Believing In Christmas Is Logical

I have a confession to make. I doubt sometimes.

I was raised in a Baptist church. I was in one of the families that, if church was being held, we were there. I was saved at an early age and grew up believing without question. For many years, I never seriously considered the possibility that God was not real or that the Bible was not accurate.

A few years ago, that changed for a couple of reasons. First, I started a job and had a coworker who was an atheist. The nature of flying jobs is that you spend a lot of time with the other crewmembers and get to know them very well. On long trips, the two of us spent a lot of time talking, solving the world’s problems and discussing the nature of God and religion.

They say that it isn’t polite to discuss politics and religion, but that is because too many people can’t disagree agreeably. My atheist friend, who I’ll call Rob, and I were different. We both liked logic and reason and could have long discussions over difficult topics in a calm manner. Sometimes we would agree and sometimes we would agree to disagree.

Rob was unlike the stereotypical atheists. He was sympathetic to religion, once telling me that he wanted to believe but simply could not. Still, he saw the value of religion as a tool for instilling morality, which he thought made the world a better place. When our families had dinner together and my kids said the blessing, he bowed his head in a very unatheistic manner along with the rest of us.

In fact, Rob, despite his atheism, was one of the most moral and charitable people that I’ve ever known. He was generous to a fault and always ready to help others who were in need. As we walked around various cities on layovers, he would frequently give money to homeless people. I remember more than once watching him slip money into the pockets of people sleeping on the street. His charitable heart put me to shame.

Rob was an analytical guy. In his examination of spiritual matters, he ultimately came to the conclusion that the universe and mankind were the result of random chance. We discussed the astronomical odds against the earth forming just at the right spot in a solar system and orbiting just the right type of star to allow life to develop as well as the minuscule chance that evolution would blindly steer developing life into a higher intelligence. He acknowledged the slim probabilities but maintained that the one chance out of billions was the number that had come up.

The second factor in my questioning was my diagnosis with skin cancer. I wrote about my stage one melanoma after it was removed almost two years ago now. While my cancer experience was much less traumatic and invasive than many, it was the first time that I had faced a real health crisis that could have killed me. In the wake of the melanoma, I realized with my gut what I had known intellectually for years: that death could come at any time.   

With that realization and with my place in eternity on the line, I didn’t want to trust blindly in a religion that I’d never really tested. If we do due diligence before buying a house or car or committing to a new job, shouldn’t we research our religious beliefs? If God is real, what we believe about him and what we do about those beliefs is the most important decision of our lives.

Religion is really a two-fold question. The first question is whether God exists. The second, in a world with many different religions preaching wildly diverging beliefs, is which is the most correct and appropriate path to God.

Logically, there are three possible outcomes. The first possibility is that there is no God, in which case, the whole point is moot. The second possibility is that there is a God but you pick the wrong belief system, which could be disastrous for your soul. Finally, the third possibility is that there is a God and you choose wisely with the result being that you spend eternity in heaven. This is the optimal outcome, but it is especially important to avoid the second.  

There are many evidences for God including the improbability that random chance got us to where we are, but one of the most interesting to me is a scientific study in which British researchers found evidence that consciousness continues after death. The AWARE study found that 40 percent of patients with cardiac arrest were conscious while they were clinically dead and prior to resuscitation. Dr. Sam Parnia pointed out that the memories described by the patients were not merely hallucinations but “detailed recollections of visual awareness in this case were consistent with verified events.”

So, I did what countless people down through history have done before me. I questioned God and put him and the Bible to the test. I looked at other religions to see how they compared. I read about ancient history and the documentary evidence for the Bible. I read about the problems and inconsistencies in the Bible. I wrote about this spiritual journey in another article after I came to the conclusion that God is real and the Bible is as true as imperfect humans can make it.

