To Whom Do Our Children Belong? (4)

Today we are pleased to share the fourth instalment of an important work from Geoff Thomas, “To Whom Do Our Children Belong?” The first three are available here and here and here.

Geoff was the pastor at Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, Wales, for fifty years. He is retired, and the author of many books and articles, having been a frequent speaker at conferences throughout the world. He still preaches at the Chapel he attends in London, as well as travelling extensively to speak in different churches.

In the previous instalment, it was established that Our children do not belong to the Church.

To Whom Do Our Children Belong?

Our children do not belong to their parents.

In the world at the time of Christ and his apostles parents took it for granted that they had life or death authority over their children. If the newborn baby was unwanted – maybe it was another girl – then they could ‘expose’ her, that is, leave her outside in the night for the scavenging animals to devour. That similar mentality is present in many places in the world today. For example, India has one of the worst gender ratios in the world, with fewer females to males, which is due to  decades of female infanticide. The relation of this statistic to India’s incidents of rape is no coincidence. In India men are regarded as the more important and productive gender and this attitude is thoughtlessly promoted by all Indian institutions.  For example, any form such as bank accounts, driving licences, school admissions, etc. require the father’s details only, not information from both parents.

But children, though they are with you and come from you, yet they do not belong to you, their parents. Commonly, any attempt to tell people how they should behave is damned as ‘theoretical imperialism’.  A personal lifestyle choice is the only acceptable doctrine.  So a woman may claim that hers is the right to decide whether she will have a child or not. Maybe she will choose to have a child by artificial insemination.  In England in May 1993 a single mother was treated with a fertility drug and she gave birth to sextuplets.  Pregnancy was her choice and the risk of multi-birth was surely made known to her.  Wasn’t this decision of hers, supported by Caesar, also ‘reckless amorality’?  That is the judgment of Melanie Phillips.  She wrote, “No fewer than 37 hard-pressed health service employees – three obstetricians, two paediatric consultants, three anaesthetists, four paediatrics registrars, five senior midwives, five senior house officers, two pharmacists, a radiologist and twelve nurses – shared general jubilation for the brilliant masterstroke of creating a single parent family of seven.” We guess that the same woman would have been applauded by most of the identical 37 people if having learned of a multiple pregnancy she had chosen to have the six children killed. Didn’t they belong to her? No, they did not.

Multitudes of children are deliberately raised without being given any knowledge of God. In the New York Times, January 25, 2019, a woman named Julia Scheeres wrote an article headed “I Raised my Children Without Any Religion” and in it wrote, “We were standing in line for meat pies at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. The indoor arena south of San Francisco had been transformed into Victorian London; actors wearing top hats and crinolines roamed about wishing fairgoers “Happy Christmas.” As we contemplated the menu — haggis or shepherd’s pie? — a noisy band of temperance advocates marched by hoisting signs that stated, “Gin is Sin!”  As my 9-year-old daughter watched them pass, her forehead knitted, and then she looked up at me with solemn hazel eyes. ‘Mama, what is sin?’ she asked. The merriment of the fair receded and I stared at her, my brain spinning with the magnitude of her question. By failing to teach my child the meaning of the word sin, had I somehow failed to give her a moral foundation? I realized that my kids already knew what sin was, without ever having been exposed to the onerous religious weight of the word. Despite being unchurched, they are empathetic, loving and kind. And even more: they are fearless. I gazed into Davia’s upturned face and felt a rush of love and happiness. I had raised her without sin. Here was a kid who’d recently joked that the Christmas standard ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ should be changed to ‘I’m Dreaming of a Diverse Christmas.’”

The concept of family has changed from a divinely given institution to a private choice.  The values of personal choice and individual autonomy have been elevated, decoupling them from any tried and tested historic consensus around what is good and right about family life.  Today it has become more important to promote the right of the person to choose (and choose again) their close relationships for their self-fulfilment. That has become more important than to affirm what since biblical times has encouraged the family structure that has brought long-term flourishing,  especially for children.

Because of an earlier grace in the land many parents who did not go to church nevertheless would send their children to Sunday School. Today that is rare. Most parents believe that it is wrong to impose your beliefs on your children. But are they not imposing on their children their own utter indifference to the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ? We know that the heavens declare to every child the glory of God so that he or she knows about God. Also we know that each one of them possesses a conscience that is God’s great monitor that commends them when they do what is pleasing to him, and rebukes them when they do what is wrong. Let parents listen to their conscience and hear the heavenly voice that speaks both day and night saying that God is great and glorious.

Children do not belong to their parents, and today even the right to administer loving corporal discipline is being removed from parents.  No teacher has the right to hit one of his pupils. My father was suddenly hit when he was a 9 year old boy sitting in a painting class head down concentrating on a piece of paper by a teacher who misunderstood what Dad was attempting to paint. As a result my father ever after was very deaf in one ear. We are the very opposite of being advocates for hitting children; we hate the very thought of it, but we do oppose any legislation that would criminalise parents for giving a smack on the bottom to a defiant and cruel child. In Scotland and in Wales this has happened, and now the public are advised to call the police if they see a parent smacking their child. Report a crime in progress in Edinburgh! In a year or two the impact of this ban will be seen in broken families, loving parents turned onto criminals and even more overburdened police officers and social workers. Then we will know that it is Caesar to whom we apportion the blame

Loving parents who tap a child in correction do not deserve to be tracked down and arrested. That is not hitting children. That kind of mild discipline – that would never be escalated to an investigation under the present law – but such an act has become criminalized in Scotland in November 2020, and Wales is going the same way. Some parents will face prosecution whilst others will face an official warning.  The impact of a police warning is enormous.

The police once said that the law was not about criminalizing parents, but now they are saying that Caesar is sending a message that is saying smacking is a “crime in progress.”  So good parents are being turned into criminals.  You cannot change the criminal law and expect it not to have consequences in the real world.

But our children do not belong to their parents.