In TIME TO STOP SENDING YOUR KIDS TO THE NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE, John Branyan poses the issue rather simply.
You went to the neighbor’s house when you were a kid. They shared the same values as your parents so you were safe at their house. You learned a lot of important things over at their house. Now that you’re grown-up and have some kids of your own, you’re sending your kids to the neighbors so they’ll have the same happy, healthy childhood that you experienced.
Recently, you’ve heard rumors about what goes on at the neighbor’s house. The neighbors show videos that you don’t let your kids watch at home. They taught your kids that men can get pregnant. They invited some drag queens to read books to your kids. And they told your kids that character is determined by the color of a person’s skin. One of the neighbors was arrested but is back at the house now.
continued => TIME TO STOP SENDING YOUR KIDS TO THE NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE
Branyan cites Psalm 78:3 which emphasizes that our Lord requires us to raise our children with Biblical values. It is worthwhile to read all of Psalm 78. Then we begin to realize the patience of God and the pain our children must suffer when we fail to instruct them properly in Biblical values.
Consider.
James 4:1-4 New American Standard Bible
4 What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is the source not your pleasures that wage war in your body’s parts? 2 You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, so that you may spend what you request on your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
A world without God is a world filled with sinful people, at war with themselves and each other. God does not have to punish us when we love this world more than we love Him. Slavery to sin provides its own punishment.
Does the threat to our children come solely from our neighbor’s house? No. Because so many of us have neglected Biblical instruction, in addition to our neighbor’s house we must keep our children from our neighbor’s school, our neighbor’s movies, our neighbor’s Internet, our neighbor’s library, and so forth. It is after all, for the time being, still Satan’s world.
John 15:18-19 New American Standard Bible
18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
To belong to God is not a gift we can give to our children, but we can offer it to them. We can teach them to yearn for the eternal glory of heaven instead of the passing fancies of this world. We just have to do what we have been told to do and do it because we love our children.
Citizen Tom 
Tom,
Parents have a tough job in our contemporary times. Many families have both parents working full time.
One of the best ways to cut the risks is to send children to private religious schools because most kinds tend to bond friendships with kids they go to school with who are taught and introduced to Gods laws rather than often influenced government liberal values opposite to religious values..
Reducing risks by the simple fact that parents who send their kids to private schools are sacrificing to pay the tuitions in private schools which is hopefully a signal parents have similar religious values
Not a perfect solution, but sadly a truth in a world where government has control of what or what not is legal to teach children and parents have less time to meet parents because they have to work to pay two tuitions, one for private religious and another for “free” public schools..
As for allowing kids to sleepover and not monitoring what they are all watching and listening to on internet, that is another challenge subject for parents in our contemporary times..
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Raising children and instilling proper values into them is for the most part an old problem. We actually have more tools that should make it easier, but as a society we are not making the correct choices. Instead of allowing parents to be in charge of their children, we are interfering with their choices.
Tom,
Your comment “Instead of allowing parents to be in charge of their children, we are interfering with their choices.”
Spot on, in my opinion.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
Regards
This guy obviously grew up in a better neighborhood than I did.
When I was growing up, we didn’t worry too much about locking the doors. Firearms were commonplace. No school shootings. It was not paradise, That disappeared long ago, but the big struggle was the civil rights movement, and that was still moving in a positive direction.
Fewer people take the idea of God and sinning against seriously. So, it is more difficult to protect children than it use to be. Cellphones, the Internet, and unscrupulous mass media don’t make it any easier.
I hear what you’re saying, but I grew up in a rough neighborhood with drug users and weird scandalous relationships. I witnessed porn in the form of TV, books, and magazines that my parents would have been very unhappy about, if they’d known. Our house was broken into on more than one occasion. There was little security for the latchkey kids living there, and we always locked our doors. I feel safer in my current neighborhood, which is working class.
Some areas are pretty rough. The worst I experience as boy was when my father was assigned to Andrews AFB in Maryland. Because of the high cost of living in the area, military personnel did not look forward to assignment in the Washington DC area.
Until we could get housing on base, we had to live in an apartment complex off base. Had stuff stolen.
Once we got on base, we had to take long bus rides to school. Then because the locals did not want to do it, we discovered that the military kids had been selected to integrate schools in the area. My opinion of people and politicians has not improved since then.
Since we moved a lot, I was always the new kid in school. So, I hated school. I studied and learned, but the bullying made my social life miserable. So, I read books and worked out. I wasn’t big, but I learned that backing down did not work. Never will be a pacifist.
My neighbours and their kids were all friends of my parents so there were never any issues.
However, if Branyan was my neighbour I would have serious reservations if my kids were encouraged to hang out at his place.
It does work both ways. The problem we have these people who use the government to force their values on other people’s children. That sort of tyranny leads to lots of problems. The only way we can resolve whose values the government will require us to uphold is civil war. So, the decision of how to education their children is best left to a child’s parents.
Your comment majesni sense with regard the comment I replied to.
Makes no sense…
We don’t have people using government to force their values on other people’s children? What if Branyan ran for the School Board and tried to implement a curriculum designed to instill his values in your children? Then no one would have to encourage your children to hang out at his place.
To a degree Governments have always encouraged certain values in our kids, even religious values, that were all part of school life.
I had to attend RE at school and say the stupid Lords Prayer at morning assembly for years.
However the initial point you were making was about kids visiting neighbours whose values were different to yours.
If you don’t know the kids or their parents or their background your kids are visiting/playing at then your are falling short as a parent.
As for Branyon and his religious views… the less said about that the better, I reckon