Just (Don't) Do It, Moms

Ahhh... it's that time of year again... there's nothing quite like the smell of the Back to School season. Every store is loaded down with clothes and school supplies and posters promising impossible bargains, the air is practically abuzz with activity as beleaguered household budgets are overspent on children's apparel and the various accoutrements of compulsory education, and every mother's heart is all astir at the thought of the kids being out of the house and out of their hair once again. It all rushes upon the olfactory senses in a great accumulation of new paper, fresh denim, warm summer breezes, pencil erasers, and tiny beads of fearful perspiration as children of all ages realize that their brief reprieve of living (at least somewhat) in the way that their Creator intended is about to come to another end as they are rounded up and sent back to the institution for further conditioning.

In fact, most Moms aren't ashamed to state right out loud in the hearing of anyone and everyone that they can't wait to get rid of their own children, assuaging whatever objections their conscience does raise by bending or breaking the family's finances for the children's sakes – for Heaven sakes!

Let me tell you a little story.
Once upon a time there was a pair of twenty-somethings who had four children, including a set of two and three year old boys together. The years went by and the twenty-somethings grew older, as twenty-somethings are wont to do. One day they found themselves now forty-somethings, blessed by God in such a way as to have seven children total, including yet another set of two and three year old boys together. The forty-somethings discovered that there was a considerable difference between having a set of two and three year old boys together at forty-something than at twenty-something. The forty-somethings dearly loved their new set of two and three year old boys together with all their might, but were very glad indeed every day to have a necessary-though-brief respite at nap time, and very glad indeed each night to get the two little fellows to bed again so that the forty-somethings could collapse in a puddle for an hour or two before completely collapsing in bed themselves. The forty-somethings understood by way of experience how trying children of all ages and combinations can be, and how very creatively and independently a given child within any given set of children can approach any given set of circumstances – or, say, parental decisions.

The forty-somethings, though blessed indeed by God with every child with which they were entrusted, were never indeed blessed by God with a child that was somehow magically or miraculously or genetically perfect in their behavior – contrary to the musings of various persons in association with the forty-somethings at various times.

In short, the forty-somethings understood as well as anyone could that children are challenging and can even be rather tiresome. No wonder that when you see a photo of John Brown, the infamous abolitionist – himself the father of some twenty children – that he had such an intense, gritty, edgy, and slightly nutty look about him. It wasn't his commitment to freeing the slaves after all.

But seriously, we ourselves can understand to some extent why you would be tempted to want to hand them over to someone else to handle (i.e., to raise), but just don't do it moms! Say no to the easy and socially complicit way!

God has given those children to you, and He has given you everything you need to raise those children yourself as He intended! We know that they will drink the catsup when you aren't watching and that all kinds of bedlam can come about from their most innocently intended curiosity, but that is what it's all about! We know that they don't see any reason that the dirt in their diaper is less suited for play than the dirt in the front yard; or for that matter why they can't eat real tree leaves when they're playing giraffe – even after you have explained it to them.

We know that the great flow of our culture thinks that you are wasting your life and your potential as a person if you are raising your own children instead of sacrificing them to your career, and the culture makes that very clear to you in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways. We know that very few people will look you in the eye and tell you this is a great thing that you are doing. We know that you will not feel yourself on most days to be involved in any great endeavor, and that your very real failures and flaws will never seem to stack up against the false mythical heart and training of professional teachers who have 'given their lives to make a difference in the lives of children'. We know that society – even close friends and family and supposed Christians – will look down on you for raising your own children at home for no pay, because you aren't doing anything with your life, whereas they would laud you from the Pulpit to Little House on the Prairie if you were keeping other women's children for pay, because then you would be 'doing something' with your life.

We know that you have been called by God and gifted by God to raise your own, if indeed He has given any to you.

We know that you will certainly stand before Jesus to give an account of what you have done with everything He has entrusted to you, including your children.

We know that your children are eternal beings and their choices and lives will have eternal consequences. We know that you have been given a stewardship over these eternal beings, and that there is no stage of their lives – even when very very small, or very very big – that your choices about them aren't potentially impacting them for all eternity, and impacting eternity through all of them.

We know that it is God's will that you yourself raise up these eternal beings in a godly way and point them toward God with all your life and choices.

We know that schools aren't going to do that. (No, not even 'Christian' schools: how on earth are you going to explain to your child that you are sending them, contrary to the will of God, to a place that will teach them to live in the will of God? If they are even trying to do so...)

We know that our society is off-balance, off-center, sick and wounded, unsound and reeling, because we have ignored the clear purpose of God and neglected the home in these very ways for many generations now.

We know that the Body of Christ in our culture is falling over itself shamelessly to provide unbiblical nursery, sunday school, children's church, and youth ministries to do a very poor job of doing your job, simply because we all know that you aren't doing your job in raising your own children in the way that God intended, and that no school can ever do.

People, don't give your children to the schools: not public schools, not private schools, not 'Christian' schools.
Not in kindergarten age and not in high-school age.

Trust God and do what's morally right: Raise your own Children at Home.