Fearless Parenting

How to Raise Faithful Kids in a Secular Culture

George Barna, Jimmy Myers

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780801000645
• eBook ISBN: 9781493409204
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Conscientious parents who long to bring their children up as good Christians and good citizens face an uphill battle. In a culture of rampant narcissism and moral anarchy, righteous living isn't easy and it isn't popular. But positive cultural transformation happens quietly, one life at a time, and that is good news for parents.

In this hopeful book, world-renowned researcher George Barna and nationally respected counselor Jimmy Myers offer parents a plan of action to raise healthy, godly children in a morally bankrupt culture. If the parents of this generation want to see their children grow up with their faith and consciences intact, they cannot afford to simply react, making it up as they go along. They must approach their responsibilities to parent their children with intentionality and consistency. This eye-opening book helps them do just that.

1
The Need for Fearless Parents

For a decade and a half, my wife and I had at least one adolescent in the house. During one challenging seven-year stretch, we had three adolescent girls under our roof at the same time. Both adults and all three girls survived, although there were moments when the ultimate outcome was in question. In the midst of our parenting struggles, my wife and I learned a lot—about our children, each other, our faith, American culture, the church, and even the impact of our own upbringing.

Looking back on our experiences, and having analyzed dozens of national surveys that either I or other research firms have conducted during the past decade, it is easier to put it all in perspective now that my seemingly daily child-rearing crises are history.

The first decade and a half of the new millennium was not an easy time to raise godly children. Ever fewer parents took pride in their commitment to raising their children to be good citizens, godly people, and productive members of society. Instead, most parents simply tried to shield themselves from the blistering attacks they received from those who were intent on reshaping society’s view of family, marriage, human development, identity, truth, and humanity.

Year after year, parents have been assaulted with an unrelenting barrage of insulting images and depictions of parents. That assault has been buttressed by a parallel stream of attacks on the traditional family launched by the liberal media, progressive politicians, and university faculty. Meanwhile, the rise of postmodernism—a self-centered, emotion- and experience-driven worldview that minimizes the role of God and denies the existence of moral absolutes—gave philosophical ballast to a hypersensitive, politically correct culture that cautioned parents against disciplining their children or exposing them to traditional ways of thinking. Adding to the chaos, the advertising industry aggressively used children as sexual objects to sell products and ideology, seemingly focused on destroying the remaining morsels of youthful innocence that MTV and the ACLU had not shredded in the previous decade.

Parents who sought to inculcate fundamental Judeo-Christian principles in the minds and hearts of their youngsters were ridiculed as backward, outdated, ignorant individuals guilty of passing on myths and fantasies that had been soundly discredited years ago. If said parents attempted to introduce traditional values and morals to their children, the guardians of progressive thinking attacked with a vengeance. The culture wars of the late twentieth century expanded to include an all-out battle for the souls of America’s children.

Because of the direction our nation is headed, the pace of cultural change, and the significance of the transformations now in progress, the impact of parenting may be greater than ever. You would be hard-pressed to find a sociologist or family counselor who believes parenting will get easier in the coming years. In the “good old days,” a husband and wife were excited to welcome a baby into the world and looked forward to sharing experiences and joys as their little one marched toward adulthood. Recent surveys, however, indicate that most young adults today are neither excited about having children nor confident in their own ability to prepare such children for the hardships the world will hurl their way. The declining childbearing rate in America, which has now reached the point at which women are not having enough children for the population to continue to grow, is one tangible reminder of how daunting it is to stare parenthood in the face these days.

Yet Americans often perform best under such pressure, rising to the challenge and producing amazing results. If you are a parent, or will soon be one, then we hope you will embrace the opportunity to add value and hope to American society by raising your children to be the embodiment of goodness and greatness. You have the capacity to do an outstanding job at this task; all that’s in question is whether you will accept the challenge and invest yourself in the process until the task has been accomplished.

