By Dr. Ted Baehr
One of the Latin definitions of education from e-duco is “to lead out” of darkness. My many books on media wisdom have tried to help parents do just that with their children.
For a brief period of time recently, psychology went through a very counter-productive misconception that you’re not supposed to help your children mature with wisdom, knowledge and understanding, because they were born that way. Anyone, however, who viewed ancient history like Livy or Suetonious realized that before Christ, people were horrible sinners, and Christianity led them out of darkness into the light of a better culture.
The example I give when I’m speaking is that my wife, Lili, and I were driving our four children around the West to see the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion Mountain, Yellowstone Park, and all the way up to Banff and Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada, and then down the coast to Washington, Oregon and California. Along the way, just past the Grand Canyon, I heard one of our children break out crying that he’d been hit, so I asked another child who hit so and so. He said no one. So, I knew that one had a propensity for crying, one had a propensity for hitting, and one had a propensity for dissimilating. Of course, as fallen human beings, they were born that way, but my job as a parent is teach the child who hit not to hit, teach the child who dissimilated not to dissimilate, and teach the child that whined not to whine. Of course, everybody can see that violence is bad and lying is bad, but we excuse other types of sin as being okay because they were “born that way.” However, that is not parenting.
MOVIEGUIDE® tries through many articles to help parents learn how to deal with their children, to lead them out of the darkness of their fallen nature into the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus enlightens all people. He is the Light who overcomes the darkness and brings abundant life.
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