“The Bible As History” by Werner Keller became one of my new favorite books. I was astonished at how much archaeology backed up Biblical accounts. Although direct archaeological support for the Flood and the Exodus are still scant at this point, there is an abundance of evidence for Israel’s kingdom period. Further, over the past few years, I’ve watched as reports of new discoveries roll in that lend more support to Biblical claims. Although the Flood and the Exodus are difficult to prove, they are also difficult to disprove.

Two other very good books, Lee Strobel’s “The Case For Christ” and Warner Wallace’s “Cold Case Christianity,” built a similar case for the validity of the New Testament. Both men began their investigations as skeptics and ultimately found that the evidence for the God of the Bible was so strong that they became believers.

In contrast, the skeptical claims against the Bible crumbled as I investigated them. Prophecies from Islam seemed vague and unfulfilled compared with those of the Bible. There seems to be no archaeological support at all for the Book of Mormon. Other religions teach that good works earn your way into heaven or that people sent to hell are given a second chance. The lack of exclusivity from these religions argues against them. If they are true and you don’t pick them, it’s no harm and no foul. Atheist claims often seem to rely on the position that they cannot understand God and therefore deny his existence or, as with Rob, hold that natural processes, however improbable, must be true.  

But Christianity is different. It claims to be an exclusive path to God. It also has both archaeological and documentary evidence to back up its claims. If Christianity is true and you don’t pick it, you’ve missed the boat.

The evidence for Christianity is not limited to scholarly works and logical reasoning, however. There have been many instances in my life where there has been evidence of the supernatural. I described in the discussion of my melanoma how a prophetic dream led me to the doctor after several dermatologists had ignored the cancer on my face. My wife and I also once experienced what seems to have been a physical manifestation of a spirit that left a mark on her body with no physical explanation.

I discussed all this with Rob, who said that he wished he could have similar experiences and then maybe he could believe too. In Rob’s case, the resistance to belief seemed to be rooted in a bad experience with the church from years earlier. This was a tragic example of how hypocrisy and bad behavior by God’s people can undermine the Gospel.

My experience with Rob is one reason that I’ve been so critical of the church’s support for Donald Trump. Rob’s belief was made even more difficult by what he saw as hypocrisy in supporting a man whose life and actions contradicted their beliefs and principles.

So why am I writing this on Christmas Eve? A common theme for generations has been that the original Christmas gifts were God’s gift of his son Jesus (“Yeshua” in his original language) to save mankind and the offer of forgiveness for our sins. It’s true that these gifts form the foundation of both Christmas and Christianity in general, but modern seekers are not limited to the Biblical narrative.

Another Christmas gift that God has given to 21^st-century seekers is the gift of accumulated science and scholarship that backs up the first century Gospels. We have at our disposal 2,000 years of research that can help us determine that God’s gift of Jesus and his offer of forgiveness are true and our only hope of salvation.

The tragedy is that all too often the actions of Christians alienate seekers like Rob. Emotional reactions to hypocrisy and bad behavior can trump the objective truth of the evidence. All believers should strive to not be the reason that people turn away from God and should pray for those like Rob who have been led astray.

Even with all I’ve experienced and read, sometimes faith doesn’t come easy. But questioning God is not sinful and can ultimately make your faith deeper. Sometimes belief is more of a choice than an emotional response.

Jesus told Thomas, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” Today, we can’t physically see Jesus face-to-face, but we can see the evidence of his existence and his actions more than any other generation since that of Thomas and the other disciples. We just have to look at the evidence and decide how to react to it.

Merry Christmas.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Just Say 'No' To The 'Book Of Trump'

Sometimes Trump supporters are compared to cultists. In many cases, the comparison is unfair, but sometimes, as an outside observer looking in on the MAGA movement, you have to shake your head in amazement. That was the case last week when Miriam Adelson, wife of billionaire Republican political donor, Sheldon Adelson, called for the addition of the “Book of Trump” to the Bible.

In an op-ed for the Las Vegas Review Journal, Mrs. Adelson celebrated President Trump’s pro-Israel policies. In her piece, which stops short of extolling his godly virtues, she compares Trump to Esther, the Biblical queen who saved the Jews from a genocide at the hands of Haman, an evil advisor to the king of Persia.

