Reclaiming the culture? Think again.

This is the best article I have read on Christian parenting so far this year.

Whilst its main point was that it is fallacious to think Christians can reclaim culture simply by having more kids and homeschooling them to ‘own the liberals’, I found the points on Christian schools interesting too.

Go to any church, any homeschool co-op, or any Christian school that has been doing things the “correct” way for over a decade, and you’ll find a mix of wheat and tares among the graduates.

The role of college choice is similar. Christian colleges and universities are good, and they are probably more likely to help kids keep the faith than your average public university. (It depends on the school, obviously; some skew so liberal that they may lead young people out of their faith and others are so restrictive that they will generate intense reaction.) But they are not guarantees for anything, and you can easily find graduates from your preferred school who are no longer walking with the Lord just as easily as you can find a vibrant group of believers who just finished at your local state school.

And yes, I am so tired of people quoting this out of context.

You may also find people who quote Proverbs 22:6 (“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it”) as some kind of prooftext that parents who raise their children in a Godly way will see those children grow up to be believers. This is both a bad reading of the text and incredibly cruel to parents that have invested their lives in raising kids who turned away from the faith of their family.

This is a good point, not just for Americans but I’m sure it applies to Singaporeans as well. Got me thinking about how many standard deviations my kids are from the mean, if they are deviations at all. And I do agree that family discipleship is a much more significant variable (continuing the statistics-speak) than simply going to a Christian school, just like how going to church doesn’t make you a Christian.

Some of it is undoubtedly regression to the mean—if the average American is a vaguely spiritual iPhone addict whose churchgoing tendencies will consistently lose out to youth sports, the average kid who is being homeschooled or going to private Christian school will likely be one standard deviation above them, but that’s not always saying very much. That does imply, as the Gen2 survey suggests, that an intentional pattern of family discipleship, in addition to educational choice, will make a larger difference in a child’s spiritual life.

A survey that is also likely subject to some sampling bias found that 80% of missionary kids remain Christians into adulthood. (Here, one of the most variables involved the parents’ commitment to ministry; kids who felt as though their parents prioritized ministry over them were much less likely to be believers as adults.) While not everyone can or should be a foreign missionary, there are still many opportunities to intentionally sacrifice for the sake of others as part of your family’s life.

This was the point that really resonated with me. I think there is much to be said for “living beneath one’s means” and not just “living within one’s means”. Especially for us in the developed world – so many of us have jobs and household incomes that supply so much more than our needs. So the challenge is to consistently and persistently live beneath one’s means. After all, there is so much wisdom in the saying that the best gift you can give your children is a lifestyle that they need not struggle to afford when they grow up.

I have long argued that a family that is otherwise indistinguishable from their unbelieving middle-to-upper-class neighbors in terms of where they choose to live and how they spend their money is probably not different enough to make a difference. If your basic outlook on life still functionally treats financial security and physical comfort as your primary life goals, then homeschooling and family discipleship can easily be perceived as different wallpaper on the same house. We can easily recognize the cultural forces in arenas like sexuality that are encouraging apostasy and even push back against the encroachment of sports leagues, but if there’s no similar effort against Mammon, we run the risk of guarding the front door while the back gate remains open.

Why do we need to upgrade our lifestyle once we get a pay increase (especially given how fleeting that might be these days)? Why is every young Christian family moving to a condominium or a landed private house once they can afford it? Why is the fanciest annual holiday we can afford de rigueur these days?

Why not consume less so we can give away more?

Of course this is easier said than done, but every little effort towards this I would wager, is pleasing to the Lord. And what higher call than that?