My grandson begins kindergarten in the fall (already! Where did the time go?) and I was talking to my daughter this morning about curriculum. She was, like everyone else tends to do, agonizing over this choice or that one, and what if I make a mistake, LOL. I told her, loving and attentive parents, who raise their children according to God’s ways and who do not provoke their children to wrath, can provide a superior education with mediocre materials. What curriculum you choose isn’t nearly the life and death decision some believe it to be. (Of course, I would love for everyone to use excellent history curriculum – especially mine, LOL. But I digress …)
Proverbs says, the heart of wisdom loves knowledge. If you teach your children to be wise, to love and fear God, and raise them with a heart of virtue, then they will seek out knowledge on their own. You won’t be able to prevent it from happening. In fact, virtue and the fear of the Lord is the number one bedrock all education needs to be built upon. You can try to cram facts into a fool’s head, but his knowledge will not profit him, for the end of a fool’s foolishness is still destruction. If you could only teach your child one subject, let it be Bible. The older I get, the more I am convinced that a thorough knowledge and love of the word of God is in fact far better than rooms full of silver and gold, and a head crammed with all the knowledge in the earth.
If you don’t believe me, try teaching math, science, or literature to a 10 or 12 or 14 year old whose heart was not taught to love virtue or the fear of the Lord. There is no more frustrating experience on earth. The best curriculum in the world will not penetrate a closed heart, or a mind full of foolish assumptions. So this year, major on the majors. Learn the word of God from front to back. I don’t think you will be sorry.
So if you find yourself with that older elementary or junior high student who loves to read, but only what they want. You have held beauty in front of them, sang, memorized Scripture, prayed for and with them and yet you meet with resistance when things get difficult. You think they will show NO resistance?
You have given me a good idea for a series of posts. What does the Bible teach about teenage resistance? Why does it happen? And most importantly, what to do about it? To say that no child will ever resist parental authority is going way beyond the Scriptures, for all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Parents also have a responsibility to deal with their own and their child's sin in a Scriptural manner. I am saying, GOD'S WAYS WORK! Every time they are applied. The problem I have found raising my own, is that what we were often told were God's ways were not always what I found when I read the Scriptures for myself. Love, Christine