day no.16.620: education is...

"Grace is the strongest of all principles... Nature, too, is very strong. But after nature and grace, undoubtedly, there is nothing more powerful than education. Early habits (if I may so speak) are everything with us, under God. We are made what we are by training. Our character takes the form of that mold into which our first years are cast." — J.C. Ryle, The Duties of Parents

Few forces are more formative than the family into which you were born. The culture of that clan imposes itself upon its citizens. Education is an eschatology. It presupposes a place and takes the initiative to lead there. Training assumes a destination and works the clay into a particular shape.

Ryle goes on to quote Cecil, "He has seen but little of life who does not discern everywhere the effect of education on men's opinions and habits of thinking. The children bring out of the nursery that which displays itself throughout their lives."

We are what we read. All opinions are borrowed. All habits are hereditary. Education is an act of war. It sets the mind up for some things by setting it against other. It is enmity enfleshed. It identifies the targets and the tactics.

"We depend, in a vast measure, on those who bring us up. We get from them a color, a taste, a bias which cling to us more or less all our lives. We catch the language of our nurses and mothers, and learn to speak it almost insensibly, and unquestionably we catch something of their manners, ways, and mind at the same time." — J.C. Ryle, The Duties of Parents

We grow up breathing in the atmosphere of our homes before we know what to call it. In other words, we breath in oxygen before we learn the word "oxygen." We are caught up in a culture before we are taught the particulars of that culture. We learn to love the taste before we understand the ingredients. We ask our mothers for the recipe. She eagerly shows us the index card.

"A very learned Englishman, Mr. Locke, has gone so far as to say: 'That of all the men we meet with, nine parts out of ten are what they are, good or bad, useful or not, according to their education.'" — J.C. Ryle, The Duties of Parents

Education is people farming. It is intellectual husbandry. It feeds the imagination and the mind. It aims to marry ideas and to propagate the best ones. It is fruitful and it multiplies. This is why a Christian education commanded by Christ and essential for every Christian child (Eph. 6:4). Children will be nourished and admonished to some end. If not for Christ, then to something less. Christians cannot forfeit the God-given window of influence they have been given. Along with the gift of the child, God gives the responsibility to raise that child. It comes in the package like scoop that comes inside the laundry detergent. Each box comes with its own scoop just as each child with his or her own obligation.

"And all this is one of God's merciful arrangements. He gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the starting-point of life to believe what you tell them, and to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He gives you, in short, a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that the opportunity do not be neglected, and thrown away. Once let slip, it is gone forever. Beware of that miserable delusion into which some have fallen — that parents can do nothing for their children, that you must leave them alone, wait for grace, and sit still... the devil rejoices to see such reasoning, just as he always does over anything which seems to excuse indolence, or to encourage neglect of means." — J.C. Ryle, The Duties of Parents

Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone, but the the Word of Christ comes to us by the obedience of someone else. Someone's blessed feet share the Good News. Someone else is sent to declare to us the glories of God and the goodness of His mercy. For children, these people are their parents. Of course, a parent cannot save their child per se, but they are most assuredly the means by which God intends to save their children. Do not miss the window God has given to you by insisting that grace requires your negligence. Do not throw up your hands and say, "But what can I do?" rather, throw your hands in to the work of making disciples of your children by teaching them all that Jesus has commanded of them by first doing what He has commanded of you, their parent, in teaching them.