Keep Your Kids from the Kool-Aid
In November 1978, over 900 people committed mass suicide in the South American country of Guyana. They were Americans. They were part of a cult headed by Jim Jones. They had fled to South America to escape growing opposition to the cult in the United States. However, American officials started investigating reports of abuse in Guyana as well. An American congressman came to visit and was murdered along with four others. This led Jones to proclaim that the end was near – it was only a matter of time before American forces would storm his compound. He instructed all his followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Obediently, almost all of them did, including 304 children and young people.
This is where the expression “drinking the Kool-Aid” comes from. It refers to people ingesting poison under the influence of a powerful leader. Of course, today nobody is referring to literal poison – it’s used to refer to poisonous ideas.
Today there are plenty of poisonous ideas floating about. There are powerful influences doing everything they can to get our children to “drink the Kool-Aid.” The world wants our children to buy into poisonous ways of thinking. These ways of thinking are destructive and dangerous. They’re Satanic.
Let’s just think for a moment about homosexuality and transgenderism. The world doesn’t just want our children to accept and tolerate these perversions. No, the world will settle for nothing less than affirmation and celebration. If you do not affirm and celebrate homosexuality and transgenderism, you will be branded as a homophobe or transphobe. By “homophobe” or “transphobe” they don’t mean to say we’re afraid of these things. No, they mean that we hate homosexuals and we hate “transgendered” people. If you don’t accept and celebrate their identity, you hate them.
If we’re Christians and we follow what Scripture says, we cannot give in to those ways of thinking. Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…” But the world is trying to disciple our children in these woeful ways of thinking. The world wants our kids to “drink the Kool-Aid.” What can we do?
Let me suggest two things.
First, we need to talk openly with our children about these things. We need to be intentionally discipling them for Christ. Teach your children God’s norms for family and marriage. Warn them about the world’s ways of twisting and rejecting God’s norms. Show them how the world’s ways are self-destructive and foolish.
Second, one of the greatest influences on our children is their school. Public schools are where children are catechized for the Sexual Revolution. There they’re told daily to “drink the Kool-Aid.” It’s not only embedded in the curriculum, it’s also in the environment. It’s not responsible and loving for Christian parents to put our children in that grave danger. Christian education, even if it’s not ideal in some respects, is always better. Christian education, even though it may require significant financial sacrifice, is worth it to keep your children from being sacrificed to the modern Molochs, Ashtoreths, and Baals.
We’re called to love our children. As part of that, we have to protect them from whatever’s dangerous. We would never allow them to muck around with literal cyanide – we also need to protect them from ingesting the poison of the Sexual Revolution. Parents, you’re on the front lines here. Please take it seriously.