CAP –
Study 9 – Institutions – Family – Children
This study addresses the parents’
responsibility for their children, especially their education. The Bible is not
vague on this subject. It is very clear and specific.
It is my personal belief that this issue
is the primary reason why the church is ineffective in America, the country is
in deep trouble and the Kingdom of God is not being advanced as we would expect.
Sadly, our public education system is making disciples for the religion of
humanism with the tax money extracted from Christians – apparently with their
full approval.
The items covered are:
·
Children are a blessing of God.
·
The family is a training ground for
leadership in the church.
·
Education is the MORAL responsibility of
parents.
·
The modern State has arrogated to itself
the education of all children.
·
Most Christians have approved ‘tithing
their children to the State’.
The following narrative is from Gary
North’s “Unconditional Surrender”.
Children
Children are a blessing of God.
"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is
his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the
youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be
ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate" (Psalm
127:3-5). The
enemies in the gate are opponents who have come before the judges of the city,
who in Old Testament times sat at the gate, to bring a charge against a man.
Men with large families have confidence in themselves, and so are not afraid of
such enemies. This appears to indicate that the self-discipline involved in being the head of a large family
carries over into other human relationships. Large families
produce heads of households who are better fit to lead in the community.
One of
the requirements for holding the offices of elder or deacon in the church is
for a man to be married (I
Timothy 3:2,12). He is to rule over his household effectively (I Timothy 3:4-5, 12). The family is a training ground for leadership in the
church. One of the obvious failures of almost all denominations
and local churches-a failure which goes back to the early church- is the
unwillingness of church authorities to write into their denominational
handbooks guide lines defining successful rule over a family. The modern
churches place great emphasis on where a man went to college or seminary, on
whether he can raise money, or on whether he can deliver a red-hot sermon. The
Bible puts little or no emphasis on any of these factors. It puts emphasis
on the leader's abilities as the head of his household.
Children are a tool of dominion. They are to be sacrificed for in
their youth. They are to be instructed carefully and continually in the law of
God. "And these words,
which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach
them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in
thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and
when thou risest up* (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). The time spent in training children
in God's law is time well spent, for it is a capital investment. It does
produce the next generation of godly, dominion-minded families. The Bible says,
"Train up a child in the
way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs
22:6).
This
leads us to an extremely significant conclusion: education is
the moral responsibility of parents. They
are the ones who must determine whether or not their children are being taught
the truth. They are responsible before God for the rearing of their children.
They are held responsible even for the content of their children's education.
This is why it is a great responsibility to bring children into the world.
The modern State has asserted its
responsibility to educate children. This is the means by which the modern State
has arrogated to itself the position of the established god on earth. The
government schools have become the established religion of every nation on
earth. Humanism, which is the worship of man and his works, rests on this
crucial institutional foundation: the tax-supported, State-regulated,
hypothetically neutral, deeply religious humanist school system. There can be
no neutrality, yet the government schools have almost completely stamped out
Christianity and the law of God by means of the neutrality myth. The State
forces Christians to finance schools that teach a rival religion, the religion
of humanism. The State has also attempted to regulate Christian and
independently financed schools. At every point, the State has substituted
tenured bureaucrats who are virtually impossible for parents to remove from
authority, while it has removed parents from the seats of power in setting
curricula or any other standards. The
modern State-which is a messianic, supposedly man-saving institution-has used
the tax-supported, compulsory schools as the primary means of stealing children
from God, by removing them from parental control.
Christians complain about
taxation, but they have tithed their children to the State. They have abdicated their financial responsibilities
"Let the State finance my children's educations" and in our day, they
have abandoned almost all other aspects of their instructional
responsibilities. They have turned the production of citizens over to tax-financed,
state directed schools. The priests of the religion of humanism have been able
to enlist the support of many generations of Christian parents, who have
decided that it is easier to transfer the responsibility for educating their
children to bureaucrats hired by the State.
Naturally,
parents have to delegate responsibility to someone. Few parents have the time
or skills to educate their children at home. But the fundamental principle of
education is the tutor or the apprentice director. Parents hire
specialists to teach their children along lines established by parents. The
private school is simply an extension of this principle, with several parents
hiring a tutor, thereby sharing the costs. But the parents, not the tutors, are
institutionally sovereign. Since sovereignty must bear the
costs, education should be parent-financed. Anything else is a
transfer of authority over education to an imitation family.
Children
are to honor their parents (Exodus
20:12). It is the first promise which is attached to a commandment: "... that thy days may be long
upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee" (Exodus 20:12b). So
the parents owe their children educations, food, shelter, and care, but the
children owe their parents honor. This means financial support. There are mutual
obligations based on personal bonds. No
one in the transaction is to become an endless giver, and no one is to
become a perpetual recipient.
The modern messianic State has intervened
here, too. The State promises to uphold men from womb to tomb. The State
promises to become the new father. The impersonal, bureaucratic State has
substituted its rule for the father's rule, and its children-perpetual
children-are to remain obedient to it all the days of their lives.
The
Bible tells us that children grow up and begin new families. "Therefore shall a man leave
his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one
flesh" (Genesis 1:24). There should be no
perpetual one-way obligations. Parents are to train their children to be
obedient, but also independent. They are to foster maturity in their children.
The State wants perpetual children, complete obedience. The State is a sad
imitation of a family. It is a pseudo-family which threatens human
freedom.