A few years ago, I read a book titled, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen. The book was a wake up call to parents. In a similar way, I feel that I need to sound the alarm to some parents of what is at stake when we do not lead them to the Lord. Here are Eight Ways to Destroy Your Children’s Future.
Provide them with only career-driven skills and no comprehensive Christian world and life-view education. All children are born in sin. And sin is the easiest thing to pass down from generation to generation. Education is a unique opportunity parents have in leading their children back to God. That’s why God calls parents to teach their children to fear God (Dt 6:5ff, Ps 128). Fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short (Prov 10:27)
Do not discipline a child when he or she does something wrong. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Heb 12:6) “Whoever loves disciplines loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.” (Prov 12:1)
Be soft on children when they disobey their parents. “Honor your father and your mother that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land” (Eph 6:2-3). “That in the last days, there will come times of difficulty. . . People will be lovers of self. . . disobedient to their parents. . .” (2 Tim 3:2)
Let the child choose the way he should go in life, especially in their relationship with God. “Train a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Prov 22:6)
Do not tell your children glorious deeds of the Lord in your life and in the lives of your people, currently and in the past. “We will not hide them from their children but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done . . .That they should not turn back on the day of battle. They did not keep God’s covenant. . . they forgot his works and the wonders that he had shown them” (Ps 78:11)
Do not train your children to pursue righteousness and justice. Let them just accept every value out there and just meld in. “For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” (Gen 18:19)
Leave parent-children problems unresolved and unreconciled. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. (Mal 4:6)
Do not encourage your children to remember God’s word and keep his commandments. “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.” (Prov 3:1-2). “Blessed is the man. . . but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” (Ps 1)
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