Christian Parents Wake Up!

Okay, as I’ve said before I am a conservative. I’m a political conservative and a conservative Christian. That seems to translate nowadays to old-fashioned, but that’s fine with me. I don’t want to be hip. I’m a new creation in Christ. I’m salt and light. I’m not to conform to this world.

Now what I want to discuss isn’t really outlined biblically, but it’s an issue that bothers my “old-fashioned ways”. It’s the new trend of children calling adults by their first names. And I’m not just talking about secular people, I know a lot of Christian parents who have fallen into this trend. And frankly, I’m baffled.

Yeah, yeah, on the surface calling adults by their first names rather than by “Mr. __” or “Mrs. __” sounds pretty trivial. But to me it’s a symptom of the larger disease of a blurred line between children and adults. Children are no longer taught to have a basic respect for adults. By calling adults by their first names, I believe we’re saying to children that we’re all on the same level. Again, this alone isn’t leading to a general lack of respect by children for adults, but our encouragement of this practice is a sign of the failure of many parents today to teach their kids about respect for authority.

I don’t think too many would disagree that children today don’t respect authority the way most of us did as children. Talk to any school teacher and you’ll hear plenty of stories to support this. Watch any talk show and you’ll want to weep at the coverage of children engaging in adult behaviors at very young ages. I personally have to struggle to think of more than a handful of parents who are actually parenting their children and not trying to be their friends.

And as I said, Christians are not immune. Most children of Christian parents that I know call me by my first name, even though I never gave them permission to use my first name. And then there is the inappropriate dress by some Christian girls which I’ve discussed before. Why are Christian parents allowing their daughters to wear clothes that expose so much skin? What is going on!

Well, I could probably rant for a few more paragraphs, but I’ll leave it at this. My children are still quite young and maybe they’ll turn out just as rotten as can be. But I for one plan to go down fighting. I won’t scale back in fear that “they’ll rebel” or because “the other kids are doing it” or because “I did it as a kid” or “you have to pick your battles” or “what can you do”. I intend to teach my children the ways of the Lord, nothing less. But for now, my children will start by learning to respect adults and call them by their last name!