On the one hand, it would be so much easier if there were an exact formula for ensuring the salvation of our children. On the other hand, a guaranteed formula would also guarantee the puffing up of our pride (after all, we were clever enough to figure it out!). It would also deny us the chance for personal growth in wisdom since mindlessly following a given set of steps for the salvation of our children would remove the need to put on Christ, to pray and to thrash out the intricacies of the means that God has laid out in his word.
There is much wisdom in the decision to give children a Christian Education at home (or perhaps at a school where teachers are true believers), but if home education becomes an idol, then we ‘forsake [our] hope of steadfast love’ (Jonah 2:8)
When does it become apparent that our educational choice has usurped Christ?
1. When We Witness to Home Education Rather Than to Christ
Why do our friends think that we home educate? Have they received the impression from us that home education is more important to us than Jesus? Do they even know that our educational choices are rooted in the certain truth that in Christ are found ‘all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col 2:3)? Are we calling others to home educate their children or are we calling others to give their children a Christian education?
When we start to talk about home education apart from our faith then we need to question whether it has become an idol. At this point in time, home education is a common grace in the UK. Many families have problems with the school system and make use of the freedom to remove their children from it. Nevertheless, there is a distinctive in Christian home education and if this is not apparent in our conversation with others, if we are sounding a drum for home education whatever that may look like, then it is time to question whether we have made an idol of our educational choice.
2. When We Are More Concerned About the Outside of the Cup.
Jesus rebukes the Pharisees because they ‘clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence’ (Mt 23:25)
If we are more concerned with how our children behave in public than we are with the state of their hearts, then we have completely missed the point of Christian education and we have no concept of the necessity of Christ’s work on the cross. Unbelievers can train their children to behave correctly, but the Christian worldview alone recognises that the heart of man is ‘deceitful above all things, and desperately sick’ (Jer 17:9). Only a Christian worldview teaches that, ‘the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Rom 6:23)
Christian home education is not a tool to teach morality. It is the means by which we teach our children that they are sinners in need of a Saviour.
3. When we Think Christian Education Can be Proved Wrong by an Unfavourable Result
A course of action is proved right by God’s Word. It is not proved wrong because of an apparently unfavourable result. The truth is that some children go through the school system and emerge as believers (although many do not). This is not BECAUSE of school system but because of another witness in their lives. In the same way, there is no guarantee our children will be saved if we give them a Christian education. If we believe this, we have not understood that Christ is the Author of our Salvation. We give our children a Christian education because we are walking in obedience (Deut 6:7), we have taken to heart the command to ‘bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord’ (Eph 6:4) and have understood that this is a full-time activity, rather than an activity that is relegated to Sundays and a few minutes in the evenings.
The wise child of God knows that our fickle and deceitful hearts are quick to build idols. For this reason, let us continue to shine the light of God’s word on our heart in the hope that he will reveal to us if home education has become the ends and not the means.
‘All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit.
Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.’
