Apologetics Resources for Parents

These are some apologetics resources that we have used with our family and that I recommend.

• Cold Case Christianity and God’s Crime Scene by J. Warner Wallace (and the kids’ versions of both for younger children)
• Evidence for the Bible video series by Mike Winger – FREE on YouTube 
• Expedition Bible videos from Joel Kramer on archaeological evidence for the Bible – FREE on YouTube 
• Where God Came Down by Joel Kramer
• Drive Thru History video series – The Gospels, Acts to Revelation, and To the Ends of the Earth are the relevant seasons covering Biblical topics – FREE on Tubi TV
• How We Got the Bible by Neil Lightfoot
• Know What You Believe by Paul Little for a great overview of basic Bible doctrines
• On Guard and Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig
• Creation.com for abundant free articles on many topics, especially creation science
• By Design by Jonathan Sarfati on evidence for God as Designer and against evolution
• Evolution’s Achilles Heels edited by Robert Carter for evidence against evolution
• Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side by Natasha Crain
• Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl

How to use these resources can vary, depending on your child’s age, the type of resource, and the questions they are asking.

Video resources work well to watch and discuss as a family. Even younger children can learn a lot this way. We watch apologetics videos on Sunday evenings while eating dinner and then discuss them with our children. You can assign video content to kids, but it works better when parents are engaging with their children. Parents can explain concepts that might be a bit over their children's heads so that they understand the information better.

For some older children or teens, you could hand them a book and let them read it. If they’re self-motivated and want to learn, this can work. It’s still important for parents to engage with the material and be ready to discuss it more or to look for more resources on specific topics.

Regardless of whether your child can read or watch resources on their own, it is VITAL that parents read and watch relevant resources and then prepare to have conversations about these topics with their children. There is no substitute for informed, active parenting on this matter. Your child will naturally look to you for answers about the big questions of life. If you can’t provide objective evidence for your beliefs, they may decide that your faith has no evidential basis and reject it. Parents have a sacred duty to know the reasons for their faith and to share them actively and regularly with their children.

1 Peter 3:15 – But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

Ephesians 6:4 – And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 6:5-7 – And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

Fight the Cultural Current toward Feminism

The effect of culture on a person's thinking and values is profound. It can be hard to overcome. We're all products of our culture in various ways. We're often harsh on the antebellum slave holders for supporting such an overtly wicked practice, but they were influenced by the teaching of their time, including the teaching from their churches. Rather than feel morally superior, it's important to examine our own ideology to see where we may be leaving the teaching of the Bible to follow the norms and ideas of our culture.

 
This is a lifelong process of examination. If you don't actively root out unbiblical ideas, you will drift with the cultural current. Drifting is the default state if you're not paddling upstream. Standing against the culture requires work. It requires being unpopular with your friends who are drifting along and fitting in. It means finding friends who are willing to join you as you work to renew your mind with Biblical truth.

 
One area where I see a LOT of Christians compromising with the world is feminism. It has crept into everything, including nearly all churches. Women are leaving their homes and children to seek careers, disregarding the God-given authority of their husbands, and even pushing their way into church leadership. It's sneaky. It's packaged to sound like it's good. It's "empowerment" and "ministry" and "setting a good example for our daughters" and "being a witness in public schools." These are the lipstick on the pig. They're rationalization for not obeying God's instructions.

 
Titus 2:3-5
Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

 
Did you catch that? When women disobey this passage and leave their God-given role, they cause the word of God to be dishonored. That's very serious.

 
Yet so many women outsource the discipleship of their own children to non-Christian strangers for hours every day (public schools) and leave the ordering of their own household to seek acclaim in the business world or popularity in the church for their "ministry." If you're a mother with young children still at home, the primary ministry to which God has called you is the discipleship and care for your very own children. Never give that up for anything! If you want to do something important for God, there it is. You have a ready-made ministry in your own home. No one can have the influence you have there. You're replaceable in the workforce. You're replaceable in church ministry. No one can replace you in the lives of your children.

 
Of course, this ministry of discipling our own children is HARD! There are several things against us.

 
First of all, raising children takes a lot of work. It can be exhausting and emotionally draining. And there's not a lot of immediate gratification. Kids rarely say thank you for all the training you put into them, and they will shortly undo the housework you just finished. They will push your buttons and test your patience. Parenting is not for the faint-hearted. In the office, you get applause for your finished project. In the church, you get applause for your ministry. At home, not so much. Wiping runny noses and making dinner and vacuuming the floor (again) don't seem so adventurous or important, and yet they're a lot of hard work. It's easy to think our efforts would produce more return somewhere else.

Second, we have our own fallen nature to fight. We all tend to want what we don't have. We all tend to find it easier to do the wrong thing. So the man who was called to be the provider and leader often finds this calling to be difficult and burdensome. Meanwhile, the woman who was called to keep the home and care for children and submit to her husband finds this calling burdensome. They each feel the other has the better role precisely because of the curse. Doing our own role requires fighting our own desires sometimes. We tend to think God made a mistake and we can fix it. It seems easier and more pleasant doing it our way.

 
Third, there's the allure of money. A career brings in money, and money is extremely useful. It can give us things we want, and sometimes things we truly need. It's very difficult to live on one income. It's a sacrifice because our society is built around double incomes and luxury. There's social pressure to make more and have more. There's the rising cost of everything.

 
Fourth, there's the social pressure of the culture which says women should break the glass ceiling and pursue high-powered careers. If a woman cooks food in a restaurant, that's esteemed as a great career. If a woman works as a secretary, handling scheduling and appointments and filing paperwork and paying bills for a boss, that's a good use of her time. If a woman cares for small children all day in a daycare, that's laudable work. If a woman works as a cleaning lady, cleaning homes and businesses, she's doing important work. If a woman teaches children their ABCs or multiplication tables in a school, that's such an important career. But if she does all that and more for her own husband and children in her own home, that's drudgery and beneath her. She needs to escape that life and join the exciting career world. This is what our culture tells us.

 
The culture also pushes egalitarianism, treating men and women as having identical and interchangeable roles. In the church, this turns into women taking church leadership roles, wanting to be pastors and teachers. This is often pushed as a good thing despite the teaching of scripture, which must be explained away with appeals to ancient culture or translation mistakes rather than simply obeying it.

 
With all these factors against us, it's difficult to stand firm on what God's word teaches. It's easy to drift. Doing the right thing takes determination to be obedient to God, no matter the cost. And it will cost you. It may cost you in lost income, lost dreams, lost friends, lost popularity, lost sleep, and much more. So why do it if it costs so much? Because obedience to God is worth it. He will reward you. There is no better place to be than in the center of God's will. Count the cost. Then choose to be obedient. Fight the current. Stand for Jesus.

Playing God with Human Reproduction: The Immorality of IVF Technologies

Humans are sacred. The creation of humans is sacred. Children are designed to be formed from the act of sexual intimacy between a husband and wife. When you take the conception of the child outside the marital union and involve third parties (doctors, technicians, etc), you are separating things that God designed and intended to be kept together - sex, marriage, and children. Creating a child in a lab is as much a deviation from God's plan as creating that child through fornication or rape. The child, of course, is just as valuable, regardless of the circumstances of their conception. But we should recognize that an injustice has been done to the child in these cases. 

Every child is made in the image of God and has natural rights. But we violate the natural law when we take conception outside the marital sexual union. It is unfair to children, it treats them as property, and it misuses the sexual design God gave us.

