Today I watched videos of college students reacting to the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. They laughed. They cheered. “Girl, somebody had to do it,” one child who thinks she’s smart said to the interviewer. Post after post on social media shows young people in my own small Texas town celebrating the death of a peaceful young father of two–a man who actually felt that what he was doing would help to stop violence because, as he said, “When people stop talking, that’s when violence happens.”
And it isn’t just young people either. If we aren’t awake to what is happening in American hearts by now, we never will be. As parents, we have to stand up and take notice. We should see this revelation as a blaring alarm, warning us that unless we make some drastic changes to the way that this world is teaching our children to think, life as we once knew it will never be recaptured. God is showing us something here, something that’s not just important to the future of our kids’ religious liberty, but even more, to their very souls.
Nominal Christianity is dead. It always was, spiritually speaking. But today I see many, many parents who claim Christianity yet live as if it isn’t a central part of their family’s life. I can’t say if those parents are actually Christians or not, but I can tell you that they are raising children who don’t see the need for it. Those children are walking in quicksand, sinking every day further into the ways that this world teaches them to think. They believe their feelings are supreme. They believe their opinions are ultimate. They believe the world should revolve around their happiness and comfort. And instead of throwing them the rope of Christian truth, their parents don’t seem to notice the struggle. They’re too focused on other things that don’t matter: sports, personal fulfillment, work, popularity, money, happiness.
These children have no truth to cling to, only feelings, and without Jesus they are likely to grow up to become people who are ruled by those feelings–the kind of people who celebrate when someone who said things that made them uncomfortable gets brutally murdered in front of his children. And with their cheers, they’ve changed the world in a horrible way.
If nothing else, the events of the past few days should make us keenly aware that we want to raise human beings who know how to think, who have a worldview that is rooted in the teachings of Jesus. People who don’t see evil and call it good. In this culture, friends, we cannot take our kids to church and then live life as usual. Surely we can see it now. Everything about our lives and our kids’ lives needs to be centered on everything that Christ is. God can change the world through our faithfulness. The future is living under our roofs right now, and we can’t waste the chance He has given us. Our kids need real Truth. They need a faith that changes the way they think. They need to learn from their parents what it looks like to cling to what we know to be true about God when we’re devastated, when we’re confused, when we’re scared, when we’re angry. It just won’t do to make Christianity another extra-curricular.
We have to get serious about our faith in a way that shocks the world. Will our kids’ faith endure to the end? Will ours? What steps are we taking to ensure that our kids understand how Jesus will revolutionize our lives, their lives, and the world? Are we living a genuine, sold-out, this is all that matters faith in front of our kids? If we aren’t, we aren’t changing the world. We’re letting the world influence us instead.
When I look at those videos of young people cheering for tragedy, identifying with a deranged murderer, I weep for their souls. Our kids will live a short life on this planet. Some of them won’t even live as long as Charlie Kirk. But they will live in eternity. So many voices in this world try to distract them from that fact, and it’s easier now than ever not to think about it. Will our kids’ souls be lost because we loved the things that don’t last? We can’t be passive. God has called us to care about their eternity.
These events have caused us to weep. To cry out to God. To wish for change. But when we will really understand that we are raising the world changers? Will our efforts as parents make the world a better or a worse place? I pray that we will take off the blinders and realize this faith is all or nothing. We must live as Christians who make Jesus central to every part of our lives. This is how the gospel goes out. This is how our children are most likely to recognize the truth of God’s word. This is how we change the world for the better.
I love hearing from you!