by Susan Beatty, speaker at the Building Your Family’s Spiritual Heritage Symposium November 16, 2013
What is your worldview? Is your worldview based on the Bible? What is child training? Do you know what Scripture says about training children? What is education? Why do we educate our children?
Your answers to these questions affect your commitment to educating and training your children, your curriculum, methods, and goals. The answers form a foundation, a reason to homeschool that leads to conviction and then to commitment. When you don’t have this foundation, you are susceptible to being swayed by tough times or every new idea that comes along.
The Word tells us children are on loan to us from God, and the responsibility for training our children is ours, not the state’s, not even the church’s. The Word also commands us to train our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. How can that be anything but a Christian education? What does that look like?
Can it take place within an education system founded on the principle of eliminating God? Can it be in a traditional school that merely starts the day with a prayer or even chapel, but then uses erroneous secular texts?
Are there other dangers in traditional classroom-based private Christian education? God has made each child to be a unique creation. Will your child be the person God intends if you use the “cookie cutter” approach of traditional classroom education? What about the ever-present peer pressure?
Martin Luther said of schools: “I am much afraid that the schools will prove the gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must be corrupt.”
Training and educating our children, that is discipling them, must be based on the truth of the Word of God. It must influence our educational methods, approaches, and curriculum. It can’t be just school at home. But if you don’t know your own worldview, if it is not based in Scripture, you can’t pass it on to your children.
When you know what the Word of God says about training your children, how that affects your worldview, and how that in turn affects your methods and approaches, you will likely be led to a conviction and commitment for discipling your children through home education, and you will have a biblical worldview to teach your children. This is a firm foundation for developing your family’s spiritual heritage.
Susan Beatty will be presenting a detailed discussion of these ideas in the “Foundations of Education” session at the upcoming Developing your Family’s Spiritual Heritage Symposium. Register today at www.cheaofca.org.