By Ada Brownell
Family worship at home is difficult
in this day when busyness steals time. Yet, it is more necessary than ever.
Secularists,
Progressives and even Communists and
other religions have made it their priority to grab the hearts and minds of
youth in America, and they’d especially like to brainwash those raised in
Christian homes.
Brainwashing usually involves propaganda and the most
successful propaganda has some truth in it, according to Jacques Ellul, author
of “Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes.”. If it were all lies, most
people would resist it.
Where propaganda goes to work to change minds is in the
“interpretation” of the truth, or the “slant” they place on the truth. It’s
called “spin” today.
Mao Tse-Tung
said propaganda can “force” people to become Marxist. His first techniques
failed, but then he went to public discussion, criticism, persuasion and
Marxist education, especially for children and he turned China to his way of
thinking. This is spite of Mao executing an estimated two to five million
people and several million were sent to labor camps.
To have the greatest effect, propaganda must
base itself on existing tendencies, Ellul said,[1]
and not go against ingrained attitudes. Instead of going against what you
believe, it gives you something else to believe--using your own desires and
needs as a basis--and without knowing it, your attitudes are replaced.
Ellul said
pre-existing attitudes fade quickly in real propaganda campaigns where it
surrounds a person from morning to night, childhood to old age, in all he
reads, hears, without giving him rest, a moment to pause, think or catch his
breath.[2]
Webster’s New World Dictionary says brainwashing is
“to indoctrinate so intensively and thoroughly as to effect a radical
transformation of beliefs and mental attitudes.”
In other
words, to brainwash you is to not only change how you think, but also what you
think. Furthermore, if you are brainwashed, it changes who you are.
Armies who
keep prisoners of war often brainwash one person at a time, but Communists and
Nazis brainwashed entire societies. In America, we not only have brainwashing
in institutions of learning, but it’s done by gangs, politicians and the media.
Gangs and governments can brainwash you so thoroughly you’ll kill your brother,
grandmother or mother.
The media
brainwashes you by portraying the majority of Christians as crooks and
adulterers. A few high profile ministers have been great sinners, but if they
break God’s laws, they are no longer Christians.
The media rarely
mentions powerful things accomplished by Christians and Jews. Christian
charities housed and fed the homeless and hungry around the world for
centuries. Missionaries often bring free health care and medicine when they go
to tell the world about Jesus. Christians are there, too, when disaster
strikes.
Christians
started and still operate most of the hospitals in the world.
Religion was the
reason people learned to read. Since the Middle Ages, there has been near
universal literacy among Jewish men because they were required to read the
Torah by age 13.
Christians
read the Jewish scrolls than read the letters of the Apostles to their
congregations. The Reformation caused everyone to want to read Scripture and
the first book published by Gutenberg was the Bible. Wycliff Translators are
bringing literacy even to tribes with no written language because they’ll live
with them and create their language.
In America, education began with
families teaching their children so they could read God’s Word and eventually
that evolved into schools. Most of the universities and colleges in the United
States were started by Christians, and they often contained seminaries or Bible
schools.
Now
you can’t even use the name of Jesus in a classroom in any of those
universities unless it’s used as a swear word.
I
thought the active war against faith in God was bad enough when we were raising
our family. There came a time when I knew I would need to counteract at home
ungodly teachings my kids were forced to study in school. That’s why I devoted time to studying
sections of Josh McDowell’s book, “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” during our
family worship time.
Norman
Lear, a writer and television executive started the “People for the American
Way,” to erode the faith of youth with television programming in response to
the Moral Majority in the 1980s, and PAW is still going strong. And the church
wonders why it loses a large percentage of youth—even when they’ve been raised
in Christian homes!
Wise
parents will guard their children’s hearts and minds, and inspire them to do
the same thing by filling their minds with God’s Word, giving themselves
completely to God, and by shunning even
the appearance of evil (1 Thessalonians
5:22).
I
remember family worship when my mother had eight of us in the house, and when
there were only two of us eight children left. Dad wasn’t the type to lead it,
but always listened carefully. God’s Word left an imprint on my life. David hid
God’s Word in his heart so he wouldn’t sin. If it worked for him, it will work
for us.
Copyright Ada Brownell
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