Core Values for a Post-Christian Culture: 10 Biblical Truths to Teach our Children

As I read the news headlines and watch my social media feed, it is plain to see that we are increasingly living in a world that has gone nuts. Perhaps you’ve noticed the same thing? Our whole society has increasingly turned its back on Biblical assumptions and core values. As a result we have spiraled into a post-Christian, secular culture. As mothers we have a great opportunity to “rebuild the ruins” and it starts by reinstalling these core values to prepare our children for the post-Christian culture we will one day launch them into.

I feel very concerned for my children. How I can better prepare them for the world they will live in? What practical steps can I take to prepare them to stand firm? We can equip our children so they are not “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14).

Take a look at theses 10 core values that our post-Christian culture has thrown away.

If we are intentional in these areas I believe we’ll be on the road to making rock solid kids with deep roots and a firm foundation. Generations past may have taken these for granted. My mother certainly believed these truths, but she really didn’t need to invest a lot of her energy in teaching me that I don’t get to choose my own gender. My grandmother would have been shocked to hear that, in the future, disagreeing with someone’s politics would constitute “hate speech”. These values were part of the “air we breathed” in society. No longer! Now, our post-Christian culture widely counters these core values. While they were generally assumed in generations past we need to be very intentional about impressing them on our kids today. These values are interconnected. If you remove one, the whole worldview eventually falls flat – which is what has happened in our culture!

God created.

Until Darwin came along the whole of western culture had no issue assuming that God created the world. He created the Universe! He created You. Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is the foundation of a Biblical worldview. The ramifications for throwing this truth out the window impacts everything! If God did not create, the alternative is everything is a big-bang-accident and we are left to create meaning and identities for ourselves. This is the core value that all the others stand on, and it is vital for life in a post-Christian culture.

So we must teach our children that God created!

We must be ridiculously diligent in pointing this out. Have them memorize Genesis 1:1. Point it out every opportunity that you have. This evening I noticed again just how cute my daughter’s nose is. Instead of saying, “You have such a cute nose!” I said, “How did you get such a cute nose, who made your nose?” The wonders of creation are all around us! Point out the intricacies of a flower, the complexities of the water cycle, the vastness of the stars, and the mystery of metamorphosis.

You are a creature.

When God as creator is no longer assumed what follows is that we fail to see that we are creatures. The result is a whole society of people trying to create themselves. You can plainly see this in the transgender movement and in the recent popularity of pronoun picking. People are literally trying to create themselves. It also rears its head in more subtle ways. We use phrases like “rediscover yourself” and entire sections of bookstores are devoted to “self-improvement”. It is subtle because there is nothing wrong with honing a skill or becoming disciplined in your character. But often, if we examine ourselves, we find we are bucking against our Creator in the ways we want to change our lives.

It is vital that we impress upon our kids that they are creatures.

God made their eyes and their body type and designed their hair. He carefully knit them together in just the right way knowing every detail of every single day that they would live. He assigned them a sex. We are not to question Him! Does the pot ask the potter, “why have you made me this way?” (Romans 9:20-21) No! God gave your child strengths and weaknesses. Their strengths should be used for His glory and His service. Their weaknesses should be used help your child see their need and dependence on God (whose power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9)) Read Psalm 139 to your child! Memorize it!

When you see examples of people denying this reality point it out to your child. Truth and light has a sanitizing effect! Ask your child to consider why someone might not want to admit that they were created. A fantastic book on this subject is You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal With It by Rachel Jankovic.

A really good resource on explaining and celebrating Biblical Femininity is Eve in Exile by Rebekah Merkel. I just finished reading it. I feel so grateful that God made me a woman after reading this short book! Never before have I been so exhilarated about the awesome and grand roles I get to play as a helper to my husband, a mother, and a homemaker. If you struggle to help your daughters see the blessings of being created as female this book will greatly aid you.

Truth is absolute.

I remember feeling so frustrated in a college course when the professor believed in relative truth. There is no possibility for logical reasoning when “my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth”. Yes, we can have different perspectives and different opinions but 2+2=4 and gravity is very real. Well beyond the world of science and math, there is absolute truth. Truth is embodied in a person. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6). One day, every knee will bow to King Jesus and there will be no more of this “my truth and your truth”. Instead it will all be King Jesus’ truth! Praise the Lord!

Hold up the Bible to your children as truth!

I think the denial of this starts in subtle ways. Kids will make up a “story” that may or may not be an outright lie. They may be pretending or just have a severely flawed memory of events. It is important not to affirm the “truth” of their stories. You can call them creative or say something like, “You may not remember it accurately.” But correct your kids! Don’t get sucked into the denial of truth! When you do catch your kids in an intentional lie at the very least call it out as a lie! Better to correct it. Demonstrate truthfulness toward your children. Also, hold up the Bible to them as truth! Read God’s word to them and for yourself and bank on all its glorious infallibility.

