Flashback

Last night, as I was finishing up the last outline of a sermon series on the loveliness of Christ, which ended up being six parts rather than four, I turned on the news to see what was going on in the world. Among reports of arrests throughout the country, of people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, I saw another nugget that has gotten some airtime, which made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and brought back some very unpleasant memories from my early childhood.
If you’ve never lived through it, you cannot possibly understand how insidious and destructive the philosophy of indoctrination could be. You mold clay while it is still malleable and soft, and you plant seeds into the hearts and minds of children while they’re still young.
For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about, I am referring to a you tube clip, of some elementary school children singing what amount to songs of worship and adoration directed not at God, but rather our new president.
This troubled me, because I lived through it as a child in Romania. Although the melody was different, and the name we were instructed to praise was Ceausescu, the similarities were so overwhelming that I simply couldn’t bear to watch it anymore. I had actually started having flashbacks of my white shirt, patriot tie, black slacks, standing with all the other children, and singing in a chorus, how Ceausescu had saved us, how he was like a father to us, and how we were supposed to serve him even though we were young.
Since the school officials knew that my parents and grandparents were of the Christian faith, I got a double dose of indoctrination for the three years I attended school in Romania. Besides the songs we had to memorize that praised the ingenuity, love, and greatness of Ceausescu, I would also be subjected to a couple hours of being told that my parents were backward fools, who believed in something that didn’t exist, poor souls that were trapped in the past, unwilling to see the glory of a socialist state for what it was. I was told my parents hated me if they taught me about God, I was told that God did not exist, and I was told that if I believed in God I was less than human, a throwback worthy of pity and contempt. All this, by those who were supposed to be teaching me how to read and write, learn addition and subtraction, and where our country was positioned on the globe.
Like I said, if you haven’t lived through it, you can’t possibly know the damage that it does to a young and fragile mind.
My salvation, the thing that kept me from believing what I was being told in school day after day, was that my parents and grandparents knew what the teachers were trying to plant in my heart and mind, and did everything they could to keep those seeds from taking root. I’ve often spoken about this when giving my testimony, and the one thing I can liken it to, from what I’ve read anyway, is that I would go through a daily process of being detoxified whenever I came home from school.
Whether it was my mother or my grandfather, every day, without exception, they would sit me down and read to me from the Bible, they would tell me that God exists, and they would take the time to educate me, and teach me the ways of the Lord.
I know allot of you are parents, and are deeply concerned. I’ve gotten more than a few e-mails asking for advice as to what parents should do seeing everything that’s going on in the school system. ‘Should I yank my child out of school?’ This is perhaps the most often asked question.
The only Biblical advice I can give, is raise your children in the ways of the Lord. Take the time consistently to read the Bible together, take the time consistently to talk about Jesus, and above all live the life you preach.
Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Make no mistake, there is a war raging for the hearts and minds of the next generation, and the enemy is bringing out his entire arsenal. If we do not live what we preach, if Jesus is not evident in our lives, if the only time we mention Him is in church services and only then sparingly, we will lose this war, and we will not recognize our own offspring ten or fifteen years from now.
Even though the world is spinning into chaos, even though new dangers are sprouting up on a weekly basis that threaten to envelop the world, it would seem there are still those whose purpose is so all consuming that they will let nothing stand in their way. Those who promote sin, and deny God seem to have a laser like focus when it comes to their plans, and are unwilling to take into account that the further we distance ourselves from God, the more hellish this world seems to become.
Pray for your children, teach your children, love your children, and be a parent to them. If you won’t teach them, someone else will!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.