Killing Children

The most serious and obvious problem with in-vitro fertilization is that it commonly results in the intentional killing of human children. We see a lot of dehumanization of embryos created through IVF. They only get implanted if they're judged to be healthy enough. Clinics discard embryos that have genetic defects or "extra" embryos. If too many embryos implant, the babies are "reduced" (i.e. some are killed). These are human children we are talking about, and it is common practice to create more than can be implanted or carried and kill the rest. It's not okay to kill a few babies to get one to hold.

The IVF process also provides opportunity for eugenics and further dehumanization of children. If you want a boy, they can discard the girls for you, or vice versa. "Extra" embryos are commonly frozen for later use (notice the wording - they are there to be used), which increases their risk of damage or death. So we are placing human children in dangerous situations for the convenience of adults, so they can be used as their parents see fit.

Freezing embryos is a risky process. Not only can the freezing itself cause damage or death to a human child in this way, but there's no guarantee that the parents will be able to gestate the child later or that they will choose to, even if they can. People most often freeze embryos in case their current IVF cycle fails, but it if doesn't fail, they may or may not ever implant those frozen embryos. There are currently nearly a million frozen embryos in storage. The vast majority will likely never be given a chance to develop and be born. Many are donated to science, to be experimented on as if they were not living human beings. Others are discarded directly. Some are "donated" like unwanted clothes or trinkets at a thrift shop. At least they get to live. But what are we doing to their psyche when they find out their own parents gave them away?

Eugenics

There has also been talk of genetic tampering with embryos to fix genetic defects or imperfections. This is currently something science is capable of doing. This is not decades down the road. We can do this now, with technology available today. In the very near future we may have designer babies that have been genetically modified to the parents' specifications. You may be able to pick your child's height, eye and hair color, athletic ability, intelligence, and so on. It will certainly be possible to eliminate children with genetic conditions like Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, Celiac disease, Autism or even just nearsightedness or hearing impairment. After all, if children are products designed to fulfill the desires of adults, the customer should be happy with their purchase, right? Nobody wants to spend all that money and get a broken child. This is the mentality that IVF leads to, and we are already seeing it today.

We have to remember that children are people, not a collection of traits designed to make their parents feel good. Treating them as products to be manufactured to specification or discarded when they are not wanted is dehumanizing. It's not a coincidence that people tend to dehumanize human children when they play God in creating them. None of this is possible without IVF first being accepted and normalized. 

Destroying the Family

IVF also allows for any number of further deviations from God's design for families. The biological parents need not be the parents who intend to raise the child, for example. The biological parents may not have even met one another, much less had love or a marriage covenant. With sperm or egg donation, the child is being deprived of their biological heritage on purpose. Homosexual couples use IVF in order to create custom children since their unions are naturally infertile. Surrogacy depends on IVF. 

Sperm and egg donation is immoral. Children have a right to know their biological parents. It actively harms children when we deprive them of their biological heritage. They need to know such things as whether diabetes or heart disease or cancer runs in the family because that's important to their own health care. They need to know whether the person they're dating might be a lost sibling with the same donor father or mother. But more than that, they need to know where they came from and who their parents are. They deserve to be loved by the people who gave them their nose and eyes and whose smile they bear. They need to hear how they look like their grandma or how they have daddy's chin when they are growing up. This gives children a vital understanding of who they are that is missing when their biological parents have been stripped from them. Many adopted and donor-conceived children feel this loss as an ache inside them to know where they came from and who their biological parents are. It is a tragedy when a child loses their parents to accident or disease or abandonment. Why would we impose that tragedy on them on purpose? We don't have that right. 

Surrogacy 

Let's talk a little bit more about surrogacy as well. Surrogacy compounds the dehumanization of the child by also treating women as mere incubators for growing a child. It is bad for both women and children. Gestation is not just a biological process. It is highly emotional and spiritual as well. The bond between mother and child that develops during gestation is completely ignored in surrogacy. At birth, a baby already knows the mother's voice and heartbeat and needs her specifically. I have seen this for myself at the births of my own children who knew and were soothed by the sound of my voice, above the voices of others in the room, when they were mere minutes old. They knew me. They wanted me. No one else would do. Studies have shown that babies learn in the womb. There's a sacred bond between mother and child that develops during gestation. Yet with surrogacy, the child is taken from the only mother she knows at birth. This is highly traumatic for an infant. It has been termed "the primal wound." We should not be intentionally causing trauma to babies so that adults can obtain a child on demand.

There is also a very serious problem that no one wants to talk about when we give children to people who are not their natural parents. There's a certain connection and investment that happens with natural parents that tends to help prevent child abuse. While it is certainly possible for natural parents to abuse their children, it is actually fairly rare. Most abused children are abused by boyfriends or girlfriends of their parents, step-parents, more distant relatives, or unrelated caretakers, not their natural parents. In fact, the mere fact of biological relatedness is not necessarily protective if the child was not created in the natural way and raised by those biological parents. This is a major reason that we carefully screen foster parents and adoptive parents (or at least try to) to be sure they are capable of caring for the child properly and will not be abusive. We don't generally just hand children to strangers without any sort of vetting process. One major exception to this is with surrogacy.

As it stands now, almost anyone can buy a child through surrogacy, with no one checking to be sure they aren't neglecting or abusing that child. There have been a number of cases in recent years where children were being harmed after being obtained through surrogacy. In one notable case, a mentally handicapped man who was not married and was already caring for elderly parents alone had obtained several infants within a short period of time through surrogacy and could not care for them adequately, but little was done since he was their biological father. In another case, a disabled child who had been obtained via surrogate was being denied life-saving medical care by the biological parents who did not want to raise the child while the surrogate who carried him wanted him and was being denied the chance to save his life. There have been multiple cases of biological parents demanding that surrogates abort a disabled child before birth or abandoning them once they are born. Again, we see dehumanization because they're treating the child as a product to be manufactured to specification and they want a product that is not defective. It is also common practice to hand children over to homosexual couples or single parents through surrogacy and thus intentionally deprive them of a home with a mother and father.

There is also the problem of the rights of surrogates being trampled. Many are poor women in countries like India who carry a child for money. This womb-for-hire commerce has some serious problems. If a natural mother plans to give up her infant for adoption, she has every right to change her mind after the birth. Women often change their mind when their child is born because there is a strong emotional bonding that takes place during childbirth. Yet a surrogate is usually not given this option. She can be strongly bonded to the child, yet the child will be taken from her to be given to people she often does not know and cannot be sure will care for the child properly. In several cases, surrogates have been pressured to abort a child for developmental problems and refused and then are required to hand that child over to the same parents who wanted that child dead. In some cases, the intended parents refuse the child due to developmental problems and leave an impoverished surrogate with a child she can't afford to raise, but yet she hates to give up to a foster system. If a surrogate accidentally becomes pregnant with her own child during the surrogacy process, this may not be realized or, if it is, she may be forced to hand her own biological child over to the commissioning parents until the legal issues are worked out.

Clinic Mistakes

There are so many serious problems with surrogacy and other uses of IVF technology. Even when a married couple intends to produce and gestate their own biological child and they don't kill extra embryos, mistakes can occur and the wrong egg or sperm can be used. What do you do when your wife is carrying another man's child because of a mistake like this? You don't have this problem with the natural delivery method.

Health Problems

There is also the issue of health concerns for children. Babies produced by IVF also have a higher rate of embryo death and a higher rate of birth defects or other health problems. More than half of IVF cycles fail. So they're creating and implanting babies that we don't know can be carried successfully. They may be implanting those babies in a womb that cannot care for them. Of course, babies can also die from natural causes when IVF is not used. Some couples have repeated miscarriages, for example. But that's not something we humans are causing. It's a natural outcome. When we take it on ourselves to control the process of conception and implantation, we also own the outcomes in ways that don't apply to natural processes.

