Tag Archives: Keystone

How do you motivate a nearly 6-year-old boy to want to learn to read?

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How do you motivate a nearly 6-year-old boy to want to learn to read?

Posted in Tough Questions

Boys are often a year or a year and a half behind girls developmentally at that age. My first reaction to the question was, “Relax, don’t worry about it”. Resist the temptation to compare him to others, any others, for he is a unique individual with his own developmental timetable. It will almost certainly not match the one the schools use: it is based on some sort of mystical “average” the experts have dreamed up somewhere and is some kind of guide to a teacher with 25 kids in a classroom. But you are just one-to-one. This has tremendous educational and social advantages over a classroom. You can spend most of your time interacting with your son and he with you…..rather than he with a book or an assignment sheet of work to do, set by the teacher who is far too busy trying to maintain order and get through the subjects in the time available to spend more than a moment with any one child.

Read to him. Read books at his “level” of interest and understanding and at a level you would think is way above. Read stuff like Treasure Island, Pilgrims Progress, Gullivers Travels and other classical literature rich in vocabulary, character development and an honesty in grappling with human issues. Read at least two hours a day. Honest. This will improve his vocabulary amazingly. It will also provide you with countless opportunies to answer the questions he is sure to have about words, characters, the setting, the action, etc. This is all excellent instructional time, the best you could possibly hope for. Why? Because he is asking the questions!!! That means his mind is engaged with the material and his cognitive skills are being worked and his imagination is operational and his powers of enquiry and inquisitiveness are being fanned into flames. Each question constitutes what the experts call a “teachable moment”, which in the classroom occurs only when there is a fortuitous coincidence of teacher availability, subject interest and enough curiosity by a child to overcome both inertia and the possibility of negative peer reaction for the child to actually ask a question. But with one-to-one tutoring, you can have dozens of such teachable moments throughout the day!

Reading to him also gives you the opportunity to ask questions about things you want him to be clear on. And the reading material, if it is any of the rich literature and biographies around rather than the dry Dick and Jane calibre of stuff they often get in schools, will provide many launching pads for you to tell stories from your own background experience: your extended family, tales from when you were a child (always a favourite with children), life lessons you’ve learned, your perspective on significant moments in history you’ve lived through, etc. You will be forming his world view, his attitudes, values, standards, concepts of right & wrong, good & bad, wise & unwise. These are the things which are used to build up his frame of reference through which he eventually filters everything he hears, sees and experiences externally, and through which he will filter his own conscious thinking and evaluation processes. This is vitally important. And the sad thing is, most children have this frame of reference formed with large measures of the attitudes, values and standards they picked up from school and playmates and TV.

If you are enthusiastic about reading, if you get excited about the reading material yourself, your excitement will almost guarantee your son’s excitement and anticipation of the reading sessions. It is great if you two are curled up together in an easy chair, but it is not necessary. Read to him while he is drawing or playing with Lego. Read while he is playing in the sandbox, or washing the dishes, or tidying up his room, or massaging your feet or folding the laundry.

At some point he will be begging you to teach him how to read, because you can’t read as much to him as he would like, and he sees you buried from time to time in a book indulging your own passion to read. And of course, you will have told him plenty of times about the treasures of excitement and fun just waiting for him to discover between the covers of those books sitting on your shelves.

We’ve all heard it said, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”. Maybe so, but you can put salt in his feed!! The salt is your thoroughly positive attitude toward reading, your enthusiasm for it and your obvious passion for indulging in the activity yourself! Yes, your example is fundamental to your son’s learning anything. We are here face to face with one of those profound gems of wisdom, marvellous in its simplicity: monkey see, monkey do. This is a bit too simplistic, actually, for we humans are a lot more complex than that.

To summarize, meditate on two very sobering passages of Scripture, the implications of which are easy to see, yet frightening in how they will be manifested down the track. Luke 6:40 says a student will be just like his teacher once fully taught. And Galatians 6:7 can be taken as a glorious promise or as a scary threat: God is not mocked: we will reap what we sow.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2001 , Vol. VII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

 

The Christian Man and His Children, Part 1

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The Christian Man and His Children, Part 1

Posted in The Faith of Us Fathers

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” — Luke 10:27

We are to engage our minds, our intellect, our understanding in order to love, serve and worship God properly. That is, we are to think. Think about this: from whence did your children come, men? Yes, from the Lord; yes, from your wife. But those children were not even conceived until you first consciously, purposefully and with much energy and anticipation, perform an act which was obviously designed to conceive that child. (Please forgive me if this sounds crude: it is not meant to be vulgar but instead to emphasise that your wife did not “fall” pregnant, nor did it happen by accident.) Maybe you didn’t have any child in mind at the time, but the child wouldn’t be around if not for your active and wilful participation in his or her conception. You are responsible, mate. And just as the Lord has forever held Adam (and through him all mankind) responsible when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, so He holds us fathers responsible when our wives bear our children. The Lord holds us responsible for our children, for providing for their physical, spiritual, character and academic development and security. “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” — Proverb 13:22a. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” — Ephesians 6:4. “…for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” — Hebrews 12:7b-8.

