I’m a country girl. I’ve cooked a few frogs in my time. Fried them, actually. Frog legs taste a bit like chicken with a little fish flavor thrown in. Not something I enjoy eating, but my boys find catching and cooking a bullfrog right up there with a sushi outing. An exotic treat, really about the experience of the thing rather than the nourishment of the matter.

Recently, I was thinking about how the world cooks Christians. It’s like boiling a frog. The frog isn’t thrown into bubbling water, he is placed in a pot and the heat is slowly turned up. This is a patient process. The frog grows warmer and warmer but he doesn’t realize he is beginning to sizzle. He stays in the pot because it’s gradual. The heat desensitizes the frog because it comes steadily, comfortably. The way the world overcomes a Christian.

And our world is changing. Last week in London, Princess Diana’s little black dress from 1981 sold for 276,000 dollars. Twenty-nine years ago when a 19 year old soon-to-be princess wore this dress, there was a minor scandal because she showed her creamy shoulders and ample decolletage. Today the dress looks downright modest. It took nearly thirty years for society to grow accustomed to women wearing see-through gowns.

This past Sunday at church, I walked up to the altar and wept before God. I’m so tired of fighting the world. The battle has been building. With six children, every time I turn around I am drawing a sword against something: movies, television, Internet, video games. Our oldest son’s favorite store is Gamestop. I walk into that place and want to throw up. I realize this is not a popular stance. Just this past month I have had three people tell me how judgemental I am. I know the Church Lady and I don’t want to be her. But I refuse to let my children boil like frogs in this world.

Let me tell you a story about a little boy named Samuel. Samuel’s mother was Hannah and before she had Samuel, she was barren. She made a vow to the Lord that if the Lord gave her a son, she would give him back to God. So at the tender age of being weaned from his mother’s milk, Samuel was taken to the temple and handed over to a priest named Eli. Eli was to raise this little boy for the Lord. Here, I cringe because Eli couldn’t raise his own sons right. Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, priests like their father Eli, were wicked men, 1 Samuel 2:12.

I did a little study about Hophni and Phinehas and found that their names were Egyptian. To my surprise, I discovered that Hophni means “tadpole” and Phinehas means “nubian.” These two men, though they were raised to be God’s servants, had no regard for the Lord. They were gluttonous, blasphemous, they lay with women who served at the tabernacle. 1 Samuel 2:22.

Sadly, in our modern church today, we still see this kind of behavior. We grow Christian kids who can quote Bible scriptures better than the pastor, but who swim in a soup of worldly entertainment that eventually leads to full-blown sin as these “church kids” become young adults.

So what’s a parent to do? Let’s look at Eli for a moment. In 1 Samuel 4:18, the death of Eli is described. When Eli was told the ark of God had been lost to the Philistines and that his sons died on the same day, the old priest fell backwards off his chair and broke his neck and died due to his great weight. Eli was fat because he had gorged himself on the sacrificial food God’s people brought to the temple. Eli wasn’t just guilty of raising his sons wrong, he took part in some of their sinful habits. Truth be told, Hophni and Phinehas probably learned to be gluttonous from their father, Eli.

I believe the lesson here is that before you try to purify your child’s life, purify your own. Ask God to show you where the world has a foothold in your heart. Is it television? Shopping? Drinking? Eating? Vanity? Greed? Here’s what I know about the world. It can never be satisfied. There is never enough food. Never enough money. Never enough pleasure. Never enough vacations or video games or provocative dresses and pedicures to fill any person’s heart. If you are a Christian in the world’s pot, you will be boiled. Maybe not today. Perhaps not tomorrow, but eventually you’ll walk blindly around Gamestop feeling like the Queen of Sheba in a see-through gown.

I love my children. I want to make them happy. But more than making them happy, I want to please God. When I stroll out of Gamestop with my smiling son because we’ve finally agreed on a video he can enjoy and I can live with, usually a soccer video, I whisper a prayer of thanks. But I don’t kid myself. After that thanks, I plead with God to protect our family. I tell the Lord what a vulnerable, little polliwog I really am on this earth. How if Jesus doesn’t deliver us from the pot, our whole family will eventually boil like bullfrogs.

In 1 Samuel 2:35, God says, “I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I will firmly establish his house, and he will minister before my anointed one always.” The Lord proclaims that he himself will raise the priests. Eli didn’t raise Samuel, the Lord did. My prayer is that the Lord will raise this generation of Christians too. That Jesus will lift us out of the world’s pot and place our feet firmly upon the rock of his salvation.