And that fact puts a great burden on us as Christian
parents. We, too, must be always improving. The answers
that godly parents gave to their teenagers a few generations
ago are no longer sufficient. By that, I do not mean that those
answers were wrong. I mean that they, by themselves, are no
longer enough. Satan is now approaching young people with
ideas, claims, and temptations that seem strange and ridicu-
lous to many of us. How could anyone spend seven hours
texting? Why would someone want to explore the world of
LGBT? How could a person conclude that we cannot know
the difference between right and wrong?
If we think that these problems are not real, then we are
not paying attention to what is going on all around us. And,
more importantly, we underestimate just how hard Satan is
working to ensnare our young people. It may be that twisted
ethics and LGBT issues by themselves don’t offer much
temptation. But once they are lit on fire by a devil who
has “demanded to have [our young people] that he might
sift [them] like wheat” (Luke 22:31), they become almost
irresistible.
The Strategy We Have Been Given
If we are to do our job well, we will have to be even more
earnest about saving our children than Satan is about
destroying them. We will have to take more seriously the
strategy that God has given us than Satan is about his own
strategies.
What is our strategy? The New Testament states it in
many different ways. One of the best statements—perhaps
the best—is found in 2 Corinthians 10: “The weapons of our
warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy
strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion
raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought
captive to obey Christ” (v. 4-5).
Here Paul compares the work of discipling others to
the military task of overtaking a fortress. A fortress, or a
stronghold, houses soldiers who refuse to accept the lord-
ship of the one whose army has been sent into their land. A
stronghold is armed and heavily fortified. It has thick walls
and high towers. If the threat posed by the fortress is to be
neutralized, bravery and hard work will have to combine to
bring about victory.
This image—familiar to the Corinthians—is used by Paul
as a metaphor for what discipleship requires. Discipling
others is, first of all, a destructive task. Walls and towers
must be broken down. This is how Paul chooses to speak of
20
“The weapons of our warfare are not of
the flesh but have divine power to destroy
strongholds. We destroy arguments and
every lofty opinion raised against the
knowledge of God, and take every
thought captive to obey Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:4-5
arguments and opinions that protect people from the lord-
ship of Jesus Christ. We must be able to identify the contrary
thoughts that our culture has constructed that make a
Christian worldview seem implausible or even ridiculous.
And we must know how to refute these ideas.
Do you know the music your young people love? Do you
know the movies they enjoy? Do you know the books they
can’t stop reading? Do you know how to help them identify
what is wrong in those things and how they can refute the
contrary thoughts in them?