Being responsible for Jimmy or Sue is not the same as saying the child belongs to you. Our children, just like everything else in the universe, both visible and invisible, are owned totally by the Creator of the universe. It is the Lord, this Almighty God, Creator and Sustainer of the heavens, the earth, the seas and all that is in them, even thrones, dominions, principalities and authorities (see Colossians 1:15-20), Who is not only the owner of our children but is also He Who has appointed you and me as stewards over His property. That is to say, one Day He will call you and call me to account for how we have stewarded, cared for, safeguarded, improved upon, nurtured, fed, clothed, housed and educated His property of whom He will be coming to take possession. I suspect He will inquire most keenly into how well we have taught our sons to fear His Holy Name so as to always respond with awe and respect at every thought of Him, to hate sin so as to flee from even the appearance of it and to so hunger and thirst for righteousness as to actively seek out ways to more consistently conform his entire life to the pattern of Christ in His Word. Will He not also examine the attitudes we built into our daughters, or allowed to grow there unhindered, if they do not positively demonstrate a most godly reverence, respect, modesty, humility and all those Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 virtues?

I may detect a voice asking, “What virtues are in Titus 2? And where is this Titus anyway?” A dead give-away that we are in trouble men, and have some serious studying to do just to get ourselves in the running for the task ahead: making disciples for the Lord of lords and King of kings. And just in case we may be tempted to think we are fairly up with Christian things and are doing a reasonable job, remember the counsel of Paul in I Corinthians 3:12-15. Near enough is not good enough….not for King Jesus. We need to work at changing our “She’ll be right” attitude to a “She must be right” attitude, for He is worthy….and what’s more, that’s what He requires. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

We, then, are to be making disciples for Christ, fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 right here in our family, a microcosm of those “nations” mentioned in the verse, as a first step toward reaching “all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). (We should be far more competent, able and willing to tackle the nations once our children are firmly converted and discipled. And besides, our by-then-grey hair will automatically impart a lot more mana and respect to us in other parts of the world than if we went over as missionaries while still waiting for our beards to fill in properly.)

The methodology of fathers being responsible for diligently instructing their children in the context of everyday life as the Lord so graciously reveals it to us in Deuteronomy 6:5-7 has been described often. But verses 8 & 9 have perhaps not so often been described. We do not wrap or write verses on our hands or foreheads, although we do sometimes have a Scripture hanging on a wall or two in our homes. It would seem that these verses 8 & 9 of Deuteronomy 6 are surely references to something more substantial.

Verse 8 could refer to such things as ownership, leaving a seal or mark, a type of identification. After all, we have heard a lot about the mark of the beast from references in Revelation, a book full of figurative language. I am suggesting that this Deuteronomy 6:8 could also be figurative, but because it lies within a Book intimately concerned with heart and soul rather than outward appearances, these figures stand for something quite definite. One may have a mark of God or of the beast on his hand and on his forehead. That is, one’s mind and thought patterns are Biblical, set on the Spirit (Romans 8:5-6), thinking God’s thoughts after Him and taking every thought captive to obey Christ (II Corinthians 10:5), or they are set on the flesh, hostile to God and used to invent evil (Romans 1:30, 8:5-7). Likewise one’s hands, symbolising one’s entire catalogue of works; one’s works can be identified as Christian works of ministry or identified as works characteristic of the fallen angel who is the father of all lies and master of deceit.

So our very beings, what we think, say and do, even when we aren’t thinking about it (see Matthew 12:36-37), are preaching sermons to our children. They can tell the difference between a faith that is consistent inside out from one that only extends to outward appearances….and they will soon learn the different set of rules applying to each. Do not be surprised, then, oh hypocrite, when your own son can appear so angelic by organising a weekly Bible study for the church youth group while seducing the girl at a meeting of the two-member planning committee. (Yes, it does too happen. Not only can I name names, but I can say that the youths involved hardly see much wrong with it.)

Deuteronomy 6:9 talks about writing God’s commandments on your doorposts and on your gates. Again, we are talking about a lot more than those cute little silver Jewish verse holders one can fasten to the door and touch reverently each time you pass through. (That is about as efficacious as touching the car roof and lifting your feet while crossing railway tracks in order to have your wish granted.) The idea is that the Word of God reigns supreme in your home (the doorposts being the entrance or most obvious place to control the influences to your home). So what are your “gates” as mentioned in the verse? Perhaps just another word for doorposts. Perhaps as in the term “city gates” it means any place where you make decisions: your wider property, your fields, your rental flats, the business you run, the employees who work for you, the classroom in which you teach or lecture, the office team you manage, the work gang you supervise, the truck or machines you operate and whatever contracts you may consider entering into……all these things are to have the Word of God stamped over them. They are to be run by the commands, precepts, statutes and ordinances of the Lord God Almighty. And when you think about it, since He is omniscient, doing things His way simply has to be the best recipe for success….and sure enough the Bible’s been saying just that for thousands of years already: Psalm 1:1-3, Proverbs 3:1-2.

