Peter Witkowski Parenting

God’s Gifts Won’t Make Our Kids Happy

Regardless of their budget, culture, or age, parents enjoy seeing their kids happy. They take them to Disney World, build those ridiculously hard to assemble Little Tikes Toys, and even buy them a goat. They do all this and more becaue they love their kids. Jesus put it this way,

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.

In a very real sense, we love giving our kids things because this reflects the heart of our creator. It’s a natural impulse because God create us to follow him. god's good gifts

But as with all human impulses, this impulse can become tainted by sin. As we try to give our kids good things, we can sometimes miss the mark. We can sometimes give them things that actually lead them away from Jesus. So how do we ensure that we give them the right things all the time?  We look to Jesus.

Look To Jesus

In Mark 3:7-10, we discover that Jesus is really popular. He was more than trending on social media. His ministry blew the roof of the media world of his day. The stories of miraculous healings and exorcism had reached a fevered pitched. People from all over the ancient world were flocking to Jesus. They were all desperate to touch him and be healed. And what did Jesus do? He withdrew. He got into a boat and sailed a little way out to sea. That’s right, Jesus put an end to the healing frenzy. He stepped away from some of the neediest people of his day. And why?

He wanted to offer them something more. He wanted to give them eternal life. While Jesus knew that healing was a blessing, he also knew that his blessing did not save. God’s good gifts of heal and wealth did not fix people’s sin problem. And so, Jesus withdrew to preach, to teach, and to offer them that which never expires. He offered them himself, eternal life, peace with God.

As parents, we need to learn from our Lord and savior. We need to realize that good gifts do not equal God. We need to understand that paying for a kid’s college education, buying them a car, or sacrificing everything for their sports career does not equal their salvation and happiness. And we need to come to grips with the reality that it is possible to focus on and enjoy God’s good gifts and yet miss God.  As Jesus later said in Mark 8:36,

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

From Gifts Back to God

So how do we keep our kids focus on God? How do we be like Jesus and make sure our audience knows that Jesus and not cars, careers, or trophy’s satisfies? First and foremost, we preach the gospel. We teach our kids at home via family devotions, conversations, and our actions. Second, we pull back worldly gifts when we see them leading our kids away from Christ. If the gift of a great education leads our child to sloth, if a car makes our child irresponsible, and if focusing on their sports career leads them to boasting, we pull all these things back. Again none of these things are wrong or evil or bad. But if they lead to sin, we should pull them back in hopes of refocusing our kids on Christ.

At the end of the day, we will all reach a point when God’s good gifts stop having value. We will all die. And when death comes, what will our kids be trusting in? Will they be trusting in God’s gift or the savior who came to seek and save the lost?

Peter Witkowski Parenting

Is your kid a Christian or a Materialist?

piggy bank blogIs your kid a giver? I don’t mean do they give 10% of their allowance to the church and put 10% of their $5.00 income into savings. That’s a great habit. But, the Christian is called to do more. We called to be free will givers, givers who regularly exceed their tithe to meet the needs of others. Do our kids have this heart within them?  Do we?

Why So Much Financial Debt?

I fear the answer for many of us is “no.” The average American household carries around $204, 992.00 in debt. Over $15,000 of that amount is credit card debt. This number is astronomical when compared to our average income.  The average American household salary is $55,192. If people stopped spending and devoted every dime to paying off debt, it would take the average family 3 years and 8 months to get right side up.

I mention these stats not to shame anyone but to remind us all that American culture is not about giving. It’s about materialism i.e. stuff.  The world says that joy is attained via trips to the Bahamas, kitchen remodels, and HD T.V.’s hung on the wall. And so, we Americans spend ourselves into debt, seeking meaning, hope, and value in the stuff of life.

Our kids’ world is no different. Instead of trips to the beach, stainless steal appliances and 90” T.V.’s, our kids find their value in vacations to Disney World, the newest Bratz Dolls, and the latest edition Madden. Because they come into the world as fallen sinners, kids have innate desire to like stuff. And not too surprisingly, our kids our great at encouraging us parents to buy things. According to Canadian researchers, kids directly influence everything from which cereal goes in the pantry to which software Dad puts on the computer. The natural kid excels at coveting stuff. But what about the biblical kid? What about the kid who claims to be a Christian? What should she live for?

Why So Much Giving?

