In a comment box below, Kristi asked me to clarify what I meant by the phrase “insulate them within.” The direct quote was, “Rather, we purpose to teach them to love God and to resist the things of the world by insulating them within.” I’ll try to clarify my ambiguity in a few sentences here.

There is a passage in III John 1:4 that says, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth,” and like many Christian parents, this is my greatest joy as well. The reason I have an unfussy hairdo and function on less sleep than a human should is so that my children will walk in truth. We try to live life intentionally—sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed—with the end goal of seeing our children love and obey God.

The “how” is what we quibble over. Each generation benefits from the one before, while wrestling with their compatriots about the particulars they face. Some of the issues our grandfathers didn’t take on quite like us are: the technology explosion, rampant sexuality masked as freedom, increased moral relativity, and violence as recreation.

Since there is nothing new under the sun, we have to apply ancient wisdom to our present godless culture. The debate concerning the Christians’ response to the world is usually referred to as a “fight or flight” one. Each side paints the other in hyperbole. In one corner, you have the fundamental wacko (always a homeschooler) who locks their children away from the world in order to be holy, forgetting that they locked themselves away with a bunch of sinners. In the other corner, you have the culturally sensitive Christian who becomes so like the world that he is indistinguishable from it, all in the name of saving it at the peril of his own soul.

The answer to the “flight or fight” debate is not a compromise of the two, but rather a combination of them. The Bible teaches both, not because it is contradicting itself or is postmodern, but because this is the way that God keeps us both separate and holy. God shows His glory through His people who are like Him, not like the world. And God shows His glory to the world through His people who are in it, not out of it. In this way, we are in the world, but not of it. (John 17:15-19)

Which brings me back to my comment about insulating children within. The path to holiness is not one in which the environment is hyper-controlled so that you have the easiest time being holy, but it does begin that way. We all control our children’s environment very much while they are young in order to teach them what is good and what is evil. This is external insulation.

We cannot always do this, however. Using the example I gave in the earlier post, they will eventually hear that four-letter-word somewhere. Did they first hear it in a context wherein we can talk about what God has to say about it? (Or do we freak out and ban all grocery stores in the name of “holiness”?) Are we instructing them how to work through what they encounter in this fallen world and how to process it with reference to the glory of God? This is internal insulation.

As children grow, parents rely more on the internal controls they have worked to develop in their children (self-control) and less on the external ones. Every parent does this to varying degrees. What we argue about (and still will) is how much for how long. For this, we must look to God for wisdom for our children, keeping in mind that there is no greater joy than to hear that our children walk in truth and that whatever sacrifice this requires is more than worth it.

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.
~John 17:15-19