Noting that Trump is still not widely supported by American Jews, Adelson writes, “Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes, sages, and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people they came to raise up.”

“Would it be too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a ‘Book of Trump,’ much like it has a ‘Book of Esther’ celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from ancient Persia?” she asks. “Until that is decided, let us, at least, sit back and marvel at this time of miracles for Israel, for the United States, and for the whole world.”

The answer to that question is, of course, yes. It would be much too much to amend the Bible so that it sings the praises of Donald Trump. The very fact that the question is asked seems to indicate that something is deeply amiss within the Republican Party. There are many reasons why there will never be a Book of Trump, not least of which is that the Old Testament canon was established hundreds of years before the time of Christ. More than that, making Donald Trump the object of holy devotion seems antithetical to the teachings of the Bible.

The consecration of Donald Trump is not limited to Adelson, who is Jewish, but also occurs in evangelical circles as well. I described several months ago how Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress led his church in a “Make America Great Again” hymn and attacked Christians who were not on the Trump train. Likewise, Franklin Graham has called upon Christians to pray for Trump to triumph over his enemies and said that “God was behind the last election.”

In some cases, Trump supporters go beyond equating Trump with Esther or King David and make him equal to Jesus himself. Just ahead of the 2018 election, a billboard in St. Louis pictured Trump with the caption, “The Word became flesh - John 1:14,” a messianic reference to Jesus Christ. The first chapter of John begins with the statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” An ebook on Amazon is titled “Donald 'MESSIAH' Trump: The Man, the Myth, the Messiah?” and asks if the president is the “Last Trump of God.”

The message is also carried forth by many rank and file Trump supporters. If you have ever frequented pro-Trump social media groups, you have probably seen memes like this one depicting Christ guiding President Trump’s hand as he signs documents in the Oval Office or this photo of a Trump supporter wearing a shirt that reads, “Jesus died for you, Trump lives for you.” Some of the social media content is satirical, some is not, and it is often difficult to tell the difference. The tendency of the Trump movement to deify the object of its obsession is so widespread and so transparent that it has inspired articles in GQ and Psychology Today as well as on Christian sites such as Red Letter Christians.

Just last week, a Michigan couple held a MAGA-themed, July 4 wedding in which the groom wore his Marine dress uniform and the bride wore a wedding gown crafted from a “Make America Great Again” flag. Bridesmaids wore red MAGA hats with the exception of the maid of honor, a Democrat who wore a plain red cap instead. While the article does not identify the religious beliefs of the couple, marriages have traditionally been a covenant between man, woman, and God rather than man, woman, and president.

While some on the right have argued that Democrats have become secular and replaced God with quasi-worship of the state or an environmental religion centered on climate change. Now it seems that some Republicans, either because they are either secular themselves and lack a focus for the innate human need to worship God or because they are simply misguided and perhaps Biblically illiterate, have replaced God with Donald Trump.

I am not going to spend time itemizing Donald Trump’s continuing unchristian behavior or rehash the fact that, as recently as the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was at best a nominal Christian who said he had never prayed for forgiveness and who was simultaneously lying about hush money payments to a porn star with whom he had cheated on his pregnant wife. I am also not going to suggest that every Trump supporter literally worships the president, although some certainly seem to do so.

What I am going to do is point back to the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Putting President Trump on par with God and Jesus is literally placing a false god before the real one. Even putting partisan politics ahead of worshipping God is worshipping an idol. Further, Jesus himself warned against false prophets. In his Mount Olivet discourse, Christ said that at the end of the age “false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). That day may have come.

As Bobby Azarian wrote in Psychology Today, “No one is infallible, no one is free from bias, and no one is honest all of the time, no matter how hard they may strive,” a statement that echoes the Christian doctrine of the depravity of man, the idea that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

“When you believe that someone is truly a godsend, you can excuse anything,” Azarian warns. “It all becomes ‘for the greater good.’ And when that happens, it is a slippery slope to gross abuses of power that continuously increase in magnitude.”

