Should Kids Join Protest

Kids as young as middle school being encouraged to walk out of school is a joy wrecking activity. This week we cover what Isaiah says about justice and conspiracy. 

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Ethan 0:02

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

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This is raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. Well, when I named this podcast Raising Joyful Children in an angry World, I never envisioned the level of anger that America would reach. But right after the Super Bowl a couple weeks ago, something happened in America that, as far as I know, is the first time ever. Well, we've had plenty of arguments over halftime entertainment and political policy and taxes and religion and sports. But the week following the Super Bowl, children in middle school and high school were encouraged by certain teachers and administrators to walk out of school and protest. Now, while these protests weren't in every district, they were in major cities, Chicago, Fort Worth, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Philadelphia. Yes, protest on college campuses has happened, but middle school schools that are obligated to enforce truancy laws were encouraging students to break those laws by believing it would change. What was a political view of what is injustice? Well, I hate alarmism or trying to blow things out of proportion. But man, this was some serious propaganda being delivered by people entrusted with the hearts and minds of kids. Put together on this, and I don't wanna make this a show about it, but we had record applications for school vouchers in school choice states. And if you. Live up north, not Texas or Florida, where people keep moving to. But you go into the Midwest or you go into some northeastern cities and the declining birth rate in America, and you start to see how many schools have been closed over the last 30 years, that's less teacher jobs, and all of a sudden we're not gonna have millions of immigrants coming. Well, that's more teacher jobs. Now what I want to go into though is really more about your kids and how they need to understand what is justice from the Bible standpoint and be able to recognize conspiracies. These are best laid out. I believe in the prophet Isaiah in the book of Isaiah in chapter five. God describes this beautiful vineyard. It was built at the choice location, the best vines. Watered perfectly. Whole walls build around it so no wild bees can get in, and yet it produces sour grapes, the same kind that grow in the wild. And it, it is really painting a picture of people that have been blessed and yet committing injustice. The story. And in terms of justice, it starts by looking in the mirror, looking at your actions. Our kids should be asking themselves if they're talking about justice. Are you treating people justly? Are you using your blessings to advance the kingdom? See, people like Karl Marx, modern communism, liberation theology, it's all over these kind of nations that have dictators. They start by judging other people, usually people that you don't know. And it's all based on what other people have said and it's, it's just well organized gossip. And young people fail to critically evaluate the information, and they're vulnerable to this because the youthful desire to fit in, oh, you just become complicit and next thing you know you're spreading the same misinformation. So we have to understand that justice means according to the Bible. Well, it talks about in chapter one, helping rescue the fatherless and the widow. So for most of us, that would be visiting widows in a nursing home or retirement community or at our church or taking them out for a lunch or something, or giving money to a food bank or to an orphanage. Those would be actually constructive things that we would do, and those would be things that God would call us to in regards to justice and mercy. In chapter eight, Isaiah warns us, it's a really, really interesting text. God says, do not call conspiracy with these people. Call conspiracy. See what's happened is people rejected God and they, start living in, in all these things that are outside the scripture. So they're consulting with the dead. They have seances. They justify lawlessness because there's these secret conspiracies of people who have plans to destroy them, when in fact the things that are happening to them are God's judgment to try to bring them back to their senses and their calling. His consequences for their sin conspiracy. Why? Because it's our sinful flesh. We, we refuse to believe we're the person that's in the wrong. It's easier to believe the conspiracy and blame someone else, and this is my concern, that kids are being recruited into the idea you can break the law to establish justice. Man, you gotta start with helping your kids examine issues in society that are complicated, not listening to people who direct the eyes of justice away from yourself, and how you treat other people and what you're doing with your time and money and talent to judging mostly strangers, people that you do not know, situations that you aren't aware of, or have all the facts. Now you're not on the jury in some of these places. You haven't read all it's not available to you. And yet we're living in days when people eat conspiracy theories like candy. And the younger you are, the more vulnerable you are to these theories. In the days when kids should be learning and discovering their talent, the joys of their faith, they should be drinking in wisdom. Discovering what's love and how to be part of the kingdom. The enemy, which is behind all of this stuff, back in Isaiah's days and hours, is trying to pour anger into the heads of your kids. And if you don't have spiritual armor or the helmet of salvation, you lack biblical wisdom. You've not learned to strengthen your faith that God has given you. You get snared into these terrible consequences of conspiracy. At best, you lose your joy, the joy of your youth, and at worst, you're arrested or injured in the chaos that these things, cause I don't wanna make this a public private school discussion, but I, I gotta tell you parents, you need to be alert to who's pouring this stuff in the hearts and minds of kids. I've been spending a couple of weeks in Florida. I meet a lot of retirees. I'm telling you, it doesn't go away. You're always in high school. I hear people repeating the same sorts of unverifiable stories of political conspiracies all the time. We need our kids to understand what the Bible says about justice, what the Bible says about conspiracy. And to become wise in God's word.

Paul 7:46

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.

Paul (2) 7:58

Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven