To complicate the sheep-versus-wolves picture, we must also recall that our kids aren’t simply sheep. Our reality is messier: the “wolves” also already live inside our children.

Jesus affirms this in Mark 7. He explains why he rebuked the Pharisees after they chided his disciples for ignoring ritual purity codes. Jesus outright condemned these religious leaders’ habit of believing that external objects, such as the wrong kinds of foods, spiritually defile us. Jesus says our disordered hearts are the real problem:

“There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him. . . . Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. (Mark 7:15, 18b–23)

By understanding that the heart is a well, poisoned at its source, Jesus cut to the chase: don’t get hung up on externals, but look to the state of your own heart. No one catches sin, like a contagion, from outside influences such as food, or even popular culture. Rather, the idols within our hearts already threaten to defile us and our children.

Even if we could create a popular-culture-free bubble for our children, we could not secure their spiritual safety. Children take the evil within them wherever they go. Yes, popular culture can entice hearts, hook into our idols, and tempt us away from God’s purpose. If that is so, and we are called into the world by Jesus, our path is clear. Instead of keeping our children ignorant, we learn to gauge their level of maturity and guide them to further maturity as we intentionally train them to discern idols—the ways culture entices us to serve and worship that which is not God. We teach our children  how the gospel outshines the fool’s gold offered by the idols!

Otherwise, once children leave home, they will be unprepared and might be blindsided by temptation. Plus, if they were raised disconnected from culture, they will likely prove to be poor ambassadors, unfamiliar with the mind-set of the neighbors they are trying to reach.

We want to help you teach your children how to refuse heart-seducing idolatry and answer this temptation with the greater beauty and power of the gospel. When we form and guide our children’s heart affections in the very midst of our surrounding culture, they can learn how to be wise as serpents and single-hearted (not simple-minded) as doves.