Inescapable Combat

In Bound For Glory, R.C. Sproul Jr. comments on the idolatrous inclinations of Christian families.

The world has its own peculiar goal. Everyone wants marriages that are enriched, fulfilled and exciting and hopes that their children grow up to be prosperous. In fact, the world is in a mad dash in pursuit of personal peace and affluence. Sadly, too often in the evangelical church it is not much different. Of course, we want our children to become Christians. but that is just an addition to the all-consuming goal, that they would attain their own personal peace and affluence. We pray that they will be Christians just like us, who have found their way in the world. But the command of God for us and for our children is not that we would find our way in the world, but that we would wage war on the world.

Isn’t this just like us, and isn’t this just like God? He has given us a task, a charge, a mandate. He has designed us specifically for the serving of the this purpose. Families are made for this warfare. but like Adam and Eve before us, we have our own plans. We go in search of some other job to do. We seek out some source for meaning, for significance in our lives. That’s why we get so confused over the family. This is why we have come to believe that the family exists for us; that we find our own self-esteem in each other, through mutual love and admiration. Of course, self-esteem rightly understood (a rare thing indeed) is appropriate. I hope that our marriages are marked by mutual love and admiration. But this is not what hey are for. This is not why the family exists.

Does he have to include the word “war” in the context of raising a family? Yes. And he is working directly from Genesis 3:15 where God introduces enmity between the serpent and the woman and their seeds. Raising a family is at the heart of this enmity, and Christian parents  must see that not only are they taking part in this battle in how they raise their children, they are preparing, discipling and very much determining which side their children will fight on. Since this war is inescapable, it’s not a question of whether you are engaged in this fight, but simply how well you are getting on. Parents who shy away from the antithesis simply suffer, usually along with their children, the fate of ignorant and disengaged combatants. There are many children (and parents) who are in fact reckoned among the seed of the woman but are so foolish that they are more useful to the seed of the serpent.

No parent “saves” their children through a special childrearing technique including the one of quoting these verses around the house. But neither will ignoring them in favor of “missional” approaches to the world bear fruit. Laying holding of these promises and working them out is done by grace through faith. In embracing and living out the call to raise Christians who love God and live as salt and light, we need to see the antithesis in everything–education, music, worship, feasting, sports, drama and beer drinking–but then fight like Christians, clothed in humility, love, patience and boldness. And no one can see hyprocrisy as clearly as a child.

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