Financial Concerns

In addition to the above concerns, there is the issue of money. Not only is IVF extremely expensive (and therefore difficult to justify given the number of existing children who need homes), but that money is given to doctors and reproductive clinics who are discarding embryos, sending them to be experimented on, or freezing them until some future date that may never come. Even if a couple does not discard their extra embryos and does not freeze their children for a later date, they're still funding an entity that does. The money they pay for their "ethical" IVF is keeping the doors open for clinics that mistreat other embryos.

The Root of the Problem

The problems of IVF go beyond these more obvious issues into the depths of what sex and procreation mean. I don't think God ever intended for us to separate the creation of children from the marital act and involve third parties like doctors and technicians. I understand that it is a natural and good desire to want your own biological children, but good desires cannot be rightfully fulfilled outside God's rightful means. It's a good desire to want sex, but we have to fulfill that good desire only in marriage because that is the proper way. It is the same with bearing children. We have to stick to God's way. The tragedy of infertility does not justify taking matters into our own hands or inflicting harm on children. Children are a gift from God, not an entitlement. 

Sex and Reproduction are Sacred

Sex, marriage, and childbearing are all an interconnected web by God's design. They are sacred because they mean something more than just the sheer biological facts. Sex isn't just a pleasurable rubbing together of body parts as our society claims. It has meaning. A sacred meaning. Similarly, the creation of a new life is not just a matter of two cells merging to start a new life. It has sacred meaning. We tamper with that at our peril.

Part of the sacredness of procreation is the mystery and symbolism that God gave us in sex itself and how it is meant to bring husband and wife together to become one flesh and through that union to create new life. The union of husband and wife symbolizes Christ and the church, as we know, but I think we often fail to understand how deep the imagery goes. During the marital act, the husband gives, emptying himself into the wife, and she takes what is given and gives back the fruit nine months later. Similarly, Christ emptied Himself, pouring out His life on the cross. We, the church, take what is given, and bear fruit - not only in our own lives, but in others we bring to Christ. Our biology means something much deeper than we realize. Christ creates new life that will last forever by unity with us just as we create new lives that will last forever through our marital unity.

When we create children in a petri dish, without sex and that union between husband and wife, we are destroying the pattern God gave us which points to Him. We are taking that which is sacred and treating it as if we could re-design and re-purpose it for our own ends, in violation of the Creator. We are treating the physical as the only reality, and ignoring what it means.

The Tragic Results of Violating God's Plan

It's no surprise that when start playing God with our reproduction, lots of evil results. That's why we have hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos - human children - stored in freezers around the country with little hope of ever having a life. That's why we have embryos discarded as "extras" with no regard for their intrinsic value as human beings who bear the image of God. That's why doctors can so casually suggest a "reduction" if too many embryos implant. That's why it's such a mess when doctors inadvertently use the wrong sperm or mix donor eggs with donor sperm and create a child with biological parents who have never even met and who will not be raising the child together. That's why we have children born from donor sperm who will always wrestle with the heart-rending question of "Why did daddy not want to know me?" That's why we have people commissioning a child through surrogacy who think nothing of aborting or abandoning their biological child when he's "defective."

Ignoring the sacredness of reproduction means denying the sacredness of our humanity and treating the physical as all there is. When we deny that we are more than physical beings and think we can manipulate human creation to our own ends, we deny the intrinsic value of ourselves and our children. This leads to many abuses, but most commonly the children are the ones most harmed. Keeping the God-given connections between sex, marriage, and children means valuing humans as made in the image of God and therefore designed to be created according to God's plan. The mentality of IVF is that humans are not sacred, but only flesh that can be manipulated and repurposed as we desire.

These many serious problems I have outlined arise, not as occasional, unrelated bugs in the process, but as intrinsic features because of the wrong worldview. There are systemic problems with IVF technologies because the underlying worldview is false. The fruit of IVF is rotten because the tree is rotten. 

Discipline Helps Children Feel Loved

We were watching Little House on the Prairie last night with the kids, and it was in the last season where the Olesons have a little girl named Nancy. Nancy is a spoiled little brat who throws a fit whenever she doesn't get her way. She wants attention all the time, and she gets it. But she's always saying how everyone hates her, even her parents, if they deny her the slightest thing she wants. She eventually runs away when her older sister, Nellie, comes back to town and takes up all the attention for awhile. She really believes no one loves her despite all the attention and gifts showered on her on a regular basis.

It occurred to me that this is very accurate. Nancy was suffering a huge lack of discipline. She wasn't being trained to behave herself and think of others. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted all the time, without consequence. This made her feel very unloved. 

It might seem counter-intuitive to a lot of parents today, but children who are spoiled do not feel loved and are not happy. Some parents try to make their children feel happy by showering them with gifts and letting them do whatever they want, but this does not work. Oh, they will feel happy momentarily when they get presents or get away with bad behavior, but they become more and more unhappy over time. 

Now, does a child know they need discipline? Of course not. They're children. They're immature. They don't like discipline as it is very unpleasant at the time. But God has designed children to feel safe and happy and loved when they are disciplined. They won't feel love if they don't get discipline. They need to know there are limits on their behavior. They need to be taught. If they don't get discipline, they can't feel love properly. And the reason they won't feel loved is because they aren't being loved properly. Parents who love their children discipline them. The Bible even tells us that.

Proverbs 13:24 He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently. 

Proverbs 3:11-12 My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord Or loathe His reproof, For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. 

Love doesn't just mean having happy thoughts about someone. It means doing what is truly good for them. It is good and necessary for children to be disciplined. They have to be taught to behave. They need consequences when they do wrong. They have to be taught that their own desires are not the standard and how to deny themselves for the sake of others. This will make them happy. Indulgence will not.

If you love your children, you will discipline them. It's not the easy road, but it is far better for everyone in the long run when children are trained to act properly and think of people besides themselves. Children also need training in how to control their emotions. A child who is constantly at the mercy of their emotions is an unhappy child. Parents have to give their children the tools of self-control and a moral compass by disciplining them. This is what love does. It provides for the spiritual and mental needs of the child. They can't feel your love if you don't.

Functional Orphans: How Lack of Discipline Hurts Children

I was in the church nursery the other day and I noticed again how interactions with my own children are different from interactions with other people's children. My children are my responsibility. Thus, when my children misbehave, I correct and discipline them. But when I am watching someone else's child, there's not a lot I can do to correct their misbehavior. I can gently encourage them not to hit, bite, or push other children and tell them it's not nice and then try to redirect them, but it's not my place to discipline them or explain to them why they should be kind to others. That is the job of their own parents.

So why am I telling you this? It occurred to me that this soft, hands-off approach we use for dealing with unruly children in the nursery is no longer reserved for temporary caretakers in our society. Many are pushing parents to treat their own children in this way - never punishing or correcting them, but only gently encouraging them to behave and redirecting them to other activities. This isn't fringe either. It's pretty mainstream advice.

It's no surprise, given this approach, that so many children these days are badly behaved, anxious, and lack self-control. But it's not just poor parenting to allow children to disobey and hurt others and throw fits and so on without disciplining them. It's treating the children as if they were someone else's children. It's a failure to parent at all.

The Bible has something to say about this topic as well.

Hebrews 12:6-8 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

So, the Bible tells us that parents who don't discipline their children are treating them as if they were not their children. Discipline is one of the main responsibilities of parents. Undisciplined children are functional orphans. They have no parents. They have someone who meets basic physical needs and manages them so they don't get seriously injured, much like a daycare worker might, but they aren't getting the training they desperately need. They aren't being disciplined.

