and I work overtime every week day. America is great..

Let’s begin with what seems glaringly obvious. Why did this woman have this child? What is a five month old doing going to daycare 5 days a week? This is tragic. Again and again, I have seen this repeated. A couple struggles to have a child. Desperate, they try everything. Finally, they get the news they are pregnant. A beautiful child is born, and then a couple of months later, the mother is back at work. What is wrong with you? Why are you so desperate to bring a child into the world, and then equally desperate to farm him out to someone else to raise? It’s unnatural. Children are not accessories to your life. Why do women look jealously at others who can have children, only to become pregnant and then give their children to other (low-paid) women to raise? This is madness.

Next let me consider complaints about costs and children. This should not be something that needs to be said, but children cost. We used to believe the purpose of a husband was to provide for his wife and children so that the wife could attend to the sphere which God calls her – the home. This provided stability and loving homes where children were cared for by people who actually loved them rather than strangers. Now we have women complaining about the cost of childcare and that children get in the way of a career. This is completely backwards! A career should serve children, not the other way around. Children are supposed to cost you. We give ourselves to our children. A woman gives part of her body to a child for 9 months. Then that child is designed to need nourishment from her body regularly for at least a year. Psychologically she is necessary to him for a lot longer. Our bodies tell a story. A mother’s body gives life and nourishment to children. That is what she is designed to do. She is not designed to farm her offspring out to others while she shuffles papers for some pointless government bureaucracy.

A mother is designed to be used up loving children, not making money. Children do not take her away from what she really ought to be doing. They are what she really ought to be doing. Children are supposed to be her priority, not her career. And if a career is her priority, perhaps she should not selfishly bring children into the world. Contrary to the world’s ignorant maxim, a woman cannot have it all. Having children is about sacrifice. You are used up as they are filled. You can’t fill them when you are used up by something else.

Now let’s consider the husband in all of this. Husbands are meant to lead and provide for their families. Our bodies and nature tell us this, and if we weren’t so obtuse and blinded by societal and cultural egalitarian prejudice we would recognise this. Men need to ensure that they can care for the woman they marry and the children they father. This means they need to enter marriage with as little debt as possible, earn a good income, and preferably have a significant amount of savings or a house. Young women should not look at young men who don’t meet these basic requirements. Fathers, if you have any input into who your daughter marries (and you should!), encourage her to look for a man who can enable her to fulfil her calling as a wife and mother.

Teaching Your Children to Show Respect

When I was growing up, there was a real distinction between children and adults. This distinction was demonstrated in many ways, but one that is fading out of existence is the use of titles. I would never have dared to call John Smith by his Christian name. Rather I addressed him as Mr. Smith. Even a young unmarried woman would be addressed with the title Miss. For adults who were family, we would address them with their title: Mum, Dad, Aunty, Uncle, Nana and so on. In situations where we had close family friends, we would address them with Uncle or Aunty and then their first name. While this was the tradition of our culture, I believe there was intent behind it. The intent was for children to realise that there was a distinction and distance between them and adults. Children were most certainly not on par with adults.

The world has changed. In some households, children call their parents by their first name. A number of schools have dispensed with titles. But where I have seen the biggest change is in general culture. In my church, children call me by my first name. In children’s church, my children are encouraged to call their leaders (adults) by their Christian names. This is now normal.

“So what!’ you might say. Not so fast. Little cultural habits matter. They have a message. What is the message that our culture is sending? Children and adults are interchangeable. Adults are not hierarchically above children. They are on the same level. And even if you as a parent disagree with this message, you live and breathe and parent in this culture. Your children are growing up with this cultural worldview. Whether this change is symptomatic of the lack of respect children have for adults, or whether it is part of the cause, there is no doubt we are living in an age where children do not have a healthy respect for adults in general. That is why in our churches we have children who feel no fear in refusing to do what an adult asks them to do.

Where else do we see this message preached by our culture? In the schools. Schools have become child-centred in their approach to learning. Children decide what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. Teachers become facilitators. We see it in youth crime, where young teens are routinely arrested for crime and abuse police officers. We see it in our government taking away the use of physical force as a form of discipline. We see it in our culture celebrating children deciding what gender they identify as. Our culture has tried to flatten the distinction between adult and child, and the ruination of childhood is the result.

It is the small things that signal cultural values. So contrary to common advice, do sweat the small stuff. Talk to your pastor about these things. Require children to address you with your title. It’s not about whether you feel comfortable about it or not. Your comfort is less important than developing a culture that teachers respect for age. Require your own children to address people with titles. Small things matter.