Right, men. Once we have sorted out our own lives so that they reflect the love and standards of our gracious God, we are ready to be proper stewards of our children, who are, as we said earlier, God’s children over whom He has set us as His stewards. Galatians 4:1-2 specifically addresses this issue of holding a child back until the proper time: “I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father.” So our children are in a holding pattern until they come of age at a date set by our Father God.

Now, there is a two-tier system operating here: our offspring will inherit that which we have laid up for them on this earth, and they will inherit that which the Lord has laid up for them not only on this earth but also later in heaven. What kinds of things do they inherit from us? They are both physical and metaphysical: houses, chattels, land, money, eye colour, a name/reputation, family heritage, culture, most of their character qualities, etc. Now do realise that while we like to say our children inherit such things from us, ultimately they get all of these things from the Lord, although filtered — and corrupted somewhat — through us parents.

What kinds of things do they get exclusively from the Lord? Those items often referred to as Providential: their talents, abilities, disabilities, giftings, ministries, callings, responsibilities, spouses, children, lifespan, etc., plus those things of which we know so little that will be enjoyed in heaven: crowns, mansions, life and ministry at the foot of the throne.

Men, listen carefully: it is our job to equip and ready and enable our children to themselves faithfully steward all these things they will be inheriting. We must be horrified at the idea of letting all these things fall into their laps when they are simply unprepared and incompetent…..due to lack of instruction and guidance on our part…….to handle them. Why should we be horrified at the thought? Because we know our children will be called to account for how they stewarded them, just as we are to be called to account. How callous to allow our children to appear before God and watch them have to fumble for an explanation. Our task as stewards of God’s children is not only to be striving to successfully manage these inherited blessings, roles and responsibilities ourselves but also to prepare these children so that they themselves, by God’s grace, may successfully manage them as well.

We want our children to grow up to be men and women of vision. Well, we’d better want that, for this is what God’s children are meant to be, those children the Lord has entrusted to us to steward on His behalf. They are to be ambassadors for Christ, ministers and messengers of reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:18-20) in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom they shine as lights in the world, offering them the Word of life (Philippians 2:15-16). Our vision is not just to rear children who will be able to cope with a degenerate world, but to rear soldiers of the Cross who expertly wield weapons of divine power to destroy strongholds, arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (II Corinthians 10:4-5). Men, we are first of all to be — and second we are to raise up — conquerors for Christ.

From Keystone Magazine
September 2001 , Vol. VII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

Home Discipleship

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Home Discipleship

Posted in Keystone Magazine Articles

by Barbara Smith

Matthew 28:18-20: And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

We find that we are not home schooling or even home educating our children now but are discipling our children. We began back in 1985/6 by bringing school into our home. This current movement of home schooling began to mushroom back in 1983 in the States after an interview between Dr Dobson and Dr Raymond Moore on “Focus on the Family”. So we were there near the beginning. There was not much in the way of curriculum back then, only what was used in the schools. Local head masters gave out exemptions in those days, so the goverment had no idea how many children were being home schooled then.

We knew God was calling us to home school, but it was a new thing, there was not much information around at the time and the curriculum available was designed for schools. I thought that my education was lacking but Craig’s was good. His job was such that he was available to teach the children, so he taught our oldest three. For two years we struggled using a curriculum that our children were not responding too well to. Finally Craig took a child on his knee and worked through the workbook verbally: doing it this way caused them to get through it in a much shorter amount of time. We found that our children loved to be read to and to read. They especially loved to hear stories and would listen for hours, for Craig and the children would discuss all sorts of things from the reading they were doing. Gradually we realised that the school curriculum was not helping us at all, so we jumped ship and put together our own programme and began home educating our children instead of home schooling them.

I thought that you had to be one step ahead of your children. That meant you’d have to know everything you were teaching them and spend hours preparing each lesson. With the large numbers of families beginning to home educate, many more minds were exploring these issues. Home educators soon worked out (or perhaps simply rediscovered a principle lost when compulsory schooling took over in most countries) that one did not have to be one step ahead but could be more effective when learning along with the children.

As our personal circumstances changed, I also gained the confidence that I could home educate the children, so took on the task with our youngest three in 1997. I was challenged and have been influenced by the Charotte Mason and the Christian Classical approach, and later on by Diana Waring and family.

