FAY ROWE

A pagan society is one “which does not acknowledge the God of the Bible” according to Webster’s New Edition Dictionary. If by “not acknowledging” we mean paying no attention to his expressed will and ways, his wisdom or even his warnings of what will harm us, then to a great degree we are already living in that world. Even if our own sphere is one in which the fear of God is present, at least to the point that we search out his wisdom and acknowledge him in almost all our ways, we will probably agree that paganism encroaches from many sides.

I won’t describe some of the things I saw and heard on one of my favourite* television shows which nailed “Pagan!!” to my mind’s message wall. The visual content disturbed me, but more so the blatant dismissal of Christian belief and lifestyle, by this line: “You’re not born again now, are you?

I confess I tried to think it wasn’t what it looked like. My daughter and son-in-law work in the film/television industry, so I’ve often heard that just because what is portrayed on the screen is to my mind inappropriate, that doesn’t mean the over all world view portrayed is pagan. It may actually be just the opposite. It may be just showing the reality of its end.

So maybe I am overreacting, but it made me think about what it might be like for our children who will be raising their children in what appears to becoming a pagan society.

And then I thought of Abraham and was encouraged. He, along with many of his descendants, was given the challenging task of raising children in a pagan society, of raising children who acknowledged the God of the Bible. God told them how to do it, and I wrote about it in Keepers of the Testimony. It may not seem as easy as it sounds, but God is very invested in this as well as you are. Perhaps even more so. He knows, better than we, that to allow our children to live without knowledge of God is to let them live without strength they need.

The scripture below says God “established” the testimony, the means to establish what he knows is necessary for our children’s best life and best end: Live God stories and tell your children about them.

God’s way works.

“For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them [his strength and his wonderful works] known to their children” (Psalm 78:5).

* It was a favourite until this week.