How Should We Educate Our Daughters? – Part 2

In the last article, I wrote about a girl’s ultimate purpose – to glorify God and enjoy him forever – and how that purpose trumps all other purposes. In this article, I dig a bit deeper to give a fuller view of what this purpose entails. This, to me, is very important because so much of what I want to say in future articles rests so heavily on this foundation.

That said, I plan to address specific ways we can help to train up our daughters in the next article, and all subsequent articles in this series.

The Misunderstanding of the Gospel

You can’t watch tv these days, even a streaming service like Amazon Prime, without being inundated by what seem to be high-budget commercials of men and women frolicking on the beach or riding bikes down a scenic path or enjoying a picnic on a warm summer day, vignettes of the good life, filled with happiness and joy, but there to sell you on some hard-to-pronounce, multi-syllabic, technical-sounding drug that will supposedly cure your Crohn’s disease, or lower your cholesterol, or treat your depression.

It all looks so fabulous that you might miss the fine print – the part where it must mention, on pain of endless litigation and liability, the laundry list of side effects that is not only too long but also quite frightening. I think most of us would agree that this type of advertising is highly misleading at best and downright criminal at worst. These types of commercials (and it’s not just pharmaceutical companies that do this) prey on vulnerable people and oftentimes cause more harm than good. You’re right to be skeptical when you see them.

I think some people think this way about Christianity. The offer looks great, too good to be true, really.

All my debts paid and eternal life in paradise? For free? What’s the catch?

No catch. You just have to accept Jesus into your heart.

It’s a gift. You just need to accept it.

A rosy picture with no fine print.

Perhaps some people really believe this, and so they preach it with sincerity. But the way you bring them in is how you’ll keep them. The second you mention any sort of obligation on their part, they’ll accuse you of a bait-and-switch, and, honestly, rightfully so.

You are not doing anyone any good by giving such an oversimplified, insufficient, and inaccurate version of the gospel message. In fact, like the drugs marketed on those commercials, you may be doing more harm than good.

You might think you’re leading someone to God. They seem eager to accept these surprisingly favorable terms and may even get baptized. You might believe one more person has been added to the kingdom of God. But there might be no real lasting change in the person.

The scriptures give us a stark warning.

Not everyone who says to me “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 7:21)

There is such a thing as being deceived about your standing with God. I would argue that it’s even worse than knowing you’re lost; at the very least, evil people stubborn in their wicked ways know where they’re headed. In contrast, the person who thinks he’s good with God because he has “accepted Jesus into his heart” or “accepted the gift” without understanding what is supposed to happen afterwards, is in for a rude awakening. To be damned is one thing. To be damned and deceived, is certainly insult to injury.

So to avoid any accusations of a bait-and-switch on my part, I want to take this opportunity to add the fine print to my last article.

The Distortion

Perhaps in the interest of making God and being a christian more palatable to a wider audience, many pastors and preachers in pulpits across the country have proffered to their congregants and listeners a version of the gospel akin to a “Get Out of Jail” card.

It’s free. It gives you a second chance, without obligation or conditions.

Moreover, there is a heavy emphasis on God’s love and the conclusion they seem to draw from that is that God wants you, more than anything else, to be happy.

Perhaps it’s a mere coincidence that that line of reasoning also happens to align almost perfectly with the spirit of the age, a secular humanism that puts man at the center of the world and personal fulfillment as one of its primary tenets. But I think not.

It’s much easier to bring people into the fold, increase member rolls, perform more baptisms, add to the church coffers, and believe you’re doing God’s work by giving people who’ve already drunk heavily from the secular kool-aid something that tastes similar and goes down just as smooth.

Some people might call this contextualization. Others might call it compromise. I call it selling out.

You don’t have to look too long in the bible to start seeing just how antagonistic the word of God is to worldliness and worldly philosophies.

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? (1 Corinthians 1:20)

We were never meant to blend into the world, though it certainly is our tendency. Going with the flow is always easier than going against it. Wanting friendship with the world and all it has to offer will always be a temptation, but God gives us clear warnings.

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)

This is a hard saying. Many people want to act like that part of the bible doesn’t exist. It’s the reason why some parents who’ve raised their children to pray and read their bibles and go to church on Sundays will, all of a sudden, take serious issue with the fact that one of their children has actually taken the word of God seriously and has decided to become a missionary to Africa.

It’s okay for other people’s kids to become missionaries, but not my child.

Instead, we want our kids to be successful in the world (whatever that means). We want them to get a great education (whatever that means), get a high-paying job doing something they enjoy (who really gets to do that?), and hopefully fall in love, get married and have perfect kids and take those kids to church so that they can then grow up and do the same for their kids. And the cycle continues.

That certainly is a blueprint for a life, but I find it hard to imagine that someone could have gotten that blueprint from the word of God.

It’s way too simplistic, for one. And quite unattainable.

Let me ask you…

Are you yourself successful?

Did you get a great education?

Do you make a lot of money doing something you enjoy?

Are you happily married with wonderful kids?

Have those kids, in turn, grown up to be highly successful, rich, happy married people with kids?

You can quickly see from this line of questioning that life is far too complex to work that way.

Life’s circumstances are far too unpredictable, and we humans are far too fragile for even the best of us to come close to living by such a blueprint.