Our concern is that there are about 1000 children beginning home education every year in New Zealand and nearly 1000 children going back into the schools. We reckon this is largely because of stress and burnout of parents trying to keep too much of a school routine at home. This does not have to be. In a United Kingdom study of learning methods, Alan Thomas found that “Families starting out on home-based education who at first adopted formal methods of learning found themselves drawn more and more into less formal learning. Families who started out with informal learning at the outset found themselves drawn into even more informal learning. The methods that both groups grew into had much more in common with the method of younger children. The sequencing of learning material, the bedrock of learning in school, was seen increasingly as unnecessary and unhelpful.” Then he goes on to say, “This study challenges the almost universally held view that children of school age need to be formally taught if they are to learn. In school this may be the case, but at home they can learn just by living.”1

When do children learn the most? Yes, during the ages of 0-5. Do parents need a curriculm for this? No, although some within the teachers’ unions are trying their best to change this. Children ask lots of questions during this time which very effectively fills their current learning gaps. Tell me, do you have no learning gaps? Of course you do. When we began home schooling, we thought we needed to use a packaged curriculum so that we would not miss anything that our children should be learning, so that they would keep up with everyone else, so that they would have no learning gaps. Do the curriculums teach our children everything? No! So even the best curriculum will still leave learning gaps!!

How exciting to read Alan Thomas’s research and to put it together with our own experience and that of other home educators around us. What we find we are doing now is to extend the “natural” learning atmospere we have with our 0-5 year olds through to our 9 year olds. “You don’t need 15 years to educate somebody but you need 15 years to socialise somebody,” says Sir Neil Waters, past vice-chancellor of Massey University and NZQA’s Board Chairman.2 Yes, he is right…you can teach your child all the tools they need for learning in 2-4 years. (More on this in a future article.)

Since the home schooling movement has been around for 18 or so years, there are children now in their 20s who have been totally home educated. There are a lot of parents who have learned a great deal over this time about what home education is and isn’t. Some are even writing books and curriculum from their experiences, meaning for the first time ever there are books and curriculum written by home educators for home educators who understand what home education is all about. On top of that there are home educators who have written these materials from a Biblical Christian worldview.

One of these books is Educating the Wholehearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson3 who say, “You may ask how we know we are cooperating with God’s design when home schooling, per se, is never mentioned in Scripture. It’s because home education is not our primary goal at home – home discipleship is, and home education is simply the natural extension of home discipleship….God designed the home for discipleship, and when we follow God’s patterns and prinicples, the natural and normal fruit will be not only spiritual growth and maturity, but intellectual growth and maturity as well…. Your home is a dynamic living and learning environment designed by God for the very purpose of raising your children to become mature, useful disciples of Jesus. When you begin to understand the dynamic, you will find a freedom you never knew was possible in your home education. Home-centered learning helps you discover that dynamic so your home will work for you in discipling and educating your children.

“Home-centered learning is not just a new perspective on your home and family, though, it is also a new perspective on your children. Not only did God design home and family to be a learning environment, but He also designed children to learn naturally within that environment. Because children are made in God’s image, they are already intelligent, creative and curious. No matter what you do (or don’t do!), God has already put within them the drive to explore, discover, question and to learn….Your role as a home educating parent, then, is to provide a rich and lively living and learning environment in which your children can exercise their God-given drive to learn, and then to train and instruct your children within the natural context of your home and family life. It’s that simple.”

Discipling our children is a whole-of-life activity, not necessarily confined to a strict timetable, text books or so many pages in a workbook per day. Such an approach we have found to be far less stressful as well as a lot more fun, and we suspect that if more home educating parents caught on to this idea, fewer would be inclined to chuck it in after only a couple of years.

References:

1. Home-Based Education – Not “Does it work?” but “Why does it work so well?” by Roland Meighan, University of Nottingham School of Education.

2. NZQA’s magazine LEARN, Issue 10, November 1996, p8. as quoted in Preparing for an ERO Review by Craig S Smith, available from Home Education Foundation, PO Box 9064, Palmerston North.

3. Educating the Wholehearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson, available from: Christian Education Services, 55 Richards Ave, Forrest Hill, North Shore City, or visit website http://www.wholeheart.orgFrom Keystone Magazine

July 2001, Vol. VII No. 4

Editor: Craig Smith

PO Box 9064

Palmerston North

Phone: (06) 357-4399

Fax: (06) 357-4389

Email: hedf@xtra.co.nz

Webpage: www.hef.org.nz

Jesus is Lord: Lord of ALL and for ALL Time

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Jesus is Lord: Lord of ALL and for ALL Time

Posted in The Faith of Us Fathers

(The following is an email conversation with a friend who sends his children to state schools. My friend’s words are in italics.)

We still need reminding from time to time… “The end of all things is near; therefore be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.” 1 Peter 4:7 “Watch and pray”.

