Okay, so the second presidential debate happened. If you find yourself asking: “How did it come to this?” then you and I are at about the same place. Still, it has been interesting for me to see the roiling comments on social media in which many Christian parents are avoiding watching the debates, or keeping their older children from watching the debates.

Initially (as a father of four daughters), I must say that I have some sympathy with this position, and have to admit that I want to close my eyes, wake up after the election, and find that miraculously George Washington has been re-elected. But, friends, Washington, Cleveland, Roosevelt (Teddy or Franklin), or Reagan are not on the ballot this year. Very not! The honest disgust that wells up in my stomach when I survey the moral incompetence of our candidates and the complicity of the press on both sides is another factor that tempts me to look away. Also, as an east coast guy, it is late—so I hear bed calling me. Finally, debate viewing is not a great thing for younger kids right now, so I am not advocating younger kids watching.

Here, however, are three reasons why you should be watching these debates with your high school children:

Reason 1: The first step in fixing the disaster that is American politics is looking it straight in the eye and seeing it for what it is.

This election is a disaster, but it is one that we need to look hard at so that we may discover the source of the problem. For one candidate, his (I would try to hide the identity but the pronouns give away a lot in this race!) coarseness, rudeness, and vulgarity is on display at a moment's notice—often he himself is screeching or tweeting them. Sometimes he is bragging about them. This might seem like a big problem, but at least it is hard to miss. Many pundits wondered out loud why Hillary Clinton didn’t destroy Donald Trump Sunday night, but any of us whose memory banks go back to the 1990s knows why. Back then, she tried to hide her husband’s misdeeds. She lied about them. She covered them up. She and her friends destroyed, dismissed, and denigrated the bevy of women sometimes reeled in by her husband in the White House (sometimes young women who worked for the government that he was running). Ugh! President Obama would have crushed Donald Trump last night, as would have George W. Bush. Ms. Clinton, however, knows the price of living in glass houses.

So, here is where we stand. We have one candidate who uses words to berate, belittle, and besmirch anyone in his way. He has done this over many years—yet a major party nominated him. We have another candidate whose use of language is so crafty, so veiled, and so parsed that I can only tell the truth by looking at what she is deftly not saying.

So, you may ask: why watch this with your high school students? They need to understand what is going on and what is not going on and why. You need to help them understand how we got to this place. Mainly, it all started by playing with words. We tried to make things like the Constitution mean things that it does not. Actually you can trace this “word game” all the way back to the Higher Criticism of the Bible - which attempted to empty God’s Word of its meaning - or even back to the early chapters of the Bible where a certain slithering animal said, “Has God really said that if you eat, you will die?” (He did. They did. They died.) You can continue tracing it from former President Clinton's “it all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is” line through to Sunday night. We don’t want words to restrain us, and we use them to conceal meaning rather than to speak plainly. Your high school students need to see and understand debates like these.

Reason 2: Our high school aged students are going to be voting soon, and we need to prepare them for the world they are entering (and the tough questions they will face).

Remember the Ents in the Lord of the Rings? They are massive tree-like creatures who just want to stay out of trouble and avoid fighting. When they decided to “sit this one out,” one of the Hobbits wisely says, “But you live in this world!”

Now, don’t miss my meaning here. I can understand and respect the decision not to vote (or to vote and quickly run to the shower), but we cannot - we must not - disengage politically. That is a surefire recipe for allowing our leaders to act shamefully and bear no consequences. Our children are American citizens. They are citizens of the world. They have political responsibilities here in America, and high schoolers need to be ready to act wisely during the next few years. They cannot sit this one out. Our country is vulgar. The tax gatherers and prostitutes of Jesus’s day were not flannel graph figures. He was not sullied by their sins. Many of them were cleansed by His blood and inspired by His love. We are called to love, to serve, and to think. We cannot abandon our responsibilities for ease, comfort, or because of despair. Jesus did not. Bonheoffer did not. We must not.

Reason 3: Watching the debate immunizes you against hoping for salvation from politics.

First, I am not against venerating heroes. I think that we need people to look up to. I even think that many leaders of the past, although flawed, are heroes. All of us should honor George Washington. He could have ruled our country, and he led it and then turned over power. No one thought he would or could. Modern leaders like Eisenhower or Kennedy or Reagan, though imperfect, have much that we can respect and honor. Our children should be immersed in the Bible and good stories. They should be reading Great Books like the Lord of the Rings and Narnia and Thucydides. They should be taught to love those heroes of American history because they need to hope for more and to be disabused on the hero worship that follows most modern politicians, not because heroes don’t exist, but because these people aren’t them—no matter how hard we try to make them heroic.

My hope is that some of the men and women that we are teaching will become leaders who answer the call to lead their families, our community, and our nation. I know that as a dad, I would like to keep my daughters out of the fray, but in this battle of words and ideas they, will either be armed or they will be at the mercy of those who are armed and are twisting the truth so hard that you might have heard it scream at points Sunday night!

Here at Veritas Academy, we teach the skills and the tools needed to be real leaders—knowing facts, thinking critically and clearly, and communicating effectively. These are the very skills being used (and grossly misused) by our present candidates. At Veritas Academy, we also encourage students to follow after Christ. That sort of character, honesty, and faith is what is so desperately needed in our culture and in this election. Sadly, it is the thing so strikingly missing.