Why doesn't anybody notice this? A large part of the reason is that our society has a hollow and abbreviated understanding of the role of parents. Everything is supposed to be delegated to a professional these days. Education? That's what school teachers are for. Spiritual training? Take them to church to be taught. Sports? Find a good coach.

The one thing most people still agree that parents are supposed to do for their children is foot the bill for all their collection of experiences. But if your view of parenting is that it’s a mostly managerial position involving paying for a host of experts to provide your child with the proper inputs and making sure they appear at the proper places at the proper times, that’s a poor substitute for actual parenting. (It also makes sense of the weird trend to ask parents of large families how they intend to pay for all their children’s luxuries like a college education. I guess if the main role of parents is to pay for everything, you better not have too many kids or else it gets expensive and you might not be able to afford the best experts.)

Along with this view of parenting, you get the rise of the term “quality time.” Rather than spend quantity time with their children (which is how almost all parents did it in the past), parents today are encouraged to spend quality time. This is usually interpreted as having special, memorable experiences together on the rare occasions you are together, often involving the spending of lots of money (are you seeing a trend here?). Parents don’t have the opportunity to spend quantity time with their kids because they’re too busy making money to pay for all the quality time. In those special times when parents are actually present with their children and actively engaged, they are trying so hard to have pleasant “quality time” that they don’t want to ruin the moment with such unpleasant matters as discipline. They don’t want to be the bad guy when they finally interact with their kids. So I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that the rise of laissez-faire parenting coincides with the rise of absent and distracted parents.

Of course, not all households with two busy, working parents fail to discipline their children. And even some otherwise involved parents have fallen for the “gentle parenting” nonsense that says they should never punish their children. These are societal trends, not descriptions of any particular homes. But there is a lot of overlap.

The sad thing about these trends is that many children today are suffering a tremendous lack of parenting. They are growing up as functional orphans. There is no substitute for careful, involved, loving parents who discipline their children and teach them. This necessarily requires quantity time, not just quality time. You can’t raise children by long distance or by a collection of babysitters, teachers, coaches, and other professionals (or grandparents). You have to be there. And you have to discipline your children. They need it desperately.

Top 5 Reasons NOT to Use Hormonal Birth Control

Hormonal birth control is extremely common today and many people, including many Christians, take it without a second thought. But there are some important reasons to avoid hormonal contraceptives. Here are my top 5 reasons not to take hormonal contraceptives, in reverse order.

#5 - Hormonal birth control can produce mood swings and even depression in some women. We all know our female hormones can make us moody at certain times of the month. There's a reason we say we're "hormonal." The hormones in birth control can do the same thing. Many women report an increase in feelings of being down, depressed, anxious, or angry while on hormonal birth control. Some women do not seem to be affected in this way, but some are. It can be especially important that women with existing depression or anxiety watch out for a increase in symptoms if they take hormonal contraceptives.


#4 - Hormones in birth control can kill a woman's libido. They have even been known to affect her attraction to her husband. A woman's normal cycle is intended to have a period each month where her libido naturally rises and she desires sex more strongly. Hormonal birth control prevents her natural cycle and this natural increase in desire. The estrogen and progestin in hormonal birth control also lowers testosterone production. While many people believe testosterone is a male hormone, even women produce some. In women, testosterone is one of the major factors that controls the sex drive. Without enough testosterone production, a woman's libido can drop greatly. In some women, it can take away any desire for sex and greatly reduce pleasure during sex. A lot of women go on birth control before becoming sexually active and thus don't have a normal baseline for comparison, so they may think they don't like sex when in fact birth control is destroying their sexual desire and enjoyment.


#3 - Hormonal birth control carries a risk of blood clots. This can be especially dangerous for those with a family or personal history of blood clots, high blood pressure, or various other circulatory problems. The early birth control pills were solely estrogen and killed a number of women due to blood clots. The more recent combination pills, patches, shots, and rings have much lower doses of estrogen, but there is still a risk of blood clots, especially for those with other risk factors.


#2 - Hormonal birth control increases the risk of some female reproductive cancers. This link is especially strong for breast cancer. There is some indication that ovarian and endometrial cancers may have a lower risk while taking hormonal birth control. However, breast cancer risk may increase up to 20% while taking hormonal birth control and for 10 years after stopping. Not only does the pill increase the risk of breast cancer directly, but delaying childbearing can also increase the risk of reproductive cancers. Having children young and breastfeeding them protects against breast cancer.


#1 - Hormonal birth control can be abortifacient. The hormones in birth control make the uterus inhospitable for a baby to implant and thus can cause an early abortion by preventing implantation. In fairness, this is not the main mode of action. There are three mechanisms by which hormonal birth control works. The main mechanism is to prevent ovulation. If no egg is released, there can be no conception. This mechanism is truly contraceptive by preventing conception. The secondary mechanism is to thicken cervical secretion to impede sperm motility. If sperm do not reach the egg, then no conception occurs. However, the third mechanism works as a backup in case the first two mechanisms fail. If an egg is released and fertilized, then the new child will fail to implant in the womb. The baby then starves and dies. There is no way of knowing which is happening each month for any particular woman.

Because of the potential for causing a human child to die, hormonal birth control is not only a health concern, but a moral concern as well. The birth control advocates will tell you that hormonal contraception does not interrupt a pregnancy, but what they don't tell you is that the definition of pregnancy was changed a few decades ago to begin at implantation rather than fertilization so that they could claim hormonal birth control does not cause an abortion. Yet human life begins at fertilization, not implantation. Ending that life is a very serious moral issue.

If we believe every human life is sacred, then we need to show that in our actions. I could not take hormonal contraceptives because of the risk of killing my child. There are other ways to prevent pregnancy, if you must. There are many good reasons to say no to hormonal contraceptives.

Having Children in an Evil World

I hear every now and then some young, idealistic, Christian woman saying she never wants children because the world is too evil. I think this is a very misguided notion for several reasons.

For one thing, having children and raising them to know the Lord and make a difference in their world is one of the best ways to make the world a better place. Children are an investment in the future. You can complain about how bad things are or you can do something about it. One of the most effective things you can do to change your world for the better is raise great kids who grow up to contribute to society, help the needy, demolish bad arguments against God and Christianity, bring others to Christ, and raise more children to do the same.

It's also a rather short-sighted view to think our era is so much worse than all of history. While our society is certainly in decline, we still have far more freedom, wealth, health, and knowledge of God than most of the people who have ever lived. 

Countless generations before us managed to bear and raise children in a truly terrible world. Many feared that their children would die of disease or wondered whether they would be able to feed them tomorrow. Surviving to adulthood was an accomplishment. Mothers have borne and tended children in slavery, in the midst of war, as victims of rape, as refugees in a land not their own, through famine and plague, hard-labor and many tears, and they did so despite their suffering because their children were a hope for a better tomorrow. Even those who had a relatively good life with no wars or plagues or slavery had it tough. Everyone worked hard, including the children. Many had little time for education. If they could raise children in such times, who are we to complain or lose hope when we live in far more wealth and luxury than the kings of their time? 

Not only do we have material wealth the people of the past never would have dreamed of, we also know that the King of Kings has come and given us new life. We have a promise from God Himself that if we have faith in Christ, heaven will be our home. We have the spirit of God living inside us to help us avoid sin and make wise choices and we can share our faith with others so that they have the same hope. 

Every child in a Christian home is a tangible hope that life will go on, more people will be taught about God, and more people will be in heaven. That's far more important than an idealized and impractical notion that children should only be born into the most perfect of situations. If our ancestors had taken that view, none of us would be here.

