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FIRST-PERSON: Teaching your kids not to follow Christ?


O’FALLON, Ill. (BP) — Christian parents, are you looking for some easy suggestions on how to help your children grow up to be heathens?

Interested in helping them slide down the path to moral relativism and depravity? Needing some tips on ways to lead them to be lukewarm Christians at best? You have come to the right place!

Here are some simple tips on how to teach your children not to follow Christ:

1. Skip church at the drop of a hat.

Make sports and other activities more important than worshiping the Almighty. Attend church only if it is convenient. Let them stay at home on Sunday mornings because they are “sick” but then attend events on Sunday afternoons. Never ask them to bother to plan ahead or set an alarm or anything else so dreadful. Don’t let your family dream of attending church if the weather is bad or good — or might be bad or good. If they attend church each week they might learn about God’s plans and actually begin to follow Him. Bonus points if you talk about church attendance as “legalism.”

2. Never read the Bible or pray with them.

You don’t want to risk your kids thinking Bible study and prayer is important so don’t ever do it with them. Remind yourself that spiritual matters are “personal.” Tell yourself they can learn about the Bible at church — unless the weather is bad or good, etc. Don’t let them think spiritual matters are important anywhere outside of church on Sunday mornings. If they catch you praying or reading your Bible or talking about the Lord, they might begin to think Christianity actually matters deeply and eternally. Can you risk that?

3. Live out some blatant hypocrisy in front of them.

Nothing will aid your little ones on their journey into paganism more than some good old-fashioned hypocrisy in their Christian parents. Let your actions contradict your profession of faith. Be sure to fake perfection publicly. Nod politely at church and then gossip and belittle fellow believers on the way home. Don’t forget to talk about the importance of your children doing what you say instead of what you do. And especially remember this: Seeing humble repentance from you could cause irreparable damage to your endeavor to sabotage their faith.

4. Don’t give them any parameters or tell them “no.”

Do you want your children to think God means it when He talks about obedience and holiness? Better not to chance it. Let your kids do what they want instead of what you know to be best for them. Let your “no” mean “try harder and I will give in to your every whim.” Help them learn to argue with God instead of listening to Him. Teach them that their feelings are more important than their holiness. Help them see that God’s commands are better seen as some mild suggestions.

5. Help them take the easy way out of everything.

This one is important. You don’t want your children to actually grow up to take up their cross and follow Jesus. You don’t want them to learn sacrifice and self-denial. Train them instead to take the easy way out. Better yet, remove every obstacle that stands between them and learning the hard lessons of life. Don’t ever make them work or stretch beyond their own comfort. Blame all their mistakes and failures on someone else. Help them follow the popular and downhill road to waste and ruin.

Now, if your parenting goals are something other than the eternal depravity of your offspring, you might have to make some adjustments. You might find that you have to stop caving to the ways to the world and start doing what God wants you to do as a parent. You might have to buck up and get serious about faith yourself. You might want to include the help of a Bible-teaching church that calls you to follow Jesus fully. Maybe you will have to acknowledge your own imperfections and inadequacies and begin to seek the help and power of the Lord instead.

Now that I think about it, Christian parent, maybe you should ask your heavenly Father what He wants your parenting goals to be. If only He had given us a book to help us! Oh, wait. …

    About the Author

  • Doug Munton