Parents are sacrificing their Children to church. This is going to be a very blunt video. So I want to give a special warning that uh bad feelings are not a signal that something is not from God. Uh In fact, a lot of times it can be quite the opposite. Um This kind of feeling sometimes it's referred
to as cognitive dissonance. And this is a psychological term that just means uh what you experience when you are observing something that is evidence that what you believe isn't as true as you thought it was so have an open mind and let's get into it. OK. This is a quote from my book, The Glory of God
is intelligence. There are three kinds of people in this life. The first kind will be good no matter in what environment they are placed. The second kind are good if they are placed in an environment that supports and encourages that the third kind are bad, no matter in what environment they are placed
. The second describes most people on this earth. It takes those who will do what is right, no matter what to create environments where the majority can be better than they otherwise would. Whether it is in the receipt and publication of commandments, the creation and sustainment of righteous culture
or the creation and sustainment of governments or other organizations. These actions go far in helping others experience a better life than they would if left to their own devices. And uh I bring this up because I'd like to talk a little bit about the second group, the group of people who would be righteous
if they were placed in environments that promoted that. Uh But who will be wicked if they were placed in environments that promote that? This is the vast majority of people on earth. Um So it's really important to understand this is the same quote again that uh if left to their own devices, these people
are not going to do the right thing. Uh They really need the encouragement and help of those who will do what is right, no matter what, who are willing to go against the grain, who are willing to be contrarians and to be open minded and to work hard in acquiring light and truth. They need these people
to accomplish the purpose of their lives. So, what does this have to do with church? Well, uh I have yet to find an organized religion that uh is wholly good. It seems that every single one of them has key elements that will actually keep you from Christ. Um And yet parents seem to willingly offer up
their kids into these organizations thinking that the benefits outweigh the cost when deep down inside. They know that that's not the case, but they're flooded with all of these issues about what they'll miss out on if they remove their Children from that situation and what work they will have to do
personally in order to um provide the spiritual education that's missed out on by removing them from that. So let's think about um what is going to happen to your child or your Children if you continue to outsource spirituality to your church doesn't matter what church it is. But uh I invite you to fill
in the blanks that pertain to your specific situation and I will try to talk in generals. So what you can bank on is that in all likelihood they're going to follow the herd. And what I mean by that is if you look at the majority of kids who transition into adults in your church, you can bet that that
will probably be the outcome of your child. And so you get the good and you get the bad. So right now in your mind, you're probably thinking of all the kids that turned out, ok? And whatever your church's traditions are, you're probably enumerating those in your mind. So, uh from an L DS perspective
, for instance, you're probably thinking, oh, mission marriage in the temple, yada yada. Um But unfortunately, you don't just get the good outcomes of the majority, you also get the bad outcomes. So every church has these for an L DS uh framework, you should be thinking early returns home remissions
. Um And the fact that the majority of young people in the L DS church, not only leave the L DS church, but they leave as atheists, they no longer believe in God. And that outcome for some reason isn't thought of by people who try to defend their choice to leave their Children in a church that uh doesn't
teach them the things that they need to know and teaches them an awful lot that prevent them from learning, prevents them from learning those things that they need to know. This just isn't good enough. Um If you think about this rationally, the majority outcome is bad, why on earth would you leave your
kids in that situation? Uh Doctrine covenant 6825 says that parents uh have a duty to teach their Children the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ, baptism, gift of Holy Ghost, et cetera. And if they don't, it says the sin be upon the heads of the parents. And you know, I'm not bringing this up to
make anyone feel bad, but this is just reality that we are responsible for what is taught to our Children. There isn't anywhere in the scriptures that indicates that we are authorized or encouraged to outsource this to anyone else. It's our job to acquire light and truth and to transmit that to our Children
. So, um, the question is if you knew that the food that you had had poison in it and it would, it would poison your Children, would you give it to your Children? I don't think anyone would not a parent that loves their Children. Right. What would you do? You'd go out and find food that, that wasn't
poison. And you'd also realize that it's probably better for them not to eat anything than it would be to eat uh food that's poisonous. Maybe this seems extreme. Is it really that bad? It is. The Lord said in Matthew 2315, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for ye compass sea and land to
make one proselyte. And when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Every organized religion does more damage than good. It's a strong statement. But unless you're talking about the absolute basics of the gospel, they get it wrong and even in that case, they get it wrong
. Why is it so bad? Here's another one from the Lord Matthew 2313, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for ye. Shut up the kingdom of heaven against men for ye. Neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in organized religions, block people from heaven. They don't
just make it harder if you embrace an organized religion. It is impossible. For you to do God's will. It's impossible for you to get to heaven. You're worse off than you would be outside. And there are many reasons for that. And in this video, I can't go into that. Uh I'll make a very, very basic case
to just say that one of the pieces of this is that every organized religion preaches a fixed creed. They fix a doctrine that has a final state. It's not a continuous learning experience. They just have a list of things and then that's it. You do the list and you're good and that by definition is damn
