It’s an odd thing that those who should be most concerned with education place so little emphasis on it. For the Christian parent, next to ensuring the salvation of their own soul, their next greatest priority is the spiritual welfare of their children. And yet the Western Christian, by and large, has not connected the dots.
Asaph in Psalm 78 does. He writes, “things….that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders that he has done.” In fact ‘telling’ the next generation is not just something for super-spiritual Christian parents. No, it is the command of God for us all. Asaph continues, “He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children.” It’s not a small thing to fail to pass on our faith to our children. It is disobedience against the Almighty.
What is the expected result of following God’s commands in this aspect of life? It is a passing on of the faith. Asaph writes “that the next generation might know them [the laws of God], the children yet unborn and arise and tell them to their children.” We see a passing on of the knowledge of God’s law from one generation to the next to the next. But the ultimate result of all this is “so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.” The command is designed to produce a people faithful to God.
It seems to me that Asaph’s general expectation is that as we teach the next generation the law of God, then that generation should set its hope in God and avoid the sin of willful rebellion against him.
What do we see today in God’s church in the West? We see successive generations of the church being smaller. Many leave the faith as they hit adulthood, and never come back. The church seems weak. Congregations are often ageing, and even those churches which are youthful are often filled with people who could be accused of being more in love with the social norms of the day than the law of God. A generalization to be sure but accurate.
Could it be that families are failing in their duty to teach their children? Could it be that Sunday school once a week, prayers before meals, the odd short devotional after dinner combined with the fun party atmosphere of youth group on Fridays cannot withstand the daily assault they are suffering from the secularists who run our education system? Might we be suffering the just rebuke of God for our idolatrous worship of the state and the handing over to Caesar what rightly belongs to God?