Marriage, Children, Education
When the Nazis had overrun much of Europe in World War II, the Allied powers began to strategize how to turn it around. They settled on a common focal point for all the allied nations to direct the resources of their armies, navies, air forces, marines and intelligence services. The place was Normandy. On D-Day they turned the tide of the war.
Today, it seems that the globalist agenda has overrun most of the nations. The natural family and traditional marriage is under attack. In much of the world the church is in decline. Governments have embraced the centralized statist agenda. Social media has been captured by the censorship group-think. Small family businesses are being penalized and squeezed out of the marketplace.
The world is becoming much like it was in the Roman Empire in the first century when Christianity was born. As Christ sent out his disciples to make disciples of all the nations, often people focus on the religious church activity involved, but another powerful part of the strategy was the Biblical Family. As the pagans aborted or neglected their children, perverted their marriages, spent their resources instead of passing on their wealth to their descendents, the Christian families were quietly building an alternative to that culture.
Today the strategy is the same. The family is our “Normandy.” It is the beachhead where we can turn the tide over time.
Why Did He Make Them One?
The first command in Genesis to married couples was to have children. In Genesis 1 God said that parents should “be fruitful and multiply.” In other words, to have kids (and not just one!).
The ancient pagan world limited the number of their children by practicing some form of birth control and by practicing abortion and infanticide. While the pagan families remained static in the population the Hebrews and later the Christians grew to form the majority of the populations in the countries where they lived. In Egypt the enslaved Hebrews were told to even kill their newborn sons, but disobeyed. In exile in Babylon the prophet Jeremiah sent the strategy to the Jewish families: “Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29:6-7) Their false prophets told them not to because they would soon be going back to Israel. Today there are some who say that Christians should not be having many kids so they can be free to reach as many people as possible before the return of Christ.
But the historic biblical command given in the garden to mankind has never been altered: To married couples He commanded them to “multiply” (Gen 1:28). This was the foundation of the family institution. This was the primary reason that Adam needed a wife. He could take dominion as a single man but he could never “multiply.” He needed Eve for that part of his mission. The words “family” and “marriage” are not found in the first chapters of the Bible but when the command to multiply was first given by God, the institution of the family came into being. They were human responsibilities, not just for Christians, but are essential best-practices that must be modeled rightly by Christians for the world to work as the Creator intended.
The reason God “hates” divorce as stated in Malachi 2 is that it destroys the ability for a family to raise “godly seed” for His kingdom. This is why God made them male and femail as “one” (Mal 2:15). Marriage certainly has benefits involving companionship, intimacy and sexual pleasure, but the central purpose of marriage is children. When Christians today approach marriage with primarily their own happiness and benefits in mind then they start on a wrong foundation. Often modern Christians make their own happiness the purpose of marriage, and once they find themselves unhappy for whatever reason, they begin to consider divorce. The purpose of the marriage is gone in their mind. But not to God.
Marriage is really something that primarily exists to create a permanent secure environment for the raising of the next generation. This is why homosexual marriage is wrong. It cannot produce a child, much less, can it properly raise a child in the way they should go. But likewise heterosexual couples who never seek to have children (there are some of course who cannot biologically do so, which is a different matter) or who seek to put it off while they pursue their own happiness and vocational and material happiness, pervert God’s purposes for “making them one” (Malachi 2). Or if they just have one or two children, they short circuit and deny the “best practices” of the biblical and historical church.
God said in Psalm 127 that children are a reward of the Lord and are like arrows in one’s hand and he who “has a quiver full” is blessed. Indeed arrows were weapons of war. Who in their right mind goes into a fight deliberately choosing to limit the number of weapons in their arsenal? But Christian families today are doing this very thing, contrary to the practice of the church in transforming nations for millennia. But when is the last time your church taught the apostolic word in 1 Timothy 5:14 for women to “…marry, bear children, manage the house…?”
The modern situation is in fact frightening in some countries today. In much of the western world, especially Europe and Japan, etc, the fertility rate has dropped to below replacement levels. That means that in most of Europe for example, the total population in about 50 years from today will be roughly one third less than it is now. It is a self-made holocaust. And it will have horrendous consequences in a shrinking economy and tax-base and therefore in shrinking budgets of governments that have promised the aging population so much. It could lead to serious instability and crises of a magnitude that will have no short-term solution. Like the black plague that came to Europe, it will take generations of backwardness before it can recover.
Meanwhile the southern hemisphere that is still having babies will become the dominant economies and therefore the dominant political powers in world affairs. Another shocking reality for Europe is that the only families that are really growing today are Muslims. This means that in about 50 years most of Europe will be majority Muslim nations. The historic “Christian” culture will be no more. Sharia law and so much more will become the dominant law and culture of Europe, along with nuclear weapons and industries that are now in place.
This situation may seem hopeless to some but in reality it is a great opportunity for the church if it will return to the best practices for the family that it once practiced long ago. When Christians first came to Europe they were but a fraction of one percent of the population. But by having a long-term family-based strategy, they gradually became the dominant culture.
Europe does not have to become a Muslim majority culture or a majority secular culture. If Christians in Europe and many other nations today return to the same practices of the early church, it can become a dominant force in their culture, even without religious revival and awakening. We also want major church-growth of course, but nations will not be won to Christ unless Christians renounce the me-centered marriage and easy no-fault divorce culture.
Of course just having babies is only the first step. They must be educated and raised with a Biblical worldview. This is discussed in the next section for paid subscribers.
The content below was originally paywalled.
