Lord’s Day, Vol. 13 No. 32
Family-Based Christian Education
The question is often asked why children of believing parents go astray when they enter adulthood. Did the children not go through the ranks of Sunday School in their formative years? What went wrong?
The Puritan writer Thomas Manton has this observation for our consideration. He said that the decay of the power of godliness and especially great corruption of youth in the Christian community is traced not so much to bad children and bad servants but to bad parents and bad masters that make bad children and bad servants. A clear reason for their lack of piety can be traced to parents own negligence of their children’s spiritual education.
Can the children who spend one hour in Sunday School each week be properly taught in the things of God whilst they spent 40 hours of each week immersed in the education of this world? The inordinate proportion of time for spiritual inculcation is one hour compared with at least 40 hours of education in the world, besides other enrichment classes. Can such a child be properly taught spiritually speaking? I believe the answer is an emphatic “No”.
Is it any wonder in their young adult years, we find them having marriage partners among unbelievers? And thus, the spiritual disaster of a generation!
Manton insightfully observed, “The devil hath a great respite at the kingdom of Christ, and he knoweth no such compendious way to crush it in the egg, as by the perversion of the youth, and supplanting family-duties…Religion was first hatched in families, and there the devil seeketh to crush it; the families of the Patriarchs were all the churches God had in the world for the time; and therefore (I suppose), when Cain went out from Adam’s family, he is said to go out from the face of the Lord (Gen. 4:16). How, the devil know that this is a blow at the root, and a ready way to prevent the succession of churches: if he can subvert families, other societies and communities will not long flourish and subsist with any power and vigour; for there is the stock from whence they are supplied both for the present and future.”
He further pointed out, “For the present: A family is the seminary of church and state; and if children are not principled there, all miscarrieth: a fault in the first concoction is not mended in the second; if youth be ill-bred in the family, they prove ill in church and society; there is the first making or marring, and the presage of their future lives to be thence taken – Proverbs 20:11 (KJV) Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.”
The neglect of family discipline is a root cause – “By family discipline, officers are trained up for the church – 1 Timothy 3:4 (KJV) One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; One that ruleth well his own house, and there are men bred up in subjection and obedience. It is noted in – Acts 21:5 (KJV) And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our way; and they all brought us on our way, with wives and children, till we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed – that the disciples brought Paul on his way with their wives and children; their children probably mentioned, to intimate, that their parents would, by their own example and affectionate farewell to Paul, breed them up in the way of reverence and respect to the pastors of the church.”
What is the issue there? “Among others, a principal cause of these mischiefs is the great and common neglect of the governors of families, in the discharge of that duty which they owe to God for the souls that are under their charge, especially in teaching them the doctrines of Christianity. Families are societies that must be sanctified to God as well as churches; and governors of them have a charge of the souls that are therein, as pastors have of the churches. But, alas, how little is this considered or regarded! But while negligent are (deservedly) cast out of their places, the negligent masters of families take themselves to be almost blameless. They offer their children in baptism, and there they promise to teach them the doctrine of the gospel, and bring them up in the nurture of the Lord; but they easily promise, and easily break it; and educate their children for the world and the flesh, although they have renounced these, and dedicated them to God. This covenant-breaking with God, and betraying the souls of their children to the devil, must lie heavily on them here and hereafter. They beget children, and keep families, merely for the world and the flesh: but little consider what a charge is committed to them, and what it is to bring a child for God, and govern a family as a sanctified society.” [extracted and edited from The Westminster Confession of Faith – Mr Thomas Manton’s Epistle to the Reader]
To be continued…
Yours lovingly,
Pastor Lek Aik Wee