Why Christian Parents Must Protect Their Kids From the Outside World

Responding to Dan Foster on Over-protective Parents

Foster highlights an important topic and is spot-on with his recommendations. Keeping young people in a Christian bubble, enmeshed in over-protective families, is harmful to the flourishing of Christianity. Instead of over-protection, Foster suggests parents encourage their children with risk-taking, engagement with culture, Christ-like compassion, and not over-simplifying the world as inherently evil or faithfulness as overwhelmingly simple.

Foster (and Kinnaman) are worth applauding. A faith without risk and devoid of adventure is not worth pursuing. This church-helicoptering needs to change.

But there is a flip side to this coin.

My fear is we focus on this over-protective trend to the detriment of recognizing the negative impacts of the under-protective. As a father of three, I’ve seen both of these trends take hold in secular culture. I’ve also seen them in my 15-year stint doing youth ministry.

The first trend has been highlighted appropriately by Foster.

Families raise children to fear the world, often directing these kids outside healthy social norms. In extreme versions, these kids have difficulty relating to anything beyond the boundaries of their Christian bubbles or leave these bubbles altogether — thus throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

However, the second trend is under-protecting young people from any development within modern culture. Here Christianity is assimilated into cultural or political formations without question by parents. This trend is prevalent as well. And these offspring are likewise within the ministry-culture fold.

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