Most of you are familiar with the compromises offered by Pharaoh in his
dealings with Moses. None were accepted. God's will, not Pharaoh's, was done.
Here is Dr. Peter Marshall (U. S. Senate Chaplain of the 1940's and Pastor of
DC's New York Ave. Presbyterian Church) commenting on Pharaoh's third offer, a
partial quoting of his message "Compromise in Egypt":
The third compromise suggested by Pharaoh was that the adults should go
(from Egypt to Canaan) but that their children should be left in Egypt.
Let the grown-ups - let the old people do it if they want to but leave the
children here.
This was perhaps the most subtle and the most successful of all the
compromises, because even the most godly parents today desire worldly
prosperity and position for their children. They want their children to stay in
Egypt, they want their children to find success and approval in Egypt.
One of the greatest problems facing the church today is the fact that so
many children and young people are still in Egypt with the approval and the
consent of their parents.
In most cases the schools have been strictly prohibited from teaching
religion. We have supposed that it is possible to provide education which is
religiously neutral, to which religion can then be added in greater or lesser
measure. But in fact, an education which is not religious is atheistic.There is
no middle ground. If you give to your children an account of the world from
which God is left out, you will teach them to understand the world without
reference to God.
Now if God exists at all, it is obvious that He is the most important of all
that does exist. We can understand nothing properly, until we see it in its
relation to God and His purpose.
There are many devout Christian parents who have literally vowed God out of
their homes. They no longer have family prayers. they have dispensed with the
blessing at meals. There is no giving of thanks to God for the daily bread.
Religious instruction in the home has become a thing of the past.
And yet I do not suggest that modern parents are not devoted to their
children. They are anxious to have their children succeed, they are desperately
concerned that their children shall be happy. The welfare of their children is
very dear to them, and yet in many cases, it neglects the most important
things.
Children are provided with the very best in medical, dental, and optical
care. their teeth are given careful attention, their eyesight, their tonsils,
their posture, are all looked after. The social graces are not neglected. They
are given music lessons, instructions in expression, they are given dramatics,
and music appreciation. their bodies and their minds are carefully nurtured and
trained while their souls are starved and neglected.
Where are the children? Where are your children? Are they in Egypt? Are you
content that they should stay in Egypt, and grow into manhood and womanhood
without knowing God? Is it your desire that they shall grow up without the
faith of their grandparents?
You are anxious that they shall succeed in college and obtain good grades.
Well that is certainly a laudable ambition... You are anxious that they shall
be endowed with all the social graces, and have friends, and be accepted in
society. Well these ambitions are not to be condemned. But they are not the
most important things in life, and when you have discharged them all, you have
not fulfilled your obligation to your children.
Some parents have discovered that their children do not like to go to church
or to Sunday School. This seems to be true of a considerable number of normal
children. Now if going to church and Sunday School were the only wholesome
activities to which children objected, then it might be something to alarm
parents. But this is merely one of a number of things, many of them quite
normal, that children do not want to do.
Some of them do not want to go to public school either, and yet one does not
hear the parents say, "Dear, dear, I do not know what to do. Our children
dislike public school, and so, we don't make them go, for fear they will grow
up hating knowledge, and later on will not want to go to college! So we just
let them go when they feel like going."
Most little boys do not like to wash their necks or to clean behind their
ears. And yet when parents make this disturbing discovery, that the young
gentleman reacts very violently to this wholesome activity, they do not say,
"Well, we never force our little boy to wash his neck, or to wash behind
his ears, because we are afraid that when he grows up he will hate soap and
water, and become a dirty man who never takes a bath."
Religious training and the cultivation of religious habits are even more
important than the training and the cultivation of cultural habits.
Children who are brought up to feel that this is a world in which people can
follow their own inclinations have been given a false view of life, which they
will later have to unlearn by painful experience.
If Sunday morning should be inclement, far too many parents are inclined to
say, "Well it is a very nasty day. It's a shame to send our child out on a
day like this." So greatly to his delight, the little boy is allowed to
stay at home. But if the inclement weather continues until the next morning, if
it is inclement on Monday morning, he finds to his dismay that the same rules
do not apply. You see, parents regard it as important that he should go to
public school. Thus we are bringing up a generation of young people that are
being taught by their parents that religion is not important, that the
cultivation of the soul is not a very serious matter...
One half of all American children today receive absolutely no religious
instruction whatsoever. And the alarming thing about it is that most of them
belong to the privileged groups. They live in our Chevy Chase and your Gross
Point. They are not children of the slums...
There are children who have been left in Egypt, who do not know God. They
are not antagonistic to religion, or to the church, but to them, religion and
the church are simply not important, and it is hard to see how they can be
called anything other than pagan.
...a famous businessman was pacing the dark in deepest despair. A friend
said, "What's on your mind?" He answered, "I'm a miserable
failure." "Oh no," said the friend, "to the contrary,
you're a brilliant success, so much so that every American boy who dreams of a
future for himself seeks a future such as your life has been!" And
the man answered, "But what's the use of it all, if your son is a
fool?"
I might add another and even more searching question: What is the good of
your son's phi-beta-kappa key, or your girl's successful career in music or art
or journalism, if they don't know God, if they are not saved, if they have not
entered into a saving relationship with God through Christ, if they are
spiritually illiterate or spiritually dead?
That's the question you will have to answer if your children are left in
Egypt.
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