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Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

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The Childless Cat Lady and Family Values. This is Raising Joyful Children in an Angry World. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. J. D. Vance earlier in the political season talked about childless cat ladies trying to run the country and our families. And it got huge attention in the political season. And then Taylor Swift endorsed his opponent as a childless cat lady. I mention this not to support or condemn Senator Vance, but a reminder of the ridiculousness of the political playbook and thinking somehow these people are going to help you teach your children about morals and ethics that are always being debated in this political world. In the Lord of the Rings Treebeard, he's asked about which side are you going to be on? And he says, I'm not altogether on anybody's side because nobody is altogether on my side. I think the first step in teaching kids about morality is for parents to get away from the political sides as it relates to ethics in these debates and turn your attention to what God has to say. Who is totally committed to your side. It is a challenge for the Christian parent to teach right and wrong, particularly in holding onto the gospel. So the kids don't become judgmental or legalistic or even worse rebel against it all because they don't have the power of the gospel and to do this in a society that is deeply. Deeply into personal choice when it comes to ethics or even morality and the morality of God in this society is supposedly a private matter. So I think we have to start this understanding, well, what are ethics and what are morals? And one way to think of ethics is that's what's defined by people as to what people think we ought to do according to the societal norms. And it's why we need to teach morals to our kids, the moral law of God, because society's standards of what's normal is always changing. And in our society, if you listen to most of the arguments, frankly, sadly on both sides, they're always based on pragmatic outcome. And we're going to find our standards changing because outcomes change. And this fluid ethics that is produced an abundance of confusion. About everything moral, including sexuality, and life, and rights, and liberties, and freedom. And, I think as a parent, you have to take this seriously because to not do so, you're going to find your kids getting swallowed up into this situational ethics. Self driven virtue. Moral ambiguity. And probably joining a side, a side of many who have debased and confused ideas about what is right and what is wrong. I think first principle, and we've got to kind of work our way backwards, is that right and wrong is not based on outcome, not what is based on pragmatic. It is based on what the transcendent God who made you and the world. Has stated and our principle is we do this on principle if I can use that redundancy, but you do the right thing, regardless of what you think is going to happen, you admit if you've told a lie, regardless if it means damage to your reputation or whatever consequences might come from telling the truth. The first principle is not dependent on, by the way, parents having followed this advice when they were young people. One of the reasons that I hear a lot of people don't kind of get into this is because they don't want to be a hypocrite. You know, when I was a little kid, I did this, or when I was a teenager, I did this. No, no, no, that's your pride. Don't let it stop you from communicating what you are told to do by God. You know, start with the, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And so lying is, is wrong, regardless if I lied. And it doesn't matter what I did. I don't owe an account to my kids about what I did as a child. I owe that account to my parents. That's how this hierarchy works. So first principle is, we do what's right regardless of outcome. Secondly, we are informed that what is right and what is wrong, the moral law of God, comes from God, comes from the Bible, the wisdom literature, the words of Jesus. And while we can recognize natural law, the philosophies of men in this regard, but only in the sense in which natural understanding of what is right and wrong aligns with God's word in this second principle. I would say it this way, the right things are not ours to decide. So be careful about giving your kids too many choices in which you start to think, well, as a child, I get to choose everything, including what's right and wrong. That has to be the second principle. We do the right thing regardless of outcome. Principle one, the right thing is not ours to decide. Principle two. And then thirdly, as we've often said, it's law and gospel. So the third thing you have to teach in doing this is that the human condition is not capable of being moral apart from the work of Christ via the Holy Spirit in our life. So, so, you know, turn down the things where we say, Oh, just, just say you're sorry. Amen. Slow down the, I'm sorry, and then that's the end of it. And start teaching to confess the sin that you did, asking God for the forgiveness of that sin, and then asking God to help you stop doing the sin. Third principle, we need God to do the right thing. So we do the right thing regardless of outcome. The right thing is not ours to choose and we do the right thing via grace and power of Christianity and of what the Lord has done for us. We have to teach also that We're not appeasing