nation because knowledge does not have an end. And if you stop short, you're necessarily short of the glory of God. And that's also necessarily short of salvation. But again, I don't, I'm not trying to make a case for that here. I'm just stating what Jesus said. So in an L DS framework, if you're interested
in more reasons why here's a 400 page book that's all about it. You can get this on Amazon. You can also get this for free on my blog at upward thought.blogspot.com in a PDF. I highly encourage you to read it. And a lot of cases, we're, we're just plain scared. It's, we don't pull our kids out, not because
we don't understand that. That's what we need to do deep down inside. Most of you do understand that you do understand that if you leave them there, it's the same as poisoning them, but you're scared because these traditions are so strong in you that all you can think about is the cost, not the benefit
, but the cost, one of those costs is that you will get in trouble by the church. Right in John 12 Jesus talked about this because you know, Satan doesn't have any new ideas and anything he's using on you, you'll find he used on people in the scriptures. And in, in John 12 Jesus talks about this same
tactic that he's using on you. Uh in the New Testament, he used it on people. So there were people that rejected Jesus even though they knew who he was and that he had uh power and authority from God. They rejected his doctrine because they were scared of being quote put out of the synagogue. I'll read
this. But though Jesus had done so many miracles before them yet, they believe not on him that the saying of Isaias, the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake Lord who has believed our report, these things said Isaias when he saw his glory and spake of him. Nevertheless, among the chief rulers also
many believed on him. But because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him lest they should be put out of the synagogue for, they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. So the Pharisees were the church leaders in jesus' day and they were scared to openly believe in him and openly do what
he was teaching because they didn't want to be kicked out of their church. So this is not a valid reason to deny what God is telling you is right? So what should you do? Well, the first thing that's most important is to seek God and trust Him. So these things have to go together because you can say you're
seeking God. But if you don't trust him, you'll, you'll limit what He can tell you and what you'll accept from Him. You have to trust Him without conditions. And when you do that, he will tell you what you need to do. I encourage you to be open about your religious questions with your Children. Uh Some
parents think that they need to be perfect and they'll lie and hide things from their Children in order to do it. And that's not right. Uh There are several reasons for this. I'll enumerate two first Children need to understand reality and reality is that we all have questions. We all have things we
don't know the answer to and we're all working through things and Children need to know that uh true religion is an unending quest for truth and that there are always open questions, things were confused about and things were conflicted about. That's just reality. And as soon as they're old enough to
handle that they need, should be exposed to it. The other reason you should be open about your religious questions with your Children. Is that frankly, there will be cases when your child has more light than you do. And if you think about uh for example, Lehi and Nephi, um there are multiple instances
in the scriptures where a child was wiser than his or her parent. And you can benefit from the light that your child has. But only if you're open with them about the questions that you have. If you pretend to be perfect and finished and complete, you won't uh benefit from that and they won't benefit
from you in getting exposed to what is reality and will be reality for them for the rest of their lives. Here's the thing, there's not some magic light switch moment where you can turn to your kid and say, hey, for the last 18 years, I've basically been lying to you, but you should really trust me from
this point out because I'm coming clean. You see this all around. If you open your eyes, you'll see it in your church. This is one reason why young people leave because they get to maturity and realize that their parents have been hiding questions and issues from them and they don't trust them anymore
. You've got to build this trust as soon as they're old enough to um to handle it. And that's, that's not an excuse to delay it. I'm saying if the kids three or four, obviously this is a little too early, but as soon as they're able to handle it, start being open about it. That's what God does with us
. Another thing I'd encourage you to do is take the primary responsibility for your kids spiritual well being. Uh, and this includes teaching them, this is again a responsibility that God has given to us as parents. And he's never given us permission to delegate that to someone else or to outsource it
to someone else. It's your responsibility. And that's something that uh what that translates to in practical terms is if you total up all the time that someone's teaching your kid about the gospel, you should be the biggest, someone, the, the majority of time should come from you more than 50%. I think
it should be closer to 100 but that's just me. Um OK. Uh Of course, they should have time to learn on their own and that should be uh even more than the time that you're spending teaching them. But that's a different point. Um Next, I encourage you to root out false traditions so actively seek these
things out in the understanding of your Children and root them out, use the scriptures to disprove them, use your experiences to teach them and encourage them to reject things that are false, to test things that uh are suggested to them and to find out what is right and what is wrong. Teach them that
truth does not come in a neat package with a bow. It's more like water that has to be filtered and there will always be elements of falsehood uh in every source of truth that we have and you have to learn to test and filter that. Finally, I highly encourage you to remove your Children from environments
that teach false traditions. And now we're full circle to the quote we started on most kids and most people will be righteous if they're put in an environment that encourages them to be righteous, most people will be wicked if they're put into an environment that teaches them to be wicked. And if you