Preparing our Children for the Future

I have been pondering many things said since March of 2020, and I am deeply grateful to be in a community replete with exemplary people–people who fought well against the principalities with dignity and courage. Two years into this war looks a lot better than it did before it started. We won lots of little victories and put some victory flags in strategic places.

A prime example of this is the local classical Christian school where a few of my kids attend. The headmaster who was there in 2020 is a man of integrity. So, it came as no surprise when he–together with the board–decided to go against the tide in our county and refuse to allow any students to wear masks. Of course, they offered alternatives to parents who were not comfortable with such a set-up, but from my recollection, the vast amount of students attended happily without masks. This avoided the potential tension among students and parents, and also, the headmaster asserted that whatever little protection a mask may have provided, it would not be worth the dehumanizing that would occur when the student body spent all their days together with their faces covered. Behold, a prophet!

This entire thing comes to mind as the leftist Face the Nation heard the opination of their chief correspondent, Jan Crawford. She observed that the biggest underreported story of 2021 has been the devastating effects COVID policies have had on children. The video has now gone viral, and for good reason. It received little to no pushback from other leftists. Now, I would love to nuance the conversation further, but her admission is a good starting point. Acknowledging the devastation this has caused on children mentally, physically, communally gets the ball rolling. I am not as hopeful about their solutions, but I will take any rhetorical victory.

I argued in March of 2020 that people would quickly set aside rituals that define them, and they quickly abandoned them at the altar of safety. And if you think the millennial generation was trigger-happy with their emotions, setting themselves up for victimization in every corner, wait until you see this one coming up. They will make wokey college students look like ideological wimps. This new growing group of humans will attack everything and will find ten reasons to end your happiness.

I had a brief exchange with Abby Johnson last night. Abby is a hero in the pro-life movement and she was pondering why people are so quick to accept all the words from Fauci even after supreme blunders one after the other. I remarked to her that every human is created to submit to something/someone. Submitting to the dictates of a man who makes Mitt Romney look consistent requires an enormous amount of faith. Abby agreed with my assessment, but the additional factor I failed to mention is that this corporate submission puts our children at risk in various ways. In other words, those to whom you submit also become masters of your offspring.

And this leads me to my final observation: this is a long-term game.

It’s our children versus theirs. And I mean that in the most adversarial way possible (Gen. 3:15). Our children will be warring against their children 10-20 years down the road. Of course, our weapons are not fleshly, but spiritual, but the spiritual will have a deep effect on the fleshly.

You may have seen the former cheerleader who spat in the face of an 80-year old man in a flight because he was eating without his mask. She berated him, cursed at him, and slapped him. Now, imagine what the child of this woman thinks of reality with a mother like that? Imagine what kind of human grows from that nurturing soul?

Christians are winning, but the kind of Christians who surrender because they don’t want conflict will realize that they have been duped and their children do pick up on these social and theological cues. They will grow into a world that sees everything through the lens of surrender, and their churches will be havens of submissive hearers and doers. They will not create a psalmic culture, but one that capitulates to everything and everyone.

For Christians, we have ourselves our 15-minutes of fame, which if things continue, may become 15 years of fame. We may have a prolonged season of showing off our theological muscles as churches and families. I trust we are fit during this season. We have the opportunity to show forth our God in his strength and build an army of bold and courageous iconoclasts.

Keep up the good fight! We are in it for the long-term!