Conserving creation allows us to love the generations yet to come.

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children…” Deuteronomy 6.6, 7

Since the Law of God is foundational to the education young people require, it makes sense that they must be instructed in all the counsel of God. The Word of God – the Law, prophets, writings, gospels, Acts, epistles, and Revelation – must be the basis and guiding light for all other aspects of the curriculum in the instruction of the young. For Americans to have allowed teaching of the Bible to be eradicated from their public school curriculum is a measure of the foolishness which has spread like a cancer throughout our society, and to which even Christians have grown accustomed.

Instruction in Scripture includes many things: teaching in Biblical theology, Biblical content and themes, hermeneutics, theology proper, the history of theology, ethics, and cultural criticism are only the most important components of a curriculum grounded in the Law and Word of God. Presumably, such instruction would also include developing the disciplines of personal reading and study, together with prayer and worship, which will continue to form the soul and shape the life throughout the course of a learner’s life.

That such a curriculum was foundational to early American education can be observed by even a cursory reading of a resource such as McGuffey’s Readers. Education in colonial America produced leaders who, while they may not have all been Christians, understood the importance of spiritual and moral truths as the only proper foundation for civil order.

Americans today have become accustomed to the idea that the Bible has no place in the public education of the children of the land. We see, moreover, where this has led us as a nation. The specious invoking of the “doctrine” of the “separation of Church and State” has ruined American education, and this situation will only begin to be corrected when believers begin to insist on a moral and spiritual foundation for the education of children based on all the counsel of God in His Word. If we cannot attain this through the public schools, then we must work for schools that will encourage such a curriculum, and for the withering and ultimate disappearance of those that will not.

Subscribe to Crosfigell, the devotional newsletter of The Fellowship of Ailbe. Sent to your desktop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Crosfigell includes a devotional based on the literature of the Celtic Christian period and the Word of God, highlights of other columns at the website, and information about mentoring and online courses available through The Fellowship.