Reminding, yes, but too many folks I’ve met seem to have allowed this to become a form of escapism from this present world, from dealing with the real issues all around us. The whole area of end times is not an open and shut case, but is fraught with all kinds of controversy. I personally think it comes down to two concepts: be constantly ready, confessed up to date, and at peace with all men, as far as it is possible with you personally; and also preparing yourself and your children as if the Lord were not coming back for another 100 years. It’s a “both/and” scenario rather than an “either/or” deal. If I was convinced the Lord was definitely going to return in my lifetime, I would never have gotten married, that’s for sure. I Corinthians 7 talks about that. But I believe He should be Lord of all no matter when He returns….that’s why we have always been keen on overseas missions as well as a thoroughly Christian education at home. You cannot send people overseas as on-fire Christians who have been trained six hours a day by the agents of paganism in our public schools; the idea is laughable.

A disadvantage, but God is mightily able to heal and change peoples hearts, minds and souls.

So why should we cause our children to be hurt so that God has to heal and change them? Why don’t we give them the advantage of a consistent Christian upbringing and training and allow God to make them into Christian witnesses the like of which the world has not seen since Whitfield, Wesley, Edwards and others who were thoroughly trained and nurtured in the faith since childhood.

OK, schools are dangerous, but so are the roads. By prayer and the grace of God they can be protected.

We don’t put our children on the roads and pray for God’s protection. We teach them to avoid the roads and cross them safely. We don’t teach them to play with fire or mess around with hot elements or walk right on the edges of cliffs so that we can pray for God to protect them. No. We ourselves take all the steps we can to protect them from the dangers we know exist and then pray that God will protect them from those unseen dangers and those dangers we cannot personally deal with…..this is our obvious duty and responsibility as parents. It is easy and within our power to remove them from the anti-Christian, thoroughly secular state school environment they sit in for hours every day and to replace the secular and political indoctrination they are fed while sitting in that environment with the Biblically oriented and Scripturally based truths they will need to know to take dominion of this world physically as He commanded us in Genesis 1:28 and spiritually as He commanded in Matthew 28:18-20 and II Corinthians 5:17-20. So why don’t we do it? Do the Scriptures tell us anywhere that our children will be better Christians, more healthy spiritually, by being trained up in the enemy’s camp?

 

I know that as Christians we should try to alter/influence things. We can’t do it by force, and the vote is too small (pity about the Christian Coalition)…, the only lasting way is by changing hearts.

Amen! Salvation is through Regeneration, not Revolution. (Conversions through the message and ministry of the Gospel, not by force or political activity…..as if conversions could happen like this anyway.) However, if politics is not an inherently immoral activity, in the way that running a brothel is an inherently immoral activity, then it is right and proper for Christians to be involved, according to their calling from the Lord, endeavouring to bring the principles of God’s word to bear upon the public policies of the nation. I mean, the alternative is just to abandon the whole thing to the devil. And why do that?

 

The devil is “the ruler of this world”, but his rule is limited to whatever God’s will allows and is also limited by the time he has been given. God is Lord of all. What He says goes. He allows the devil’s “rule” for His ultimate good purposes.

I’m not satisfied that the “ruler of this world” is the devil. The early Christians were tortured and executed because they would not compromise on the tiny declaration, “Jesus is Lord”. They only had to say, “Caesar is lord”, put some incense on the altar, and they were free to go. But they instead insisted that Caesar would one day bow the knee before the Lord Jesus Christ, that Ceasar would be answerable to how he executed his responsibilities while in the flesh, on the earth. That is to say, the Christians who were tossed to the lions believed very much that Jesus is ruler of this world, now, as well as ruler of the next. Can you find a Scripture to support your idea?

I’m happy to report that I can’t find a verse to support it after all. The closest is that he is the “ruler of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2). In fact even now, “Jesus Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev 1:5).

Amen, brother! Amen!! Actually John makes three statements close together which indicate that maybe the devil was prince of the world to some degree, but that Jesus ended that: John 12:31, 14:30 and 16:11. The Lord also indicates that He was entering the strong man’s — that is, the devil’s — house and plundering it, first binding the strong man! (See Matthew 12:29, Mark 3:27 and Luke 11:21-22 and their contexts.) Yes, the devil does appear to hold sway over many (I John 5:19), but it is only through deceit and the fact that the unregenerate heart has a tendency to lean satan’s way. In Matthew 4 and especially Luke 4:5-6 the devil is quoted as saying he could give the kingdoms of the world to Jesus, for they had been given to him (the devil) to do as he would. Now I’m sorry, but I’m really sceptical at this point, for the Scripture tells me that the devil is a liar and the father of all lies and that there is no truth in him (John 8:44). I’m convinced he was telling Jesus a whopper in these passages.

