Karl D Coke
There is a worldwide exodus of Christians from organised religion. This current trend is not rebellion against. “authority.” God is bringing His people to Biblical awareness. Involved directly in this fresh awareness is the restoration of the family. The restored family is a portion of Acts 3:21, which says, “He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.” Among those holy prophets is Malachi. He spoke of the restoration of the family as a sign of the coming of Messiah. The very last verse of his prophecy says, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; …” Neither organised religion, with all its programmes, nor public schools can replace what God installed as the norm – that education begins at home. The more Biblical one becomes, the more family is one’s orientation. The more family oriented one becomes, the more important proper education becomes. Proper education without question begins at home. It is definitely the Biblical mandate.
When considering the home as the rudder in the river of educating its members, one should remember that God chose the family to reveal Himself. Neither Judaism nor Christianity were God’s intention to reveal Himself. God created the family. In Noah’s Ark, God saved a family. In fact, the Bible is filled with family terminology. Believers call each other brother or sister. God is referred to as our father. Jesus calls believers brothers. Believers are called the seed of Abraham, our father. Jesus is the husband to believers who are called His bride. New converts are said to be born again into the family of God. Even the Egyptian captivity was begun by the family of Jacob. The family is obviously important to God, therefore, how that family conducts its affairs is equally important. Included in that conduct is the establishment of the home as the centre for education.
Why should education begin at home? Why should the education of our children not be handed exclusively to others? Why should parents play a visible role in the intellectual stimulation of their offspring? What effect results from abdicating parental educational responsibility? Where will children depart from faith in God in their secular pursuit of understanding? At what age do humanists begin their destruction of faith in the Bible? The answers to these questions are found on the front pages of your daily newspapers. Television news bytes are filled with the results of the loss of the home as the vanguard of proper education. Frankly, secularism will always fail. There are no morals to check crime in society void of faith in God. Tax and spend more money for prisons is the only available secular cry. When secularism replaces the family home as the centre for education, you can rely upon sexual disease, murder, drugs and political wars. Worldliness can never replace the spiritual side of education fostered in the home. The world can only release people from the internal restraints taught in the Bible and reinforced by parents. Without this respect and love for the family and its input, all fall victim to Satan’s plan. From the beginning, Satan had the family as target for destruction. What better way to destroy it than to remove from it the Biblical mandate of education. People naturally place their confidence in what and who educates them.
Anyone who decides to take back the educational responsibility of the home is in for a battle. Satan does not like anyone becoming too fanatical about Biblical mandates. Be prepared to be as Abraham, who according to Hebrews 11:9, “Made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; …” Do not be surprised that the greatest attacks against your decision to restore the authority of your home to your children’s education comes from Believers! However, let nothing stop you from fulfilling the mandate of Scripture. Make your home the centre of your family’s education. Education begins at home. Education is the business of the family. Only parents can instill belief in the hearts of their children. Parents possess the ability to make a spiritual being like God real to little ones. Dad and Mom wouldn’t lie to me. Do not give this tender truth away into the hands of those who will present falsehood as truth. Resist the temptation of laziness. Oppose the lie that others can explain better. Free yourself from self imposed limitations and study along with your child. Know where each one is with regard to taking in information. There is no excuse for not making education a family project accomplished with the home’s knowledge and consent.
The Biblical Mandate for: “Education begins at home”
The fifth commandment of Exodus 20 is found in verse 12. It says, “Honour your father and mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.” This explicitly says for children to obey their parents. It also implicitly says that parents are responsible to provide all that demands obedience. Parents are held to the responsibility of training their own children in their own home. Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “Impress them (God’s commandments) on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home …” The teachings of God include far more than spiritual training. Isaiah says that God instructed the farmer all about farming. In chapter 28 and verse 26, Isaiah says of farming, “His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.” Solomon says of all knowledge gained by man, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, . . . ,” in Proverbs 1:7. He also said of his father David in Proverbs 4:3-4, “When I was a boy in my father’s house, still tender, and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said, ‘Lay hold of my words with all your heart; keep my commands and you will live.’
This is why the Apostle, Paul, says in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the LORD.” David produced the echo of his son Solomon by saying in Psalm 34:11, “Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD.” His great song, which we know as Psalm 101, should become the theme song in every home dedicated to education beginning therein. It reads:
“I will sing of your love and justice; to you, O LORD, I will sing praise. I will be careful to lead a blameless life – when will you come to me? I will walk in my house with a blameless heart. I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men 0 hate; they will not cling to me. Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil. Whoever slanders his neighbour in secret, him will I put to silence; whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him will I not endure. My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, and they that dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me. No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence. Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land; I will cut off every evildoer from the city of the LORD.”
The clearest Biblical mandate for parents to educate their own children comes from Proverbs 22:6. It says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” This passage clearly sets forth the responsibility of parents. Parents should provide their child training in the path of aptitude. This is not an appeal for home schooling. It is a mandate of God for parents to be directly involved in the education of their children. This is not a verse supporting one’s denominational distinctives in hope of having children attend the same church. It is a clear, powerful directive to let all know that your child’s education begins at home.
(Reprinted from Tishrei Vol 3, No 1, Spring 1995, Education)