To give you some context, let me describe what life in America is possibly going to be like in 2030 unless you and millions of your peers step up and embrace that challenge. The year 2030 is little more than a decade from now, a time when most of the young children alive now will be in their teens or twenties and therefore largely imprinted with the substance of who they will be for life. Although what you are about to read is just one plausible portrait of America in the near future, this is a reasonable depiction of what we will likely face unless there are dramatic shifts in the trajectory of our culture between now and then—shifts that are likely only if today’s parents accept the job of raising their children as their greatest gift to the world and perhaps their most significant service to God.

Maybe you’re a bit hesitant to consider the future. We do, after all, live in a society that treasures “living in the moment.” You may be thinking, 2030? That’s more than a decade from now. I’m struggling to get through today, this week, this month. I cannot devote myself to thinking about what the world may be like that far down the road. Who cares about 2030?

You should care, and here’s why:

• If you have a child born anytime between 2007 and 2012, then 2030 is when they will likely be preparing to leave the nest and enter the “real world” of full-time employment, college, or some other form of independence.
• If you have children born between 2013 and 2022, they will be in their adolescent stage.
• If you give birth to any youngsters between 2023 and 2030, then those young people will be in their early, highly formative years before third grade.

What you do today, next month, a year from now, and even five years from now will imprint critical ideas, values, beliefs, and behaviors on your children that will dramatically influence who they become and how they live for the rest of their lives. Parents, teachers, relatives, pastors, community leaders, and other people who know and regularly interact with your children have an impact on them. But nobody has greater potential to transform the lives of your children than you do. You must exploit this opportunity; if you do not, others will fill that vacuum. To best take advantage of your God-given opportunity to intentionally and purposefully affect your children, it is imperative that you understand the times and know how to respond while your response can have maximum impact.

Keep in mind that the America I am about to describe is likely but not inevitable. If you read the description of what’s coming and don’t like it, the best way to avoid such conditions is to initiate the change—right now! To avoid living in such a society will require us to consistently and intentionally make substantial changes regarding how our three key institutions—family, church, and government—coexist. If you are a parent, in particular, you have a significant opportunity to alter the future through the way you raise your kids. As a follower of Jesus Christ, how you integrate your faith into your influence on the lives of your children will probably be your most important and enduring legacy. Make it count!

The Picture of America in 2030

I was raised in America when it was known as the land of plenty and a nation of hope and opportunity. Given its current course of development, however, that depiction of America will be merely a historical footnote to coming generations of young Americans.

In 2030, the United States will likely be wrestling with shortages of potable water and certain types of food. These deficiencies will not cripple the country, but they will upset the ability of certain regions to have consistent access to all basic resources. Shortages always affect the cost of living too.

Crime rates have risen significantly in recent years and are poised to continue to increase. Combating that rise will be difficult because the increases in theft, assault, rape, embezzlement, and substance abuse will be facilitated by a variety of social changes. Among those precipitating conditions are the revised moral code, increased illegal immigration, law enforcement challenges, and an overburdened and inefficient judicial system.

While millions of children will be born each year, a growing focus will be directed toward the tidal wave of senior citizens living in America. As Baby Boomers pass the traditional age of retirement and live longer due to improvements in nutrition and medical care, a greater share of the country’s limited resources will be allocated to the needs of the elderly—often at the expense of the unique needs of twenty-first-century children.

The environment for raising children in the future will also be notably different from today’s. Terrorism became a tangible reality for Americans in 2001 and has escalated over time. However, new forms of cyberterrorism will arise, and both chemical and biological terrorism are expected to become more common. Since 2008, our country’s military preparedness has been drastically diminished while government funding was reallocated to social programming. The continuation of that philosophy will substantially reduce the military’s capacity to effectively protect the American population, leaving the nation at risk and raising public anxiety. Meanwhile, the number of serious conflicts around the world will grow substantially, but the United States will be incapable of responding to them all. The world will be a more dangerous and unpredictable place in 2030. That will, of course, take a toll on the psyche of our children.