No, the whole idea of the devil being ruler of this earth gives too much power and glory and honour to the devil, it seems to me. He deserves none. He will get none from me. He’s just a squatter here, one who knows his time is short. To Jesus alone is the power and glory and honour and dominion now and forevermore. Amen.

And anyway, He Who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (I John 4:4). I know the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (I Peter 5:8), but the Scripture tells me I need only resist the devil and he will flee from me (I Peter 5:9). What have I to fear from him? Nothing. What have I to fear from the even less powerful schemes of men? Even less than that. As the Scripture says, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for good works (I Peter 3:13)? And as earlier saints have said, as long as we are walking in the will of the Lord and until the Lord plans for us to go, we are effectively immortal!

I remember people at church used to be fond of saying, “If Jesus is not Lord of all He is not Lord at all”.

 

What verse is that? Anyway, I think this means Jesus being Lord of all areas of a person’s life. Nothing to do with the world.

Oooohhh….I reckon you may have just compromised the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There are plenty of verses that emphatically teach the Lordship of Christ over every atom in the universe. I mean, isn’t the earth the Lord’s and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1)? Were not all things created in Him, through Him and for Him, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities (Colossians 1:16)? Does He not uphold all things by His word of power (Hebrews 1:3)? How about the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me. Go therefore…” (Matthew 28:18) Sounds pretty inclusive to me. So are you saying that as long as I keep my personal life free from worldliness, the world can go where it will, I don’t care, ‘cause Jesus and I have this wonderful relationship? So if the world includes the schools, is it ok to send our kids to institutions which by law must be anti-Christian (Section 77 of the Education Act 1964, still in force, says all instruction must be entirely of a secular character, and secular is taken to mean without any religious instruction or observance…interpreted to mean Christian instruction or observance, for as we both know, occultic instruction and instruction in immorality is fully accepted)? Are you saying that our little ones, for whom Christ died, can be immersed in a grossly secular environment everyday of the week and yet somehow it is not a challenge to Christ’s rightful dominion in every area of their lives, not to mention our Christian duty as parents that our children’s every thought be taken captive to obey Christ (II Corinthians 10:5)?

My parents had a hands-off approach to parenting, wanting us to decide things for ourselves. I think they read Dr Spock. It seems some Christians have a similar godless approach. When our Genevieve was 11, the Sunday school teacher was doing a lesson about choices. He told the whole class (it was all printed in the lessons) that they had choices to steal or not to steal, to obey their parents or not to obey their parents, to go to church or not to go to church, to sleep around or not to sleep around. These were 11 year old children, remember. Some of us parents were hopping mad at some of this stuff. But Genevieve went to the heart of the matter: she told the teacher that as Christians they should never even be given such options. Of course we Christians don’t have such choices, she said. It’s a lie to say that we do, for where God has spoken, the issue is settled. Christians don’t have choices because they are supposed to be slaves of their Master, Jesus Christ, and He is supposed to be their Lord. (I was impressed with her answer and clarity of thought: I couldn’t see or think past the reference about kids having the choice to sleep around or not.)

 

Ultimately they do choose for themselves. We can help them a very great deal with wise guidance and advice.

The point Genevieve was making was, “Why focus a child’s attention on the things he shouldn’t do and then tell him he has a choice to do that? Why not major on all the right things to do, which so few people seem to be doing anyway, and keep reinforcing the message that Jesus — including everything He commands us to do — is the only way?” Why do we keep compromising our message, giving young, impressionable minds (who are actually looking to us adults for clear, unambiguous guidance) mixed messages that, well, we would like them to follow Jesus, but we know they will be drawn to this and to that and will want to experiment around a bit, but one day we’re sure they’ll want to come back, so why don’t they just decide to stay here with us, please? Heck, I don’t have to tell my children about the sin in the world: they see it all the time, in every TV show, newspaper, magazine, radio show, movie….and they experience sin in their hearts all the time. I don’t have to reinforce that message; I need to reinforce the Lord’s message and obedience to His word. The Lord told us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Ain’t much left over for messing around in other areas, I reckon. So why do we say, “You get to choose”, when the Lord commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30) and to love and serve and obey Him with everything we’ve got? If I am sounding an indistinct note on the bugle of warning, who is the Lord going to hold responsible? Yeah, me! And this is double so with my children, for they would not be on this earth if it had not been for a deliberate act on my part. As fathers we men perform a conscientious, willful, both-eyes-open act, one that we desired and strove to do…and obviously accomplished….which put our children on this earth. I don’t believe we can now hold them at arm’s length or remove ourselves even the slightest and say, “Well they ultimately have to choose for themselves”. For crying out loud, I will be doing all I can to totally bias my children a certain way, to completely bend their hearts and minds and wills to move only in one direction — toward submission to Christ — knowing only too well how much their own natural sinfulness, inherited from me, will be easy to work in the hands of the devil. So I will not do anything to make the devil’s job any easier than it already is. No, sir!!

