Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Deuteronomy 11:19

For Meditation

How careless can we be with our children? What are we doing allowing them to be exposed to various kinds of teaching through cartoons and television that shape their worldview and mold their habits the? Why then are we crying at what the world has become – godless and vain.

I see it daily; children buried in cartoons. It has become the best tool in changing public opinion and shaping a godless worldview. The enemy’s project starts with children. Yet, we seem oblivious to the carnage cartoons are inflicting on our children. We give them the tools and walk away without the slimmest idea of how those cartoons are subtly molding their lives.

In my ministry here in Senegal, I have seen and experienced firsthand, the impact of taking children, as young as four years, into religious schools and shaping their worldview in the way of religious leaders. One can experience them in every aspect of live – as artisans, drivers, singers, shopkeepers, and what have you. They have no formal education, so they become vulnerable to every opinion their masters express. They are unquestionably loyal and would kill to maintain the status quo. Ideas they have been exposed to in their formative years as Talibe (disciples) constitute their beliefs and shape their convictions. And these convictions do solidify into bad habits.  

Cartoons are doing worse to the children of today than we could imagine. I call it the School of Cartoons. There are no qualifications for enrollment, no age limit, or admission fee. The parent pays no school fees and provides no school uniform. The only requirement is the acquisition of either a tablet, mobile phone, TV or any other gadget that can receive instructions from the invisible teachers from all over the world. Instruction is, therefore, virtual, and the curriculum, wide and uncensored. It doesn’t matter what the teacher believes. They are accepted by their craftiness – the dexterity of concealing their real agenda in seemingly harmless little creatures that can hold children’s attention longer than any parental or classroom session. These cartoon sessions have addictive power like any harmful drug and much more destructive. For want of time for the pursuit of wealth, many have freed themselves from parental responsibility by enrolling their children in the School of Cartoons thereby affecting them for life.

Through the medium of this school, immorality and godlessness have found a secure platform to breed. Our children and grandchildren are being brainwashed into accepting homosexuality, same sex marriage, transgenderism and all the isms. The ideas they plant in infant minds shape their worldview. They grow to accept these ungodly lifestyles as natural and normal. “They become convictions that govern their behavior and solidify into habits that mold their lives. No wonder the world is what it is today! Acrimony, hatred, shootings in schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, and public spaces have become the order of day.

The answer is in good parenting in Christ Jesus our Lord. Good parenting is hands-on and godly. Jesus said there is no one good but God alone – and He is God (Lk. 18:19). So, there can be no good parenting apart from Christ. The parent is the ultimate teacher of their children as enabled by the Holy Spirit. We are instructed to, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it (Prov. 22:6). In Deuteronomy, the Lord tells His people repeatedly to uphold His word and teach it to their children. “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (11:18-19). Unfortunately, we have abdicated this role to teachers in the School of Cartoons, and formal education reinforces the ungodly worldview cartoons impose on them. 

Can we as Christians disengage our children from the School of Cartoons and assume our responsibility as the ultimate teachers of our children? Can you take time to screen the content of what you allow your children to watch? Can you limit the time you allow them to spend with cartoons? Why not engage them in spiritual things and eternal perspectives, inculcating in them, your Christian worldview? They need social skills growing up, so why not get them well connected with other Christian children and let them be kids? These require your time and attention and much love. When we fulfil these Godly conditions, we will find that amid ungodliness, our children will flourish like roses in Christ.

Shalom