How to Raise Our Children to NOT Become Shooters

My feet had no choice but to step on the campus the morning after a provoked teacher threatened to kill all the children, forcing the staff to watch.

Old red, white, and blue, dangled in the bright, cloudless sky. I was told the testing for one of my kids would take around two hours.

I checked the internet before I left. The teacher had been let out of jail. I swallowed deep as I see a police car sitting outside the school. My heart beats violently, my mouth dries as I open one of the large glass front doors.

But then, I remember the brave. Those who used their bodies as shields, those who refused to renounce Jesus, the saints in school shootings who didn’t fear death. I knew I couldn’t cower. I then realized…

No threat of evil could make me relinquish my belief in a God who lives on when hate takes the innocent.

In the wake of the recent Florida school shooting, the nation seems paralized by the threat of evil. Parent’s drive up and drop off their students, or watch from the safety of their internet as grieving fills the land.

Blaming is easy, pointing fingers, our go-to, insisting we have answers for all the evil lurking somehow eases our minds.

If we just sign one bill, won’t that solidify future destruction from now until enternity?

But, I recall ancient civilization. Killings of women and children, tribes or populations. It was a sign of power, done almost thoughtlessly. If I kill them, I will somehow feel bigger, have more authority, or elevate my own insignificance. 

However, the harming or degrating, belittling, or shrinking of another is always a sign of cowardness and weakness.

Demons of control and possession, self-entitlement, and greediness boasts in people’s chests making evil is the center, hate cloud our vision, fear grip our hearts, so a gospel of love becomes tainted.

The murder of fellow people in our minds and hearts, has always been a tactic Satan used since the beginning of time.

Oh yes, we have changed and re-dressed it. Instead of warlords, or aboriginies, tribe leaders, or game members, sin makes the stakes even greater…..children killing children.

Evil has always loved seeing the innocent die, whether in the womb, or during ancient times when the Canaanite diety, Moloch supposedly delighted in such sacrifices…

Or when tribes thought throwing children into the fire brought blessing or protection.

Child killing comes in different forms and different flavors, but it always accompanies sorrow it’s the heart of man and God.

So, how do we stop child sacrifices, whether in the womb, or in the hallways of our very own schools?

What if we returned to parenting again? What if we stopped letting daycares, schools, t.v.’s, other social media, and even churches raise our children?

What we took on the responsibilty of raising our children in the way they should go? Then, when they are older, they WILL NOT turn from it?

No one chops a tree down, replants the top half and expects it to grow again. And yet, we forget, roots need to be nurtures, soil must be toils and fertilized, in order for future fruitfulness.

And when our children shoot up schools, we blame a branch, or limbs, or even a parisite for poisoning the tree…

But, what if the problem lies in the roots, the soil we choose to place our children in is the culprit of our angst?

I heard a child the other day, blast their parent in front of another parent. My heart sunk as the other parent laughed in agreement.

And what I have seen is that children are given authority they do not own or were never designed to possess.

Haven’t we all seen two-year-olds bossing around their parent, or dragging a parent’s hand, demanding their wishes and to have their own way.

A few decades ago, a parent would have stood tall, looked that child in the eyes, and said, I am the parent. You get to follow, I am designed to lead…

But now? The child gets complete Lordship over their parents. They tantrum if they don’t get their each and every wish.

Parent’s are weak and tired, and innocently trying to make-up with payments of cell phones and screen time, choices, and accomodating demands to ease their own guilt and regret. 

Troubled childhoods, working too much, neglecting to work on a strong central relatinship with God or our spouses has surmounted the guilt, perposterous amounts.

So, we give kids a thousand different choices, wondering why they are confused? We wait in limbo, hoping to cater and accomodate, fearful that if their child is mad or sad, or not perfectly comfortable…somehow we have failed.

So they hand them their every want, while neglecting them with our time.

And I have to question if this model of child-lordship, reflects our relationship with God?

Have we somewhere alone the way made the child the parent (us) and God the child? Do we tantrum and demand to decide our own fait? Thinking God existing to just cater to our every whim? 

Have we de-thrones his Lordship, shrinking God to sit at OUR feet, molding him to follow what we demand or are dictate?

What happened to respect? Trusting, leaning on and honoring those He has placed us with? What happened to, “Children respect your parents?” Honor. Dignity. Kindness. And unarguable obedience?

Do we let our children twist our arms, because we have grown up in a culture, in families, brainwashed that somehow we can twist the arm of God and He will quiet, bow and obey?

At my friend’s daycare long ago, a baby sufficated by being logged between the mattress and the crib. The police came. His mom ran to the schene to identify her breath-less son. The dead baby was hauled away. And the daycare shutdown.

But, newspapers never got word out. Infants die frequently, children wander aimlessly, and it seems we have become calloused and accustomed to it?

When did a child’s innocense lost become just another “choice” of an adult in authority?

Shouldn’t we be shocked at this survival of the fittest society? Shouldn’t children’s safety outrank working for new houses, cars and commodities?

Granted, not that all daycares are evil. But I have to wonder, how those first few months we so effortlessly hand our newborns into the arms of strangers and expect another to care for them like we would?