Christians have both the old and a new nature. Sometimes we “give in” to the old nature. Do you not call that a choice? Only robots have no choice.

We adults, or perhaps I’d better say “I”, give in because I am so used to sinning. But generally we have been sinning since the day we were born. If we were raised in nominally Christian homes, we were never taught to submit our sinful natures to Christ, to allow Him to crucify the old nature on the cross, to think His thoughts after Him. No, in nominally Christian homes we were taught to be our own bosses, to do our own thing, be master of our own fate, exactly the same as non-Christians, but with this difference: we had to act within a certain prescribed code of acceptability. Our minds and hearts were still in rebellion against God, but we simply did not manifest it by participating in (all of) the gross sins of others round about us. But we were headed in the same direction….straight to hell.

So then we got converted to Christ. Our children are being reared in Christ-honouring homes, a far cry from our own experience. We should not expect the same kind of thing from them as what the world got from us. No, their lives should be miles different from our own at their age. In fact, if they were to be completely and consistently trained according to Biblical standards (something my past disqualifies me from doing, for I have all this garbage left over from my non-Christian days), but if my children were so raised, I believe they would be like nothing we have ever seen on this earth in our lifetimes. Now, Lord willing, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren should really be something, for they will be starting on a much taller and far more solid foundation than what I had. My children will stand on my shoulders, my grandchildren on their shoulders and so on. It would be too easy for me to allow my children to grow up into the Christian mediocrity that was the only option given me as a child. No way! My wife and I have always intended that they be launched into an orbit much higher than that.

Why settle for anything less? Why make it easy for them to choose second best? No, hang on, choosing sin is not second best…..it is death. Why make it easy for my children to choose death by making them used to sinful and compromised standards all around them all the time, by allowing them not to be shocked by it, by not hating it myself with such a passion that they are likewise horrified by any association with it? Why not make them love righteousness (as far as we are able, by God’s grace) and be so uncomfortable and ill-at-ease in the tents of the wicked that they flee from it….just as the Scripture tells them to do (I Timothy 6:11, II Timothy 2:22)? And yet all this time we must also be preparing them for an adult life lived in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation to whom they are to be offering the words of eternal life.

As Christian home educators it seems to me our task is not just to train up our children so that they can cope with this sin-cursed and fallen world, remaining faithful until the Lord’s return. No. The Gospel would seem to demand that our children make disciples of all nations, going as ambassadors of Christ, preaching a message of reconciliation and personally ministering reconciliation in all that they do. That is to say, they will be turning the world upside down! Now that’s the kind of task, long-term and with objects in view such as seeing the king of Saudi Arabia so soundly converted he influences much of the Muslim world to do the same…..that is the kind of thing we men can really sink our teeth into. Right dads? Let’s get to and do it!

From Keystone Magazine
July 2001 , Vol. VII No. 4
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

Smorgasbord Theology

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Smorgasbord Theology

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When we started home education, we wanted to teach the various subjects from Biblical presuppositions and perspectives rather than from the state humanistic party line used in the public schools (the “Secular Clause”, Section 77). For example, Maths became a study of God’s orderly and rational character: the mathematical systems are not human inventions, but are human discoveries of a part of God’s revelation. He is proven to be the sovereign of all when it is found that maths can be used perfectly to describe every aspect of the creation, from the micro world to the macro world of interstellar space. That is why we describe the cosmos as a “universe” rather than a “multiverse”….there is a demonstrable unity throughout all the known cosmos, a unity that is predictable down to centimetres and seconds, as in a satellite rendezvous with distant planets and moon landings. Now if maths is only a human invention, used to impose order on the chaos around us, there is no logical reason for this invention to so perfectly apply and predict events on other planets.

(Dr Remo J.Ruffini, physicist at Princeton University, reacted to the successful landing of men on the moon thusly: “How a mathematical structure can correspond to nature is a mystery. One way out is just to say that the language in which nature speaks is the language of mathematics. This begs the question. Often we are both shocked and surprised by the correspondence between mathematics and nature, especially when the experiment confirms that our mathematical model describes nature perfectly.” Dr Ruffini openly admitted that the mystery could be solved by positing the Biblical God. But to him this explanation was unacceptable.)

Anyway, to know what Biblical presuppositions even are, we have to know the Bible fairly well. But then we found that different Bible study helps would approach the Bible differently….that is, they had different presuppositions about the Bible!! Aaarrrrgggghhh! We had already been frustrated by that kind of thing: I grew up in a Methodist church and went back to one for a few years after being converted. We attended several Baptist and Presbyterian churches. We were among the Open Brethren for 14 years. We are now with the Reformed Churches of NZ. These various churches approach the Scriptures in very different ways, I can assure you.

