Here’s something to encourage you as a parent. If you’re not a parent but ministering to kids, then this will be a strong reminder of the value and power in parenting.

If you thought parenting could get tough, check out what some parents faced in Mosul under IS.

Imagine for a moment that you have kids and they are going to the local school. What if the school your kids went to directly undermined everything you wanted your kid to know and do?
I mean, how bad could it get? When would you pull them out?

Schools under IS became overt indoctrination cells
 “Outside in the cement schoolyard the men held Sami as the rest of the school gathered to watch…One of the men raised his sword and hacked off Sami’s head”. Sami was Shiite and considered under IS rule, an apostate, punishable by death. “They told us to learn like this. This is how to cut people’s heads off’’ (‘The Innocents’, The Sydney Morning Herald, News Review, March 4-5, 2017 p26)
Some had initially welcomed IS in Iraq’s Sunni majority north in 2014. But then things changed and within months, it soured. Police and military officials were killed, prices went up, food became more scarce and then they started enforcing dress codes, beards and banning TV, smoking and mobile phones. All the while the IS soldiers smoked, watch tele and sat on their phones. Go figure.

When the people of Mosul lived under IS the terrorist group ran the schools, took over the curriculum and rewrote text books. Maths became a lesson in counting weapons instead of pastries. Grenades instead of apples: ‘There are 23 guns in a box and we add 5 guns. How many guns are in the box?’. Consequently, when students went to school it was a step by step agenda to get them to join IS. The indoctrination curriculum included physical drills, beheading dolls and decapitating cats.

You can’t beat the power of good parenting
But here’s the triumphal news: Parents rebelled. IS plan for mass indoctrination failed because parents refused to let their kids go to school anymore.
“IS threatened to punish us but because the parents all acted together, there was nothing they could do”.
Did you hear that…because the parents ACTED TOGETHER THEY DEFEATED IS. IS failed with most children because parents were very aware and careful. Isn’t this enormously encouraging?! Even under immense strain and risk of life, parents held onto their God given role to love and protect their kids. Isn’t it fantastic to see a mighty army crushed by parents! Well, crushed maybe an exaggeration. The US led coalition has surely done great damage to IS. But the Iraqi parents in Mosul took on their own fight. They refuse to let their kids be subject to the false indoctrination of IS and they won. They may not have been able to set up a proper home school alternative, as many kids it seems are now 2 years or more behind in school, but they didn’t fail as parents.

Where are the challenges to parenting in our societies?
Where could we be failing as parents?

Or if we run a ministry to kids, where could we be closing our eyes to threats of indoctrination that undermine the Christian faith?

Think of the battleground out there in the world for our kids minds. It could be humanism, hedonism, headless equality, atheism or Islamic radicalism. They’re all coming for your crown, trying to take you down and undermine the job God has put in your hands.

The parents of Mosul may not have been able to set up a proper home school alternative. It seems that many kids are now 2 years or more behind in school, but they didn’t fail as parents. But they did what they could do protect and nurture their kids education.

In the last months of IS occupation in Mosul only 3% of 250 students came to our school, said one principal. Most of the students still going were the progeny of IS fighters. ‘They were like little spies; they would listen to what you said and then tell their parents’. This made it difficult for parents to tell their kids that IS were bad. If they said that IS were murderers…their kids might get killed. So, they had to give other safer reasons for not going to school, like, there’s a chance of a car bomb or it was too hot.

Be encouraged to take the battle field and change history
Consider what you might need to do to protect your kid’s minds:

• How much opportunity and influence do you think you have as a parent?
• Do you think you exercise those opportunities to shape and equip your kids?
• Where do you need support and help to do your job of protecting your kids from secularisation?
• In what things might your children be indoctrinated with or shaped by in the school or society they are in?

Look out for an upcoming FREE video course from Anton’s Antics that will support parents and those ministering to kids as we take up the fight against secularisation through clear teaching from God’s word.

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