We had some children who did not recognize love when they encountered it. They refused to cry when spanked because they knew we wanted them to be repentant and submit to our authority. When we spoke to them they refused to listen.
2 Timothy 3 is a description of these defiant types. They are evidence when seen on mass of the end times mentality of most people.
"3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."
We adopted four older children who were so defiant that everything we tried to teach them was resisted. They would do exactly opposite of what they knew we wanted, even if what we wanted would give them a better more productive happy life.
Sadly, I don't think these children ever figured out how much we loved them. They did not see instruction, discipline and hugs as love. Since they were deeply manipulative they saw any attempts at helping them to be a better person as manipulation. They evaluated everything we did in negative terms because they were raised in foster homes where the parents there were the enemy, complicit in removing them from their natural parent. Of course the new parents didn't remove them, they only provided a place when the state removed them. To these children the state and the new parents were one and the same.
Some of those foster homes were the enemy to these children because they were abused in them.
The incredible thing about those with stubborn hearts is that they will be resistant to any help to their own destruction. They see "help" as being an allowance to do and be anything they wish without any instruction or guidance. When rules or standards come into play they see it as a threat to be resisted.
When I asked one of our adopted children after he was grown, how it felt when he came to our home he replied honestly; "I thought of it as just another foster home." I asked him if it made a difference that we were intending to adopt him and after one year as the rule was for the state we finally gave him our name so that he was considered one of our family by the state. His reply was the same, it made no difference at all that we wanted him enough to adopt him.
This is an example of how early children are deeply influenced by their formative years. I believe those early years, even as early as a year old, there is an anger and emptiness inside that could only be resolved by interaction with the natural parent. Even though the natural parent was bad for them, even abusive, they wanted what belonged to them, that DNA, that voice of the familiar parent.
It is interesting that all children love their parents no matter how bad the parents are or how neglectful. I explain it this way, there is an invisible umbilical cord that stretches from a child to his parent that can never be severed. The connection to natural parents is so strong that even with new parents who love them and would do better for them, they can never fill that emptiness that is inside from the missing natural parent. Also we see a fantasy in the young child about their natural parent that is not commensurate with reality while with those parents.
It is only Christ Who can break that bond between wicked natural parents and a natural child. This is true too even in family structures in which the abused child remains with their parents. As long as the parent is alive the children must see their loving adoptive parents as the bad guys while their real parents are the ones who loved them. It is inaccurate in most cases but this is the way the adopted children view their new families.
Many adoptive children seek out their natural parent no matter how wonderful their adoptive parents were to them. We hear these stories all the time, the heartbreak of the adoptive parents who gave their all for these children only to be rebuffed and rejected. The adoptive parents are often broken-hearted even though they still have a hope that one day the adoptive child will find Christ and come back to love them.
The adoptive parents have no desire to create animosity in their adoptive children toward their bio parents, but as all narcissists do they assign all the bad of the bio parent to the adoptive parents to justify their sense of anger and loss.
In the cases where there was no animosity toward the adoptive parents were those situations in which the natural parents were killed and the home was a loving place. The children were well adjusted from the example of the natural parent so the adoptive children were grateful for their new home and recognized love in it because they had seen the face of love in their bio parents.
In the cases where the children were removed for abuse or neglect the children learned the anger and hate from their bio parents. As early as one year old a child's perspective about love and live are shaped by their bio parents.
When the anger of a bio parent is inculcated into the soul of their toddler, there is no removing it until that child becomes born again. The angry habit of attitude is formed as a permanent fixture in the child. Yes, lots of love and attention can cause behavior modification in the early years but if Christ does not dwell in the heart of that child the teen years are when we see what has been hiding inside all along.
This is also why the school system has been working to get control over our children at younger and younger ages, they want the children to bond to the teachers and the school system in place of their own bio parents.
When a child spends more time with the teachers at school and then the coaches in sports on the weekend, they will bond more readily to those influences than they do to their own parents.
Have you wondered why the society as a whole has become resistant to God's Word, instruction and correction? The reason is simple, the teachers, the churches, the coaches and everyone else the children interacts with all week long are steeped in humanism and permissiveness. These entities are training our children to look to them for their guidance while teaching them the wicked ways of devils. They inadvertently and by example turn the children against their parents.
We have more rebellion against parents now than we have ever seen in our culture in past years. The 2 Timothy 3 scenario is playing out before our eyes and we can expect it to become worse.
Why are the children accepting the authority of the humanists in other places than home. Simple, we are handing them over to these authorities, in the minds of the children we have given them away to others to raise. With the endorsement of the parents they live with, they are handed over.
Deuteronomy 6:6-8 "…6 These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as reminders on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.…"
I see nothing in any verse of the Bible instructing us to hand our children over to others outside the family to teach and train them.
This is not a warning not to adopt children, it is a warning to know what you are getting into and to be sure God is telling you to do it. There are many lessons to be learned about human nature and love from stretching ourselves in adopting children, missionaries do this all the time.
AND, this is a big "and", our adopted children are all still alive, as long as they remain alive there is a chance they might remember what they heard and and saw in our home and become born again because of those memories.
We are not in control of anyone, we are merely the messengers, God is the One Who must work in the hearts of everyone.
1 Corinthians 3:6-8
"6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. 7 So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. 8 Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor."
Bottom line: Never place your trust in what you perceive as "results", these can be deceiving. Place your trust in Christ alone, then we will never be worried or disappointed. Our job is to obey, that's all!!!!