One day I heard someone say that most Christians had a “smorgasbord” theology, a bit of this, a bit of that, but nothing comprehensive, complete and cohesive. It immediately struck me how that perfectly described my own theology at the time, and certainly that of most Christians I knew. I began a search for whatever was the counterpart to “smorgasbord” theology and discovered “systematic” theology. In this view one does not toss out all the old teachings and doctrines of the past simply because they are old. Instead, one takes the view that surely the Church of God here on earth, the Body of Christ, has learned something over these last two thousand years. Surely there are some basic things that we Christians don’t have to re-invent with each new generation of believers.

This view led various Reformers in history to write out statements or “confessions” of what constitutes a proper doctrine or Biblical understanding of God, of man, of the Fall, of Sin, of the Trinity, of Christ, His humanity, His divinity, salvation, justification, sanctification, church government, church discipline, proper worship, etc, etc. That is, they produced “creeds” and “statements of faith” which are fairly comprehensive, fairly complete and fairly cohesive. One church we were with for a while refused to have written creeds, saying they were merely the words of men (which is true: creeds are not inspired as are the Scriptures). These good people would say things like, “No creed but Christ”, and yet the congregation would be torn apart when some members would display gifts of the spirit or wander off into immorality or simply ask for an explanation as to why we baptise this way and not that way…..the leaders just didn’t know the answers nor apparently where to start looking!

Actually, it seems to me many churches these days shy away from that kind of thing a bit, that is, accepting a written creed or statement of faith: something containing a logically presented, categorised and systematic breakdown of what the Scripture teaches on any particular subject. The fear includes the idea that such statements might cause divisions, or one aspect or another might be offensive to someone who might then leave. I have to laugh at this! It is the same as saying, “Doctrine divides, but love unites.” That in itself is a statement of doctrine! Doctrine is inescapable: we all believe something and should be able to “confess” what it is, that is, write it down in a clear, concise fashion.

As parents we must avoid presenting to our children a muddied, unclear or confusing picture of Who God is or what He requires of us as we take our children through the Bible. We need to study hard so that we will not be ashamed of our Bible knowledge and understanding before our children, and so that we may not be ashamed before God but instead rightly handle the Word of truth (II Timothy 2:15).

There is a lot of good material out there to help you come to grips with a consistent overview of what the Bible teaches. There are several Statements or Confessions of Faith by the Baptists, and buying one that has a commentary with it is very helpful. I think that the Anglicans, Presbyterians and Reformed all subscribe to one degree or another to documents such as the Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism. These lay out in very orderly and logical fashion the basic teachings of Scripture on the various items listed above. Again, getting a copy that has a good commentary with it is a great way to come to grips with these doctrines. There are also books on systematic theology from various theological perspectives. One I found exceptional for its clarity and brevity is “A Summary of Christian Doctrine” by Louis Berkhof (Banner of Truth, ISBN 085151 0558).

Brother Andrew (God’s Smuggler) of Open Doors was quoted in the Challenge Weekly of 3 April 2001, “Our big need as Christians, and evangelicals in particular, is that we don’t even know how to verbalise our faith in God when the Muslims challenge us with questions about who our God is. This is appalling. This is such an extreme poverty. Praise God for the Heidelberg Catechism! How many people know about this Confession of Faith today? In my view it is the most eloquent expression of the faith that we have had throughout the centuries.” These confessions and statements of faith help us to see how the whole of the Bible hangs together, they help us to see the wider implications of the Scripture to the whole of life, to every area of our lives. These are not to replace the Bible, but only to help us more accurately understand the incredible breadth and depth of the Scripture’s application to every area of our private, social and national lives. They are excellent spiritual reference books.

Smorgasbord Theology: it just seems that the Scripture should not be viewed in that way, especially when the Lord Jesus Himself says, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that procedes out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4 see also Psalm 119:160). Anyway, I found that to have more than a smorgasbord theology meant doing a lot of work in reading and researching and comparing the various theological views around. Which one is the most accurate? Which seems most faithful to the whole of Scripture? These are difficult questions, but we must realise that we all, that is, each one of us, does have a theological point of view. It is inescapable. It can simply be one we picked up from tapes and sermons and our own Bible reading (a smorgasbord theology), or it can be one we have diligently sought out from all those on offer out there, conscientiously studied and now held as a personal view, one we can articulate to others, one we are ready to defend: and one we are explaining to our children, so that they will not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but will know precisely what they believe and why they believe it. Such is our duty to our children: to train them up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4, RSV); to teach them God’s commandments diligently all day every day (Deuteronomy 6:6-7); to impart to them a systematic rather than a smorgasbord theology. For the Lord and His Word are not composed of many unrelated bits chosen by us, but are like His tunic gambled for at the Cross: a precious whole, without seam, woven from top to bottom. (John 19:23-24).

From Keystone Magazine
May 2001 , Vol. VII No. 3
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz