Beyond Ideology: How Parents Can Equip Children With Values, Vision, and Hope: Home & Abroad

“The Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomsoever He will.” (Daniel 4:17)

I live today as a father in a foreign land. Each morning, I wake with gratitude for the gift of a son born to me at 51, now almost four years old. Yet, along with gratitude comes the sobering reality: I am raising him in a cultural climate where ideologies scream louder than reason, and where the loudest voice often passes for truth.

In a world of shifting sands, where ideas rise and collapse overnight, I must ask myself daily: what will my son inherit from me? Will he be a casualty of cultural noise, or will he stand as a beneficiary of timeless values?

Values, Vision, Mission, Ideology, and Culture

To guide my own thinking, I often frame life in five categories:

* Values: Who you are. The unshakable bedrock of character.
* Vision: Where you are going. The horizon that shapes your choices.
* Mission: What you are doing. The actions that carry you toward vision.
* Ideology: The public face. The banner you raise before the watching world.
* Culture: The soil in which all of this is planted, tested, and sometimes resisted.

Values form the root. Vision gives direction. Mission defines action. Ideology explains conviction in public language. Culture tests whether these things are real, or simply rhetoric.

But in my son’s world, ideology has become a hammer. It no longer persuades silences. It does not reason, it dominates. It does not seek truth, it seeks victory.

That is why my task as a father is clear: to raise him with values deep enough to withstand the noise, vision broad enough to transcend culture, and a mission aligned with God’s transcendent rule.

The Transcendent Anchor

I take my anchor from scripture: “The Most High rules in the kingdom of men.” (Daniel 4:17). Nations rise and fall. Ideologies capture headlines today and are discarded tomorrow. Cultures mutate with time. But God’s eternal purpose, the redemption of man to Himself, remains unshaken.

This transcendent perspective is what I must hand to my son. Beyond culture. Beyond ideology. Beyond even the identity of living in a foreign land. He must know that his life is not tossed about by the winds of opinion but steadied by the sovereignty of God.

Learning from This Cultural Moment

The brutal murder of Charlie Kirk last week and the flood of reactions that followed revealed something deeply troubling. The tragedy itself was horrific, but equally disturbing were the responses: the rhetoric of the right, the rhetoric of the left, the docility of the so-called independent, and the chaos unleashed on our collective soul.

What was missing in so much of the noise was humanity. For some, Kirk’s views seemed reason enough to mute outrage at his death. Others used the tragedy to advance their agenda. Few voices rose above ideology to simply mourn a man, a husband, a father.

This is what happens when ideology drowns reason: tragedy becomes content, humanity becomes secondary, and children, the next generation become targets for indoctrination. Propagandists do not mourn; they strategize. They indoctrinate their own, and they indoctrinate ours when we are too distracted to model conviction for our children.

That is why the Psalmist describes children as arrows in the hands of a warrior. The man with his quiver full is not ashamed at the gate because he has a trained troop—an army of values, of vision, of readiness. But what happens when fathers and mothers abdicate this training? Our children become vulnerable, unarmed, and easily captured by voices that care nothing for their humanity, only for their usefulness in advancing an ideology.

The Father’s Commitment

So what, then, is my responsibility? Not to shield my son from every storm—because storms will come. Not to create a bubble—because bubbles burst. My responsibility is to give him:

* Roots in values that are timeless.
* Wings through vision that points him upward.
* A Compass in the truth that God rules all things.

The fruit never falls far from the tree. If I live cynical, my son will inherit cynicism. If I honor courage, he will inherit hope. If I model compromise, he will inherit confusion. But if I walk in integrity, he will inherit clarity.

Fatherhood, then, is not about perfection. It is about modeling what is worth inheriting.

A Word Beyond My Home

I write this not only as a father in a foreign land, but as a fellow sojourner in a noisy world. This is not just my burden; it is the calling of every parent, every leader, every guardian of children.

Our children do not merely inherit our words—they inherit our example. They will either be beneficiaries of the values we embody or casualties of the contradictions we excuse.

Therefore, let us not be deceived by the volume of ideology or the seduction of culture. Let us remember: God rules all things. To raise children with that awareness is to raise them with hope. And to raise them with hope is to raise them prepared for a world that desperately needs light.

Do have an INSPIRED week ahead with the family.