If such adoration was aimed at Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, conservatives and Republicans would rightly ridicule it and those who practice it. The response should be no different because the object of affection of these Trump supporters is a Republican president. No American should bend a knee before a leader of either party and Christians should only kneel to worship Christ. Whether Trump-worship is an actual cult or merely a cult of personality, worship of a president does not bode well for either the Republican Party or the American Republic.

Thoughts On Church Searching

Some things about moving are easy. Boxing and unboxing your belongings is pretty straightforward. If your relocation is for work, then you already have a job to go to. Schools for the kids are based on where you live so you just have to enroll them and drop them off. Other things are not so simple, however. My experience had been that finding good doctors and a good church are two of the most difficult aspects of a relocation.

We moved to a different state a year ago this month. Twelve months after the move, we are still looking for a church home.

Part of the problem is the sheer number of churches in our rural Georgia county located near a small (by Texas standards) city. I can’t find a reliable comprehensive listing of churches in our county, but one online source lists 48. There are almost certainly more than that, but even that number increases when churches across the nearby county line that are still within a 20-minute drive are considered.

The large number of churches presents a problem in two ways. First, it is difficult to visit so many churches without getting confused and overwhelmed. Second, the high number of churches per capita means that most of the churches are very small and have limited resources.

The number of possible churches can be culled if we focus on certain denominations. I was raised as a Southern Baptist but we have also been members at a couple of Methodist churches. My family is comfortable with both branches of the faith. Additionally, we have attended some charismatic denominations with friends. It’s a matter of taste, but charismatic churches tend to be a little too “energetic” for me. Still, we’ve tried a couple of them as well.

In my view, no one denomination has a lock on the truth, but going to a church of a certain denomination is like going to a chain restaurant in that you have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to get. If you walk into a McDonald’s, the decor may be different from a franchise somewhere else and there may be different faces and accents, but you’re going to get a McDonald’s burger and their famous fries.

The most important thing we look for in a church is Biblical teaching. I don’t want to waste time with a pastor that preaches feel-good theology or, worse yet, who says things that contradict the Bible.

A few years ago, we walked out of a church where the pastor was preaching a name-it-and-claim-it type sermon in which he said that all Christians needed to do to be healed was have faith and that, if you weren’t healed, your faith wasn’t strong enough. Lazarus would probably disagree. The first-century man who was raised from the dead by Jesus had probably seen Heaven and had great faith after meeting Jesus. However, eventually Lazarus went back to the grave and stayed there. Healing is not always God’s plan, no matter how great your faith is.

We also consider nondenominational churches. One of our favorites in our new home is nondenominational. The pastor is good but lacks formal theological training leading me to be concerned about doctrinal errors in his teaching.

Beyond a Biblical message, we are also looking for a church with something to offer for the whole family. We have a teen and a tween and need a church with age-appropriate programs that will keep them interested and engaged as they get older. I don’t want my children to be among those who fall away and I realize that keeping them in the faith will be easier if going to church is something that they enjoy as opposed to something that they have to be nagged to do and can’t wait until it’s over.

Finding a church with a good youth group is one of the most difficult aspects of searching for a church. Many churches have good programs for children but very few, at least in our area, have many high school kids. This is probably due in part to the fact that the churches as small, as noted previously, but the local churches seem to be largely failing older kids. With a plethora of other activities, churches seem to be getting lost in the shuffle.

I think it’s particularly important for my ninth-grade son to get plugged in, make friends, and keep growing into a Christian man. It’s my belief that churches are a good place to meet good people and, in his case, good girls. Teenage boys tend to be interested in things that draw teenage girls.

To all that, add other factors such as friendliness and convenience. Quite a few of the churches that we’ve visited seem like tight-knit social clubs rather than evangelical bodies. When we are almost totally ignored at churches we visit, it makes me think that outreach is not a priority.