The Purpose of Children

The number one reason Christian couples do not want children (or want very few children) is because they do not understand the purpose of children according to the Bible.

Our culture tells us children are for self-actualization. They're what you have when you're settled, financially secure, and need something to care for in order to give you purpose and also increase your social status or to make you feel good about yourself. But if children are for self-actualization, then you wouldn't want to have one when it might be difficult or get in the way of other types of self-actualization like having money for vacations or a big house or having freedom to travel or having time to yourself now and then. You certainly wouldn't need very many of them. A single child or maybe two is plenty and having more than that would result in diminishing returns or even negative returns as the workload and expense from multiple children mounts and people start to look at you funny due to your excessive procreation.

Because of this view of children, they are often seen as burdens when they cause us stress or expense or limit our freedom, but also as commodities to be obtained when we want one. People obtain children by surrogacy or sperm donation or IVF because they feel entitled to have one as part of their pursuit of self-actualization. Their life feels incomplete without a child, so they deserve to have one by any means necessary. So even when children are wanted, it is often for selfish reasons of the parents, not because they understand the purpose of children. And when children show up when they aren't wanted, they are seen as invaders or parasites and discarded through abortion or neglected. It's all part of the same false view of children as a means to the end of parental happiness.

Even in Christian circles, we repeat the mantra that children are a blessing, but we don't always understand what that means. We adopt the culture's attitude, but Christianize it. So we're still thinking that children being a blessing means a blessing to us. When you've got a crying baby at 2:00am or you're sitting in the emergency room with your child after they took a flying leap and broke a bone or you're dealing with a difficult teenager or you're doing your 4th load of laundry for the day and your toddler wets their pants yet again, there are a lot of things on your mind, but "This is such a blessing" is probably not one of them. Children are a lot of work and a lot of expense and even a lot of heartache at times.

So what does the Bible mean when it says children are a blessing? Yes, they are certainly a blessing to their parents in many ways, but it's much more than that. Children are meant to be a blessing to the whole world. Even from an earthly perspective, a child is a future worker, innovator, consumer, and contributor to society in many ways. We need children to keep the economy and our culture thriving and to pass it on to the next generation. Having a child is an investment in the future, not just for ourselves, but for the world. More importantly, a child raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is a light in a dark world, to lead others to Jesus and influence their culture for Christ. A child is a legacy to pass down a heritage of serving Christ to future generations. And perhaps most importantly, a child is an immortal soul who will live forever and is meant to praise and worship God and bring glory to our Creator. 

The purpose for children is not self-actualization of their parents. Children don't exist to make their parents feel good about themselves (which is good, because they don't always do that). Children exist to know and serve God and to be used by Him to change the world, or at least their corner of it. Having children and raising them, for a Christian, is a way of helping to bring the world into subjection to Christ and bringing more people to heaven. It's not about the parents and what makes them happy. It's about fulfilling God's plan. 

Every Christian, whether they know it or not, is on a mission to serve God. Having children is an important way of doing that because they're a way to multiply the impact and take that impact down through the years. Even for those who can't have biological children of their own, children are still important and we are all called to foster the growth of the children around us in whatever ways we can. If you can have children, have them because they're part of your mission for God to impact the world around you for many years to come. If you can't, encourage those around you who are having children and help children who need your influence in order to know and love God.

Children are worth the pain and the work and the expense many times over, but not because they make the lives of their parents so wonderful. Sometimes they do, and that's great. But let's not overlook the bigger picture. It's not about the parents. It's about implementing God's plan here on earth and populating heaven with more people to glorify God.

The Most Important Mission Field

There is a mission field that is more important than any other and it is often neglected in Christianity today. If you thought I was going to tell you all about a distant land in need of missionaries or remind us to tell our friends, neighbors, and coworkers about the gospel, you might be a little surprised. Our children are our first mission field. Those of us who have children have a number one mission from God to train and disciple our children in the ways of the Lord. We should prioritize them over every other mission field. Both men and women alike should focus on family first because our children are specifically given to us by God for training in the Christian faith. If we lose them, we have not only failed to win them as converts, but have been poor stewards of the souls God gave into our charge.

The Bible speaks of those who gain the whole world and lose their own soul. Their priorities were wrong and they lost that which was most valuable. Something similar is true of those who gain converts out there in the world but lose their own children.

This need to teach and train our own children first is evidenced in many places in scripture. In the OT, God's people were instructed to train their children at home, when they went out, and everywhere they go and in everything they do (Deut. 6). This requires not only a lot of time and effort, but it means parents have to be with their children in order to train them in the things of God. This has always been God's model for how children are to be raised by those who follow Him.

The New Testament includes the parable of the unfaithful steward (Luke 12) who did not properly care for the things entrusted to him and also speaks in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25) about the servant who did not invest what was given to him, but hid it and did nothing to bring an increase for his master. In these and other cases, the clear teaching of the Bible is that we are most responsible for those things which have been specifically entrusted to us. Of all the precious things entrusted to our care, the greatest is our children, who are specifically said in scripture to be gifts from God. If we fail in that stewardship, other gains we may have will pale in comparison. Yes, we should save the lost out there, but only after we save the ones God gave to us to train.

The need to train one's own children is also implicitly assumed in the qualifications for church leaders, who must be men with a reputation and record of not only remaining married and being self-controlled, but raising their children correctly so that they remain in the faith and are obedient to it (I Tim. 3). How can a man lead the church if he cannot lead his own wife and children properly? The clear indication is that he can't, which tells us not only that this is important, but of primary importance. The church leader must prioritize his own family so that they are properly led, before he can lead the church. And if even the church leader must prioritize his own family over the other work of the church, how much more the ordinary church member. We are all called to make our children our first mission field, with every other mission field secondary.

On top of that, women are specifically called to make their home and family their primary mission, even more so than men. Men must ensure that their children are in submission to their authority and being trained properly, but their wives are the ones who put most of the actual time and effort involved in this mission, because women are the ones called to be in the home caring for the children.

One of the major problems we have today is that too few have their family properly prioritized and they spend their time and effort everywhere but on their family. What we need is more Christian people who are teaching and training their children and building their marriages so that they can make a difference from a place of strength - a strong family that works together for God - and also be good stewards of what God has given them. This is not just about saving individual souls, though that is important, but about the intended purpose of the family to create, equip, and send out new soldiers to change the world for God. We can literally multiply our efforts to make a difference for Christ through properly trained children who continue the mission beyond us, in generations to come.

The Importance of Doing Little Things for God

Our culture pushes people to value fame and fortune and doing big things, and our churches have too often adopted this view, but "Christianized" it. Now, rather than just living a quiet, faithful life and serving those around them, Christians are taught to aspire to do big things for God. They all need to aspire to be the next Billy Graham or Ravi Zacharias. The "good" Christians all want to be missionaries or pastors or have a multi-million-dollar ministry of some kind.

This push to only value the famous Christians or those who do something big and important and unusual for God is part of the reason so many women want to become pastors and missionaries. If that's what a "good" Christian is, then how could God prevent women from being the best kind of Christian?

But in reality, most Christians are not called to do something big and famous for God. They're called to serve others where they are. They're called to raise a family and impact the people already around them for God. The greatest in the kingdom of God isn't necessarily the one whose name everyone knows, but rather the servant of all. That's what Jesus said.

The faithful husband who works hard to provide for his family and comes home and teaches his children about God and occasionally provides evidence for Christianity to his coworkers is doing what God wants him to do. The diligent wife who spends her days serving her family, keeping her house, and training her children in the faith is doing important things for God right in her own home.