God in, in, in the keeping of the law, that we're making some sort of sacrifice to satisfy his wrath, that this is somehow earning our way to heaven because that too becomes a violation of the law. It becomes idolatry. Our kids need to know That sin, the breaking of God's law, results in God's wrath. That is clearly stated in the book of Romans. And that God's wrath is a fearful thing, which is why we have to trust God for forgiveness and why the gift of forgiveness and the satisfaction of God's wrath is such a blessing. You can have two kind of, uh, Camps in Christianity that'll get this confused. One is a fancy word called antinominalism. It means no law. So everything is grace. Everything's good, all good. And there's never any condemnation about the law. That's not helpful. We have to understand. What is the, you know, what is sin and what does it mean to have sinned against a holy God and what it means to be restored and forgiven. Christianity can also get into deal making where we get into the old sacrificial system. Well, I'm going to do this to satisfy God's, God's wrath, or I do this to make God happy. And again, you're, you're missing the gospel. We can't just teach moral law without bringing in the gospel. And these two mistaken approaches, what they fail to deliver, the big thing that they fail to deliver is certainty. Instead, they provide anxiety. Christianity has to be proclamational. In other words, repent, confess, and now you're forgiven. And now ask God that you don't sin going forward, even though we know we're going to have to go through this again. That's proclamation of the gospel. And when you don't get that either in the fluid, self generated virtues of the current society, Or you get it in trying to totally keep the law as a means of salvation, or you believe in a sacrificial system of the law, you're going to produce anxiety, you're not going to produce certainty and this mental health crisis that you read about if you, if you follow any of the significant papers in Western society, the London times, the New York times, the wall street journal, this is a continual problem this week. The Times reported in King's College that the number of students who were self diagnosing and reporting mental health difficulties had tripled from 2016 17 calendar year to the 22 23. Rising from 6 percent to 16%. Professors were talking about students, leaving messages. I can't come to class because I'm too anxious about it. I can't take the test because I have anxiety. And we see evidence of this anxiety throughout America in a mental health crisis that continues to try to dish out antidepressants and, and, and counseling without the power and the proclamation of law and gospel. And lastly, I want to get into is, is we've got to teach our kids what a sin is. Don't assume that your child fully understands what a lie is. Use the Bible stories to talk about lies, the commandments and the Proverbs about this. Use the wisdom literature to teach them and explain to them what a lie is, why it's wrong. how it offends God, the consequences that lying leads to, and what we must do when we lie in regards to confession, repentance, restoration, and transformation by the Holy Spirit. We have to proclaim forgiveness to our kids when they make the confession that the full grasp, the weight of sin has been removed. We got to teach the positive side also of morality. Which is to speak the truth in love, to love our neighbor, to preserve life, to live faithfully in our family, to experience the freedom that the gospel gives us, to honor our parents, to worship God, all of the positive things that we need in terms of teaching morality. It's not just a bunch of thou shall nots, but we've got to also include the thou shalls and the benefits that God gives us and the love that is in the law. I want to close because the reality of the childless cat lady, Jay Gresham Maycomb, who was a very politically active theologian he made observations that a society of people bound up living under and in the bondage of sin who do not have the gospel cannot be transformed without the saving power of the gospel. And all of our rational approaches and all of our outcomes regarding ethics and morality in the political structures are ineffective. Because the sin nature. That Luther describes in the bondage of the will that Augustine talked about in his debate with Pelagius cannot be set free merely by rational understanding. The focus of our transformational goals ought to be in our homes and our families in which we teach our children the law of God. The morality of the Creator, the reality of our condition, and the spiritual practices in which our God, in the power of the Holy Spirit, transforms us into the people who trust the promise and follow Christ. We have to certainly pray for our neighbors and come to this understanding that we should share the gospel. But our main responsibility when our kids are in our homes involves their souls and giving them the wisdom to live that is provided in the proclamation of law and gospel. This week, the highest court in the United Kingdom is going to decide the legal status of what it means to be a woman. Not a man, by the way, but a woman. Christian parents, we cannot count on societal ethics and even of the most learned in the law. For the most learned lost the law, the law of God, a long time ago. Turn your focus to the souls in your own home. Preach the law and the gospel, sin, forgiveness, and mercy. And transformation. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.