From the Pastor's Desk . . . .
“Integrated Education”
"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4
The yellow school bus is as much a symbol of public education today as was the little red schoolhouse in its day. In some areas of our country, the bus was used to effect racial integrating in education. However much that may have been needed, our children need even more a spiritual integration (and that's not the school's job).
If children learn all the secular subjects but remain uninstructed as to the way of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, their education is unbalanced and incomplete. Their growth is certainly not as symmetrical as was that of the boy Jesus, who "increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke 2:52). This was coordinated mental, physical, spiritual, and social growth.
Further, if our children's total education is not integrated in the Christian sense, if all secular knowledge is in one drawer and spiritual knowledge in another, then we teach our children to live in two worlds and to become "split personalities." Then faith in the Savior and love for Him does not motivate learning and everyday living. Then we are bringing up a generation that believes that Christianity pertains only to church for one hour on Sunday morning, while the rest of the week is lived by worldly standards.
The admonition in today's Bible reading is to fathers, but it applies to parents in general, as well as to Christian parents collectively: the church. It too has the responsibility and privilege of bringing children to the Lord Jesus and keeping them with Him through Christian education, "teaching them to observe all" (Matthew 28:20) He has commanded us.
By Pastor Edwards
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