The scriptures say that that the Christian kid is one who gives freely to others. Instead of using his limited income to fill his barn-like toy chest with stuff, he buys his classmate a new coat. The Christian kid counters the culture by living out the truth that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). We read in 2 Corinthians 9:6-8

 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

                Our kids can tithe and save up money to fund well budgeted trips, Playstations, and concert tickets without doing anything to advance their own spiritual life and the proclamation of the gospel. The rich, younger lived for the law and missed Christ. The transformational grace of Christ should move us beyond budgeting to giving. We may not all be cheerful givers now, but this God’s plan for his children.  “God is able to make all grace abound to you.”

To be a Christian is to be a person who excitedly gives from heart as they are able. For our kids this may mean they joyfully give a classmate a pencil or send $5.00 to a missionary.  For us we may 4896996561_541b024452_obuy a homeless man a meal or donate a car to charity. The amount may vary but the heart attitude is always the same. We give generously and freely seeking to expand our faith by glorifying God through serving others.


But what if this is not our experience? What do we do when our kids struggle with giving? What happens if you struggle with giving? How do you become a cheerful giver? Let me offer 4 insights from Paul that have helped my heart.

What Do We Remember?

  1. Remember what giving is not. Giving is not an element of salvation. Giving is not to be done, “reluctantly or under compulsion” (7). No one needs to give to earn God’s favor. Nor do with give to earn the praise of our fellow men or to earn a deacon nomination. We are fully saved by the work of God on the cross apart from human effort. Giving is not a work of the law. It is an act of Grace. We don’t have to give to earn favor with God.
  2. Remember What Giving is: Giving is an act of faith. We give to reap bountifully. We give as much as we are able because we desire to grow in our faith and because we desire God to bless our lives. Many Christians have both depressed spiritual and physical lives because they don’t give. We can’t grow if we are unwilling to sow. If we our unwilling to submit our wallets to God, we cannot expect him to bless with more money. He will not encourage us to develop habits that lead us away from the throne room of heaven.
  3. Remember What God Gave: Ultimately, we are generous givers because everything we have was given to us. Giving in cyclical. We give because we have been giving things. If we have a pencil or a million dollars, we have it because God gave it to us. When we give things to others, we are handing over things that were given to us from God through other people. We aren’t giving our stuff away, we are giving away God’s stuff. Most importantly, the greatest thing we have and the only thing we can take with us after death, our salvation, is a free gift from God. God gave us the most awesome gift ever. He became poor so that we could live more abundantly (2 Cor. 8:9). If we get this truth, how can we not give?  
  4. Remember Who Gets the Glory: Often when people think of giving they think of the people getting the stuff. Biblically, this is slightly off base. Yes, we give to others because we care about people and their needs. But ultimately, we give so that God will be praised. Our giving is not based on the quality of the need. We give so that others will look at us and praise God for his work.

Giving is not a natural impulse. But it is a divine mandate. If we will stay at the foot of the cross and plead with God to change our hearts, we can and should be confident that we will become givers. Until that point, we keep reminding ourselves about the above for points.

photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/25444930@N02/4877821682″>Babe</a&gt; via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

Peter Witkowski Apologetics, Parenting

Did Noah Drown?: A Quick Warning About Russell Crowe’s Noah

Did Noah DrownA Fail of Biblical Proportions

During the first five minutes of Noah, I was pleasantly intrigued. I had was not making plans to write the following review. I knew going into the theatre that the marriage of Biblical narrative and Hollywood cinematography often leaves our scriptures a little worse for the wear. And, I was willing to give the creators some creative grace when it came to dressing the characters in 1860’s work clothes. Sadly though, the creators of this film did not stop with recreating the historical setting of the story. They completely rewrote the biblical narrative, transforming Noah into a self-righteous maniac who was not above killing babies, using drugs, or drowning his failures in one too many wooden cups of freshly pressed grapes. Consequently, the film promises to confuse younger viewers’ attempting to appreciate the biblical narrative found in Genesis 5-8.  If you are a parent, I would encourage you to protect your children from the deluge of error that flows in and out of this movie.  

Not Just Noah 

In general, we must give great care when choosing movies for our children to see, especially biblical ones. Often lacking a good knowledge of the Bible, our children will assume that a film accurately represents the powerful, divine narrative. I lost count a long time ago of how many kids approach Exodus through the storyline of The Prince Of Egypt. “No…I don’t think baby Moses almost got eaten by an alligator or run over by a ship. And moving on….”

Consequently, the movie Noah by simply existing has the potential to leave this generation of kids with muddled perception of this narrative that beautifully details sin, death, and salvation. But by smashing past the usual limits of historical license into the world of recreation, the architects of this film offer our children gross misconceptions about the God, Noah, and the Bible. The film is troubling.

