Part of the series Questions For Home Education
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2014-08-25.
There are two sides to every story and two paths for every task. One leads to God, the other away from him.
Our world view is shaped by everything we have experienced, whether true or false. We tend to trust what we have come to believe as true and may even defend ourselves when presented with opposing thoughts. This series is meant to challenge your world view.
Bible Reference: Haggai 1:5-6
Nearing the end of the book of Deuteronomy, we are given a simple choice between life and death, blessings or curses. Jesus talks of a broad, easy way that leads to destruction and a narrow, difficult way that leads to life. There are a number of places in scripture that makes it look like life is a simple choice between two opposing positions. If only it was that easy!
The problem is that while there is a single version of the truth regarding a matter, there exists at the same time a multitude of versions to the opposing lie, some of which come very close to the truth. C.S. Lewis stated that the best lie is 98% true. Since we are constantly bombarded with “variations of the truth”, we often fall prey to things that ultimately lead us away from God, with whom rests all truth, rather than to Him.
One of the tricks to get us to believe a lie is to confuse words that appear to mean the same thing. Schooling, educating, training, teaching, and learning or curriculum, programs, and courses, are such terms. If they were the same, would there be a need for different words? Once this confusion is established, anything can be passed off as true, accepted, normalized and even made to harmonize with the Bible, when it clearly is in contradiction with what it actually says. People are lead astray by misusing words to create a replacement for the real thing and push it as the only choice. School has provided such an opportunity for parents to include error in their plan to raise children, even to the point of being fearful of not meeting the false expectations of others that had nothing to do with giving birth to your children in the first place, much less having any idea of what is needed to fulfill your child’s life.
This week’s scripture reference shows us that when we follow the “alternate” path to what God has prescribed, we may get some satisfaction, but no real fulfillment. Since God has never relinquished parental authority and responsibility for the training and teaching of children to any other agency, we can apply a practical example to those given in this passage. We can state that “we school our children but teach them nothing of value” or summarize it all by stating that God’s way fulfills, while man’s way confuses. Here again, we have a choice. Which path will you take when training and teaching your children?