God defines good and evil.

I have often wondered if eating of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” was what resulted in people wanting to define good and evil for themselves. We live in a world that calls the murder of unborn babies “good” and will label a man who is faithfully leading his family as the “evil patriarchy”. How confused! Just as truth is absolute and defined by God, good and evil are defined by Him and explained in his Word. The book of Judges repeats the phrase, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6, 21:25) When we have no God, no Creator, and no King we do what is right in our own eyes.

Teach your children to look to scripture to define good and evil.

Instilling this core value in our children requires that we be students of the Word ourselves so that we can align our values with the plumb line of scripture. Help your children to judge what they see around them based not on what the culture is saying or what their friends are saying, but based on what the Bible says.

It is ok to hate and disagreeing is not the same thing as “hating”.

I know a lot of parents who don’t allow their children to use the word “hate”. I believe their intention here is good, but misguided. We are commanded to “hate what is evil” (Psalm 97:10, Amos 5:15, Romans 12:9). Rather than focusing on the emotion of hate we ought to zero in on the object of hate. No, I don’t want my kids saying that they “hate” each other, or any people for that matter. Let me be perfectly clear, we must teach our children that hatred of other humans is absolutely despicable and sinful! I do, however, want them to hate their own sin! There is such a thing as righteous anger; and hatred for evil and wickedness in the world is a good thing!

Closely tied to the vilification of the word “hate” in our post-Christian culture is the labeling of any disagreement with the zeitgeist as “hatred”. We now have “hate crimes” and “hate speech” and exactly what fits those categories seems to change daily! Holding to a different perspective than someone else or believing them to be in error is not the same as hating that individual. Ridding society of all differing perspectives will lead to some weird dystopian society like Brave New World or 1894.

Teach your children when hate is appropriate and model healthy debate!

I have a feeling that this core value for our post-Christian culture is so outdated that many of you are a little uncomfortable with the thought of teaching your children to actively “hate” their sin. If it feels uncomfortable remember that their sin will kill them. John Owen said, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” Teach them to despise sin in their hearts and to turn to the Lord for help and mercy. Over and over and over, again!

Paul often gave directions to the early church on how to handle their disagreements (See both of his letters to the Corinthians!) Implied in these situations was the reality that Christians within the church disagreed! We can have different perspectives. In our disagreements at least one party is wrong, and often times both to varying degrees, but we may not know for sure this side of Paradise. Debate can be healthy. Iron sharpens iron after all! (Proverbs 27:17)

Your feelings are deceptive.

The validation of feelings is a dangerous and ugly reality of our post-Christian culture. When we define our own truth we tend to base that on our feelings. But the heart is deceptive! (Jeremiah 17:9) Hurt feelings do not make you a victim. Just because you feel scared does not mean that you ought to be afraid. Feeling like a woman when God made you a man does not mean that you are a woman! When we base “truth” on our feelings rather than on God’s Word chaos ensues. Our self-centeredness and the degree of experience and knowledge we possess easily skews our perceptions. This core value will shine in a post-Christian culture!

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by water,

that sends out its roots by the stream,

and does not fear when heat comes,

for its leaves remain green,

and is not anxious in the year of drought,

for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately sick;

who can understand it?

Jeremiah 17:7-9

Teach your children to manage their feelings rather than let their feelings run the show.

As a parent, this means that we do not validate every emotion that our kids have! Often, we need to correct emotions. Imagine my kid is scared of a bug. I can validate their fear and let them forever be fearful of bugs OR I can correct them saying, “No. This bug cannot hurt you. I don’t want it to crawl on me either, but I do not need to be afraid of it.”

Say my child is feeling sorry for themselves because they feel left out. I can choose to validate their feelings resulting in a mopey, sad, Eyore-ish child. OR I can urge them to “buck-up and stop wallowing in self-pity. Rather, find something interesting to do, be joyful, and resolve to treat others by the measure you wish to be treated, therefore be kind and inclusive.” This will result in either i) friends flocking to them attracted to such an interesting and cheerful individual, or ii) a child who is able to be interesting, creative, and cheerful all by themselves!

We are not entitled to health, wealth, and prosperity.

Our culture idolizes health, wealth, and prosperity and we tend to assume that we are entitled to those things. If you don’t believe me just take a glance in the rearview mirror. Regardless of your beliefs and feelings regarding Covid-19 it is plain to see that a “threat” to our health was like poking a hornets’ nest! Fear of losing our health had a domino effect on our economy and our political systems. Since we, as a society, also feel entitled to wealth and prosperity we look to the government to come in and bail us out – print more money! We deserve it after all!