Evidently God Was Silent

First and foremost, the movie misrepresents God to the next generation. God is shown to be a mystical creator who only communicates with his creation through odd dreams. Instead of giving Noah a detailed plan of the ark and encouraging him to call people to righteousness, the god of this film gives Noah vague impressions that occasionally require the assistant hallucinate drugs to help things along (Genesis 6:11-22). Because God is so distant, the actors in the film never actually say the word “God.” Moreover, all those wonderful promises that drive the historical Genesis narrative were not divine revelation. They were the strange musing of an emotionally unstable Noah. If we let this movie inform our children’s view of God, they will think the creator of the universe is a distant being who cares little for the souls running about earth.  

Save The Animals

Noah waste landAccording to Mr. Crowe, humanity’s greatest sin has been the destruction of creation, naturally pushing murder, violence, and idolatry to secondary importance.  He often laments the cruel consumption of nature by the greedy sons of Cain. Being a good dad, he tries to instill his values into his sons. He rebukes his children for picking a flower without a utilitarian purpose. He then kills three men for attempting to hunt and eat a prehistoric dog.   In another Biblical twist, the villain of the movie is credited with saying that humans should “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air” (Gen. 1:28). Not surprisingly, God decided to destroy the world for the purpose of creating a new Eden free from the evil humans who abuse animals and trees.

Sadly, the movie misses the reality God created the world for men and women. God killed the first animal in Genesis 3:21 to provide clothes for Adam and Eve. Moreover, God took delight in Abel’s blood sacrifice and rejected Cain’s grain sacrifice (Genesis 4:3-4). Nature exists for man, helping him to understand and relate to God.  According to the God of the Bible, people never existed for nature.   

The God Saves Those Who Save Themselves

 By necessity any movie that redefines sin must also redefine how a person gets saved.  The creators of the film offer our children a salvation of works, oddly eliminating the existence of grace. Early on in the film, the viewers are introduced to the “Watchers:” rock clad angels. Sometime after the fall of Adam and Eve, they descended from heaven without God’s permission to help Adam survive in the world. Because of their well-intended disobedience (which also indirectly inspires humans to create cities) God has imprisoned these messengers of light in bodies of heavy stone. But after helping Noah build the ark and then defend the ark from the city dwellers (who are beyond saving), God forgives these angels, allowing them to return to heaven with the former glory.

NOAHNot surprisingly, the Noah of the movie also does not offer grace to his family or to the lost world around him. He is intent on seeing all of humanity destroyed, refusing to save an “innocent” girl and others from destruction when given the chance. After all, Noah believes mankind deserves to die for their unjust treatment of the earth. Ultimately, humanity only continues on because Noah eventually sees some redemptive qualities in his progeny. Thus, he decides not to kill his granddaughters and end all hope for human procreation simply because some people are loveable.  The God of Ephesians 2 and Deuteronomy 9 who saves people according to his free grace has been replaced with a silent, dictatorial God who redeems beings when they magically perform enough good works.  

Just Another Fanciful Story

By introducing their audience “Watchers,” Methuselah’s nifty magic tricks (which include a flaming sword that wipes out armies and herbal teas that cause hallucinations) and a Noah who has been blessed by snake sin, the architects of the film transform the BibleRussell-Crowe-in-Noah-Movie-HD-Wallpaper into a fairytale. Instead of being a series of events that involved real people to reveal truth about God and the world, the story becomes just another entertaining myth designed to help us suspend reality for a few moments of pleasure. The movie has attempted to push the Bible off of the historical and ethical shelf onto the messy table of fiction. I believe those who see this movie will struggle to embrace their next Sunday school lesson as being historically true.

(For another great look at the Noah movie through the lens of history and theology check out the Answers in Genesis Blog)

The Real Noah Was Drowned  

In short, I left the movie without actually seeing the story of the “Great Flood.” The creators of the movie drowned the godly Noah of the Bible under a sea of murky philosophical debris. By misunderstanding God and by redefining sin and salvation, the creators of the film present a Noah who is driven by environmental standards of holiness. The man Russell Crowe portrays on the big screen reveals only that an ethic built upon a love for nature and the absence of the biblical God leads to madness. For this inadvertent revelation, I am thankful. But, I am deeply troubled that it came at the expense of the historical Noah who loving preached righteousness to perishing world (2 Peter 2:5). I believe this film can do nothing but confuse the next generation.