A major reason for the lack of greater investment in domestic and global strength—i.e., local police and military—will be the staggering national debt (which reached $20 trillion by the end of 2016), as well as the mind-boggling costs associated with repairing our nation’s decrepit infrastructure.1 Over the past quarter century, America has allowed its infrastructure to crumble, making only the “absolutely necessary” patches to get by. With government budgets already strained past the point of sanity, the nation’s infrastructure will be in a state of emergency by 2030 unless our governance and funding priorities radically change. Watchdog groups will ruefully decry our ragged roads, thousands of unsafe bridges and tunnels, a power grid incapable of handling the daily demand, leaking waterways and insufficient dams and water walls, and widespread congestion that will snarl traffic and impair the environment. Politicians will routinely run from the cost of making the necessary repairs, which would be hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.

Emotional Instability

If you’re wondering what any of this has to do with raising children, apart from the direct impact on their quality of life, consider the effects such an environment will have on their minds and emotions.

For instance, my generation (Baby Boomers) grew up intoxicated with the American Dream: work hard, exploit opportunities, get ahead, and enjoy a comfortable and secure lifestyle. We knew enough to relish America’s freedoms and to understand they required us to serve the country as needed. The dream incorporated a belief in and a relationship with God, maintaining a satisfying marriage while raising our 2.5 children to maximize their potential, and pursuing a functional family experience for both present enjoyment and our children’s well-being. We trusted their future would be even more outstanding than our own—that was part of our gift to them and had become an unspoken expectation from generation to generation.

The world in 2030 will instead feature the New Millennium Dream. We are already seeing this new dream get a firm grip on America; by 2030, it will have been in place for more than a decade. In this view of reality, the goal of life is to work enough to get by, unless your job is synonymous with your identity (in which case you will work constantly but enjoy it). The New Millennium Dream will include a belief in some spiritual being, but a view that all truth and wisdom come from within, not from that external force. Family will be considered solely a source of enjoyment, so choosing relationships like marriage will be uncommon because such a permanent commitment brings limitations and hardships after the initial period of happiness. A lynchpin of this version of the dream is that we get benefits without responsibilities: we are “entitled” to freedom, security, opportunities, and happiness by virtue of our citizenship. That energetic pursuit of everything we want includes a new moral code that essentially allows for anything—sexually, financially, relationally, ethically, spiritually—that delivers pleasure or satisfaction without regard to the long-term ramifications. Having multiple options to choose from will be expected, and being able to take advantage of a wide range of gratifying experiences will be crucial to our sense of wholeness and fairness.

The social conditions described earlier, experienced through the filter of the New Millennium Dream, mean that one way we will protect ourselves is by maintaining minimal confidence and trust in people and institutions. Sociologists will note the typical relational pattern to emerge: we start with a handful of close friendships that inevitably dissolve when a friend no longer meets our needs. Being the victim of such dismissal by others will push us to develop a thicker skin and lower our expectations of people, and lead us to make fewer commitments to others. The ultimate outcome is that we will become self-serving exploiters, viewing other people as a means to our personal ends.

The New Moral Code

Without the Bible or a dominant religious ideology to serve as the source of absolute truth, Americans will refine the current practice of basing their moral and ethical decisions on feelings. Personal experiences rather than convictions or principles will greatly influence our choices. We will esteem compromise for pragmatic reasons rather than consistent adherence to core values and beliefs.

The moral context in which our children are raised will continue to move them further from biblical principles. One of the most disturbing of the social trends they will experience is the dismissal of marriage as a sacred or necessary part of life. Cohabitation will be the norm, emerging as the new millennium substitute for traditional marriage. In fact, current data indicates that a traditional marriage (i.e., a man and a woman exchanging vows to stay united for life) will be experienced by fewer than one out of every three adults under the age of forty. Getting married in a church by a minister of the gospel will be viewed as quaint, a throwback to the old days.

