day no. 16,978: battlegrounds and boot camps

"You should also especially impress upon rulers and parents that they should govern well and take their children to school, pointing out how it is their duty to do this and what a dam­nable sin they commit if they fail to do it. For in this way they topple and ruin both the kingdom of God and of the world, as the bitterest enemies of both God and men. Show them clearly what dreadful harm they do when they do not help raise children to be pastors, preachers, writers, etc., that God will punish them terribly for such neglect. For there is a need to preach about this. It can hardly be expressed how greatly parents and rulers sin in this matter at the present time. The devil also has great calamity in mind with such behavior.” — Martin Luther, Preface to the Small Catechism 

It is a Christian duty to provide Christian children with a Christian education.

Ephesians 6:4

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Christian children are OWED a Christian education and NOT providing them with one provokes them to anger. In addition, you incur the wrath of God for defying a direct order. To call a child to Christian battle without putting him through Christian boot camp is not only evil, it is retarded. You cannot just throw arrows at the enemy. You have to fire them. You cannot just toss your children into the fray without first teaching them how to handle themselves under fire. You must train them and teach them before sending them out. You cannot expect the school, which is the church of the state, to help you train your children to be apologists and missionaries of the Christian faith. You cannot send your kids off to learn the secular catechism and be shocked when they reject the Christian creeds. 

"You may not be paedobaptist or postmill, but the left is and that's why they're winning." — Ben Merkle

You may not lay claim to your kids or to their future, but that won't keep someone else from doing it. Someone will want your kids and someone will have plans for them in the world to come. 

“Whoever trains the children controls the future.” — Steve Wilkins, The Public School Movement

Since we, as Christians, know that Christ rules the world and the future, we are subjecting our children to lifelong trouble and eternal turmoil by turning them over to secular schooling. In other words, the secularists will not control the end of the story even though they lay claim to it, but they can control certain plot points between now and then and all the more so if we surrender our kids to their grooming. We cannot submit our characters to their editing and have a happy ending. When we do so, we make our children their accomplices.

One can imagine a time of such intense battle that all hands are needed on deck regardless of how well trained those hands may be, but one cannot imagine a time available to train that is instead spent sending your troops to be trained by your enemy.