Do I Have To Teach My Kids About God?
In today’s day and age, even if we are believers we may take the idea of passing on our faith to our children casually. Can we “make” our kids get “saved”? No, that is the job of the Holy Spirit. It is one thing if you have done your best with your child(ren) and they have still rejected God; if so this is not written to badger you. But please, do NOT take a casual approach to the passing on of the faith. The generational link between you and your kids is key! Don’t believe me?
How many generations from creation did the first murder occur? One.
And once destruction came upon the whole of the ancient world as a flood, how many generations were there from Noah to Nimrod, whose Kingdom was Babel, who, as Josephus writes, incited the people against God for destroying their forefathers, who lead to the building of the Tower of Babel until God scattered them because of their pride? Let’s see… Noah, Ham, Cush, Nimrod. Three generations after Noah.
Hopefully you are living a life that makes your children want what you have, but our responsibility goes beyond that. Even when God was pondering whether or not He should reveal His judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham, He considered this generational link, because it was up to Abraham not only to live rightly, but as God says “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” (Gen. 18:19).
It is quite telling that God considered this before revealing His plans of judgment. Why? Because Abraham knows he is charged with keeping this covenant with God – which includes the generations after him (Gen. 17:9). So by choosing to reveal the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is God’s way of showing Abraham, in great and terrible detail, what ultimately happens when the way of God is lost between the generations.
