Learning to Swim - Upstream
Raising children who can buck the tide of culture
How do you teach a child to swim? Do you tie them up in a gunny sack and drop them into the middle of a lake? Of course not! That would be an almost sure recipe for drowning! Do you take them to a fast-moving river with a rapids and a whirlpool or two? That would be dangerous and almost surely disastrous! You teach a child to swim by starting in calm, shallow water and staying close beside them while they learn the basics of bobbing, holding their breath under water, and floating in both prone and back positions. You instruct and demonstrate. You support them with hands under them as they learn to float and with words of encouragement as they try and eventually succeed in new skills. You make sure they practice, practice, practice until the basic skills are mastered before moving to more advanced levels, especially in deep water. Only a very athletic, skilled swimmer would dare attempt strong currents - and then, probably only in pressing circumstances. Great care is, and must be, taken in teaching children to swim - otherwise, you invite tragedy.
Tragically, when it comes to culture and education, few parents realize the real dangers of throwing children into strong cultural currents and educational eddies. Little to no instruction, demonstration, support, or practice is invested in training children to swim in woke waters, pools of pornography, seas of socialistic “socialization,” or the Marxist morass! Children flounder in shallow, atheistic academics and drown in the deeps of the depravity into which they are too early thrown. As a result, among churched children from Christian homes, 80-90% of those who attend public schools fall away from the faith of their parents when they leave home (or even before that). This is an educational and cultural calamity!
Public school curricula in the United States are designed to teach children to swim against the tide of Christianity! The curriculum promotes perversion, paganism, communism, compliance, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God (II Corinthians 10:5). Even a well-intentioned Christian public teacher cannot completely counter the curriculum’s core values. And what is the likelihood that your child will have a Christian teacher each of his 13 years in the system? What can you do against such anti-God “swimming lessons” 30 plus hours a week and more than 16,000 hours in your child’s growing up years?!
The solution is do not enroll your children in the anti-God, government “swimming lesson” system! In doing so, you will be giving your children their first demonstration in bucking the current and swimming upstream! Then, instruct your children in the basics of “floating” in Faith and the Fear of the Lord, “breathing” the Scriptures, and learning the “strokes” of Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge. You instruct, demonstrate, support, and provide the needed practice until mastery is demonstrated. Then, with you at their side and a lifeline at the ready, you venture with them into the deep waters. Perhaps you are not a strong “swimmer” yourself. Never fear! Your instruction manual for swimming through life’s seas is the Bible, and the Holy Spirit is a Master Teacher!
Will you STEP OUT of the synchronized swim of socialism and prepare yourself to be a Lifeguard in the King’s Service? Throw out the lifeline of the Gospel to your own children and others. By the Grace of God, how many can we rescue?