“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
MATTHEW 22:36-37
And He said to him, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’“
When questioned about which is the great commandment in the Law, Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Notice that in Jesus’ quotation of this passage He uses the word “mind” instead of “might“. Rest assured, this is not a mistake or misquotation by Jesus. This is a theological clarification to reveal the heart and thrust of this commandment. We are to love the Lord our God with every fiber of our being—every faculty we possess. This includes our reason and intellectual thought. Not only are we to love Him emotionally with our heart, but we are to love Him with our mind. All of it.
I think we can safely conclude that loving the Lord with all of our mind would entail an earnest desire to learn from Him and about Him. And as more knowledge of Him is obtained—if it is obtained with faith—it will result in a greater love for the Lord. It is quite amazing how the Lord set this up: the more we love Him, the more we want to know about Him. The more we know about Him, the more we love Him.
So what does this have to do with education? Well, quite a bit actually.
It goes without saying that children need to be taught. When a child is born, there are certain involuntary actions that do not need to be taught, such as breathing or filling up a diaper, but they need to be taught nearly everything else. We teach them how to talk, how to use the potty, and how to tie their shoes. Children are dependent on their parents to teach them these milestone lessons—but they also learn much more from us. Whether we realize it or not, we are instructing and shaping their affections. Parents teach their children what kind of music they should like or which sports team they should pull for. We teach them these things, yet it does not simply remain in their minds as an intellectual nugget. It seeps into their hearts. They love what we teach them to love—and they love it with their minds.
So as Christian parents, it is our duty not only to teach our children the commandments (Deut. 6:7) and the stories of redemptive history (Deut. 6:20-25), but to teach them to love what they learn, and love the One who created us all. They must be trained to do this.
Here is where education comes in. The “great commandment” is comprehensive. It is a command to love the Lord totally—with everything you have, in every part of life. Knowing that to be true, and wanting our children to obey this command, Christian parents must be intimately concerned with the education of their children.
God wants all of our love, and all of our children’s love. If it is our duty to teach our children to love the Lord with everything they have, then anything other than a Christian education is unhelpful to that end. The stakes are far too high to try to make up for 6-8 hours of Christ-less education with the little time we get with our children in the evenings. What our children need is an education that acknowledges and gives thanks to the Lord—and that tells of all his wondrous works (Psalm 105:1-2). They need to be instructed in God’s Word when they sit, walk, lie, and rise (Deut. 6:7)—in other words, all the time. Whether through a Christian school or homeschool, it is our duty as Christian parents to give our children a Christian education.
One of the primary ways children learn is through imitation. If I may borrow the example of the sports team from earlier: the reason a child will love and support the same team as the parents is because the parents actually love the team. It would not be very effective in the child if a father tells his son that they are fans of the Carolina Panthers, but he looks dreadfully depressed while watching every single game. The son would follow suit—and probably wonder why they like the Panthers at all. On the other hand, if the father is oozing joy at every kickoff, the son is likely to be a die-hard Panthers fan. It is contagious, because children learn by imitation. This is the way that God has made us and our children. It is also a major reason why we need Christian schools. Jesus told us that after a pupil has been fully trained he will be like his teacher (Luke 6:40). Children will learn by imitation when they walk through the school doors—and we can’t prevent it. Our options are to allow them to be conformed to the image of a teacher who cannot legally teach them about Christ (no matter how wonderful they might be), or to give them a Christian education under a faithful Christian teacher who is oozing with love for Christ, love for the students, and love of the subject being taught.
The question we must ask ourselves as parents is this: Which option will best assist us in training our children to love the Lord our God with all of their heart, with all of their soul, and with all of their mind?