As far as convenience, I have to work weekends fairly frequently so we need a church that will be comfortable for my wife to attend without me. Sunday morning inertia can be difficult to overcome when both of us are home, but it is even tougher when the woman of the house has to motivate herself and both kids to get out of bed and into church. The same problem applies to Wednesday nights after a long day of work and school.

I haven’t even touched on other aspects of church personality such as music style, formal versus casual, small versus megachurch, and whether the congregation feels comfortable with reactions such as clapping or just sits stoney-faced. I have preferences in these and other areas, but I don’t view them as critical.

So pray that God will direct us to a good church and that we will know it when we find it. I’m sure that there is one out there that He has in mind for us. Until we find it, we’ll keep praying, visiting, and searching.

And if we are searching, I’m sure that many other families are as well. If you’re a pastor or church member, be welcoming to unfamiliar faces. Make them feel at home. Even if it turns out to be another church member that you haven’t met yet, you still made someone’s day.

Along that line, churches should have a greeter to direct visitors to where they need to go so they aren’t forced to wander around aimlessly. Post your service times online so they know when to show up. If you have them fill out a visitor card, follow up with a phone call or letter telling them you’re glad they came. Better yet, send someone out to visit and find out if you can do anything for them. This also applies to longtime attendees who stop coming.

The irony is that even with a lot of available churches, many are not filling the needs of the community. Maybe this is why, as Jess Fields described earlier this week, churches in America are dying and religious “nones” are on the rise. I want to avoid that for my family.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Joy Behar: Christians Are "Mentally Ill"

Periodically the left tries to make an appeal to Christians and other religious voters. Democrat campaigns hire people to do outreach to religious communities in an attempt to win over as many of the faithful as possible. After the campaign, liberal rhetoric about religion typically goes back to a point somewhere between ignorant and insulting. That is the case with Joy Behar’s recent attack on Vice President Mike Pence.

On “The View,” Behar joked about a statement by former White House staffer and “Apprentice” contestant Omarosa Manigault-Newman who had implied that Pence was mentally ill. Omarosa said of Pence on “Celebrity Big Brother” that “he thinks Jesus tells him to say things … Scary.”

Behar responded, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness if I’m not correct. Hearing voices.”

Behar’s comments immediately drew criticism from other panelists on “The View.” The Washington Times notes that Meghan McCain pushed back, saying that Jesus speaks to her “every morning.”

“As a Christian, that’s just par for the course,” said Sherri Shepard. “You talk to Jesus, Jesus talks back. What concerns me is, how long is the conversation with Jesus?”

Behar, an agnostic who was raised Catholic, expresses the popular view among liberals that rational and reasonable people must reject the notion that God cannot be real simply because he cannot be seen or touched. For people like Behar, it isn’t enough to simply question the existence of God, it is also necessary to mock the beliefs of the faithful and question their sanity based on their own prejudices.

Behar’s condescending comment, which reflects either a total ignorance of Christianity or a willful misinterpretation of prayer, is insulting to Christian believers on both sides of the political spectrum. In contrast to the assumptions of Behar and other liberal elites, more than half of Americans say that they pray “at least daily” per the Pew Religious Landscape Study. Less than a quarter of Americans never pray. Most probably expect an answer.

Perhaps shockingly, the number of Americans who pray frequently cuts across political lines. The share of people praying daily is split almost equally between Republicans and Democrats (42-40 percent). Democrats have a slight edge in the share of people who pray weekly or monthly.

Although the poll shows that far more conservatives and moderates pray than liberals, when leftists like Behar insult religious believers they chip away at their own base. The left’s hostility to religion in general pushes moderate voters away from the Democrats, the party that once booed God at their 2012 convention. Ironically, it is these moderate voters that decide most elections.

For the benefit of Joy Behar and other liberals (and moderates and conservatives) who believe that prayer is a sign of mental illness, allow me to explain. When praying, Christians do not typically have a “burning bush” moment where we hear the literal voice of God. We aren’t usually visited by angels and we don’t normally have visions either, although the Bible definitely teaches that such moments can and do happen.

