President Joe Biden is wrong, anti-biblical, and escalating the war on children and the war on the family—which is ultimately a war on God. Now, that’s a strong way to start this article—but it’s absolutely true. Consider a recent statement he made while honoring the 2023 national and state teachers of the year.

Quoting a former teacher, he stated,

There is no such thing as someone else’s child. No such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.

Let’s judge President Biden’s statement against Scripture.

Psalm 127:3 KJV – “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”

Are “our nation’s children . . . all our children”? No! We should certainly be concerned about and care about children other than our own. For example, we should fight to protect them from murder by abortion or for research, body-mutilating drugs and surgeries, and sexual predation and sexualization from drag queens and other groomers (many of whom are public school teachers). But we shouldn’t view other people’s children as our own, because . . . well, they aren’t. Children, through birth, adoption, and fostering, are a gift from God to parents. Children belong to parents and, ultimately, to the Lord. Our children do not belong to Pres. Biden or the government or our neighbors or their teachers. They belong to parents and to the Lord.

Considering his statements were made to teachers, let’s consider who, according to God’s Word, is given authority to educate children.

Isaiah 38:19 KJV – “The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.”

Ephesians 6:4 KJV – “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Psalm 78:5–7 KJV – “For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:”

God gives parents, and in particular fathers as the spiritual head of the house, the authority to educate children.

The family is the first and most fundamental of all the human institutions God ordained in Scripture. The family is the educational unit God uses to transfer a spiritual legacy from one generation to the next and to impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why the devil so hates the family and stirs people to war against it.

Now, if you reject God and his Word, as secular education does, then anything goes—there’s no absolute standard on which to base your thinking. In this view, children are just biological machines, the product of millions of years of evolution. They aren’t given to parents—they are just a “choice” parents made. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that now we have the president of the US basically claiming the government owns all the children. It’s a natural outworking of his worldview.

But when we start with God’s Word as shown above, we learn that children are a gift from God—given to parents. He has given parents authority over their children and the responsibility of training, teaching, and raising children. They are not just “choices,” nor are they the government’s responsibility—children are the parents’ responsibility because God gave children to their parents to train them up for him.

You see, the family unit didn’t evolve. God created the family when he created marriage (Genesis 1:27 and 2:24) and told the first couple to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). He entrusted children to parents to raise them in accord with the principles he has laid down for us in his Word (e.g., Psalm 127:3). God is our Creator and he has the right to set the rules!

And we must remember: the most important part of education is the spiritual upbringing of children, as that affects their eternity.

Philippians 3:8 KJV – “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,”

Parents—take this responsibility seriously! You are responsible for your children’s education, not Pres. Biden or the government.

God has given you a big job, and there’s no job more important than discipling your children in the Lord. If you aren’t thoughtfully and purposefully parenting in the Lord, I urge you and your spouse to sit down and discuss your “game plan” as a family for how you can be purposeful about this job, one that has an eternal impact. As our world gets darker, it’s more vital than ever that you and your spouse be purposeful in how you raise your children.

As part of discipling their children, many families homeschool. At Answers in Genesis, we produce a number of resources for homeschoolers, such as Answers Bible Curriculum for Homeschool, and we have a K–12 school, Answers Academy here in N. Kentucky, to help parents in discipling their children. We are also producing biblical worldview curricula for Christian schools.

The bottom line: Christian education (however that looks in your family) is not optional. As parents, we need to be purposefully raising our children on the foundation of God’s Word.