God said this to the nation that he had chosen as his own special possession in the Old Testament, “what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 10:12).
Now consider our nation: No fear of the Lord, a wholesale rejection of God and his ways. A nation which has legalized murder of the most helpless among us, and is systematically seeking to redefine the most basic of God’s design regarding marriage and gender. Sexual immorality is the rule, not the exception. In almost every way, we have called evil good and good, evil.
Are we favored by God? It would be the epitome of arrogance and ignorance to assume so.
In Reformed churches children do not have “responsibilities” such as specific roles in the worship service or congregational life. They are, however, joyfully counted as members of the congregation and are encouraged, within the limits of their growing and developing understanding and abilities, to know and believe all that the Bible teaches as they are taught it by parents and the church, to learn what it means to worship God both privately and corporately, and to be growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ.Perhaps the responsibilities of young ones are best seen in the responsibilities of parents and the church members toward them; namely to love them as a member of the body of Christ and to commit to assist them in Christian nurture, to teach them the principles of the Christian faith, to pray with and for them, and to set an example of piety and godliness before them.
I’d say first that many religious schools aren’t any better than secular ones. True Christian schools, however, are far better than secular ones in that, by definition, they carry on the work of education within a biblical worldview, one that, understanding the need for true excellence in education, relates everything that is taught to the truths of God’s word; that all of creation declares the glory of God, and math and science an order which only makes sense in God’s universe.In upper grades especially, Christian schools’ campus life fosters free exchange of ideas, a vanishing commodity in universities today, while recognizing the submission of every subject, every program, every thought, to the word of God.Christian schools, when at their best, have as their goal to play a part in training young people up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and to bring every thought captive to Christ.
