On the Education of Children


Ralphie is the lovable kid in glasses of the now American classic movie, A Christmas Story. If you own a TV you know that Ralphie wants a Red-Rider BB gun for Christmas. In the build-up to the big day, we are given endearing glimpses into Ralphie’s friends and family. In a stressful moment, Ralphie lets loose with a bad word. Not just a bad word, but a big bad word. His mother is mortified and immediately gets out the soap. Ralphie has to suck on soap for a while. Grownups used to call it “getting your mouth washed out with soap” but it’s more like eating soap. Then after an appropriate time of punishment, Ralphie’s mom wants to know where he heard “that word.”

In narrator’s voiceover Ralphie tells us that his old man had been using curse words around him for years. Ralphie’s dad used curse words like Picasso used charcoal and paints. But Ralphie is no fool. He knows the very worst thing for him to say would be, “I learned to curse from my dad.” That would be suicide. Better to take the lickin’ than to get mom or dad thinking about than own shortcomings as parents.

It’s a sobering thought to be a parent and to see your own sins running around on two feet. Oh, it’s all sweet and good when you bring the baby home from the hospital and everyone ooh’s and aah’s and says, “Oh, she has your eyes!” or “Oh, look he has two ears!”

But it’s quite another when they get a little older and the temper comes out and somebody says, hey, he has a temper just like you do. Well, where did the temper in the two year old come from? Educational psychologists have shed light on the stages of early child development that explain what and maybe why certain behaviors happen early on. But most experts agree that the “Terrible Twos” should be pretty well over by say age fourteen or fifteen, or thirty-two, for that matter.

Let’s face it. Kids can be bad. Not just the kids of the bad parents either. In fact, you could say that what makes good parents, good parents, is they seem to be more aware or specifically, more attentive to the fact that their kids can be bad and do bad things. Good parents don’t let the bad things slide. Good parents correct bad behavior. They are no shocked that it happens, and they are not resigned to it either.

Christians believe that human beings are born bad – how bad depends upon your particular Christian tradition. We are created in the image of God and so have beauty, and goodness, and potential. But somehow the first human beings disobeyed their Creator and sinned. The Scriptures attest that something has gone wrong in human nature because of Adam and Eve. It’s not just that we do bad things, but that we are bad things at the deepest of levels.

Take our Gospel story for example. Jesus is called to the home of a Canaanite woman in the region of Tyre. The woman cries for mercy – “My little girl is possessed by a demon.” Notice Jesus doesn’t say, “Woman, you’re overreacting.” Or, “well, let’s see about that.” Jesus acts like the woman is telling the truth. In fact, Jesus goes on to heal (presumably by exorcising the demon) the little girl.

Now think about that. Everyone involved in the episode – Jesus, the disciples, the woman’s family – assumes that it’s not only possible but likely that a little girl is possessed by evil.

Now try to imagine anyone in your social circle ever entertaining that possibility about their own kids. Be serious now. It’s obvious we would not. It goes against the grain of our modern beliefs, which are in general, ignorant of spiritual realities, and indifferent or hostile to the doctrine of Original Sin.

G.K. Chesterton has said that Original Sin is the only provable Christian doctrine. You don’t have to look farther than your own household to see it in action. Look at the whole world around you and ask yourself, “What is the nature of humanity?” Well, the doctrine of Original Sin has extraordinary explanatory power.

But it’s still complex and mysterious. Through the ages theologians have employed various metaphors to describe how the sin of Adam and Eve came to affect all their descendants. Early church Fathers like Augustine used words like contagion to describe the ongoing effects of Original Sin. Sin is a disease that is passed on generation to generation somehow in our nature.

In the twentieth century we adopted a new mainstream language to talk about human nature and specifically, the sinful nature. It started in the previous century when a Catholic monk named Gregor Mendel started growing beans and taking notes. Mendel’s work eventually gained widespread prominence. And today we use the language of inheritance. A fine example of the narrative power of inheritance is the tv commercial from last year in which the young girl shows her parents her poor school grades and then matter of factly states, “Hey, don’t blame me. It’s your gene pool!”

The metaphors have perhaps enlightened, but nobody has totally explained human nature and evil. Nobody has explained it better than the doctrine of Original Sin. It’s an old doctrine with staying power. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan is allowed to escape from his infernal exile only to discover, “Which I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.” Or as Alan Jacobs notes the ancient lament of the tourist, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

That’s Original Sin. We take the evil with us. In twentieth century Soviet Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn found that the Gulag was a terrible place because both prisoners and guards had brought their evil with them. The Gulag taught him that. . .

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

Now, let me say that believing there is such a thing as Original Sin or evil in human nature doesn’t leave you in a good place, and certainly doesn’t make you a Christian. It is the hope of the Gospel and receiving that hope that will save you.

“For God has consigned all people to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.”
Romans 11.32

So what of my original subject, our dear kids? The education of our children, spiritual or otherwise, but certainly spiritual, must begin by recognizing that there are things in them that need to be corrected, and there is a bent will that needs to be redirected to God.

Time does not heal all wounds. Bad behavior is not a phase - if not corrected, it’s a lifetime curse.

John Dewey, the father of modern American education, believed that children were inherently good and wise and all that we needed to do to educate (call out) them was to bring forth that inherent goodness and wisdom. There is something to this. There is much good in our children. But to teach them and help them to grow means to give them knowledge, wisdom, and instruction that they don’t currently possess by themselves.

I know a boy who tried get our of going to Sunday School by telling his parents he “already knew all the Bible and all that stuff.”

To which I said to the boy, “No, you don’t.”

Here is what we are trying to do as a church for our children:

– give them the Bible stories and the ancient wisdom
– teach them the Scriptures and Christian belief
– bring them to a decision of will to follow God through Jesus Christ
– model godly living and train them in the Christian way through spiritual practices



We do this through Sunday morning worship, which is the main way we are formed; through Sunday School, not just a cute phrase but it is what it says; and other special opportunities.

Your kids can’t learn if they are not here. They need your help. They need a ride. They need motivation. Hey, they’re kids (and sinners ta boot), you are the adult. You’re supposed to be more motivated than they are! This is more important than soccer or baseball or sleepovers.

Listen to the great American theologian and preacher, Jonathan Edwards on this matter:

“As innocent as children seem to be to us, if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God’s sight, but are young vipers. . . There is a corrupt nature in thy children which is a fountain of all wickedness and confusion. Will not you that are Christians, then show your Christianity by sensibly doing what you can that your children may have a better nature infused into them?”

The better nature he is talking about, of course, is the nature of Christ. Christ is the remedy for our children, and for us all.