Opposing Zeals
I attended the Well Child Expo in Palmerston North today. Organisations such as Public Health, SKIP, the Commission for Children and Plunket had colourful booths at the Expo encouraging parents to feed their children healthy food, not to hit their children, and to brush their children’s teeth regularly. The Expo was attended by mums and dads with their young children. The littlies could have their faces painted and were given apples and stickers and balloons by the people running the different booths.
Attending the Expo confirmed something in my mind which has become more and more obvious to me: there are people out there with zeal for my children.
They want my children to be healthy and happy and to have a little sparkle in their eyes!
Last year I attended another function which had all the same organizations at it. This was a conference called, “Stop It, It Hurts Me!” and was put on for midwives, childcarers, teachers, and CYFS workers to attend. It was a conference designed to rev up attendees against those who would spank their children. It was a conference designed to network people together towards repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act, which states that parents are justified in using reasonable force to correct a child. The people at this conference had a zeal for my children too, but it was a zeal with a very different tone: they are convinced that they know better than the parents what is best for everyone else’s children.
Their zeal was not so much motivated by the idea of having healthy, happy little children, but was motivated by hatred against God, against the Christian family, against the Church, against Christianity and against men (strong patriarchal men in particular).
On the surface the people at the Stop It conference just wanted to stop children from being abused (while using double-talk confusing spanking with abuse) but underneath, their agenda is to destroy the traditional family’s place as the unchallengable foundational unit of society.1
They have zeal for my children and for yours too. Their desire is to ensure that our children break away from our parental influence. Their desire is to train the children to be willing workers for the Government. Their zeal is encapsulated in their motto, “Get the children away from their parents.” As parents you and I won’t hear that motto. They phrase it differently to us. What we hear is “free childcare,” “free schooling” and “free healthcare for your infants.” What they want is to take our children away from us at earlier and earlier ages, or to gain access into our homes in order to monitor what is happening.
Yes, there are people out there with zeal for my children. But I have zeal for my children too. My zeal is motivated by love. It is motivated by a love for God, a love for the family (mine in particular), a love for the Church, for Christ and for patriarchy.
The zeal I have for my children causes me to want to have my children around me all the time. It causes me to want to teach them the things that I know. It causes me to want to explore the world with them. It causes me to want to teach them right from wrong. It causes me to protect them from the influences of the world and to prepare them for doing battle in the world. My zeal motivates me to teach my children to love God too. It causes me to teach them to love the family, to love the Church, to love bearing the name of Christ and to love patriarchy.
So I will care for my children myself. I won’t send them to a kindergarten that will train my children that they can do without me.
And I will teach my children myself. I will teach them the things I believe. I won’t let them be taught by those haters of God in the state schools who will teach them to be unthinking dependants of the State.
And I will prepare my children to do the same for their children. I will prepare them so that they can stand strong with great zeal when they encounter people with zeal contrary to their own.
Do you have zeal for your children? I hope you do, because other people do too.
Who is going to win their hearts?