It's not just the people "out there" who need our help. It's the people right in our own homes and communities too. I have mission field right here in my home - three little souls who need me to guide them, serve them, and raise them to know and love God and a husband who needs my support and love.

Some people are called to do more - to become pastors or missionaries or evangelists, to have an online ministry, to write books, or other things which impact a larger circle than just their family and acquaintances. But not everyone. We should all do what we can, with the priority on serving our own families first, then a larger circle as we have time and energy. Too often, the push to do bigger things results in wrong priorities and the family suffers while mom or dad spends their energy helping everyone but their own spouse and children, the very people they are most called to serve.

We aren't all called to be missionaries, teachers, pastors, or earth-shakers. But we are all called to make disciples. That can happen right where we are. In all the rush to make converts, sometimes we forget that making disciples is more than that. It takes a lot of time and effort to train someone to develop a Biblical worldview so that they are prepared to remain steadfast in the faith, serve God on their own, and impact others. Making a convert is just the first step. Some people are really good at this step and do a lot of it, but most of us are called to primarily foster the growth of these converts - to disciple them.

It takes a lot of little things to serve God, being faithful every day to share, teach, encourage, and serve others in various ways without getting much notice from the rest of the world. Whether we're raising babies or baby Christians, it takes time to mature them. There are many potential disciples and disciples-in-training right where we are. Let's not forget to serve them.

The Problem with Public Schools

Many Christians are extremely concerned about the worldviews that are being taught to children in public schools. We commonly see headlines about children being taught in schools to say a Muslim prayer, that boys and girls can be whatever gender they feel like, that humans evolved from an apelike ancestor, that sex is for people who “feel ready,” regardless of their age or marital status, and many other false and very upsetting things. These are all very serious problems in which the schools are teaching a false worldview.

But some people claim these are isolated incidents, not the kinds of things that happen in their own local public schools. Nothing like that happens in the schools where their children attend. It’s just academics and they’re very involved as parents, and it’s not a problem.

I suspect that, for many Christian parents, they’re simply not aware of the influence of wrong worldviews because they haven’t studied them and don’t think on a worldview level. A teacher doesn’t have to say “Christianity is false” in class for your children to be absorbing false ideas that will one day undermine their Christian beliefs. The teaching of false worldviews is often subtle, not blatant, but it has a cumulative effect over time as children eventually come to realize that the ideas they are being taught as fact in school (or, in many cases, that they have absorbed without thinking about) are not compatible with the Bible. We’ve seen the damage caused by this as a large percentage of children raised in Christian homes have abandoned the faith in their teen or early adult years due to doubts about the truth of Christianity. This is a widespread problem, not an isolated handful of cases.

It’s certainly true that many local public schools may lack the kinds of blatant indoctrination into false religions that have made the headlines recently, but that doesn’t mean they’re free of false worldviews altogether. If you wait until it’s so blatant that they’re teaching a Muslim prayer or telling your elementary child how to try oral sex to be concerned, you’re missing a whole lot of problematic teaching that is slipping right under your radar.

Thus, I’m extremely skeptical that even the best of local public schools is really free of faulty worldviews. Actually, I don’t believe it at all, and I challenge parents who believe this to learn more about the common false worldviews of our culture and do a careful evaluation of the ideas their children are being taught to see if they line up with scripture. Parents have to think on a worldview level if they want to catch all the false ideas.

However, even if it were the case that a particular school did not teach any false worldviews, there’s still a problem. Even IF a public school is completely and totally "neutral" on religion and worldview – the absolute best we can hope for in any public school – that's actually a very serious defect that no Christian parents should accept.

Here’s why.

Deuteronomy 6:6-9
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Ephesians 6:4
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Deuteronomy 4:10
Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

It sounds like teaching our children the ways of the Lord is to be an all day, every day thing. We are commanded – not encouraged or suggested, but commanded – to diligently teach our children the commandments of the Lord all throughout our day and wherever we go. Having our children spend the better part of their waking hours in an environment that does not teach them about God and the Bible leaves a gaping hole in their education far worse than any other.

It's simply impossible to provide the kind of Biblical training the Bible commands that we give our children if they spend 8 hours or more, 5 days a week, in a facility where teaching about Christianity is not allowed. If you wouldn't dream of sending your child to a school that doesn't teach math, how much more should you be appalled at sending your children to a school that doesn't teach them the ways of the Lord. The latter is far more important than the former because it impacts, not just their life here on earth, but their eternity.

This lack of teaching about God is a huge problem with public schools, quite apart from the false teaching they include and the peer pressure to do wicked things. Even if all the teachers were Christians in your local school, and even if they didn't teach gender theory and moral relativism and evolution and promiscuity and so on, they aren't teaching the ways of God.

Of course, as I have pointed out, public schools today are NOT religiously neutral and actually do a lot of indoctrination into false worldviews like humanism, secularism, atheism, moral relativism, hedonism, and scientism that parents may not detect unless they have studied these things. But even if your local public school contains many good Christian teachers and doesn't push false worldviews, it is still a far cry from the consistent, daily immersion in the things of God that we are commanded to provide our children. And that's why it isn’t a proper place for the children of Christian parents.

The Problem with "Values-Free" Sex-Ed

One of the common talking points of the left is that abstinence-only sexual education “doesn’t work.” This is their justification for the current sex-ed programs in public schools. But are they right? Is abstinence-only sex-ed ineffective? Should we be teaching kids more about sex? Are there problems with the current system?

If your idea of abstinence-only education is to only tell kids "don't have sex" and that's it, then that’s a poor plan. But if you follow up teaching abstinence with reasons why abstinence is good (like protecting yourself from heartbreak, disease, and unexpected pregnancy, making your future marriage more likely to succeed, reducing your chances of living in poverty, pleasing God, etc.) and strategies for refraining from sex (like not spending time alone with your boyfriend or girlfriend near a bed, seeking accountability, etc.), then abstinence education can be very effective.

For the most part, people who belittle teaching kids abstinence assume that it’s going to be the first case where you just tell them to say no. But that is (mostly) a strawman. Very few people believe we should leave sex-ed at just the instruction to avoid it until marriage. Most agree that children should be taught more and expect that reasons and strategies will be included in the discussion. So the criticism of abstinence-only education is flawed. It's really a good choice if it is done right.

If the alternative to abstinence-only education was merely teaching them about different forms of protection and contraception, but still holding up abstinence before marriage as the norm and the goal to strive for, then I wouldn't necessarily be against it.

However, the sex-ed given in most schools these days is known as "values-free" sex-ed, which means they don't place any value on morality at all, even though sexuality is inherently a moral topic. On top of that, they blatantly teach that having sex as a teen (or even a pre-teen) is completely normal and fine, and don't teach the dangers inherent in having sex outside marriage (which go far beyond STDs and pregnancy). There is no condom that will protect against a broken heart. There is no way to have sex without making an emotional connection, despite the common teaching to the contrary. There is no protective measure to prevent premarital sex from causing fallout in future relationships and marriages. So even if you're teaching kids to use a condom every time, you're not really keeping them safe.

What's more, the emphasis on how to have sex "safely" (which is a misnomer when applied to sex outside marriage) and on making it cool and normal teaches kids that if they aren't having sex, there must be something wrong with them. And thus they're getting pressure from the school system, in addition to their boyfriend or girlfriend and peers, to have sex before they are prepared for it. And even for those already inclined to have sex, telling them it's perfectly okay isn't doing them any favors. They ought to be learning to develop self-control - the kind of thing that will help them out in their future life and marriage - rather than being told to just give in to their urges.

