Beloved,
We had planned to go hiking, but due to the weather I ended up taking the boys to the library on Monday morning. We climbed the stairs to the second floor and were greeted by a friendly librarian who told us about the summer reading program. Each boy was given a bag of goodies for signing up, and they also got to pick out a free book. Vos was in the 0-2 age range and there were three board books to choose from. The first two were about potty training and construction trucks (Vos chose the first!). But it was the third that particularly caught my attention. It was titled Antiracist Baby, a boardbook authored by one of CRT’s leading proponents, Ibram X. Kendi. It is a book with a singular goal – to make my toddler “woke” by teaching him that systemic racism pervades the institutions of society and that those institutions must be overthrown by way of antiracist political revolution. It is a book aimed at normalizing cultural Marxism as if it was no more threatening than Pete the Kitty demonstrating how to flush the toilet and wash his hands. And I’ve since learned that this antiracist board book is a #1 New York Times’ Bestseller. Am I the only one who was unaware that baby books could make the NYT Bestseller list?
These are the days in which we live, friends. And it has been a fresh reminder to me that the cultural elites are after our kids. I knew that, of course. How else are they to radically change the religious and moral fabric of society? They need to get into our colleges and public schools. And if possible, they need to begin even earlier than that. For if they are successful in indoctrinating our kids, then within two generations they can turn society completely on its head. That is what is happening before our very eyes. It is sobering.
But it is not sobering in a pessimistic, hopeless kind of way. The world has always operated in this fashion. Satan is very unoriginal. And here is the encouraging thing about it – God has designed the family and the church to be a haven and training ground for our kids to preserve them from the devil’s lies. As a part of the covenant community, He has gifted them with the Scriptures, and as they hear their parents teach them and their pastors herald them, they, through the Spirit’s blessing and a living faith, come to see the folly of empty, dead-end ideologies like CRT.
Seeing Kendi’s board book offered at the library has brought a strange kind of encouragement to my soul by reminding me that God has made provision in His word and HIs church to protect, preserve, and prosper my boys and all the kids of our church. The world might be after our kids, but before the world was, God was already after our kids! What an encouraging thought that is in the present cultural moment.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick