We are raising our children in Babylon. The UK in 2022 is not David’s kingdom, Solomon’s Kingdom or even Rehoboam’s Divided Kingdom. Believers are living in exile and if we sit back and relax, the world will teach our children that marriage is between two people of any gender and endures until somebody wants out, gender is up for grabs, unborn babies are disposable, ape-like creatures are our ancestors, existence is meaningless and socialism and environmentalism are the only way forward. In short, like the Israelites of old, the world dubs good evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20).
Yet I can write from a position of peace rather than panic because I know that God will never leave himself without a witness, that he has made known to me the path of life (Psalm 16:11) and that a better way will be taught to my children.
In his grace, God has given believers of this day and age the legal option of educating children at home. We are not compelled to send our children to the Babylonians for their education. Nevertheless, removing our children from the schools is not a mission accomplished in and of itself. It is too easy to be passive, to sit back assuming the job is done and to completely miss the opportunity of training up our children in righteousness.
Three Ways Not to Be Passive:
1. We Teach our Children the Law.
The law according to the world is that everything is permissible except dividing between good and evil. The law according to the word is the Ten Commandments, the full extent of which is explained by Jesus in Matthew 5-7. We must actively teach our children the Ten Commandments because the world will actively teach them to take God’s name in vain, to disregard the Sabbath, to worship any gods except the true God, to commit adultery, to lie, to envy and to steal. Let’s call to mind the truth that the man who is blessed is the one whose ‘delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.’ (Psalm 1:2)
2. We Teach our Children the Gospel
The gospel of the world is that if anything feels good, it must be right. A guilty conscience is the result of oppressive conditioning in our childhood. If there is a heaven, then I will definitely be there because I know people who are more wicked than me!
The Gospel of Christ is that the law demands a perfect standard which none of us can attain. Christ kept the law perfectly and imputed his righteousness to us while receiving the punishment for our wickedness upon himself.
How do we teach the gospel? We ensure we are members of a fellowship that faithfully preaches the gospel (even if we do not agree on every minor point of doctrine). We worship daily as a family. We teach all subjects through the lens of Christ, pointing our children to him whatever the subject. ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Rom 10:17) and my children need to hear the gospel in season and out of season, whether the books open in front of them are maths, grammar or science.
3. We Go to the Word for Instructions About Parenting.
The world is full of advice on how to parent our children. Let’s take, for example, Romanticism. Romanticism believes firstly that ‘human nature is innately good and should be encouraged to take its natural course’ and secondly ‘that the child is a special being in his own right with unique, trustworthy… impulses that should be allowed to develop and run their course’ (E.D. Hirsch). The Bible says that our children are born in sin (Ps 51:5) and that we must train children up in the way they should go (Prov 22:6). Parenting is active, rather than passive. If we want our children to learn, we must teach them. Certainly, we can nourish particular interests, but it is at our peril that we never to push them to do something that they might never choose to do if left to themselves.
Let’s praise God that this is not the first time his people have found themselves in exile in a culture that was on a counter-attack to his ordained law and gospel. An overdose of the daily news could leave us fearful and hopeless but we have a better word. ‘…the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit…’ (Heb 4:12). With our feet firmly planted on the rock of our salvation may we instead be spurred to work a little harder, teach a little more diligently and pray with increasing measures of faith. We must not be passive.
