By Not Known
Ours is a day of outsourcing. Rather than do odd jobs ourselves, we call a contractor. The same applies to many other areas. We pay people to do somethings for us in order to free us up for other things.
We also outsource education. Our children are sent into the schooling system at a young age. Then we hire tuition teachers to fill in the gaps of extra learning and homework supervision.
Outsourcing also affects the spiritual education of our children. How many parents think that we have fulfilled our duty when we send our children off to Sunday School and Youth Ministry on Sunday morning?
Don’t get me wrong. Schoolteachers and their colleagues at higher levels of education do a great job. Most of us are unable to do this ourselves. Our ORPC Sunday School teachers and YM leaders put much effort into giving a good Christian education to our children and youth. We need these teachers and should value them more than we generally do.
But, should spiritual education of our children and youth be primarily outsourced? The answer of the Bible seems to be ‘No way!‘
Consider these examples. Deuteronomy 6: 7- 9 assumes that parents are teaching their children about god at home. Proverbs is in the form of advice from a father to his son, urging him to accept God-centered parental instruction in life’s wisdom. Timothy’s mother and grandmother taught him about God before ever he came into Paul’s classroom for more formal instruction (2 Ti 1:5; Acts 16: 1- 3)
Fathers have a special role, especially with their sons. Local churches commonly face a problem of boys dropping out around the time that they finish JC, do Ns, go to university and start building a career. How much of this is because they have seen that Christianity is women’s business and it’s mostly been their mother who have made spiritual education a priority? If we fathers want our boys to follow Jesus we have best take a leading role in their home-based Bible education
May God give us parents who show and tell Jesus to their children at home.