So, no, just telling them not to have sex isn't sufficient. But "values-free" sex-ed is even worse. The kind of sex-ed that teaches children to be promiscuous, to see sex as something to be "safe" from, to see babies as a danger to avoid, and to consider unexpected pregnancies as a crisis to be fixed by killing their unborn children is not only immoral, but it's not best for our children by any measure.

An education that is lacking in a moral foundation is inherently flawed and incomplete. And anyway, how exactly can you teach about a subject like sex, that is inherently bound up with morality (in pretty much every religion, by the way), without discussing morals?

If you teach that sex should be saved for marriage, everyone realizes that such a position involves morality. But the thing is, if you teach that when to have sex is up to each individual child to decide when they feel ready for it and give no other conditions for engaging in sex, that's a moral stance too (an immoral position, to be precise). It's not neutral! That’s not values-free sex-ed. It’s sex-ed that teaches the wrong values.

So if we're going to say that public schools should take no stance on the morality of sex, it should be completely silent on the topic and give only the biological details of human reproduction in science class. Teaching kids how to put on a condom or how to perform oral sex or teaching that sex is fine whenever they feel ready for it is not keeping morals and values out of the classroom.

I should also point out that if we're going to make schools the realm of facts, as has been suggested, then it is only right to include all the facts. And the fact is that sex places children in danger of a number of things beyond STDs and pregnancy.

Children should, at the very least, be given all of the information if we're going to turn them loose with no moral guidance. They should be told about the effects of oxytocin that will emotionally bond them to their sex partners. They should be told about the heartache that comes from having sex with someone who leaves you. They should be told that having multiple sex partners makes their future relationships and marriages prone to breaking up. They should be told that they can become jaded and unable to love freely due to being hurt too many times by having sex without a marriage commitment. They should be told that having a baby before they get married greatly increases their chances of living in poverty and that contraception fails regularly. They should be told that using porn can interfere with their ability to make love to a real person. They should be told that having anonymous sex can lead to depression and suicidal thoughts.

But with all the current rage for giving kids all the facts about how to perform all kinds of sexual acts and how to take pills and wear devices to protect them from disease and pregnancy, no one is telling them about the risks involved to their emotions and relationships and mental health, much less to their eternal soul.

So what is really happening when we tell children to have sex whenever they feel like it without telling them all of the facts is that we aren't actually educating them at all. We're indoctrinating them. We're actively teaching them promiscuity with no regard for the damage we are doing. That’s what modern “values-free” sex-ed does. And it’s not okay. We can do better for our children.

Marriage and the Needs of Children for a Mother and Father

In my last blog post, I pointed out some of the reasons that government should protect traditional marriage and not redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. On that post, I received a comment stating that studies have shown that children raised in same-sex households are not negatively affected by it. However, this assertion is false.

Yes, a few studies have shown no difference between homosexual parenting and heterosexual parenting. However, several studies have found a difference (see here and here and here). Importantly, many of the smaller, non-random, or self-reported studies have shown no difference while larger, randomized, or more objective studies have shown significant differences in child outcomes with different kinds of parenting. Also, some studies which showed no difference compared homosexual parents to single mothers, not to married biological parents. The emerging picture from the studies is that the best environment for children is a home with their married biological mother and father. That's what the science says. And social scientists are beginning to stand behind these findings more and more, in spite of their unpopularity in the culture at large.

New studies about domestic partner violence are also painting a far less flattering picture of same-sex relationships than are portrayed in the media. We know already that households with lots of violence are bad for children, but now we are seeing that same-sex relationships are more prone to violence than heterosexual relationships. And because of faulty cultural beliefs about same sex relationships, many victims are suffering in silence.

Not only that, but many people raised in same-sex households are speaking up about how it negatively affected them and supporting traditional marriage as being best for children. Take a look here, here, and here, for example.

However, even without this extensive data, it is evident that same-sex parenting inherently, as part of the design, deprives a child of one or more of his biological parents. Obviously, if children are born into a male-female marriage and then divorce occurs and the custodial parent "marries" a same-sex partner, this is just one way for children to be raised in a same-sex household. In such cases it is obvious that the child is being purposely denied a biological parent.

But children conceived through sperm or egg donation are also being deprived of a relationship with a biological parent. The studies are showing that this has a marked impact on these children. Many such children have testified that they always longed to know their absent parent, that it has harmed them psychologically, and that being donor-conceived is, in many ways, worse than the death of a parent. Children who lose a parent to death have had a tragic loss. But children whose parent was paid to go away and not be a part of the child's life not only have that same tragic loss, but will always wrestle with the heart-rending question of "Why didn't they want me?"

If we, as a culture, raise same-sex relationships to the level of marriage, we are saying to these children in same-sex households that they are not deprived in any way when they objectively are. Such a position claims that children being raised without one of their biological parents is just as good as children being raised with both of their biological parents. That is patently absurd.

In fact, same-sex marriage not only does away with biological parenting as the norm, but it tells children that they don't even need a parent of each sex. At least when children are adopted by a husband and wife they have a male role model and a female role model so that they can understand the differences between men and women and learn to relate to both of them. Studies show that men and women parent differently and children need both. We have studies showing the necessity of mothers for a child's development (see here and here). We also have studies showing how vital fathers are to development (see here, here, here and here). Lacking a mother or a father objectively puts children at a disadvantage - whether that occurs through single-parenting or through same-sex parenting.

In order to claim that same-sex parenting is equal to mother-father parenting, you must claim that a mother adds nothing to a child's life that cannot be supplied by a man and that a father adds nothing to a child's life that cannot be supplied by a woman. That is simply false. It not only runs counter to everything we know about the impact of mothers and fathers on a child's development from the research, but it contradicts our own experience and intuition as well.

In addition to all these things, studies have shown that same-sex relationships are far less stable than male-female marriages. Thus, children raised in same-sex households are far more likely to experience the break-up of their family and all the upheaval and trauma that entails.

From all these studies, we can see that children need their biological mother and father living with them, in a stable relationship with each other that provides a good, non-violent environment for raising children. This is the ideal. Adoption or foster care isn't ideal and everyone knows it, but we have to do what we can for existing children who have been unavoidably separated from one or more of their natural parents. But, unlike adoption, same-sex marriage and parenting elevates what is clearly not the ideal - a child deprived of one or more biological parents - and makes it legally equal to the actual ideal of married biological parents raising their children. In doing so, it erases the cultural understanding of that real ideal and systematically and inherently deprives children of a parent on purpose - not merely due to a tragedy.

Sheltering Children: What it is Really About

People often criticize parents who are careful about what their children watch, listen to, or read or who monitor their friends and influences very carefully. This criticism is very commonly made of homeschooling parents, though it has certainly been applied to others as well. The claim is that these parents are sheltering their children too much and that they won't know how to deal with the real world when they enter it upon reaching adulthood. Some even claim that sheltered children will be more likely to go crazy with the sudden freedom than children who have grown up exposed to evil things of the world and are used to them.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about what sheltering is and what its purpose is.

There's a big difference between knowing about evil things that can happen and knowing evil by being steeped in it. It is certainly possible to shelter one's children too much so that they are ignorant of reality and have no idea how to function in society or how to address the wrong ideas of the world. But that's very rare. The greater danger is in putting children in the midst of evil before they are prepared (developmentally and spiritually) to handle it. That is by far the more common scenario and the one more likely to result in problems.

You don't send a soldier into battle until he's trained, and you don't send a child into the world until he's trained either. Children are very vulnerable and need protection until they are prepared to fight evil on their own.

