CHILDREN'S CRUSADE, PART II

 

 

 

By Paul deParrie
September 29, 2004
NewsWithViews.com

The year 1212 was not a good one for Christendom. It was in this year when the infamous Children�s Crusade began. It was a time when Christendom believed it was their duty to reclaim the �Holy Land� by whatever means necessary. A number of crusades had preceded it, others followed. When the full truth of its results came out, it was horrifying. The German version of the Children�s Crusade fared somewhat better than the French. Both suffered high casualties along the way � about a third of their tens of thousands. The French children were betrayed by certain merchants in Marseilles who had offered seven ships to take them to Palestine and had craftily arranged to sell them all into slavery to the Saracens. This last was only learned 18 years after they set sail. The Germans� crusade broke up at Rome after the pope told them to go home, but many were the losses on the return trip as well.

Reading about it, we all wag our heads and see the innate folly of sending children to do the work of mature adults. We wonder how any parent could be excited � as many were � to see their sons and daughters off, alone and unprotected, to such a venture. We wonder � and turn around and do the very same thing with more lasting consequences.

I refer here to Christians who send their children to public schools. I�m not going to claim that I was always up to speed on this issue. I had never even heard of home schooling until my oldest had just entered high school. However, my experience with switching over taught me a lot.

Generally, when I spoke to other believers about home schooling (or even Christian private school) the defenses went up immediately. The most common response was, �Well, my child can be a witness at their school. If we abandon the schools to the non-believers, there will be no witness there.�

This response, or its near equivalent, was recited to me by people whose children were (or had been) in public school kindergarten. On top of that, many of these parents were people who had difficulty defending their own faith, so it was highly unlikely that they had trained their little ones to make a solid defense of the faith among their peers and teachers.

Imagine the world these little tykes are being placed into: Adult teachers who are often consciously trying to undermine faith � especially that of evangelical Christians, �friends� and classmates who have no discernable religious upbringing who would treat your child as a social outcast, books and study materials designed to promote a godless universe and naturalistic science.

Thrust a five-year-old (or six or seven) into that raging torrent with only the life vest of your average, insipid Sunday School lessons, and what do you think will be the outcome?

A recent article in The Oregonian revealed that Christians in the U.S. are out-reproducing their non-religious neighbors � and even those of other religions. One of the subtle alarms raised in the article was that Christians might be in line to hold the power of influence in the future in government, industry, the arts, and other realms.

The fear would be plausible except for the fact that these same Christians are handing over their children to the pagans for their education for 13 to 17 years. (Yes, yes, I know there are Christian teachers in the System, but they are mostly muzzled and are not numerous enough to counter all the Leftist �change agents� out there.)

Most of our children, after being drummed with that thoroughgoing hostility toward God wind up being pagans themselves. I�ve seen it.

�Missionary schooling� is like �missionary dating.� It doesn�t work.

Sending your child into shark-infested schools and allowing them to bleed there (make insipid little Sunday School comments) is an invitation to disaster. It is the modern version of the Children�s Crusade. In fact, a second Children�s Crusade like that of 1212 would be preferable. At least the children in 1212 were only enslaved or died physically. Here, their eternal souls are at risk.

Home schooling is hard and requires sacrifice. Maybe you rent a smaller house and you double up your children on bunk beds. Maybe you don�t own a boat or go on vacations. Maybe you don�t have time for Mom to work outside the home. Maybe you don�t eat roast, but settle for meatloaf. Maybe you don�t even get meatloaf, except on Thanksgiving. What is your child worth?

Stay at home, Mom. Work another job if need be, Dad. Keep those kids at home (or, as a last resort, Christian private school -- beware though, some "Christian schools" are not much better than the public schools) until they are at least old enough to be solid, hard-core defenders of the faith. That point may come at 12 for one and 15 for another, but you will know it because you will know your child through something more comprehensive than a pagan teacher�s report card.

This means that, if you ever would consider sending them to a government school at all, that you would actively and strongly prepare them for the evil they will encounter there. They must have more than one-liners to defend their position. They must be pretty much �stand alone� type believer before they go.

I applaud the fact that we are out-reproducing the pagans � and I wish it were by greater numbers � but let�s not just bear children as fodder for Hell.

Let�s end the Children�s Crusade, Part II.

� 2004 Paul deParrie - All Rights Reserved

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