The ideology of Daycare to the Church

Daycare Danger of the Church

            I recently read an article by Joy Pullman on the dangers of daycare.  I cannot help but see the parallels to the Church.  If it is not corrected, it will lead to a greater many people falling away from the faith for it seeks to undermine the basic work of the Church. 

The Church is often called the Bride of Christ as Paul teaches in Ephesians 5, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” 

            Paul then goes on to describe what this relationship looks like in the follow verses, but here I diverge and ask the question, what is one of the main purposes of the union of the husband and wife?  Go back to creation: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”  (Gen. 1:27-28) And just in case you thought that was an Old Testament command, Jesus quotes Genesis, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh.”  (Matt 19:4ff)In so doing he also promotes the rest of the creation account: be fruitful and multiply.

            Since one of the main purposes of marriage is for procreation (despite what appears to be the case in many marriages where children are avoided ) and since the wife is compared to the compared to the Church doesn’t it then follow that the Church is all about creating and nurturing the faith of her children?

            Who are her children?  You are her children. Christians are her children.  You never stop being the children of the Church.  Apart from the Church, we are outside of God.  We have no part with him, but now notice what Paul says in Romans 8:14-17, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”  The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs.”  

            Adoption makes you legally and legitimately part of the family of God.  Paul uses this same illustration to bolster his argument in Galatians 4 and Ephesians 1.  Adoption is a blessed gift that many children have been given because by it they know they have security and safety, a family that will always love them and never dismiss them.  So for Christians, adoption gives you the blessed assurance that you belong.

            Here finally, we make that correlation to the truths the article brings out.  Children need a mother and a father.  This is the only combination of adults that has been prescribed as godly and right.  Children need a mother to nurture them and I refer you to the article above for such a great explanation, but here is where the Church is needed by all people to nurture them.  What we have instead seen, in ever increasing numbers, is that people don’t think they need the Church, just like the growing belief that we don’t need mothers and fathers to be mothers and fathers.

We simply are coerced into doing what the world teaches us to do—we allow the world to be our daycare.  Our children are cared for by sports and other clubs.  Adults seek out other daycares for themselves: nature, work, shopping, sports for them.  All of these things are encouraged by a culture of death who wishes to rip each child from the womb piece by piece.  Those they can’t rip apart, they strive to force upon them a group think in order to tear them away from the only ones who know what is best for them—their mother and father—and tearing them away from Christianity.  And we are letting them. 

If those who are left are to be spared and if we are to regain any souls from this daycare culture, we must be rebuked.  We must have it pointed out to us that the reason we are seduced by this evil is that we have striven to make for ourselves gods, a new god of money that the devil has deceitfully woven together.

Secondly, may we exhorted to drink from the breast of the Church.  And I mean exactly what it says, just as we read in 1 Peter 2:2-3, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”  Mothers, your children long for your nurture (again see the Pullman article).  There is only a façade of joy found in that which is outside of our holy mother, the Church.  The exuberance of winning a championship game or shooting a massive elk, does not bring you true joy, but only more longing for what is next. 

Instead, when we cling to the Church, like a babe to his mother, taking in the simple truths of God’s Word in Law and Gospel, receiving the forgiveness of sins through the Sacraments, we finally find joy and hope.  We never lose that sense of joy, but instead it becomes your thing that you look forward to clinging to.  Scripture clearly state you are to be like infants.  Be connected to your holy mother.  Hold on to her tightly and never let go.  We long for that constant connection, and the world has said you can find it apart from your mother, but how wrong it is!  Yes we should desire to stop being fed milk and to move to solid food, but even then, that does not mean that you are separated from the Church but rather all the more you cling to your mother who directs you to the other provider, the Father.

What we have found also in society is that men are no longer men.  (Here I would encourage you to get a hold of the book Man Up! by Rev. Jeffrey Hemmer to understand true, Biblical manliness.)  Men need to be providers but instead we emasculate ourselves and choose laziness.  Men don’t take the role of headship and we turn it over to women.  Men choose the route of no commitment and do the most despicable thing and they refuse to marry the woman and force her to accept what she knows is not right as well.  They walk right back into the roll of Adam and do not defend the women.  Men need to re-embrace their proper, Biblical role and recognize the importance of leading women and being a husband who will provide for his wife and children.

Again, this has an important part within the development of children in the church.  The Father is the provider of the Church; he is the one who fights to keep her and her children safe.  He vehemently opposes those who seek to tear his children from his arms.  He strives diligently to teach all his children in his care.  He weeps for those who have died.  He mourns for those who have run away and seeks to get them back.  He prays that they will one day return.  The Father is your pastor.  It is why you may address your pastors as Father because they truly take on an important role of protecting the Church whom he has been married to in his installation.  In his Divine Call, he promises to be the protector and provider. 

This brings us to some of the greatest truths of our parents.  Are our parents perfect?  Certainly not.  Mothers and fathers often err.  Our local churches certainly make mistakes.  Our pastors are not definitely not perfect either.  They are sinful men who do wrong, and yet, they care about you.

This brings us back to the children.  We, the children, are often upset by our parents are we not?  Like two year olds we throw tantrums when we don’t get our way.  We constantly seek to test our boundaries to find out what is right and wrong.  We may even engage in doing something wrong willfully just to see if our mother and father will reprimand us and then forgive us and take us back in.  We constantly ask why in the hopes that our questions will be answered.  Your church and your Pastor want what is best for you.  Repent of your stubbornness and foolishness.  Do not attempt to supplant your pastor with your own wisdom.  Don’t be seduced by what your fellows siblings try and talk you into.

Remember, we are a family.  The daycare that the world is trying to foist upon you is only problematic.  As one wise man once said, the family that prays together stays together.  So also the family that gathers together for the divine service stays together.  If you have been away, return, they will always welcome you back.  When you recognize your relationship within this holy family, that you are always a child in need of the nurturing you are provided, your roll within the church begins to solidify.  You will not tolerate your own excuses to avoid the Divine Service.  You will even rebuke your own family members over the dreadful sin that they are committing of abandoning the family they were adopted into.  You will seek out your Father, and beg for private confession and absolution.  You will certainly go to nurse at your holy mother’s breast on the Word and Sacrament that has been provided for you.  Don’t be seduced by the false logic of the world that says you don’t need the Church or a pastor.  Instead rejoice that your holy mother and father, your church and your pastor, strive to claim you every day of your life and the Holy Spirit will always work through these gifts given to you to create and strengthen the faith.  We don’t need daycare, we need what God has given to us, our Mother and our Father.