Did you hear about the parent whose child had a curable illness that simply required a regular prescription medication, but the parent let the young child decide each day whether to take the medicine or not? Oh, you didn’t? Did you hear about the parent whose child didn’t like going to school, so that parent decided to not make the child go to school, lest the child turn away from education altogether and never want to learn anything ever again? Oh, you didn’t?
As parents, we raise our kids to have the best opportunities to succeed in life, and we make the big decisions for them, when they are young, since they are not equipped to understand the long-term need for certain things or the ramifications of choosing to neglect something vital to their life. We do that with medications, with school, and those things we have determined to be essentials. So, here’s the question: Why do parents let their children decide whether they want to go to church, or go to Bible class, or go to church youth events, or participate in worship or church activities, or have family devotionals, or all sorts of things that make an eternal difference? Why are those optional?