Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8
As we go through life, there are certain moments that grab our attention more than others. Usually these moments fall under a traditional category. Mile markers if you will. Birthdays, drivers license, high school graduation, first dates, wedding day, birth of children, etc. I feel that currently I am hitting these mile markers at record breaking speeds. They almost blur together they go by so fast. I currently have one daughter about to be a junior in college while our other daughter is entering her junior year of high school. As a result of this rapid aging process, I am in the middle of a college search with my younger daughter. Personally, I don’t remember even thinking about college prior to my senior year of high school. However, I do applaud her in getting ahead of the game and trying to figure out her future. I am trying to support this search as best as I can but it is hard.
We have, at the time of this writing, taken three school tours. One was in Arkansas while the other two were in Georgia. My daughter has been very certain about one thing, and that is she wants to go to a Baptist/Christian school. This was her decision and I am very proud of her making this choice. She recognizes the need to try and surround herself with the best possible friends and faculty as possible to help her develop as a young adult. This process has been fun and exciting, but also can be frustrating and disturbing. Our process has been to use Google to locate Baptist/Christian based schools in our local area along with bordering states. Our daughter then looks at the school’s websites for information about academics, financial aid, student housing, etc. From there, she decides if she thinks we need to physically visit the school.
As a parent, I have concerns that I look for that maybe my daughter doesn’t consider. I want to know about the safety of my daughter, cost of attending, and how well they prepare her for the career of her choice. But on this last visit we went to, it became apparent to me that there was one concern that my daughter and I did share.
You are never really sure as a parent if what you are teaching your kids is taking hold in their heads and heart, or are you wasting your time. You hope for the best, but you can’t help but wonder if they are simply telling you what you want to hear. After this last school visit, I had one of my most proud moments with my daughter.
The last school we visited was listed online as a “Christian” institution. You can find several places on their website about Christian values and serving others. They mention about the Christian background of how they were started over 100 years ago. A certain chicken restaurant, that is a favorite among evangelicals, regularly donates to this school. So, needless to say, this school visit was very highly anticipated.
The morning of our school tour, my wife pulled up the school’s Instagram account to see if they had posted recently. We were very concerned about what popped up. The first post shown was a “Happy Pride Month” post. We were very discouraged but hoped that maybe this was more of a rogue student led post rather than an official school post. We get to campus and it is absolutely gorgeous. You couldn’t ask for more. The facilities were all updated. The academics were almost too good to be true. They provided work study for all students who wanted it. Internships were readily available to students. Tutoring for anyone who needed it. It was hard to find anything to complain about.
Then we go into the library. We see a sign immediately with rainbow colored handprints all over it. The sign read “Everybody is welcome in our library”. On a staff door, hung a rainbow striped heart. One of our tour guides was a student that worked for the “diversity” office of the school. The tour guides also begin to tell us about the school sponsored “casino night” they have every year with professional card sharks brought on campus to lead it. There is also a chapel where the students can go pretend to get married with fake marriage certificates and ring pops to exchange. You can even get several people all “married” to each other at once. As the tour guides are describing this event, they are standing in front of a television screen that has a campus event date schedule scrolling across it. Scheduled for June 24 was “Rome Pride”. Red flags and fireworks are going off in my head. I am praying to God about how to handle this.
Our tour then led us to the Freshmen dorms. This was probably the worst part of our tour in regards to facilities. It was not as renovated but that was not the main problem. We are told that the dorm is co-ed. Now prior to this the tour guides were telling how, when the school first opened, the boys were on one end of campus and the girls were on the other end of campus. One hundred years later, they are in the same building.
For a lot of people, I know what I just described would not ruffle any feathers. Even for a lot of Christians. Which is my point of this post. We have given in to the world. The term “Christian” does not mean what it once did. This school advertised itself as a “Christian” institution but yet it openly promotes and supports a lifestyle that the Bible strongly speaks against. The Bible refers to homosexuality as an abomination but yet the world says it’s fine. I am going to call a spade a spade here. The Bible is God’s Word. It comes from God Himself. God is pure and holy. He has no sin and cannot sin. God cannot lie. So if His Word says something is wrong then it is wrong. It does not matter what you or I believe. God is truth. When you don’t agree with God then you are not “with” God. You are not like God. That is the very definition of a Christian. As a Christian, you are “Christ like”. I am not saying we won’t sin as Christians. But as a Christian you should always agree with the Bible and what God says is sin. When you don’t, you are not Christian. Your faith is not in God and what He says. Your faith is in what you think/believe. You have basically said that your ways and beliefs and higher and better than God’s. You are a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You are pretending. You are fooling others, but more importantly, you are fooling yourself all the way to hell.
Back to the proud daddy moment. As we are riding home, my wife asks our daughter if she was still considering this school as a possibility. We both had seen how her eyes lit up with the different things she saw. It was very tempting to close your eyes to the things you didn’t like and say the amount of good out weighed the bad. My daughter did not hesitate. “No, I’m not going there”. When asked why, my daughter said she couldn’t get past the things she saw and heard with the pride junk, co-ed dorms, and the casino night. She knew they were wrong and she did not want to put herself around that stuff if she didn’t have to. I was driving so I couldn’t hug her right then like I wanted. I didn’t want to be the bad guy and suggest that she shouldn’t go to this school. I would have, but I knew it would be so much better for my daughter to make that decision for herself. I did thank God right there on the spot for my daughter’s willingness to stand up for what she knew was right, despite what good things she might have to give up. There is nothing in this world worth forsaking your relationship with God.