The process of raising a child should involve progressive steps to get them used to the environment they will face as adults and prepare them to face its challenges. In much the same way as a lion cub raised by humans must be slowly acclimated to the wild by being protected while learning how to take care of himself, children must be protected while gradually giving them more information, more rigorous training, and more freedom. You don't turn a tame lion, who spent his entire life being fed everything by humans, loose in the wild because he isn't prepared. And you don't turn an untrained child loose in the world because he isn't prepared. Parenting done right is a gradual process of preparation that should culminate in an adult who is capable and informed enough to make his own way without falling into the many traps out there.

I don't want to keep my children from knowing that evil exists or the different forms it can take. I don't want to keep them ignorant of the wrong ideas of the world. However, I don't want them to learn about evil things by seeing them taking place around them before they have been taught how to handle it and what the right position is. I want them prepared to handle the evils of the world - not shocked by them or caught off guard, but prepared to fight them. To do that, I have to shelter them from experiencing those evils until they can understand my teaching about how to deal with them.

Sheltering isn't about preventing children from knowing so much as it is about learning first things first. They need the framework to know how to deal with these issues first, before they come in contact with them.

Four Promises for My Boys if They Tell Me They are Gay: From an Ordinary Christian Mother

Today's post is a guest post from a family friend, Martha McLean. It originally appeared on her new blog, Confessions of a Horribly Disorganized, Totally Weird, Homeschool Mom. I read it and really liked it because it is exactly how a Christian parent should respond to a child who "comes out" as a homosexual. It balances truth and love. It affirms love for the child, but doesn't condone sinful behavior. May we all learn to speak the truth in love like this.

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I read an article recently titled “If I Have Gay Children: Four Promises from a Christian Pastor/Parent.” The thoughts represented in it have stayed with me for about a week now, begging to be answered. Maybe answered isn’t the right term here. It isn’t really an answer to that blog that I need to write, but an answer to my own children on why some of my promises will be a bit different if they come home and tell me they are gay. The author of the post I mentioned claims to be a Christian parent and pastor. I do not claim to know the author’s heart, and I am not trying to belittle anything he wrote. In the end, what I think, what he thinks, or what you think, have no bearing on truth, and therefore, I do not seek to change the minds of any reader here, nor of the man who wrote the original post.

There is a matter here that I feel is important. My child, as of this moment, has not come home and told me he was gay. I have never faced this issue, and therefore, I can only promise my children what I plan to do. How I plan to react. I do understand that quite often the moment we find out what we will really do is the moment we face the realities of the situation. The following four promises are made from what I know and understand now. The rest I will only know and understand when and if I ever walk this path.

 1. I will not hide you, nor will I applaud you.

I believe living a homosexual lifestyle is a sin. (Just so you know, same sex attraction is not a sin.) My opinion on this comes from the Word of God. Whether anyone else believes the Bible or not, I do. Without apology. I believe that homosexual behavior is a sin because the Bible says it is. However, I also believe marrying a woman (all my kids are boys) who is not a Christian is a sin. Having a sexual relationship outside of marriage is a sin. Lying in order to be looked upon in a better light is a sin. Gossip is sin. Laziness is sin….and the list goes on.

If you come home with a woman who is not a Christian and announce you plan to marry her, I will not applaud your decision, nor will I hide it. It will be no different if you come home with a man.

No matter what behavior you may embrace, you are still my child. We will always be a family. You will always be welcome in my home. Those you love will be welcome in my home. I will ask that while in my home you respect my beliefs, just as I would in your home. If you come home with the girlfriend you are living with, you will not sleep together while in my home. If you come home with a boyfriend, I will ask the same. However, if I go visit you, I will not ask you to change because I am there. This is simply a matter of respect. I hope that I will have taught you to respect others in a way that this would never be a problem.

I also would expect others to respect you, and consider you part of the family. Family reunions where you are not invited, I will not attend. This is not an endorsement of your lifestyle. It is a confirmation of your permanent place in my life and my heart.

2. I will pray for you.

I will pray for you to change, but I will not pray for you to conform to my way of thinking. Instead, I will pray that God will draw you, my son, to Him. This, by the way, is the same prayer I pray for all of my children already. It is the prayer I will pray for my kids regardless of your life choices. It is the prayer I will continue to pray daily for the rest of my life. 

3. I will love you.

I would like to stop here and tell a story that has helped me understand true love. As an adult, I have heard stories of extreme love shown by parents whose daughter came home pregnant, or whose son had to enter drug rehab or other such things we would consider “bad”. On the other hand, I have also seen and heard of those who have rejected their children. For some it has been because of “tough love”, for others it was because they were simply repulsed by their child’s behavior. There is a family I know, however, that has truly shown Christ’s unconditional love in the face of what seems to be overwhelming obstacles. I will not mention their names, nor will I go into great detail about their story. I will simply say that I watched as their child was convicted of murder. I have shed tears as I see pictures of them together posted on facebook taken from a prison visiting area. I have stood and watched from afar as parents love their kid regardless of what they may have done. Through this family, I have been able to get a small glimpse into the “other side” of tragedy. The side of the silent victim—the family of the accused/guilty. Through them I have seen an honest glimpse into the love my Heavenly Father lavishes on me, a sinner no better than that son who committed a terrible crime, that daughter who gave her body away for a needle full of heroin, or any other human that goes astray. I am that woman who gossips as God weeps over my sin, yet He still loves me. I am the one that sometimes has a bad attitude when my Father simply asks me to go out of my way for a minute to help someone else. I am the child that doesn’t trust as I should. My Father doesn’t always approve of my lifestyle, but He always loves me.

I say all that to say: A parent does NOT have to agree with their child’s lifestyle to love them. They do not have to love what the child does to passionately care for their child. Just as I love you now when you lie or disobey, I will love you when you are older, regardless of what you do. 

4. I will not change my mind for you.

I think this is where people tend to have a problem. People seem to think that in order to love and accept another person, they both must agree on important things like this. Honestly, sometimes it seems that this area of homosexuality is so much more important than other areas to many people. If I disagree with you then I am simply a hateful bigot. So many times the “Judge not lest ye be judged…” line is spewed (out of context I might add) without the first thought to the fact that they have in fact judged those with whom they disagree. I want my kids to be clear on this one thing….your “coming out of the closet” will not change my love for you, nor will it change my mind about the behavior.

Romans 1 tells us that people will begin to live exactly as they are living now. It also warns that those who know the truth about these things will, “not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” This chapter speaks of homosexuality, backbiting, murder, haters of God, and many other sins. I, with the help of God, will never take pleasure in your sin. I will, however, always take pleasure in the fact that you are my son.

If you have same sex attractions, you may already or will soon struggle in this area. If you don’t have same sex attractions, there will be some other temptation that plagues you. Every one of us is born with a sin nature. The Bible clearly teaches that Adam’s original sin brought sin into the whole world. As I said above, I am quite adept at sin myself. I, like Paul, can say, “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” (Romans 7:14, 15) In other words, I do the very things that I don’t want to do. I have a struggle with my sinful nature on a daily basis. You have the same struggles. I want you to know that you can talk to me…we can pray together. I cannot promise that things will get better, that your struggle will go away, but I can promise that I will listen and not condemn (that’s not my job). I will not change my mind because I can’t. I believe the Bible is clear on this issue, but I can share with you where I struggle. I will remind you that God loves you, and I will always, always love you too.


Martha McLean is a wife, homeschool mother, interpreter for the deaf, and most of all a Christian.  She has written on and off for many years, but has just recently started a blog where she will be discussing her homeschooling successes and failures, as well as other things that are important to her.  Her goals through her writing are to encourage others and to glorify the Savior.