A Christian Home is Christian Education
My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honor around your neck. Proverbs 1:8-9 NLT
Our parents, are our first teachers. Ephesians 5:33 speaks of the respect a husband or father is to be given as he teaches by example the self sacrificing love of God. Of course the Bible also mentions women and mothers who teach us about God’s love with the same self-sacrificing love. Thus our mothers deserve the same respect. I remember as a child talking back to my mother, only to hear my grandmother tell me, “You don’t talk that way to someone who would die for you!”
“The child’s first teacher is the mother. During the period of greatest susceptibility and most rapid development his education is to a great degree in her hands.” — Ellen G. White, Education, p. 275.
This passage from the book Education, as well as the Bible tell me parents are our first teachers and our greatest life long teachers. This passage also makes it clear that we also receive a real education outside of formal schools as well as in formal schools.
I love Christian schools, and have dedicated my time and money to them. I believe in their mission with all my heart. Yet, sometimes when we promote Christian schools, I think we sometimes give credit to the schools that actually belongs to the parents. Of course I understand it is the parents who utilize the school in their home ministry. Christian education does not begin in a school building. It begins in the home. I promote Christian schools over public schools but I also realize a child can get a Christian education at home even if he/she is in a public school. last week’s lesson showed us how the Garden of Eden was the first classroom. The home is a child’s first classroom and it is a continuous classroom.
I went to Adventist Schools from Grades 1 through college. My schools averaged around 100 students a year with different students coming and going throughout my 12 grades. A while back, I went through my year books, and I could count on both hands, and maybe a couple of toes the number of kids who remained in the church after we grew up. Upon further investigation I found, for the most part, my schoolmates who remained in the church after growing up, had worship every night in the home. Their parents also encouraged their children to study the Bible for themselves. That is why their children are still in the church.
Image © Lars Justinen from GoodSalt.com
Church schools are great, they are wonderful, they are ordained by God, but they are not ordained to take the place of the mother and father and do the work the mother and father are ordained to do. (I understand there are situations, like my late friend Quong, who came to the United States from Vietnam, and was put in an Adventist School, only because it was private. While his parents were atheist, Quong, accepted Jesus, and was forced out of his home at 14 years of age! He slept at the school every night till he found a new family to live with. Thank God for that school!)
A while back I was giving a devotional for chapel at a Christian School. I asked the lower grade students how many of them have family worship at home. Out of about 45 students only 5 hands were raised. I begged the other students to ask their parents to have family worship with them every night, by studying the children’s Sabbath School lessons (Click on age groups tab on menu at the top of the screen.) and Bible together, and prayer.
Again I have dedicated much of my life and resources in support of our Adventist schools. At the same time when we have an ‘Education Sabbath” it grieves me that the church will give credit to the schools that actually belongs to the parents. As already stated, family worship and a Christian home is the key contributor to keeping children in the church after they grow up. A Christian home is Christian education.
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