Your Kids Matter More than "The Lost"
It's ok to have priorities
The day you become a parent is the day your entire priority system is flipped on its head.
As much as you love your spouse, there’s just something different about your feelings toward your own offspring. Together you realize in that instant that your main concern is no longer yourself or each other but the child God has given you.
On a broader scale, you also realize your role as a cog in the machine—the world existed long before you, and it will likely exist long after you.
In other words, children tell you the world doesn’t revolve around you.
It would take a lot of programming to get you to give up this natural way of thinking. It would have to be something persuasive, something that makes you feel like you’re making a difficult, but better choice. It would have to be something like a preacher telling you your rebirth in Christ was meant to rewire the natural instincts God gave you at your physical birth.
As with so many things in modern Christianity, the gnostic, pietistic voices of our day are so over-spiritualized that they deny undeniable creation order.
You will be made to feel guilty for politically prioritizing your children’s best interests. You will be told you are supposed to send your kids out as evangelism bait “lights” in the indoctrination centers schools. Ministers will be expected by many to put their wives and kids second to the church. You will be told to stand down from acting in your children’s best interests because “the lost” might benefit.
For an example of what I’m talking about, in his sermon, “Doing Missions While Dying Is Gain,” John Piper illustrated it perfectly. Discussing his decision to move his family to a rough neighborhood as part of his ministry career, he said:
I make no claim to be a perfect embodiment of this; but I want to be like this, so that when a rock comes sailing through my kitchen window — like it has done multiple times over the years — and smashes the glass and my wife and children hit the floor not knowing if it’s a bullet or a grenade, I want to be able to say, “Isn’t this a great neighborhood to live in?” This is where the needs are. You see those five teenage kids that just rode by? They need Jesus. If I move out of here, who’s going to tell them about Jesus?
When your little boy gets pushed off his bicycle and they take it and run, I want to be able to take him by the neck while he’s crying and say “Son, this is like being a missionary. It’s like getting ready for the mission field! This is great!”
It sounds super pious—sacrifice for the Gospel! Here’s how it was perceived by Piper’s son, Barnabas:
And that’s coming from the son who isn’t a popular TikTok apostate.
This is the same pietistic mindset that leads Piper to say he might not protect his wife from a midnight home invasion out of love for the assailant. A gnostic, evangelism-only reading of the Bible can’t outweigh both your common sense and everything else the Bible has to say about the home and the man’s place in it.
Husbands and fathers should absolutely teach their families about sacrificing for the Lord—miss sports because church is more important, be there every night of the Gospel meeting, volunteer to rake the elderly widow’s yard, giving up a Saturday night to host a Bible study, etc. But a man who will put his wife and children in physical danger to preach the Gospel has his priorities entirely out of whack.
It’s the same issue that led Jesus to slam the Pharisees for neglecting their parents financially.
“For Moses said, ‘HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER’; and, ‘HE WHO SPEAKS EVIL OF FATHER OR MOTHER, IS TO BE PUT TO DEATH’; but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.” (Mark 7:10-13 NASB)
It probably sounded very pious to them, too, to say their first priority was to give their money to God. But their over-spiritualized priorities did not fly with Jesus.
Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 7:32-34 Paul treated it as only natural that the married man would be less free to commit to God’s public work because of His domestic duty. He did not say this as a slight against marriage, but merely an acknowledgement of the natural order of things.
Loving your kids and acting in their interest does not make you a bad Christian. Putting “the lost” above them does not make you a good Christian.
“The lost” is a nameless, faceless monolith. The actual lost are real people with real names and faces, who do not all believe the same. Loving “the lost” and acting in their interest is cheap and ultimately meaningless. It’s doing what you want and giving it a spiritual branding.
Everybody can love nameless, faceless people and feel like a good person. But what are you doing for the people God put right in front of you—beginning with your kids?
If you think your job as a Christian is to have a deeper love for some theoretical person than for your own flesh and blood, you’ve misunderstood God’s duty for you. (And before the objection is raised, Jesus’ words on hating father and mother in Matthew 10:37-39 are about when family wants to pull you away from Christ, not fulfill your natural, God-given duty.)
Sheltering my kids long enough to train them to share the Gospel, stand for the truth, and even take risks for God will do far more for the lost than the current failed strategy of sending them to school in hopes that they convert somebody. They’re statistically much more likely to fall away, and now not only have the lost not been reached, but we’ve lost some of our own. Net loss after net loss.
Additionally, speaking God’s truth into a decaying culture and pushing for His name to be held in honor in the halls of government so my kids can prosper and be safe will also benefit the lost.
I highly, highly recommend you read about history’s atrocities. (Michael Malice on North Korea and especially on the Soviet Union will tear you up at the unspeakable things humans have faced in living memory and still do today.) If you can come out of that thinking “Even if my sons end up being beaten and imprisoned, my daughters raped by corrupt government officials, and my grandchildren forced to starve to death then that’s ok, because Christians might drive the lost away by getting political,” something in you is broken.
Voting, being active in local efforts, and advocating for policies that resist the slide toward such massive human suffering for the sake of your kids isn’t a sin. And if your kids are mercifully prevented from living in such horrible conditions, that means everyone else in their generation has been, too. The Gospel will be more widely accessible. Nobody in North Korea has the conversion story I do, of their grandmother wandering in to the church at the end of the street and leading the whole family to Christ. If I work for my kids to have religious freedom, others will be saved, too.
It’s only in this bizarro, over-spiritualized world in which evangelism is the only thing we’re allowed to do that this can make sense. First things must come first, and if you’re a parent, God already showed you what your first things must be.
Notes
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New Bible 101 is up on Creation, the Image of God, and Dominion
Sorry, no audio edition on this article just yet as I am hanging out at Connect Conference in Nashville. If you’re here, say hello!
For the audio, check back tomorrow or keep an eye on the podcast feed (Apple, Spotify, any other podcast app).
Very good. Reminds me of two things. First, the modern church could use a lesson on covenant, covenant blessings, and family worship. Second, Christians have long believed in rightly ordered love; we can't love those far from us if we fail to correctly love those nearest to us (i.e. family)
Once again, this was an excellent article by you! With your thoughts in mind, I just read a post by a Christian that indicated the Democrats are better than Republicans at projecting Jesus due to their concern for woman, chiildren, and the disenfranchised. (This belief is largely drawn from politicalsial rhetoric than reality.) As I read that I wondered how this idea can be maintained in light of abortion (this is not only detrimental to children but it is harmful to women) and cripling inflation that has had a significant impact on this nation in the last three years. Who doesn't know that we currently get less for more when providing for our families? Again, your article reminded us of the misplaced sacrifices that many Christians make and I thank you for it.