Someone recently asked me why I was convinced about a specifically Christian education. I am committed to specifically Christian education for a few reasons. For one, the warning implicit in Judges 2:10 that tells us, “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.”
They had grown up knowing Deuteronomy 6:4-15,
4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
10 “And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
This was a promise and it was an explicit, prophetic warning, that if parents wouldn’t follow the commands in verses 7-9, then when Israel entered the promised land, they would forget God (verse 12), and destruction would follow (verse 15). This is indeed what happened in the time after Joshua, when each generation subsequently walked further and further away from the God who had brought them into the promised land in the first place. Deuteronomy 6 tells us that it was precisely because there was no education of the children in the ways of the Lord that the generations turned away from God.
The same principle is at play today. Many of God’s promises to us are conditional. If you raise up a child in the way he should go, then he won’t depart from it later in life (Pr 22:6). This implies that there is an active task of ‘raising’ and there is a ‘should’ involved; that is, there is a particular way a child should be raised. There is a particular way in which God has commanded us to do this. We could add a lot of proverbs to the list of biblical imperatives regarding Christian education. We could also look again at Deuteronomy 6, and we could also go to places like Psalm 78 and Ephesians 6 to see clear commands when it comes to raising our children in the Lord.
Now, most people say, yes, yes, of course we should disciple our children, but what does that have to do with education? Well, think about it this way: part of discipleship is learning to love God with all the mind (Matthew 22:37), to think God’s thoughts after Him, to be aligned with the truth, for that is what sets us free (John 8:32). Now think about education: teaching us how to think, how to know things, and how to go about learning more things. Everything you learn is going to align with God’s thoughts or - to varying degrees - be misaligned with God’s thoughts. And so, education is discipleship. Our children are being discipled in whatever educational institution they are in, whether we like it, realise it, or not.
Thus, if education is discipleship and we are commanded to disciple our children, then we are going to have to take responsibility for that education. That’s why I believe in working towards the creation of a culture of Christian education.
This isn’t to say that everyone must immediately homeschool their children - I know that’s not immediately possible for many in the culture we are in. But it is to say that we as parents must not be passive in our children’s education - no matter what type of school environment they are in. And it’s also to say that we must work, as the Church, to build the types of ministries that will lead to a renaissance of Christian education here in the UK so that it once again becomes a possible option for people to pursue: Christian schools (that are Christian all the way through), Christian home education communities, as well as building the types of churches and ministries that will direct finances and other forms of support that can help parents to provide a Christian education for their children.
This is what is needed if we are to see a different result to the generations that followed Joshua. This is what is needed if we will see our children grow up knowing the Lord and His faithfulness.
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