How to Raise Godly Kids in a Culture of Death

The only way to describe it is my soul just grieves.

The undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress have caught everyone’s attention on social media, now leading to Congressional investigations and an initial vote to defund Planned Parenthood this week (while it failed in the Senate, many observers note it provided an important first step).

In the initial video, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services Dr. Deborah Nucatola is caught casually eating her lunch while describing how she kills babies in routine abortions—all while carefully trying to preserve fetal body parts for outsourcing.

It is mind-numbing to watch. How could a person talk in such a callous and casual manner about carving up a baby?

But really, why am I surprised? As a writer, I have done enough research on the subject to discover that many medical and pharmaceutical companies use fetal organs for research purposes. Those human remains have to come from somewhere.

I am also not shocked at the fact that Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in this country—with a staggering average of 327,000 abortions a year.

But in order to face the facts about abortion in this country, I do what many other people do: I compartmentalize this type of horror. It’s not a part of my immediate world, so I draw a curtain over it and try to forget what I cannot change.

These viral videos are a dose of reality for all of us who try to place a veil over what we know is a vicious reality. We come face to face with evil, and she looks just like us. She acts just like us while casually enjoying a lunch. She is the product of what our society has become; the greater horror would be if we did not lament it.

As I began to grieve over the reality of that undercover video, I asked God for a word of encouragement—that He is in control even amid such evil. I decided to look up my daily Bible scripture on my phone app; Proverbs 22:6 was the day’s verse. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Well, I thought obviously that didn’t really apply and I began to search my Bible for more revelation on the day’s events. 

The next day, as I was scrolling through article after article—some commenting on Planned Parenthood’s callousness for human life, and nearly every news organization coming to its defense—Proverbs 22:6 came back to me.

I have always read that verse as a reminder to train my children in God’s Word, but I never thought about how that scripture applies to guiding my children through the everyday events of our world. Walking out God’s commandments is about teaching our children how to apply those commands to the world they live in, where evils like abortion exist.

I asked God to encourage me, and instead He gave me a mission call. I may not be able to end abortion today, or control the reality of evil that I often want to pretend isn’t there—but I can train my children to love the value of God-given life.

My generation has grown up with abortion as a part of our society. We’ve grown up with the lie that abortion is the answer to a mistake. But the world will never be able to teach our children what we know through the love of Christ: redemption and mercy.

I want my children to understand what abortion is, and I filter the events of our world based on their ages. As parents, we need to share with our kids how we react to the evil we see in the world. If we don’t, they will only witness the reaction of the world that rejects God’s commands and sees abortion as a solution.

Don’t throw a curtain over the world’s events to shield your children from evil. Evil exists and it’s our job to train them to live among the darkness, offering hope that only Christ can bring.

My children know that abortion is a sin, but more importantly I want them to be able to understand that Christ already paid a price for our sins. I want them to know that life is messy, and there is evil in this world. Yet there is a freedom we can walk in that the world will never be able to give. 

I hope my children are never faced with an unplanned pregnancy. I hope they understand that they are sinners and they live in a fallen world. I hope and pray that they understand forgiveness and grace so that they might be able to help future friends who are caught in what seems like an impossible situation.

I hope that my children know that abortion is never the answer, because God’s grace is sufficient for all our needs. Sometimes God uses the ugly events of our world to remind me of my life mission as a parent.

As parents, God has given us all we need to change the world—if we just train up our children in the way they should go. This doesn’t mean there won’t be struggle and hardship; it means there will be freedom to walk out the unexpected in their lives.

I pray one day that there will be an end to abortion in my children’s lifetime. I pray that organizations like Planned Parenthood are put out of business from profiting off of destroying life. But until then, as a parent, I have a mission to train my children about the precious value of all human life.

The world gives us abortion as an answer, but God gives us an ocean of grace. He says, “Choose life and watch what I can redeem.” Let’s train up our children so they can offer up that same grace, a grace the world fails to recognize.

“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:6-9).

Passionate about the issue of life, Julie Klose is a freelance writer and blogger at The Velvet Brick and Bound4LIFE International, a grass-roots movement to pray for the ending of abortion and for revival worldwide. She and her husband raise their children in Virginia. Reprinted with permission from Bound4LIFE International.