Hello Parents!
We are getting more and more excited about the upcoming school year. Your quote on education: “One of the goals of classical education is to discern the appropriate manner by which the mistreated and oppressed can challenge their oppressors without destroying their civilization.” ― Gene Edward Veith Jr., Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping America
This is an excellent sentence by Veith. The Apostle Paul counseled the same in the classical /1st Century world. The distinction that matters in desiring change in a society is the difference between reformation and revolution. Christians are to be reformational (bringing change through patient gospel means) non-Christians tend to be “revolutionary” (bringing change by force, coercion, impatience, the protest and violence.
The mindset of Christians should be reformational. -- In my last newsletter I spoke of expectations for maturity in our children’s discipleship. I said it will be a series that I’ll build upon in the newsletters. Here is part two. Schooling, in so many ways, is parenting, it’s shepherding. Parenting is schooling. This is why what you do at home and what we do with your children here at the school are linked.
I spoke last time of the very common problem with parenting where parents are too lax and undefined with their small children and then get reactive and strict when their children go off the rails as teenagers. No. Teenagers should have more freedom and more responsibility than the single digits. They are to be a greater blessing in your home in those teenage years.
One pastor says this about parenting, “we get more of what we subsidize and less of what we penalize.” So what are we allowing our children to do that we shouldn’t, and also at the same time how can our home be more filled with playful joy and eager love? These are two questions that should work simultaneously. If not, then a home can be too strict without grace or on the other hand, too indulgent with poor standards that lead to lackluster young adults. It shouldn’t be “either/or,” rather “both/and.”
A mature human being is one that does not see a contradiction between God’s law/rules and God’s grace. As Charles Spurgeon said on another matter, “why reconcile two concepts that are already friends?” Maturity is loving true biblical holiness from the heart, not a fake legalistic appearance of holiness, but the genuine article. There is a progression for maturity in the Bible and it relates to above. It is a movement towards more freedom and more responsibility. It corresponds with the classical trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric stages).
Today I’ll list out the progression but only cover the first grouping of three on the left:
Grammar — Knowledge — Priest stage
Logic — Understanding — King stage
Rhetoric — Wisdom — Prophet stage
Perhaps you have heard of this model before. It certainly isn’t unique with me, scholars have noted it. The first grouping of three on the left above is the earliest stage of development in redemptive history and Christian growth (grammar, knowledge, priest). We all learn the basics when we are little children, the fundamentals. What is the fundamental? “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” the Bible says. Children must learn their “ABC’s,” the fear of God, how serious sin is.
The priests of old had to learn the law of Moses “line upon line,” letter for letter. They had to go by the book, everything was spelled out for them. Likewise, parents should have very clear expectations for their young little “priests” at home. They should expect first-time obedience. They should not tolerate whining, fits of anger, and manipulative pouting … to name just several.
Your home must not be a culture of griping, siblings griping with each other and esp. problematic is kids griping with you. This is no bueno… These are the basics. Parents should be all over these sins in their young children and discipline for bad attitudes not merely bad behavior. We’re after the heart, their affections, not just the outward action. In biblical, redemptive history as well as our own Christian growth … there is a progression of maturity. Israel under the Mosaic administration was in the “priest stage.”
The Torah is laid out very plainly, so should our parenting. Obedience and disobedience are very clear and Israel needed the “ABC’s” of the law for the challenges to come. Parenting is not cookie cutter. It isn’t mechanistic, you do “xyz” and your children will turn out perfectly. However, we shouldn’t throw our hands up when we’re perplexed with our children, and we definitely should not point fingers at them. We should get on our knees more. We should look within more. We must turn to God more.
Friends … as one pastor says, “God picks us up where we’re at, not where we should be.” We don’t clean up our act in order to be accepted by God. He meets us in the present, graciously leading us to repentance and saving grace. God meets us in the trenches of life, in the mud and the blood and the mess.
This is where we meet Jesus. If you feel that things are in bad shape at home – God does “bad shape.” Jesus Christ is the friend of the broken. I will wrap up the model in the next newsletter but lastly I want to say that the most important thing we can do for our children is to truly live the faith in front of them everyday. Parental lecturing and wordiness and rules lose all their meaning and can become utterly embittering if we ourselves are not living in integrity by the power of the gospel.
God bless you,
Mr. Alexander