Raising the Bar

I spoke briefly in my reel yesterday that too many Christian parents are often satisfied if their children grow up to be good and moral adults. And for the most part, they are doing a great job doing that. Yet, if we step back and think about that for a moment, that is more a humanistic goal than a biblical one.  Here is what Deuteronomy 6:1-9 says:

These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

There are many good and moral people in the world who do not love or follow the Lord. If Christian parents are satisfied with this goal, then the bar they have set for their children is much too low. God’s command to parents is to raise their children to love God with all their being so they will follow his commands. In other words, in our modern context, to be followers of Jesus.

From my decades of working with Christian college students, the vast majority when they arrived on campus were good and moral young people. Very few were true followers of Jesus. I heard time and time again from students that it wasn’t until they became involved in our campus ministry that they realized what it meant to be a Christian in the biblical sense of that word. They were good kids, had good morals, had good friends, and wanted to do good in the world. But many didn’t know the Lord, only about him. Thankfully, many, many students over my years in campus ministry came to truly know him.

What saddens me, however, is that if they had been raised in the way Deuteronomy describes, they would have already known him by the time they reached campus. They would have a solid foundation on which to build a ministry to the lost on campus. As was the case so often, we in campus ministry had to spend a lot of time doing what should have been done in the home during their childhoods and adolescence—teaching them how to know God and his ways.

So, if you are a parent, set the bar much higher for your children than merely to become good and moral adults. Pray, hope, and help them to become young men and women who love the Lord and want to live their lives for him. That is the biblical way to raise children and to ensure that the gospel will continue to be proclaimed by each successive generation.

© Jim Musser 2023 All Scripture references are from the New International Version, 2011.