Encouraging Family Reformation

The biblical institutions of church and family in America are in need of reformation. Some say that we are in the period of greatest apostasy in 500 years. Less than one-half of one percent of adults ages 18 to 23 years have a biblical worldview. Only one-third of Christian parents say their religious faith is one of the most important influences on their parenting and only 27% of Protestant parents are very familiar with what the Bible has to say about parenting. It is clear that many Christian parents are no longer discipling their children in the faith. The result---SBC’s Council on Family Life reported that roughly 88 percent of evangelical children are leaving the church shortly after they graduate from high school. The problem is not only with the church and its program-oriented, marketing-driven growth philosophy, but also with parents, who have abdicated their role and responsibility in teaching, discipling, and nurturing their children in multigenerational faithfulness. The result is that the secular post-Christian culture has claimed the children and youth of America. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3). We are encouraged by the fact that God is sovereign, Jesus Christ is Lord and His kingdom is forever. As we believe God's covenantal promise, our opportunity is great in working toward reformation of the family, the church, and the nations.

This blog links to a wide variety of writings on biblical issues regarding the family, biblical roles and relationships in the family, the church, education, and biblical worldview including ethics, apologetics, history, politics, and culture. The blog was created to encourage biblical family reformation through development of a clear family vision of multigenerational faithfulness. Our duties as parents include sharing the gospel with our children, discipling them in the faith (Deut 6:7), raising them in the fear, nuture, and admonition of the Lord (Prov 9:10; Eph 6:4), cultivating in them a biblical worldview (2 Cor 10:5), and providing them with the necessary tools to recognize and engage an increasingly humanistic, post-Christian culture while glorifying God.

October 28, 2009

Christianity or Humanism in Education

Posted by The Chalcedon Foundation

Christianity: The sovereignty of the triune God is the starting point, and this God speaks through His infallible Word.
Humanism: The sovereignty of man and the state is the starting point, and it is the word of scientific, elite man which we must heed.

Christianity: We must accept God as God. He is alone Lord.
Humanism: Man is his own god, choosing or determining for himself what constitutes good and evil (Gen. 3:5).

Christianity: God's word and Person is Truth.
Humanism: Truth is pragmatic and existential: it is what we find works and is helpful to us.

Christianity: Education is into God's truth in every realm.
Humanism: Education is the self-realization and self-development of the child.

Christianity: Education is discipline under a body of truth. This body of truth grows with research and study, but truth is objective and God-given. We begin by presupposing God and His word.
Humanism: Education is freedom from restraint and from any idea of truth outside of us. We are the standard, not something outside of man.

Christianity: Godly standards grade us. We must measure up to them. The teacher grades the pupil.
Humanism: The school and the world must measure up to the pupil's needs. The pupil grades the teacher.

Christianity: Man's will, and the child's will, must be broken into God's purpose. Man must be remade, reborn by God's grace.
Humanism: Society must be broken and remade to man's will, and the child's will is sacred.

Christianity: Man's problem is sin. Man must be recreated by God.
Humanism: Man's problem is society. Society must be recreated by man.

Christianity: The family is God's basic institution.
Humanism: The family is obsolete. The individual or the state is basic.

Taken from Rushdoony's The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum.
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