You should teach your children to love the good and to hate evil. If this teaching is not the foundation of everything else, then the else is sophistry. Let’s shed all the faux-sophistications about parenting. Let’s not twitter on and on about this and that but fail at the foundational task: people, when grown, should do good, and not do bad.
Grace completes nature, it does not annihilate nature. Biblically, the grace-works distinction does not equate to inner versus outer, nor to physical action vs. internal intention. But evangelical Christian parents, from a sincere fear of instilling “works-righteousness” in their children, end up being less than parents, in that they fail to teach their children to act virtuously. They don’t grasp the importance of physical obediance. They create an inner-outer dualism that does not reflect biblical anthropology and becomes a fully grown Protestant nuerosis. For their children, the inner man is the repository of moral goodness, and the outer man is a doppelganger, who sometimes does well but sometimes does not, but ultimately this desultory outer man has no eternal significance. Salvation happens internally.
This produces guilt ridden adults who rely on magical “forgiveness” to function. They will manipulate God and people all day every day to get the freedom from guilt we all need. They manipulate God by performing rituals, or magic spells, in response to which He must forgive. The main ritual is called Confession of Sin.
In high churches this is attended by formalities and even ritual. In low churches they dispense with the ritual, congratulate themselves on their authenticity-by-Docetism, and still practice the magical incantations, which work as long as you are “sincere”. The evangelical magic spell is a prayer to Jesus asking forgiveness.
Don’t skip the foundation. Set out to create a sharp, sharp distinction between good and bad in your infant children.
TimothyOne 