Instead, God and Jesus speak us in a still, small voice. We can hear from God through reading the Bible, from listening to a sermon, a conversation with a friend, or a thousand different ways. It can simply be a reassurance and comfort that Jesus is with us and provides us with guidance as we go through life.

It isn’t surprising that people like Joy Behar would mock believers. The Bible predicts that scoffers would ridicule believers. Peter wrote, “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’”

The Bible also gives encouragement to the believers who are mocked. Paul told his followers, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” and that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The power of God and prayer is something to which many on both the left and right can attest. For those who have experienced it, the opinion of Joy Behar and other mockers is inconsequential. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

No Surprise That Evangelicals Are Standing By Roy Moore

In the wake of last week’s revelations about Alabama Republican Roy Moore, a new poll shows that more than 70 percent of evangelical voters in Alabama still support the man accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl. About half of the evangelicals who still support Moore say that the charges make them more likely to vote Republican, a statistic that shows how little regard Republican voters hold for the mainstream media.

The poll by JMC Analytics found that 37 percent of evangelicals are more likely to vote for Roy Moore in the wake of the sex scandal than before. An additional 34 percent said that the allegations made no difference in their vote. Only 28 percent of evangelicals were less likely to vote for Moore after the revelations. The same poll showed that 38 percent of voters at large were less likely to vote for Moore.

The poll’s findings will be assumed to show hypocrisy on the part of evangelical voters, but this isn’t necessarily true. CNN exit polls show that 56 percent of Protestant voters voted for Donald Trump. In contrast to Trump, Moore’s sex scandal is more easily explained away.

Roy Moore tacitly admitted to Sean Hannity that he dated girls “as young as 17.” At the same time, Moore called the more damaging allegation that he improperly touched a 14-year-old girl “completely false.” In contrast, evangelicals have already voted en masse for Donald Trump, who admitted to sexual assault in a taped conversation on “Access Hollywood.”

In Trump’s case, the tape was made in 2005 and other allegations of sexual misconduct were even more recent. The allegations against Roy Moore are almost 40 years old. Moore has been happily married (to the same woman, unlike Donald Trump) for the past 32 years. Moore’s wife, Kayla, told Breitbart that they met when she was 23.   

With no allegations of sexual misbehavior in more than three decades, it is easy to argue that Roy Moore is a changed man. Christians believe in in the power of God to change hearts and lives. They also believe in repentance and forgiveness. It is much easier to believe that Roy Moore is a changed man who has repented of his long-ago actions than Donald Trump.

The second reason that evangelicals have not abandoned Roy Moore is a simple one. They believe that Democrats are a bigger threat than someone who may have exercised bad – and, in at least one case, criminal – judgment four decades ago.

Democrats have worked painstakingly hard to convince the country that they are no friend to Bible-believing Christians. The list of attacks on Christians by liberal Democrats is long and includes a legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, political assaults on photographers and bakers who hold a traditional view of marriage, attacks on freedom of speech for pro-life activists and campaigns to remove Christian symbols from nearly aspect of public life. In a viral clip from the 2012 Democratic convention, Democrat delegates even booed the inclusion of God in their party platform.

Roy Moore was directly involved in two incidents which were perceived by Alabama evangelicals to be assaults on their religious liberty. In 2003, Moore was removed from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for his refusal to remove a 10 Commandments monument. Moore worked his way back to the state high court, but was removed again in 2015 after refusing to order probate judges to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Critics might argue that Moore’s actions were self-serving and violated his oath to uphold the rule of law, but they also made him a hero to the state’s evangelical voters.  

Now, after decades of having their religious beliefs attacked by the left, Alabama Christians see their champion, Roy Moore, under assault from the same liberals who have celebrated as courts chipped away at their religious liberty. Moore’s habit of tilting at windmills may not have been successful, but, like Donald Trump, he is viewed as a man who fights back. Many evangelicals will even refuse to believe the charges, in spite of Moore’s admission, because they view the Washington Post and other mainstream media as fake news.