When did we become skeptics of organic foods, immunizations, and if our children are eating GMO, yet don’t flinch when we pass away our children for the majority of day to some stranger, in exchange for pay.

I mean, who gives their most prized possession away without thoughts or worry?

And then, we expect overpacked daycares and schools where children often become either cowardly passive-aggressive haters, or overbaring bullies, dominating and dictating…

Justifying it as “leadership” or “excess shyness”?

Respect must be woven in the fabric of every aspect of our children. We must stop centering the world around the created (children), instead center it around the Creator.

We must stop waking our kids for Pre-morning workshops, then, leaving them in schools all day, afterwards, carting them to sporting events.

What if our evenings were dinners and conversations instead of forcing them to top their off with homework, two hours a day.

Kids were made to dream, think, let the world filter through their minds so they can unravel who they are, what they think, using their parents as sounding boards instead of letting the world be their gagging bar for relationships or morality.

Life was slower in the olden days, but relationships richer. Anxiety, depression, and ADHD, weren’t trademarks of prior generations.

Cultures center around respect and honoring other people often thrive and are marked with less crime, less hate, and more safety as a community.

And as parents, what if we, instead of running away from the hurting, we ran straight to them? What if we saw a child in need, and took them under our wing, truly became the parents to the parentless?

What if we offered lunches to kids who couldn’t afford it, brought a neighbor to sports practice, cared for and helped nurture struggling parents so disfunctional families might thrive and prosper?

What if all the dad’s stepped up to became the Father to the Fatherless? Caring for not just his own kids, but children who needed leadership and love, the model of a father-figure they might be lost for at home?

After all, we were made for community, never isolation. Isolation breeds crazy ideations, grande schemes, hate-filled segregation from other people groups and communities.

We are one, many, collectively part of the people around us.

I used to work at a pharmacy. I remember when the cold medicine’s became locked up in a glass case, with a lock and key required to access them.

I thought, “How strange? Why is that?” I asked.

I was told it was because people snorted them, turning them into a street drug. Instead of guns, knives, and well-known drugs, people throughout the world have always got creative, when motived, always find some way to destroy themselves and other people.

Evil is a heart condition, not a one step problem that can be solved with simple measures.

Prayer. Repentence. Confession. Holiness. These are words almost obsolete nowdays, even in the American church.

We have left the alter for programs, confession to self-profession, exchangin being humbled by His greatness, for declaring the richness of our own pockets and lives. We have sacrifices the Lordship of God for the self-help promises, stating “learning more” will somehow elevate or enlighten us.

But if enlightenment leads to the shooting up of schools, if the internet is a root of terrorism in any form, if video games simulate the destruction of even robotic people….

Don’t we have to re-think what we are teaching our children? The things our children daily are facing? The streams of influence we allow to train up, mold, or form our children?

Without weighing in on the gun situation, won’t our children still make pipe bombs after staring at the internet, if their hearts are filled with hate?

Shouldn’t we care more about the content of people’s character than the skin of what people are visibly holding?

Volcanoes, and gangs, and history has taught us, if people want to kill, they will. Evil finds a means, like Cain and the stone…

Just like love is can desinigrate the hate in even the most calloused of hearts.

Instead of getting on our high-horse, or trying to simplify with one sentence in hope to stop the murder problem in schools…What if we stopped, and asked God how each of us can parent better?

What if we had bigs arms that scooped up the world’s children? What if we humbled ourselves, prayed more, and used the church as a place of repentence?

What if we cultivated the hearts of our children from the time they were infants, instead of letting money rule us, and dropping our children without conscious into a culture of “want” and blame…

What if we thought less about bigger houses and more about sacrificing, surrendering, disciplining, and teaching our children better…

Cultivating roots that never waver?

What if respect was the center of our families? Respect for parents and for children? Listening was the core of our relationships? Asking questions?

What if our focus was creating safe places for those hurting from the warzone societies children are facing?

I made it to my child’s evaluation that day at the elementary school. My heart was thumping, and walking past that flag reminded me of how close to home, the threat of a mass shooting really is.

Thankful, the officer’s car still sat outside, under that flag waving, after just witnessing teacher’s trembling in fear and expectation the whole duration of that two hour meeting.

Yes, the reality is that at any moment it could be our families weeping, our children lying in body bags inside some bloodied school…

And what will we do about it? Will we project blame, place more demands, pointing finger, or justify with excuses? Will that restore the family nucleus again?

Or could we start now? What if we began with this moment? Turning off the internet, putting down our phones, pulling our children onto our laps, asking them about the reality of their day, school-life, friends, expectations and disappointments…

What if we asked our children, “What are your fears, hopes and needs?”

Listening about bullying, instead of blame shifting? Taking up in courage and strength and ownership for our families.

What if we made radical choices, if need be, to keep our children and those around us safe?

The world has enough shooters? Where are the healers, the leaders, those that tend soil, and are willing to cultivate the genuine and deeper roots…

So no one will have to walk in a school and worry about a gunman plowing them down? If their child will make it home on the bus later that that same evening, their child leaves for school.