But the Son of man had nowhere to lay his head (Luke 9:58) and I would argue that he didn’t feel “entitled” to pristine health when he became obedient to the point of death on a cross either. He was born in poverty and there is nothing about his earthly ministry that could be described as “prosperity”. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that we shouldn’t avail ourselves of the blessings of modern medicine or that we shouldn’t grow our businesses and make wise financial moves that will lead to the prosperity of our children. What I am saying is that we ought to view health, wealth, and prosperity as underserved blessings rather than something that we are owed. When we believe we are entitled to these things it is easy to justify sins like envy and covetousness. (I address this type of entitlement regarding our diets in this post)

We need to intentionally teach our children not to be surprised at trials and suffering and to be thankful for blessings.

Be clear with them that we deserve no good things but, that because of Jesus, we get good things anyway! This applies to the whole world and not just Christians. Not to rabbit trail, and go too deep into limited vs. unlimited atonement, but there is a clear biblical argument that at the cross, Christ purchased the countless blessings bestowed on every human being each day, even if he limited the atoning work which purchased eternal life to the elect. In other words, the King of Heaven purchased the sunrise and the sunset. He purchased undeserved rain for our crops and the cool breeze on a hot day – and THAT is why every knee will bow! Considering the magnificence of that truth wells up in me worship – worthy are you Lamb to open that scroll!! (Revelation 5)

Furthermore, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord! (Romans 6:23) The Bible teaches that we ought to expect trials and suffering. James 1:2 says that we are to count it all joy when we face trials of various kinds. The word “when” implies that we can expect those various trials. We live in a fallen world full of pain and toil. What we are entitled to is described in Genesis 3:14-19. As followers of Christ we should also expect to be reviled, persecuted, hated, and considered as “sheep to be slaughtered”. (Romans 8:36)

Coveting is sin.

This core value for a post-Christian culture might come across as controversial but hear me out. We as a society have elevated “sharing” to a weird degree. Maybe it is a result of a Marxist influence, maybe not. Either way, how many times have you heard someone say to a child, “You have to share!”. Sharing is probably one of the top ten virtues we push on kids and, while the intention might be good, the result is gross. The result is a kid demanding, “You have to share” to another child who has something they want. The result is justified covetousness.

On the one hand, we want our children to be generous. Generosity is a vital virtue! It flows from gratitude for what we have been given combined with compassion for others. Demanding that someone else share flows from covetousness and envy. Covetousness is not pretty. “You shall not covet” did make the top ten! (Exodus 20:17) It flows from dissatisfaction with what we have been given, coupled with a lack of compassion for someone else.

Teach your child that coveting is gross and generosity is beautiful.

As parents, we need to correct this when we see our children demand that someone else share or give them something. Don’t give into the lie that “sharing is a virtue” and assume your child is justified. Coveting is gross and generosity is beautiful. In our home, I often need to separate my children so that I can encourage one to be generous and then reprimand the other for coveting!

Envy never solves anything.

This core value takes the “coveting is sin” value to the next level. If coveting is strongly desiring something that someone else has, envy is desiring what someone else has to the degree that you also want to see that other person harmed in some way. Envy was what Karl Marx held for the bourgeoisie. He was poor and they were not and he was envious. The ideas that formed out of his envy have been responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people in the past century.

Despising someone and wanting to see their demise because they have a blessing that you do not have is evil! If you look closely, envy is at the heart of many of the political movements of our day. Sometimes it rears its nasty head as straight up Marxism, but sometimes, it is cleverly disguised (like in the case of CRT or “equity” programs that are spreading in schools like wildfire).

Be on the lookout for deadly envy.

Envy in our children is not always visible. It is important to be on the lookout for this because it can get out of control quickly. You might see it in a sneer or a push between children. Or if a child breaks another child’s toy that can be the fruit of envy. It is critical to discern the root and when confirmed, address this in our children’s hearts. We also must identify it in our culture. When you see the fruit of envy in our culture call it out in front of your children. Remember that Cain’s envy resulted in Abel’s death; furthermore, it did not get Cain the approval from God he wanted. I believe the primary way to combat envy is with gratitude and you can read about three easy ways to foster gratitude in this post.

Love is love laying down your life.

A few of my neighbors have signs in their yards with all sorts of woke phrases. “Love is love” is one of those phrases. To me it is utterly meaningless. What is love? We know that greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13) Love is described well in 1 Corinthians 13. In summary, love is laying down your life in some way for someone else whether that be setting aside your pride, your time, your resources, or your physical body.

Love always comes at a cost and it is a glorious thing.

I want my children to understand that showing love will involve some sacrifice but it will also bring about a great deal of joy. Point out the cost of love to your children whenever you see it. Celebrate when you see them make sacrifices for others. Explain some of the prices you pay in order to love them – not in a way that makes them feel burdened or guilty but in a way that makes them see how valuable and precious they are to you. The sacrifice is worth it!

We have our work cut out for us in equipping our children for the culture they will inhabit. It may seem daunting but God’s grace is more than sufficient for the task! If you like this content be sure to subscribe (below or on the right) so that you don’t miss out! I’d love to hear in the comments about other core values that could be included in this list.