1-“Try your best to make goodness attractive. That’s one of the toughest assignments you’ll ever be given.” 2-“We speak with more than our mouths. We listen with more than our ears.”, (Implying that we express our thoughts with our lips and we hear with our heart as well as with the flappy things on the side of our heads.) 3- “There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” 4-“It’s not so much what we have in this life that matters. It’s what we do with what we have.”
‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’ ran on PBS from 1968 until 2001. If I clustered the words: kids, trolley car, castle, Daniel the striped tiger or king and queen hand puppets you might think of Mr. Rogers. If I describe a man known for opening the door and taking off his suit coat and putting on a cardigan sweater. If I mentioned he pulls off dress shoes, tosses them in the air and catches them with the other hand. If I mentioned then putting on sneakers you might think Mr. Rogers. How ‘bout:
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood, A beautiful day for a neighbor- Would you be mine? Could you be mine? …- You help to make each day a special day by just your being yourself. There’s nobody else in the whole world who’s exactly like you.
Fred Rogers had a degree in music and in 1962 became an ordained Presbyterian minister. He was one of the most influential people of that time, recognized as a genius of communication with both children and adults. He represented kindness, and kindness was the motivator back then. He once testified before Congress, and one of the influential moments during that testimony was Mr. Rogers quoting one of his songs:
‘What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong… And nothing you do seems very right?’
Fred Rogers died in 2003 at 74 years old. It has been pointed out over the years that while Sesame Street was created to educate children, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was created to address kids’ psyches, their well-being, and their feelings. Today, it seems we’re a long way from Mr. Rogers’ concerns with kindness, caring, thoughtfulness, or loving. Just take a moment to consider the choices children are asked to make in today’s environment. Fred Rogers stated this years ago: “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero.” I won’t even go into what many of our ‘leaders’ think we should be teaching and doing to children these days; doing much of it in the name of human progress and tolerance. Who would have ever imagined that Christian parents would be talking about having to protect our children the way we have to today. Not just protecting them in the street but having to protect them in the schools, doctor’s office and internet. In trying to protect our children and hold on to core Christian values you can get called some pretty strange names today. I remember a time when you could have an opinion about what schools teach our children and you were not called an ‘anti-government terrorist.’
This is a quote from Francis A. Schaeffer’s book: The Great Evangelical Disaster. “Here we have the world spirit of our age- man setting up himself as God, in defiance of the knowledge and the moral and spiritual truth which God has given…the titanic freedoms we once enjoyed have been cut loose from their Christian restraints and become a force of destruction and chaos…Sixty years ago could we have imagined that unborn children would be killed by the millions here in our own country? Or that we would have no freedom of speech when it comes to speaking of God and biblical truth in our public schools? Or that every form of sexual perversion would be promoted by the entertainment media? Or that marriage, raising children, and family life would be objects of attack?’ That book was written in 1984. Schaeffer alerted us 39 years ago, if we throw out all ‘divine’ constraints there will be chaos, if chaos there will only be arbitrary authoritarian control by the elite with no individual expression allowed. (Paul alerted us in Romans 1:21-32.)
What would Jesus do? Would he sit around children and teach them such things as we are teaching them today? What kind of intellect thinks that the kind of behavior we’re teaching and requiring of children today is the preferred behavior in the next generation? God is our Father and He told us, trained us, instructed us, in the ways that would lead us to the most success, the best way to live and experience more peace.
When the station began, we came, not to demand everyone agree with us, but to offer a choice, a choose Life choice. I’m sorry to say, we’ve seen abortion mainstreamed; the next focus seems to mainstream 7 year olds determining their sexual orientation. Do you hear the word pedophilia used anymore? Soon that word will be a hate speech and illegal to use as a description of behavior. The new culturally approved expression is ‘minor sex.’ It’s sobering to even write these things in this letter. However, normalizing abortion in America has led to over 63 million babies killed. Just imagine mainstreaming what’s coming down the pike right now in our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.
Jesus did not overlook children. Today, He does not overlook our role in giving them the best chance possible to experience both a successful and peaceful life. In Mark 10:14 (and in Mat. 19:14, Luke 18:16) he addressed such: ‘…when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, and said unto them, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me; forbid them not: for to such belongs the kingdom of God.’ In his environment children are respectful, trusting and eager to be with the Son of God. God created Life; His teaching became a remedy for Life.
(In a kind of ‘type’ parable) As parents we experience creating the gift of life, creating life by birthing our children. And just as The Heavenly Father does, an earthly father and mother have the opportunity to gift the best remedies we can to our children. Do you think that’s what is happening today? The gift of creating life is married to our obligation to give our children encouragement to discover a purposed and blessed life. I believe, as parents, we can’t measure that effort simply by the results we get. We need to measure it from our hearts, judge it more by the effort and truth of the motivation we give to it.
Being made in the image of God, I think we can better understand what motivated our heavenly Father to compassionately send a Savior for His ‘children of God.’ Soon the stuff we’re doing to our children in the name of progress will come home to roost, tragically not just in their lives, but significantly in ours as well. I’ll go back to one of my old expressions: ‘You can’t snow the snowman, he knows everything about snow.’ God knows everything about creating Life and shares that with us. Mighty Counselor is appropriately used as God’s description. Taking the responsibility of providing the best possibilities for our children is super serious to the Creator of His children. Please! much of what’s happening to kids today is not that it’s wonderful for their lives but it’s what we want to create because of many adult’s selfish purposes.
Today, confusion seems to be the benchmark for children’s lives we’ve been entrusted to give a blessed life to. The anti-Christ spirit comes to steal, kill and destroy; Jesus took that seriously, so should we. Jesus expressed it this way: ‘You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stands not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.’ (John 8:44) Just look back over the past few years and tell me you actually expected life to be just like it is now. Anti-Christ’s whispers to us, hey, it’s just a conspiracy; there is no such thing as evil. What we’re learning more and more each day is evil is real.
In some ways, it’s like we’re living a fable: ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ Written in 1837, that story is about a guy that thought he had on a fine, new set of clothing. Just because he thought that the clothing was real, he acted like they were real. Actually, he was being swindled by a couple of corrupt tailors; he was wearing nothing at all. However, because he believed what he had been told by those fellas, he was parading around his kingdom in his birthday suit. He was ruled by what he was ‘thinking’ rather than ruled by the Truth. He was justifying his behavior by what he wanted to be true rather than what was obviously true. In the fable, the town folk went along with the ruse, and it was only when a small child pointed out the truth did everyone admit their foolishness. What is our culture cheering today? It’s obvious, but we’re cheering it anyway. We need the honesty of a child to tell us the Truth. We’re not going to be able to ‘snow the snowman’ with what we’re doing with our children today. Looking the other way will not be a sufficient excuse.