And yet, that is probably the mindset of a large swath of christians in the modern church. It’s also probably a large factor in people’s overall discontentment with life itself, for if that’s the blueprint, and most people’s lives don’t come even close to measuring up to it, we can see why people would feel defeated. Add to that the toxic element of social media, which only compounds the problem by putting before our eyes an endless catalogue of the supposed successes of others, making us feel like even more of a failure. But I digress.

To reiterate, this blueprint fails to account adequately for the vagaries of life.

But more importantly, this blueprint is woefully insufficient because it has very little to do with God’s plan for your life.

The Fine Print

In my last article, I spoke of our inability to be right with God in our own strength. I presented the good news that Jesus Christ came to earth to be our savior. He took our sins upon himself when he died on the cross, and he suffered the wrath of God that was supposed to be ours, so that we could be free from eternal condemnation.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

It is through Christ’s death for us on the cross that we not only find forgiveness for all our sins, but also become adopted into God’s family. We are welcomed into his household, co-heirs with Jesus Christ of God’s kingdom, destined now to live in glory with him forever.

To put it another way, it’s like we’ve won the spiritual lottery.

The difficulty with all of this is that it seems so abstract. It’s hard to measure the worth of something like this because we’ve never seen it, and the only ones who have can’t come back to life to tell us about it.

So we’re going to have to trust God with this promise. We need to have faith.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

And if we have this faith, we can see that it is immeasurably more valuable than anything we could ever attain in this life. All the world’s goods, all the power, fame, and fortune that one person could enjoy in this life, cannot begin to add up. That is what Satan offered to Jesus, and, of course, Jesus knew better.

And then he went the way of suffering; he went the way of death.

And in the same way, if we are to be “christians,” meaning “followers of Christ,” we must follow him on the path of suffering and death.

through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22)

The idea that God wants health and wealth for us on this earth is a lie, nor is it true that God wants us to be happy, if by “happy” we mean fulfilled in our own selfish wants and desires.

What God wants for us is for us to be like Him, and that takes pruning because we’re weak and sinful and inadequate in many ways. And pruning isn’t pleasant, but in the end it produces holiness and righteousness.

Unlike the words of pseudo-preachers that tickle ears and flatter and bring peace where there is no peace, Christ’s words are hard to hear and only those who have ears to hear can hear them.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26-27, 33)

I can hear the objections now.

Wait a minute. I thought all I had to do was accept Jesus into my heart? Now you’re telling me I have to forsake my family and renounce everything, even my own life? That seems like a pretty big catch to me.

Well, if you think that having to forsake something to have something better is a catch, then yes, you’re right, there is a catch.

In order to have a loving and committed marriage, you must forsake infidelity.

In order to be honest, you must forsake being a liar.

In order to have holiness and righteousness, you must forsake evil.

The difficulty lies in the fact that family, possessions, and our own lives (unlike infidelity, dishonesty, and evil) carry great value, and to give them up is extremely hard, if not, impossible, even when eternal life is offered in exchange, largely because “eternal life” remains theoretical and abstruse.

God must make the scales fall off of our eyes to see distinctly and palpably the immeasurable worth of everlasting life with him. Man cannot do it himself. His love for family, wealth, and his own life is too strong.

And that is exactly what God does when He saves us. When a person truly receives this gift of salvation, when God forgives and reconciles this person to Himself, he or she is actually changed into a new person. The old is gone, the new has come. He or she becomes a different person with different tastes and preferences, ones he or she did not possess before, so that the idea of bearing the cross, or renouncing everything he or she has, or even laying down his or her life doesn’t seem all that bad in the end. To the saved person, what he or she has received – eternal life – is so much greater than this temporal life, with all its comforts and pleasures, that they cease to have the kind of allure they once had, cheap and hollow in comparison to everlasting glory.

In other words, God changes people and empowers them so that they not only want Christ over everything else but also have the ability to lay aside every hindrance, even their own happiness, to have him.

What I’m trying to get at, apostle Paul has already said with greater force and clarity, so I’ll leave his words here:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7-11)

This is the fine print. Christ offers his salvation to us freely by his grace, but he also changes us to become like him.

When I think about the good life, I don’t think about money and career and a happy family life. I think about all of my loved ones and me, together and with God, eternally. And if that means I have to suffer in this life, and even pay the ultimate price of losing my life on earth, it’s all worth it.

Jesus Christ is worth it.

Join Us for the 7 Effective Attitudes for Kids Summer Camp!

We’re excited to announce our upcoming summer camp from June 24-28, specially designed for kids ages 7-12. It will be held in Vero Beach, FL. This camp will focus on instilling the right attitudes for life, all based on Scripture. Through fun activities and engaging lessons, kids will learn about:

• Being Brave: Finding courage in challenging situations.
• Setting Goals: Understanding the importance of having aspirations and working towards them.
• Being Peacemakers: Promoting harmony and resolving conflicts with kindness.
• Doing Hard Things: Embracing perseverance and resilience.
• Being a Team Player: Learning the value of cooperation and supporting others.
• Being a Listener: Developing strong communication skills by actively listening.
• Having Self-Control: Cultivating discipline and the ability to manage impulses.

This camp offers a nurturing environment where children can grow spiritually and personally, all while having a great time with peers. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity for your child to learn and embody these important attitudes that will benefit him or her for a lifetime.

For more information and to register, please click here. We can’t wait to see your child there!