Indoctrination

I was listening to the radio the other day, and the host was describing some news broadcasts about recent protests, where parents had brought their young children not just to watch, but to participate by holding signs and marching with them. This reminds me of another situation I heard about, where a group of 5th graders decided to mimic major league football players by kneeling in protest during the national anthem at a school football game. Both situations were clearly about kids who don’t really understand the issues, being coaxed into protest activities by the adults around them rather than making their own informed choices.

After describing the protest, the radio host started sharing his opinion that kids should not be pressed into such activities that are beyond their understanding. Only the host didn’t just focus on political activities, he also had the same opinion about religious activities, saying that children should not be forced by their parents to go to church until they are old enough to understand and decide whether they agree with their parents’ religion.

Now I can sympathize with this host’s opinion in not wanting to see young children brought into political activities they don’t understand, but when he turned that thought towards religion it immediately struck a sour note with me.

The problem is that God isn’t just somebody’s opinion. Although one might in some cases argue that certain political ideas are opinions to test and figure out which ones you like better, when it comes to the subject of your children’s salvation, that is a very dangerous position to take.

When educating our children we don’t just let them pick and choose for themselves which answers are correct. One plus one always equals two. There are correct ways to spell certain words, and there are incorrect ways. The structure of sentences must follow certain patterns. Although the creativity in art may follow different expressions of a child’s feelings, for most things that a child has to learn there are right answers, and there are wrong answers.

Religion isn’t some kind of art where a person gets to pick for themselves what is right and what is wrong. God is real. As parents we are responsible to raise our children under God’s ways of right and wrong. Just like we teach our children how to add numbers to get the correct answer, we also need to teach our children to go to church, and to pray, and to develop a relationship with the God that we worship.

Proverbs 22:6 - Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. (NIV)

It is the responsibility of all parents to encourage, train, and indoctrinate our children in the ways of God, even when this makes them do things they don’t understand or don’t want to do. If we follow the opinion of this misguided radio host and fail to do our job as parents, then somebody else will indoctrinate our children in the ways of the world instead, and that could doom them to hell!


James :)