There is a candlestick, a firecracker and a stick of dynamite on the table.
Your child (you pick the age) has a lit match in their hand. As their loving, adoring, caring parent, do you tell them that no matter which one they choose to light you will love and respect them the same, no matter which they choose? Or do you give them the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge you have gained as it was passed on to you by those who loved you enough to raise you to choose the right one?
There is a milk bottle, a whiskey bottle and an arsenic bottle on the table. Your child (you pick the age) has an empty glass in their hand. As their loving, adoring, caring parent, do you tell them that no matter which one they choose to drink you will love and respect them the same, no matter which they choose? Or do you give them the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge you have gained as it was passed on to you by those who loved you enough to raise you to choose the right one?
There is a Bible, a comic book and a pornography magazine on the table. Your child (you pick the age) has an assignment to read in their hand. As their loving, adoring, caring parent, do you tell them that no matter which one they choose to read you will love and respect them the same, no matter which they choose? Or do you give them the benefit of your wisdom and knowledge you have gained as it was passed on to you by those who loved you enough to raise you to choose the right one?
How far does this need to let them choose go before you are willing to accept the fact that YOU bear great responsibility for the choices your child makes? What choices do you NOT influence by your examples and desires? What influence do you exert with scowls and raised eyebrows and attendance to their games and plays and performances? What power does your rejection have over their attitudes? What mastery does your conceited arrogance have over their inner spirit?Do you imagine that these lives which you are responsible for are simply the unwanted inconveniences of your lustful appetites?
Examine the world in which we live. Prostitutes, sex slaves and perverts exist in every society. All the wishing in the world doesn’t change the violence children commit upon each other. Left to themselves children will naturally bow to the peer pressure demanding drugs and alcohol as measures of acceptance. Having no guidance into what is right and wrong, being driven to make life choices without wisdom of experience, seeing the truth and sanctity of a nurturing loving relationship blurred by such violence, perversion and debauchery is wickedness beyond what even Satan himself could hope for.
There is right and wrong and apathy in your heart. Your rebellious reply is to ask “Who says that is what is right?” Your self serving ego easily sees the wrong as a plan to obtain the profitable. But even in the light of all the evidence, even in light of all the consequences, even in the light of all the sorrow which your poor choices have brought you, you still don’t care what they choose. You proclaim that their freedom to choose removes your responsibility to lead, guide and direct them in the paths of righteousness. You would rather see the seeds of immorality and ungodliness driven deep into the minds of your little ones than to pull your lazy carcass of the couch and change the channel to something wholesome or even turn it off.
It is not the Satanic immoral pedophile who is rips away their innocence. It is not the gun or knife manufacturer who inflicts the deepest deadliest wounds. It is not the former preacher who has lost his faith and peddles logic and rejection of truth into their future. It is the parent who never took the time to explain candles and their purposes. It is those who failed to demonstrate the benefits of a healthy body and even those who failed to guide virtue and peace by sharing the love that is greater than any emotion we can feel. It is You. You who do not insist that there is a right which cannot be challenged. It is the way of peace. It is the path of righteousness. It is the culmination of joy. It is the way of Jesus Christ. Regardless of the pontificating and verbosity of swell headed deniers He is the answer. He is the way, the truth and the light. His way is not the easy way in a world gone wrong, it is the right way.
A lie never becomes the truth, no matter how many time you declare it to be so. You may convince every person you ever meet that it is truth, but that does not make it so. The truth never becomes invalid or a lie, no matter how many times it is declared to be so and no matter how many claim it is so. There is not a situational truth. You may have a situational preference but it does not supplant the truth. The sun is never cold. You may make it relative to some other hot thing but that does not make it cease to be hot. You can propose a thousand words of interjection and rebuttal for every one I have written here but it will not change truth one iota.
Few people want to hear they have sinned against a Holy God by breaking His laws. Few people want to hear there is a consequence to their sin called hell. Few people want to be told that they must humble themselves as a little child to avoid the rewards they have earned through their rebellion. Few people want to envision themselves standing before a Holy God to watch their children condemned to the pits of hell for the crime of following in their parents footsteps. Few children ever imagine that one day they will be judged for believing what someone who said they loved them, led them to believe.
There is a candle, a bottle of milk and a Bible. The Bible says that it is God’s word. The Bible says that God’s word is a lamp unto your feet and a Light unto your path. The Bible says that you should desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow there by. Those who would choose the firecracker, the alcohol and the comic book would probably never be seen as a great menace to society or other people in general. Yet their distractions, their refusal to choose the best gifts, their insistence that they will be okay in the end is a deception born in the pits of the evil one who declared the fruit would make them as gods. The choosers of dynamite, arsenic and pornography would be the deepest scarred, most seriously damaged, most devastatingly blinded to the truth which was before them all the time.
Yet there is one more choice. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The last choice, the last opportunity to choose love and truth and right, is in accepting that God could not accept your sin but was willing to pay the price of your redemption. You should die for breaking God’s law. It is YOU who deserves eternity in Hell. BUT (and this is the biggest and best exception in the whole universe) He would rather suffer the agony of a death on a cross at the hands of the cruelest people of His own creation than to allow you to be separated from His love in heaven. You need only to ask forgiveness, to ask Him to be your God, your Lord, to agree to turn from your wickedness and follow His right ways. If you will choose Him now then He will show you how to help your children to choose Him too.