Family Foundations
Ken Ham
The family is the first
and most fundamental of all human institutions which God ordained
in Scripture, and it is the educational unit which God uses to transmit
His knowledge from one generation to the next. I believe that a
lack of a solidly Biblical approach in this whole area of education
is doing great harm to an entire generation of Christian children.
Personally, for our children over the years, we chose a combination
of home schooling and Christian schooling. (I do understand that
for some, their circumstances are such that this is not an option.
I just want to say that all of us should be trying to make the principles
of Scripture foundational to our thinking, as best as we can.)
Surprisingly, the opposition we get to the educational choice
we have made doesn't usually come from non-Christians (the ones
in our street are delighted with the outcome) - it comes from Christians.
Some of their main arguments are: ‘Your children should be
in the public school to witness to the other kids’, and ‘You need
to throw your children out there so they know how to survive’. When
I hear these, I ask people to show me from the Bible how they can
justify this. I believe it' s a prime example of how we’ve been
‘evolutionised’ - by that I mean we’ve taken the world’s way of
thinking and added it to our thinking, and to the Bible.
THE FAMILY IN GOD'S WORD
The family has its foundation
in the book of Genesis, when God took dust and made a man, then
took his rib/side and made a woman.
One of the most important
aspects of marriage is given in Malachi 2: 15 - to have godly offspring.
You are to produce godly offspring, who will themselves produce
more godly offspring, to affect the world increasingly for Jesus
Christ generation after generation.
Everywhere I go in
the majority of Christian homes it's ‘Mum’ that prays most with
the children, and does most of their spiritual training. But according
to the Bible it is supposed to be ‘Dad’ (except of course where
mothers are forced to raise their children without a father). One
of the greatest problems in Christian homes today is that most husbands
and fathers do not carry out their God-commanded responsibility
to be the spiritual head of their family, and to train their children.
Isaiah 38: 19 says: ‘The father to the children shall make
known thy truth’
Ephesians 6: 4 commands fathers to ‘provoke
not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and,
admonition of the Lord’ .
Psalm 78 is a long one, but every
parent should read it. Basically it is saying, over and over - fathers,
teach your children so they'll not forget to teach their children.
So that they might not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.
Interestingly, in the last part of Psalm 78, you read that
the Israelites did forget the works of God. Which is why they ended
up adopting the pagan religions of the day and so on - because the
fathers did not teach the children.
‘WHAT MEAN THESE
STONES?’
When Joshua crossed the Jordan River, he told
the people to build a memorial from stones, so that when their children
asked them what the stones meant they would not forget to tell them
what God had done.
However, after Joshua died, ‘...there
arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor
yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of
Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim’ (Judges
2: 10 - 11).
They lost it - in one generation. How? The
fathers didn’t teach the children. I think the same has happened
in the West today. It is just assumed ‘Oh, the children are going
to church, to Sunday School, they will be fine’. Parents, we should
be getting our Bible teaching from home, from studying the Word
of God as a family.
TEENAGE REBELLION
People
often talk about those ‘teenage rebellious years’. I believe that
in most instances (not all), these are nothing more than a lack
of teaching to acquire a taste for the things of the Lord in the
early years. Once children become teenagers (and we all know that
there are hormonal changes and certain behaviour patterns related
to puberty and adolescence), it's very difficult to change their
behaviour.
SALT
Those trying to justify their
belief that children should not be in Christian or home schooling
often say, ‘Well, we’re supposed to be the salt of the earth.’ Matthew
5: 13 Says we are supposed to be the salt of the earth, but if it
loses its savour, it's contaminated salt - no longer good for anything.
Also, Mark 9: 50 says, ‘Have salt in yourselves’. You can’t be the
salt of the earth unless you've got salt - uncontaminated salt.
When babies are born they don't know about the Word of God.
They don't know about Jesus dying on the cross. They don't know
what it means that God created in six days, and about marriage,
and any of that. It is our job as parents (particularly the father
as the spiritual head of the house) to be pouring in the uncontaminated
salt.
However, all of us are sinful by nature. That beautiful
little baby is biased against God, so it doesn't by nature want
the truth. It is as if there are holes at the bottom of our children
leaking out the salt while we are pouring in at the top. This means
we're going to have to work extra hard - they won't automatically
end up salt-filled.
WHO INFLUENCES WHO?
lCor 15: 33 basically means that bad company corrupts good character.
This is a scriptural principle - that the bad will influence the
good more than the good will influence the bad. Look at Lot (Genesis
18, 19). Did Sodom influence Lot, or did Lot influence Sodom? His
sons-in-law didn’t even believe him. His wife looked back, presumably
with a longing look. Who influenced whom?
Let's be honest,
in a public school situation, do our children bring home swear words
or do the others take home the Bible verses? You know the answer.
You see, it's much easier for our children to be dragged down
than for them to drag the others up. Remember also that children
are not miniature adults (lCor 13: 11). In a world of no absolutes,
evolution, sex outside marriage, humanism, false religions - they'll
be tossed to and fro. How do they know which way to go? How do they
know what to choose? They don't until they've been trained in truth
and can recognise the difference between good and evil.
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BIBLICAL GLASSES
Training
children means much more than just having a daily Bible reading
with them - it means sharing a Christian worldview about everything,
all the time (see Deuteronomy 6: 7), as naturally as breathing.
In every interaction we have with our children we can help teach
them a Christian way of thinking.
Sadly, most children
from Christian homes are being trained in a secular world view,
to which ‘God’ is added. We cannot Christianise a secular philosophy,
which a lot of Christian schools/texts try to do. Sadly, even those
which are ‘anti-evolution’ often fall into this error. Our children
end up thinking in a secular way, with God and the Bible just ‘add-on
extras’, rather than being relevant, ultimately, to everything,
and the supreme authority.
Sometimes someone will tell
me ‘My parents forced Christianity on me and I rejected Christianity.
I'm not going to force it on my kids’. In every instance Christianity
was imposed legalistically from the top down. When you build it
from the foundation up, starting with the logical foundations of
all doctrine in Genesis, not trying to prove the Bible with science
but using the Bible to understand science, it makes a world of difference.
It’s no longer just your opinion - it is the Creator’s instructions.
Martin Luther said, ‘See to it that you cause your children
to be instructed first in spiritual things, that you point them
first to God and after that to the world’. How you train your children,
and how they train their children, and so on can potentially affect
millions of people. Parents, you can’t take your TV or your car
to heaven with you, but you can take your children. What an awesome
responsibility!
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