So, on the
weekend I preached a message about
the blessing of children, in which I spend a significant amount of time
establishing that school is antichildren. This is part of what I said,
“We Live in an Antichrist culture (Matt. 19:13-15) – You might think
that this is a strange title for a point about why our culture hates children
so much, but it really isn’t, because our passage for today says this, “13 Then children were brought to him that he might
lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, 14 but Jesus
said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such
belongs the kingdom of heaven.” 15 And he laid his hands on them and went
away.” Jesus Christ honoured children in a way that few others have in
history, probably like no other. We even see with his disciples that they
disdained children because they tried to keep them away. But Jesus had already shown
back in chapter 18 that we should regard children highly, “1 At that time
the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven?” 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and
said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will
never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 “Whoever receives one such child in my
name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in
me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around
his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” We are going
to come back to these passages soon, but it is vital to start here because it
is important to show that when we say that we live in an anti-child culture
that is the same as saying we live in an antichrist culture, and it is vital
that we understand that. If you have disdain for children you are in opposition
to Jesus, it is that simple. And this is common. So why is our culture so
antichildren? Well, I think there are many reasons.
Hyper-individualism – we live in a hyper-individualistic, consumeristic
culture. We want to have experiences. Some people really want to travel
overseas and see the world. Kids make that harder, much harder, even if you
have money it limits what you can do right? Some people just want to van it up
and travel the country in their twenties and get their experiences in before
they are bogged down with a job, family and kids. Some people just want to
experience non-stop socialite culture or be perpetual adolescents…
…Education –
More specifically the way we do education. Our schooling system, structure,
philosophy, and emphasis is antichildren. Kids are put into the system earlier
and earlier, and they are trained from almost day dot to answer this question:
what do you want to do when you grow up? They are forged into worker drones and
often lack basic life skills as a result. In high-school young boys and girls
are at their most susceptible position in their lives when they are filled with
all kinds of identity and value issues, and at this vulnerable age they are constantly
asked by their guidance counsellor, or career advisor, or teachers, their
parents, their youth pastors, their friends, their parents friends, every
single person they meet: what do they want to do?
Socialists
and communists worked out a long time ago that the longer you keep women in the
education system the less children they are likely to have. Did you know that? And
as many women find out, the longer you delay having kids the harder it becomes.
Once they start looking around to find someone, they find it is not as easy to
find someone to have them with as they thought, and their body is not as
willing as it would have been if they had begun when they were younger.
This
leaves many women bitter.
You
don’t even have to really tell these young women not to have kids, they are
trained to suppress all motherly instincts by the system, and the boys are not
being trained to be fathers either. Most parents just expect the schools to
teach their kids everything they need to learn. Most schools just assume
parents are teaching them the things they are not. Kids miss out in the middle
of being shown how to be fathers and mothers, in fact, they are actively
steered away from planning for it.
What
impact do you think this has on their psyches as they develop? It causes a
delay in development into adulthood. Instead of seeing 18 as adulthood, as it
once was, or even 21. Now, it is just the legal age where you can act like a cashed-up
kid who can drink alcohol and get a credit card. Our western way of raising
kids is delaying their development.
Many
parents reinforce this by treating their adult children, over the age of 18,
like kids still. I see this even in very conservative Christian based families.
They don’t realize how much they are a product of this same cultural trend.
Young
men and women come through this system and family and children are as about as
far from their mind as they can get. It takes many of them years to re-adjust.
What
do you expect from a system that is designed to raise worker drones, not turn
youths into men and women?
Rather
we should be asking our boys from a young age how are they going to provide for
a wife and children, and we should be asking our girls women how many children
do they want?”
This was part
of my sermon where I sought to push back at our culture which seeks to delay
parenthood until women’s fertility is basically starting to wind down. I think
all of these points are becoming more self-evident to many conservatives and
others on the right in the West today.
But I was
pleasantly surprised to see that people of much more influence are seeking to
address this, as I read this on RT just today,
“A
senior Russian demographer has proposed cutting the number of years children
must attend school in order to promote earlier parenthood and reverse a
national trend towards lower fertility, TASS reports.
Sergey
Rybalchenko, head of the Public Chamber’s Demography Commission, has argued
that bold steps are necessary to prevent Russia’s population from shrinking.
In
recent years, the country has seen negative natural population growth, falling
from 149 million in 1993 to 146 million in 2025 despite an influx of immigrants
and the unification of the country with Crimea in 2014 and four former
Ukrainian regions in 2022.
The
country’s population is poised to decrease to 138.8 million people in 2046,
according to the base-case scenario developed by the federal statistics agency
Rosstat.
“A
shorter education period would enable young people to reach adulthood and plan
to have children for two years earlier,” Rybalchenko told TASS, explaining the
initiative.
Getting
married and having children at a higher age is linked to a longer period of
social maturation, the demographer pointed out. Young people only start to
think about children by the age of 27, as they spend 17 years getting an
education and dedicate an additional three years to social adaptation after
finishing university, he explained.”[1]
As Vox, who
also addressed this, noted on his blog the first countries to actively engage
policies that incentivize young men and women getting married and having children will turn their demographics around earlier. Immigration is both a foolish and
a pointless way to address this issue, as after a generation or two the descendants
of immigrants have less kids as well, plus it has all sorts of other social
effects.
How many
women do you know who have a law degree, a teaching degree, a doctors degree, a
nursing qualification, or some other technical qualification of varying degrees
who spent much of their 20’s studying and working but are now not in the workforce
at all, or are at best in the workforce part-time because they have one or two,
maybe three kids? This is a common trend in the West. In fact, I read research
the other day that noted that more professional women are choosing to have children
later in life. This means that much of that money which is dedicated towards helping
these women get advanced degrees then comes to no use or not much use in those
professions anyway.
We’d be much
better off encouraging young women to marry earlier and have children earlier.
Once their kids are older maybe they will have time to study, maybe they will
simply help their kids with the grandkids, but plenty of mature people get
degrees every year. It is much harder for mature people to have children, and
our society is much worse off because of it.
But note
something. It was a Russian demographer that was discussing this. Many
westerners think that Russia is still the home of Communism. But Communism was
never a Russian ideology, and never was good for the Russian people. It was an
ideology that nearly ruined Russia and enslaved it for several generations. But
they have broken out of it. We now in the West are more in line with Communist
thinking than modern Russia is. Communists wanted every man, woman and child to
be a worker drone, and the West is now working towards that. Let that sink in.
I find it
encouraging to see how many people are realizing that we in the West and also
in other parts of the developed world, have taken wrong turns and are coming to
similar conclusions about how to turn it around.
List of
References
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