Sacrificing a Child for a Grade

Have you ever used public transport the times children are on their way to or from school? What is the most noticeable thing you see?

I always see children falling into deep sleep however uncomfortable the ride is, be it morning or evening. And it is easy to understand why.

They wake up long before dawn to prepare for school. Add that to the fact that they will be on their homework from the time they get home to bedtime; meaning that they have no time to rest, or even play. We are talking about the privileged few who do not have household chores to deal with. What about the ones who have to wash clothes and utensils and even cook?

It would be good if you read my past post ‘The A Syndrome’ as a companion to this because they are related.

Why will a parent enroll his children to a school so far when there are many schools in his neighborhood? What makes a parent to wake their children up (many times using nannies) at 4 am to prepare for school? Why would a parent allow his child to go to the bus stop before daylight to get a vehicle to school? And why does a parent allow his child no free time all in the name of homework and tuition so that even school holidays are completely swallowed by that tuition?

Many a parent will tell you that they make all these sacrifices so that their children can get good grades. What they seem to forget is that they are in the process sacrificing those children. They are sacrificing the children to the god called excellence, the one the Bible calls Molech, though they may think otherwise.

By the way it is to the same god abortionists sacrifice those children they call unwanted, even those parents who for a lean family ‘remove’ possibilities for conception. I won’t go farther on this as I believe I have offended some already.

Anyway let us get back to what we started with; sacrificing our children for ‘excellence’.

How much time do those children get to spend with their parents in a normal day? How much of that time has any quality when it is there? How much of that time enriches the bond between both parties?

What happens when a child is sleepy all the way to just a few minutes before class begins? How much judgment does he have in those times?

It reminds me of a time many years ago when I was from visiting a relative and found a boy surrounded by people because he did not know where the bus had dropped him. He could not even explain where home was. People were taunting him while others were advising him to go to the police station for assistance. I offered to go with him and nobody even offered any protest. Then I took him to school the next morning before I went to college.

Yet he was a normal boy, as bright as any other from the time I spent with him. It most likely happened that in his hurry to get home and fatigue he picked the wrong bus which dropped him at the end of its route.

I hear they came to look for me with his mother later but I had moved from there.

That is what we expose our children to. That is many times the cost of that grade.

How do we expect them to have a strong moral backbone when the only time we are with them we are only talking about academics, the only rebuke constant in their lives involves an unsatisfactory grade or unfinished homework?

And we wonder when they are unable to make good moral choices. We are shocked when they see no problem having sex with parents and grandparents age mates, even coining a respectable term for it, sponsors. High school students in day schools away from home are converting their small rooms into whorehouses. And children burn schools for the smallest excuse.

But there is another aspect to this sacrifice. We not only throw our children to the deep end of adult expectation, we also become sacrifices to another god, consumerism. In fact that is the reason we are preparing them for that altar as we know no better. Of course we may pretend but we know that this god is called mammon. The children are therefore some sacrifices our worship demands.

How much time do we have left after all the hustle of the day? And I am asking this, not only for our children but even for us. Do we have any free time left after a full day? Does our work day ever end? Do we have a full night’s sleep?

With the digital progress, we are able to work long after office hours. Some do not even know whether there are nonworking hours any more. What with the cell phone and laptop computer and internet everywhere?

With the pursuit of a bigger car or a house or a move to a classier neighborhood parents have forgotten what rest is or means. Even the religious have all but trashed God’s requirement for a Sabbath, behaving as if God did not consider our times when He issued the command. That does not exclude the sabbatists because they also pay lip service to the doctrine they devote their all to prove others in error. They focus on the day at the expense of all the other requirements for that day of rest. Like the Pharisees they reject the weightier matters of the Sabbath.

Do we give our bodies and spirits adequate rest or are we so devoted to the pursuit of that elusive coin? Are we slaves to mammon? Do we think that giving the tithe in a church covers the worship of mammon? Are we so deceived to believe that giving God (which is many times a conniving pastor whose connection to God may only be mouth deep) is acceptable to God as an exchange for living for Him? (Those who have been reading my blog know that I have argued from the scriptures that the tithe is a teaching of rebellion with no place in the New Testament church. This is especially because they choose only the parts that suit them)

Our worship of a foreign God demands that we introduce our children to that worship, and if possible sacrifice them. That is how we are able to burden them with books and school so that they have no spare moment to consider any other god as we are scared they may embrace that other god. Sadly, the God we are shielding them from is the only God who has the exact things they will ever need, the God who created them. That is incidentally the only God resisted by all the religions and cults. You will see it in their exertions and exclusiveness of their ‘worship’. It is the same God we block by our extremely busy lifestyles where we have no spare moment for reflection outside what makes us money.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm 46:10)

Denying our children or us that quietness denies us that crucial connection with God that gives Him time to give direction to our whole lives. But it does worse. It connects us to a false god, a god whose purpose operates at cross purposes to our creator’s.

That is why I am talking about sacrificing our children, though many times we are the first sacrifices on that altar.

It saddens me that parents are at the forefront pushing for extra tuition against the law. They are the ones who readily agree with teachers whose driving force is lining their pockets from that tuition. They do this many times because they are scared of having their children at home, many times because they are also never there. School for many is a safer bet than home alone. They are the same parents who buy their children very expensive toys to compensate for their absence.

Think of it as killing two birds with one stone; the parents and their children. Then you place them on the altar of that destructive god.

What does God have to say about this? I want to leave this open for us to pray that God will speak to us individually. Then we will see the kind of collective action He will require of us.