We’re good at focusing on the negative: Jesus did say we’re not to be of the world.  Yet we somehow manage to forget the positive: we also are to be in it (see John 17).  Failure to recognize and apply this—indeed, many Christians seek to live out the opposite—contributes to the crisis of fragile and ill-prepared children.  If they’re sealed in a biosphere for eighteen years, sure, they may stay “uninfected”…until they’re let out.  Then, far from being immunized or inoculated, they’re prone to catch almost anything.

I’m still amazed by what I saw kids from Christian homes do when they got to college, away from their highly sheltered lives.  They had professed to follow the Lord and receive His whole council, and they had lived such highly prescribed lives, but if their parents only knew half their exploits, they might, like Job, tear their clothing and sit in ashes.  “Every fall,” observes John Portmann, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, “parents drop off their well-groomed freshmen, and within two or three days many have consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol and placed themselves in harm’s way.  These kids have been controlled for so long, they just go crazy.”

By and large, we’re not debilitating our kids on purpose.  Over the years I’ve slogged through a ton of negativity, and I’m insistent that guilt is not an acceptable synonym for parenthood.  Nonetheless, often with the best of intentions, Christian and non-Christian parents alike are raising children who are passive, pleasant, and malleable rather than innovative, proactive, and bold.  These “nice” children prevalently struggle with fear, anxiety, loneliness, and, later in life, relational instability and divorce.  Our goal should be to create confident and truly virtuous kids who are capable of doing more than their part in obtaining an abundant life.  These children become adults who lend their strength to others and help them obtain happiness as well.