When Children Stray

I just want to take a moment to gently honour the mothers of prodigals. When mums tell me about their child who has gone astray, I am honestly humbled and moved every time. Thank you for telling me. I try to remember to pray for you; I wish I were better at it.

Prodigals are close to my heart and their mothers even more so. I know you have made tremendous sacrifices to teach your children at home. I know you probably battle with the thought that since you have worked so hard and given up so much, the Lord owes it to you to save your children. At least, this is how I would be tempted to think. I would also be tempted to turn the finger of blame inwards. After all, we are too painfully aware of our failings as we raise our children.

Yet, just as we cannot take the credit when our child is strong in the Lord, neither should we so easily shoulder the blame when a child goes astray. We need to strive to take our thoughts captive even at those most painful moments. God’s word is truth and I just want to focus on a few in the hope they might bring just a few drops of cold water to a fellow mother who feels distress.

The truth is that in the long run, prodigals often come back. We probably all know first-hand accounts of children raised in the Lord who go astray and then return, strong in the Lord and-deeply aware of their indebtedness to his grace.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

We know this proverb is an observation rather than a promise, yet we so often misinterpret even this observation. We tend to equate ‘old’ with ‘age eighteen’ or somewhere around that time. Our child is eighteen, on the cusp of leaving home and has not professed Christ therefore the Christian upbringing has been in vain. What if Solomon really meant the word ‘old’? What if he meant that in the general course of life, all things being equal, those who have been raised in the Lord will profess Christ before their days on this earth are over?

We plant the seed during childhood and the Lord brings it to fruition through the course of their life. Those days and nights of tears and heartache are a step along the way. Again, this is not a promise but might help us not to think that everything is over if we do not see hearts knit to Christ as we finish home educating.

Furthermore, what if those actions and choices that we now question are the very means by which the Lord will call our children to himself?

Here is a thought: perhaps God, being all-knowing, foresaw that a child would walk into grievous sin, and sovereignly placed that child in a faithful family that a godly upbringing might one day be the means by which that child leaves that sinful lifestyle and comes to Christ. A child who has the Word of God written on his heart when he is young will never fully enjoy sin. It will always have a bitter taste since conscience and God’s Word will convict. We think home education has failed, but we do not know the end of the story. That Christian education we have started to question might one day be made effectual to call our child home; it is essentially the reason they come back.

Secondly, the anguish that mothers feel and wish they did not have to shoulder, may very well seed the prayers that turn the heart of the Lord towards their children. Consider Hannah. She poured out her heart to the Lord with tears and then, having handed over her burden of childlessness into his hands, wiped her tears and carried on. The Lord saw fit to answer her prayer. Perhaps those trying months and years have a purpose to make us pray all the more fervently. They are not the end of the story; they may be a necessary step along the way to a child’s salvation.

The temptation is to think we have missed a trick in not sending our children to government schools. This is particularly true when children openly blame their parents and their Christian upbringing for the chaos that is a life without Christ. But let’s think clearly here. God uses the means: salvation comes through hearing the Word of God. If a child has been raised in an atmosphere of the Word of God and then rejects Christ for a time at least, then it is highly unlikely that child would have accepted Christ had they been educated in a godless environment. We have not missed a trick. We have not made a critical error in home educating. It does not follow that children are more likely to accept Christ if they know less about him.

Just to put my cards on the table, our children are currently ages 8-16. We see God at work in their lives to varying degrees but at this point we just do not know whether one or some will go astray for a while. I know that blogging about home education puts our family “out there” to some extent and I was fearful at first that in writing about home education I might be setting us up for a fall, that it would all publicly fall apart at some point. However, I eventually came to the conviction that living in fear of our children rejecting the faith should not stop me from writing and speaking about Christian education when I feel so called to it. I don’t think home education will necessarily save our children but I do believe it is a wise choice.

We cannot whitewash the fact that some home-educated children go astray for a while at least. It is not fair to hurting families, those at the very beginning of home educating or even to the truth to pretend it is a guaranteed formula for success. Home education is an act of obedience and a reason for hope, nothing more. We work in faith and leave it in the hands of the Lord to bring the increase.

“I planted, Apollos water but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7)