Ultimately, Alabama evangelicals will have to decide between an accused child molester and Democrat. Many of them openly admit that they consider the Democrat to be worse. Considering how Democrats have treated evangelicals, this should not be a surprise.  

Originally published On the Resurgent

Make America Great Again: Teach Your Children Well

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” said Ronald Reagan. “We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

In 2013, the former Archbishop of Canterbury echoed Reagan’s words, saying that Christianity was “a generation away from extinction” in Britain. Lord Carey warned, “So many churches have no ministry to young people and that means they have no interest in the future. As I have repeated many times in the past we are one generation away from extinction. We have to give cogent reasons to young people why the Christian faith is relevant to them.”

The two men both understood that ideas such as the love of liberty and the love of God cannot be learned without being taught. But today, too many parents leave it up to others to teach the love of God and country to their children. We expect pastors and Sunday School teachers to educate our children about God, often on only a handful of Sundays out of the year. Love of country gets delegated to history teachers, politicians, activists and war movies.  

The importance of the two institutions, America and the Christian church, cannot be absorbed by children if they aren’t breathed and experienced on a daily basis. God isn’t a very important part of your life if you only worship him and seek his guidance on Sunday morning. Likewise, if the Fourth of July is the only time you talk about patriotism, your kids probably aren’t getting the message.

People who are trying to subvert your beliefs are much more consistent in their message. Television, movies, books, magazines and politicians are spending a lot of time telling your kids that America was never great and that God, if he even exists, is not good. Modern media is replete with examples of popular culture that ridicules Christianity and patriotism and constantly tries to undermine the values that you want to teach your children.

Should we surrender pop culture and retreat to an off-the-grid existence? That isn’t necessary. The Bible says that we can be in the world, but not of it. The Bible also instructs us to the light the world, but notes that it makes no sense to light a candle and hide its flame. We cannot light the world if we run and hide.

What we should do is be discerning. We should monitor what our children watch, listen to and play. Much of the programming and video games aimed at children are filled with ideas and words that most of us don’t want our children exposed to.

If your child has a smartphone or tablet, monitor their activity with an app like Funamo. We don’t expect our children to live without limits in other aspects of their lives. Why should they have free reign over an internet filled with lies, pornography, perversion, violence, predators and general weirdness?

As someone pointed out in a modern parable, we wouldn’t allow a rude, profane, ill-mannered, violent guest who ridicules our beliefs in our homes. On the other hand, television does all these things and we give it a place of honor as the center of attention. Parents may have to make the decision to turn off their own favorite shows if they are not appropriate for children.

Take your children to church. Take them to museums and historic sites. But don’t let the lessons about Christ and America be limited to such outings.

In my house, we have had the tradition for years of bedtime stories. My children who are now 13 and eight still ask for a “Bible story and an American story” every night. We began when they were babies with age-appropriate Bible stories and have since graduated to reading devotional books and passages from the Bible.

For the “American story,” we like Bill Bennett’s “American Patriot’s Almanac.” This book gives short daily readings from American history and my kids love to hear the stories and trivia every night. Some of the stories they have heard in school and are often excited to add their own knowledge to the story. Others are new even to me.

The point is to live your faith and patriotism daily. If you want to teach your children to live according to Christ’s teachings, they must first know what those teachings are. Since children learn by example, you should be living according to Christ’s teaching as well. All of your lessons will be in vain if your kids see you react in anger and violence after preaching forgiveness.

Likewise, children don’t learn respect for America if they only see the federal government as either a source of handouts or an ogre that constantly threatens our freedoms. Both extremes are equally wrong and threatening to the real meaning of America.  

As you raise your children, remember Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Teach your children constantly by example and by lessons and they will remember your values when they grow up. Hopefully, they will continue the cycle and pass them along to their own children.

 Originally published on The Resurgent