“You Shall Teach Them…in Your Home” (Deut 6:7)
The national data in the United States is shocking. Studies now show that about 80% of children raised in Christian families that take them to church regularly all their lives, are dropping out of church and no longer claiming a personal faith by the time they are adults out on their own. This statistic holds true for both children of Christian families that send them to public schools and private schools. But the ONLY variable is among home-schooled children. Only about 20% of them stop being active Christians when they are adults. A remarkable 80% of them remain true to the faith of their parents even when they are on their own as adults.
Children whose parents have remained the center of their universe are different. All other kids attend church, are involved with Church youth groups, and some even in Christian schools, but the one thing that is different is that they are mostly with their peers all day long five days a week. This shifts the orientation of their decisions away from what their Christian parents had hoped for them. The results are devastating the to the American church today. The problem is that virtually every church is in denial. They think it’s not going to happened to their kids. Their family and youth group and church life is probably better. Look at all these children here who seem to be benefiting and enjoying it. But the problem is that the ones who fall away are not there. Out of sight, out of mind. The kids don’t usually drop out while at home, but once they move out, away at college or working their job elsewhere. No one in the local church notices and the self-deception continues unabated. But 80% of those children they see running around the church today will leave the faith. From every church. It’s like a frog that is being cooked so slowly it doesn’t know it until too late. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect to get different results. The American church is not only in denial, it’s crazy.
But a new movement is emerging. What some are calling the 4 to 14 Window has become the focus of multiple global summits of Christian leaders. I have had the privilege to serve as a facilitator in many of these summits. Some leaders are beginning to say we must be brutally honest because we are losing our kids. The home-schooling movement is one of the few things that is reversing the trend. Churches, parents and teachers are starting to wake up and think outside the box.
The family “box” of modern America and indeed so much of modern western civilization is so completely different from the best practices of the historic church. Home-schooling was what Abraham and families of Israel did for over a thousand years. Then the early Christians, with roots in Israel, followed the same pattern as they spread their faith throughout the Roman Empire in Europe and beyond. They didn’t send their kids to the pagan Roman schools. They raised their kids the Biblical way. And besides home-schooling their own kids, the church families banded together to start additional schools for kids of pagan families as well as for orphans and the poor. The pagans could see the Christian kids had better results and eventually this was how Christianity conquered the Roman Empire. Within three centuries half the population of the empire were identified as Christian.
The Home Is the Primary Place of Education
Parents are commanded by God to “teach” their children (Deut 6:4-7). Jewish children were taught in the home until age eight. Then some of them, as a supplement to home training, were tutored by the Levites and priests until approximately 13 years old (Gal. 4; 2 Chron 17:7-9). They were taught to read at age five. In pagan countries children received education only if they were children of royalty or elite classes, and it usually occurred outside of the home by the state.
But the state is never given this responsibility anywhere in the Bible. Never. The only mention of state education in the Bible is in Daniel, where as exiles God’s people find themselves in Babylon and forced to have their youth in the pagan schools. God condemns this education and some parents sought to be exempt (see Dan. l:3-6). Biblically, the state is given the responsibility to protect and defend its citizens, but only parents have the responsibility before God to educate their children.
If aspects of the child’s education are delegated by parents to others, it is still the responsibility of the parents to seek out good tutors or schools that will do the job in the same manner they would, to “train them up in the way they should go.” This means in a Biblical worldview and in godly morals. If a state school really can do that then it may be an option for the Christian parent to consider, but if there is any doubt, parents should avoid it for they will give an account to God in the end. All too often parents take the risk and hope for the best but to risk an eternal soul in one’s charge is an extremely foolish gamble.
Education is an important jurisdictional responsibility of the family. The Bible teaches that the home is the primary institution for training the future generations. God chose Abraham to be a father of nations because he knew he would be faithful in this responsibility (Genesis 18:19). The father, mother and grandparents are all to take part in the education of the youth.
Ephesians 6:l-4 tells us that the father is especially important in the education of children. Verse 4 says: “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The word nurture means “to train, to educate, to tutor; to personally have input in a child.” Fathers must take time to personally train and educate their children, but at the very least the father serves as the “principal” that oversees the family’s school.
A primary role of mothers is to teach (Proverbs l:8; Titus 2:3). The chapter in Proverbs that has taught multitudes the characteristics of a virtuous woman was written by a man, King Lemuel, but he learned of this ideal from his own mother (Proverbs 31). Among a woman’s most influential things she could ever do in life is the raising of the leaders of a nation. The 19th century American statesman Daniel Webster said that “in a free republic woman performs her sacred duty and fulfills her destiny” in a way that cannot be overestimated. He said that in the home: The mothers of a civilized nation…work, not on frail and perishable materials, but on the immortal mind, molding and fashioning beings who are to exist forever. They work, not upon the canvas that shall perish, or the marble that shall crumble into dust, but upon mind, upon spirit, which is to last forever, and which is to bear, for good or evil, throughout its duration, the impress of a mother’s . . . hand. An early American pioneer in education said: “woman is inevitably a teacher. . . . [and] should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators. They have agency in the prevention of crime. . . . Demand of her as a debt the highest excellence of which she is capable of attaining. Summon her to abandon selfish motives and inglorious ease. Incite her to those virtues which promote the permanence and health of nations. Make her accountable for the character of the next generation. Give her solemn charge in the presence of men and of angels. Gird her with the whole armor of education and piety, and see if she be not faithful to her children, to her country, and to her God . . .”
Grandparents may also take part in the education of the youth (Deut 4:9). Timothy attributes his Christian education to his mother and grandmother (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:14-17) since his father was a pagan (Acts 16:3). Teaching by grandparents not only benefits their grandchildren but it also is a help to themselves in having purpose in their senior years. Over the years they have acquired much wisdom and knowledge that the youth need.
Besides education, the family has other key roles in transformation of nations. More on this will be presented in future articles.