It occurred first in 1969, when my book Dare to Discipline was being written. I was running at an incredible speed, working myself to death like every other man I knew. I was Superintendent of Youth for my church, and labored under a heavy speaking schedule. Eight or ten “unofficial” responsibilities were added to my full-time commitment at USC School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. I once worked seventeen nights straight without being home in the evening. Our five-year-old daughter would stand in the doorway and cry as I left in the morning, knowing she might not see me until the next sunrise.
Although my activities were bringing me professional advancement and the trappings of financial success, my dad was not impressed. He had observed my hectic lifestyle and felt obligated to express his concern. While flying from Los Angeles to Hawaii one summer, he used that quiet opportunity to write me a lengthy letter. It was to have a sweeping influence on my life. Let me quote one paragraph from his message which was especially poignant:
Danae [referring to our daughter] is growing up in the wickedest section of a world much farther gone into moral decline than the world into which you were born. I have observed that the greatest delusion is to suppose that our children will be devout Christians simply because their parents have been, or that any of them will enter into the Christian faith in any other way than through their parents’ deep travail of prayer and faith. But this prayer demands time, time that cannot be given if it is all signed and conscripted and laid on the altar of career ambition. Failure for you at this point would make mere success in your occupation a very pale and washed-out affair, indeed.
Those words, written without accusation or insult, hit me like a blow from a hammer. It contained several themes which had the ring of eternal truth. First, it is more difficult to teach proper values today than in years past because of the widespread rejection of Christian principles in our culture. In effect, there are many dissonant voices that feverishly contradict everything for which Christianity stands. The result is a generation of young people who have discarded the moral standards of the Bible.
Numerous studies have documented the steady increase in promiscuity occurring among teenagers and college-aged young people. For example, the American Journal of Diseases of Children reported that of 677 seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in a mostly white, lower-middle-class junior high in Indianapolis, 55 percent had had sex. More than 50 percent of the boys had intercourse by age 13, and more than 50 percent of the girls had intercourse by sixteen.1
Quoting from Josh McDowell’s book, The Myth of Sex Education, “A 1987 study by the National Academy of Science discovered, the attitude shift has been best documented among girls. From 1971 to 1982, the proportion of unmarried girls aged 15-19 who had had sexual intercourse at least once increased from 28 percent to 44 percent.”2
This is the world in which our children are being raised. We need all the help we can get to lead them through the minefields of adolescence.
The second concept in my dad’s letter was the one that ended my parental complacency. He helped me realize that it is possible for mothers and fathers to love and revere God while systematically losing their children. You can go to church three times a week, serve on its governing board, attend the annual picnic, pay your tithes, and make all the approved religious noises, yet somehow fail to communicate the real meaning of Christianity to the next generation.
I have since talked to dozens of parents whose children are grown and married.
“We thought our kids had accepted our faith and beliefs,” they say, “but somehow, we failed to get it across.”
For those younger parents whose children are still at an impressionable age, please believe the words of my dad, “The greatest delusion is to suppose that our children will be devout Christians simply because their parents have been, or that any of them will enter into the Christian faith in any other way than through their parents deep travail of prayer and faith.”
If you doubt the validity of this assertion, may I suggest that you read the story of Eli in 1 Samuel 2-4. Here is the account of a priest and servant of God who failed to discipline his children. He was apparently too busy with the “work of the church” to be a leader in his own home. The two boys grew up to be evil young men on whom God’s judgment fell.
It concerned me to realize that Eli’s service to the Lord was insufficient to compensate for his failure at home. Then I read farther in the narrative and received confirmation of the principle. Samuel, the saintly man of God who stood like a tower of spiritual strength throughout his life, grew up in Eli’s home. He watched Eli systematically losing his children, yet Samuel proceeded to fail with his family, too! That was a deeply disturbing truth. If God would not honor Samuel’s dedication by guaranteeing the salvation of his children, will He do more for me if I’m too busy to do my “homework”?
From Dr. James Dobson’s book, Straight Talk To Men.
- “Teens Are Starting to Have Sex Earlier,” USA Today, 17 January 1989.
- Lena Williams, “Teen-Age Sex: New Codes Amid the Old Anxiety,” New York Times, 27 February 1989, B11, as quoted in Josh McDowell, The Myths of Sex Education (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here’s Life Publishers, 1990), 8-9.
