Sheltering Your Children? What Every Hypocrite Needs to Know

It must be a law of the universe that if you reject a necessary practice as legitimate, you are only going to be presenting yourself as an unthoughtful hypocrite.

For instance, when people say or imply, "You are wrong to judge another person's decisions," that person is obviously judging your decision to judge. Hence, they end up breaking the very moral that they're supposedly upholding in theory.

Another example is when people say that they think it's arrogant for claiming absolute certainty of a proposition. Of course, that's a proposition about which they are assuming an absolute certainty.

These same hypocritical self-defeaters abound when people make claims concerning the freedom they give to their children. "Sheltering children is wrong," so they say. And, of course, what is being withheld from these children is not sheltering but a type of sheltering. In other words, they're sheltering their children from a life of protection from certain things all in the name of freedom.

Everyone shelters his or her kids. It's a matter of where the parents draw the boundaries. I once had someone who would not let her kids around me because she was attempting to shelter her children from what I said. Of course, she was the biggest advocate for letting her children choose their own paths and letting them experience and make their own choices in life. So much for that ideal.

In reality, this is another rebellious self deception that allows the individual to shelter his or her kids from what the Bible teaches about sheltering children in an effort to pretend that he or she is really just being more open and liberated with their children. In reality, these people are merely making the choices for their children like any other parent is doing, closing them off from hearing certain things and considering certain things. They're just making different choices for them than those who follow the Scripture.

Hence, they are sheltering their children like anyone else. They're just sheltering them from what is good and brainwashing them in what is evil. Such is the path of all who are hypocrites. When you are not self-critical of your concepts, you will inevitably judge others for the very thing that you practice. The difference is that some of us know we practice it and others think they're more enlightened/mature than everyone else who isn't as duped as they are. As in all things, to the fool, the wise man is foolish.

So do I shelter my kids? Absolutely. Who doesn't? But I shelter them while I train them to think and spiritually deal with the war of ideas and moral choices that they will encounter in the world. Some people supposedly shelter kids from being sheltered, but what they're really doing is just sending them out unprepared to make good choices. Throwing your kids into a battle untrained is about as loving as killing them yourself. I liken it to sacrificing your defenseless children by throwing them to lions.

I allow the world into their lives in doses, so that I can help them address the foolishness of the world with the wisdom of God. Imagine if you had an army waiting outside your walls and you decided to let the entire army into your walls at once. That city would not stand. That people would be utterly destroyed.

Fighting them in smaller battalions allows the city to have a chance. It may stand. It may win. The people may live. The outcome is not a sure thing, but it is a sure thing the other way. So it's not simply a matter of saying, "Well, they're going to have to face it anyway." It's a matter of understanding that how you train them to face it, along with how much you allow them to face, makes all the difference in their survival.

But everyone is sheltering their children. It's only a matter of whether that sheltering is from what is right or wrong, good or evil, and whether it is honest or hypocritical, working with your children to undo the evil with which the world would undo them or working with the world to undo your children.


Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Prov 22:6)

That verse works either way btw.