When Christian parents are considering their responsibility to educate their children, God requires that we must face and answer three questions from the Scripture: who will educate our children, what are our children to be taught; and how does God require them to be instructed?
In answer to the first question, who will educate our children, the Bible makes it clear that God has given this responsibility neither to the state nor the church, but to parents. They have a duty to instruct them thoroughly in the commandments of God as they bear upon every area and aspect of their lives. In this regard, two passages of Scripture are important.
The first is Deuteronomy 6: 4—9:
Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The confession of every Christian is that the Lord alone is God. He is one, and there is none other. There are no other gods, or loci of authority, in His presence. Therefore He alone is to be loved with all our being. Everything else that exists has been created by Him: therefore, our love for everything else in the creation is to be reflective of, and derived from, our love for Him. The Scriptures teach us that we must not divide our lives into a “God compartment” and an “everything else” compartment. We only see and understand correctly when we see everything as belonging to God and created for His glory. Consequently, we only learn truthfully and correctly when we are being taught in this manner.
Therefore, we are to teach our children in all the activities of their lives and in their every encounter in the Creation to see everything in terms of the commandments of God. Nothing can be known properly and truthfully and rightly unless it is known in terms of God's Word. If we try to learn something apart from the one true and living God—that is, seek to learn it as if it existed independently of God, as if it did not live and move and have its being in God—we are learning a lie. We are not learning truthfully.
Notice that this text does not call us and our children to leave life and the creation, enter into a “spiritual zone”, and learn of God in a monastic way. It requires the very opposite—that we make it our duty to ensure that the Word of God is shaping our understanding of God as we and our children interact with the creation. Moreover, our text makes clear that the duty to instruct our children this way is given to parents.
If parents determine, as many do, that they must delegate a considerable part of the instruction and education of their children to another, the one to whom they delegate must stand in loco parentis—that is, in the place of parents. It is the God-given duty of Christian parents to ensure that their delegatee is in actual fact and in every way standing as their representative, in their place. The teacher must teach as the parents would and must. This requires that Christian parents must ensure that the teachers of their children believe as they believe. How can Unbelievers teach faithfully and truthfully the commandments of God as they bear upon mathematics and science and reading, and writing, and speech and commerce, and music, when they, themselves, do not believe in God, let alone His Word? An Unbelieving teacher cannot stand in the place of a Christian parent to teach in fulfilment of Deuteronomy 6: 4—9.
A second critical passage is found in Proverbs 1. Here we learn that the ground and beginning of knowledge, wisdom, and instruction is the fear of the Lord. (Proverbs 1:7) Moreover, it is both the father and the mother who must instruct and teach their children accordingly. But the fear of the Lord and the knowledge, wisdom and instruction that comes forth from it, is to be found, not in a cloister, but in all of life. In order to learn wisdom and be properly instructed, one must learn about the creation and the “outside” world. Thus: “wisdom shouts in the streets, she lifts her voice in the square; at the head of noisy streets she cries out; at the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters sayings.” (Proverbs 1: 20—21)
Thus, in the Christian faith there are not two spheres of learning and knowledge—the one related to God and His Word, and the other beyond and apart from God—secular, and non-spiritual or non-religious. There is only One God and all that exists belongs to Him and has its being in Him. Moreover, one can only know God properly if one learns of Him in and through the world He created and sustains. Wisdom does not shout in the cloister, but in the streets!
It is parents, the father and the mother, who have a duty to ensure that their children learn godly wisdom and knowledge from the book of the creation. It is only as they study God's creation—and in particular, those subjects we call the humanities—that they will learn true wisdom and knowledge. All such learning must be infused with the fear of the Lord. Those whom we employ to teach our children must likewise teach accordingly—which means that they, too, must believe as we believe.
These two passages of Scripture tell us that it is parents who are responsible to ensure that their children are taught properly. This implies that if parents are to send their children to a school or to teachers or tutors to enhance and make their education more effective still, (acknowledging that the Holy Spirit has particularly gifted some people to be teachers) those teachers must believe in the same way as the parents. They, too, must be Christians who understand that God is one and all of the creation—all truth, all knowledge, all learning—has its being and existence and truth in God.
These two passages also help us answer the questions of what our children are to be taught and how they are to be instructed. Our children are to be taught according to God's word in every subject; and they are to taught that all of the creation is religious, belonging to God, and is for His glory. Every subject, every branch of learning, therefore, is a religious subject. If reading and writing is not being taught Christianly, for example, it will be taught according to pagan beliefs and principles. It will be taught to promote the glory of man, not the glory of the one true Living God. There can be no middle ground. As our Lord said, “he who does not gather with Me, scatters.”
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