With biblical marriage discarded as unceremoniously as last week’s newspaper, other immoral pursuits will follow. A majority of children born will be welcomed into the world by parents who are not married to each other. The number of nonheterosexual unions will slowly and quietly increase. Sexual liaisons that occur apart from a commitment to marriage will gain widespread acceptance. A majority of Americans will embrace the idea of sex between two people who “love each other in the moment” as both logical and morally defensible. After all, they profess love and are living in the moment, two principles that will be cherished as foundational by the American public. Sexual liaisons among three (or more) partners will also be a more regular occurrence since such experiences will not transcend accepted moral boundaries and yet will offer the potential of temporary pleasure.

Further, without an understanding and a recognition of absolute moral truth—a concept that more than one out of every four Christian churches have already abandoned in their teaching and outreach—instances of lying and cheating will proliferate. Politicians have been engaging in these practices for years, with the media and voters seeking to bust them for their indiscretions. By 2030, through the inconspicuous prodding of entertainment and news media, we will be worn down to the point that we come to accept deceit as the norm and fight it only when it tangibly affects our personal best interests.

Because we will chase everything and anything that makes us feel good or delivers happiness and comfort, substance abuse will be rampant. Some will engage in alcohol and drugs to escape the harsh but unspoken realities of a life lived without God, purpose, and boundaries. Others will turn to harmful substances due to the mistaken belief that they will harmlessly provide the pleasure they desire. The well-researched tie between substance abuse and physical abuse will constantly be on public display, as cohabiting partners and their children, in particular, endure regular bouts of alcohol- or drug-fueled physical violence.

Marriage will not be the only traditional value to undergo a reversal of fortune in the coming years. By 2030, we can expect life itself to have less value in the eyes of most Americans. This is a natural result of a society in which feelings rule, the ends justify the means, and change is preferred to absolute or traditional principles. Abortion will be considered a personal and largely circumstantial choice, permitted by law and accessible through government-funded clinics. Poverty, as well as the deprivation, suffering, and deaths that result from it, will be widely bemoaned, personally ignored, and assumed to be a government responsibility. Suicide will be deemed a valid personal choice in an unpredictable, meaningless, and disappointing world. Naturally, euthanasia will be another acceptable option. After all, we will esteem having choices more than knowing or conforming to absolute moral truths.

Uncle Sam Steps It Up

Power loves a vacuum, so governments at the federal, state, county, and local levels will be sucking up as much power and authority as possible. Despite Americans increasingly distrusting government to do what’s right or what is in the best interests of the people, the New Millennium Dream will lead us to acquiesce to the Great Government Power Grab in exchange for more and more “giveaways” that come our way. Government will create a constant flow of programs to provide goodies for the people in exchange for greater control over their money, property, and constitutional rights. The election of Donald Trump may serve as a temporary blockage to government bloat. However, given the international impulse toward socialism and government expansion, as well as the ideological pendulum swinging slowly toward the Left in America, it seems most probable that Trump’s election may simply represent a short-term interruption of the Great Government Power Grab.

Consequently, the primary sector providing job growth will be the government arena. The act of governance itself will transition from reliance on the rule of law to a rule of elites who will rewrite the laws to their own liking. The American people, determined to work less, play more, and leave...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Contents
• Before You Go Any Further
• Introduction
• 1. The Need for Fearless Parents
• 2. Reject Fear-Based Parenting
• 3. Institute Preparation-Based Parenting
• 4. Taking Charge of Our Children’s Spiritual Growth
• 5. Our Children Are Called to Stand Out
• 6. Prioritize Family Relationships
• 7. Reject Destructive Parental Behaviors
• 8. Reject Materialistic Entitlement
• 9. Rethinking Social Media and Smartphone Use
• 10. The Porn-Again Child
• 11. Parental Self-Worth and the Push
• 12. Consistent Application Will Enhance Your Parenting Experience
• Notes
• About the Authors
• Back Ads
• Back Cover