Episode 119 – The foundations for giving children an informed choice

[00:00:00] Dan: Hi everyone and welcome to Training for Life Redeemed. I’m Dan. I’m here chatting with my father, David Jackson. We are looking at the Theology of the Child.  today, you know, we’ve been looking at… You know, the more, I guess, theological aspects of whether or not,  infants are saved by defaults.  it doesn’t matter if they’ve got Christian parents about that.

[00:00:23] Dan: And we’ve come to the conclusion that generally our children are not saved because of us.  you know, they’re only saved by being the elect, by the Holy Spirit, all those types of things. By the grace of God. And then in our last episode, we kind of concluded with the idea that what we should be doing is enabling us…

[00:00:38] Dan: children to make an informed choice about whether or not they want to follow Jesus or not, which of course is, you know, them responding to the,  to the call and through the spirit, all those types of things, you know,  lots and lots of reformed theology in there.

[00:00:57] Dan: Today, Dad, we’re going to be looking at how we go about getting kids or providing kids the opportunity to make an informed choice. What does that mean in terms of what, what are our kind of, I guess, goals as we’re teaching our children or at school as we’re teaching our students? Like, what do we need to try and help them to be able to do or to have exposure to all that kind of stuff?

[00:01:21] Dan:  so that they can actually make an informed choice. And we’re actually going back to what looks like one of your old,  Old documents that you designed for,  for a school when you were working there and you were laying out the kind of goals and objectives for a biblical studies program. And we’re kind of coming back to that in the sense of, this is still our aim with our children, as well as what we were both doing,  when we were trying to give students at our school an informed choice.

[00:01:56] Dan: That’s right. So that let us do just a few of the key things that we need to be providing our children or our students or the kids in front of us at church, et cetera, to help them to be able. Have that informed

[00:02:12] David: choice. Yeah, well obviously to have an informed choice about Jesus, God has revealed himself to us in history, but that was a long time ago.

[00:02:22] David: So the eyewitnesses of that history, by the grace of God and through the work of the Holy Spirit, have recorded their testimony in writing. And so our access to know the truth comes through the text of the Bible. And that then change that, that determines the way that we approach giving our children informed choice.

[00:02:43] David: It’s going to come through a written text. So we have all those passages in the Bible that talk about,  the word of God is profitable for teaching reproof correction,  for equipping people for all of life.  so I begin,  I go back to when your mother and I were at seminary together, we were newly married.

[00:03:07] David: We’re still madly trying to study and pass exams in theology, but we’re also sitting up till all hours of the nights watching, talking till the sunrise actually.

[00:03:18] Dan: Good old days before kids, that sounds like. Yeah,

[00:03:20] David: yeah, but not days before Hebrew exams.  but we, we would get into these conversations, how do you raise your kids?

[00:03:29] David:  what are we going to do with these little fellas,  and that conversation in the midst of studying the Bible,  one of the things that struck us is how complicated it is to teach children,  the whole. So the, the, the motto of the seminary we went to is Acts 20:27,  the whole counsel of God. So,  we realized that our job, by the time our kids leave home, they should have, they should know the whole counsel of God.

[00:04:03] David: This exciting stuff that we’re learning, they, we should be passing that on to the next generation. How many passages in the Bible tell you to teach the next generation the things that God has taught you? And how

[00:04:15] Dan: many times in the Bible do you see them not do that? And the consequences? And the consequences

[00:04:19] David: are horrendous.

[00:04:21] David: So you think about,  a five year old at school. And All of the stuff that it with great sophistication and great,  preparation and professional everything is being poured into that little head,  that’s coming from a perspective that’s outside of the kingdom of God. And here we are as working parents, you know, trying to equip the child to handle that.

[00:04:54] David: I was listening to Talkback Radio this morning as I do,  and the guy was interviewing the head of Catholic Ed in Parramatta and the Catholic schools in Parramatta have been putting up.  statements that advocate for a particular view of a referendum that we’re about to have. And it doesn’t matter what the referendum is and it doesn’t matter what they’re advocating.

[00:05:19] David: But the fact is that you’ve got five-year-olds with these posters up in their classroom. And the question is, is that appropriate? Well, the answer is, these kids have got to face the issues of their day.  and everybody’s going to have an opinion and they’re going to hear it mainly from mum and dad at home and then they’ve got to deal with it.

[00:05:40] David: Well, where does a Christian family, a Christian church, equip a child to make an informed choice about the immediacy of what they face when they’re in the world? And the answer to that is… Well, we equip them through the knowledge of the Word of God.

[00:06:02] Dan: Yeah, and I’d go so far as to bring in some of the educational stuff that I like to focus on when I’m reading and whatever else,  is even to change that knowledge aspect to understanding,  because knowledge is one level and it’s required to get to understanding, but I actually want my child to understand the Bible, not just know it.

[00:06:22] Dan: Okay. And so that’s, for me, as I’m looking at that slight change The difference is really the ability to,  to not just be able to kind of recite stuff and, and know what it says, but to actually understand what it says to be able to apply it or to be able to actually kind of internalize it for shaping their character.

[00:06:46] David: And that, that’s a process. Yes. That never ends. So my argument with, with. Pedagogy, teaching, is that you start by delivering that knowledge, the exposure level. And then you explain, you demonstrate, we imitate, and then you go and practise. EDIP. Explain, demonstrate, imitate, practice, but at the beginning of that you have to expose your child, your student, to that information as information.

[00:07:16] David: And they’re not going to discover that on their own. If they could discover it on their own, God wouldn’t have taken the trouble to reveal it to us. These are things we could not discover. So we have to go to the text of the Bible. We have to access that text, which means learning to read. And so that becomes a parental goal.

[00:07:37] David: I want my child to be able to read the Bible for themselves to make an informed choice. So let’s start right at the beginning. What is my aim? Teachers do this professionally. Aims, objectives, outcomes, all that sort of stuff. Parents need to do the same thing. Churches need to do the same thing. So think about this child.

[00:07:58] David: Think about where he fits in the way God designed children to be. And now we ask the question, what is my job to deliver to the child, that body of information, understanding, example, practical exposure, all those things. Where’s my plan? to do that. And what’s the first step in making an educational plan?

[00:08:23] David: Come

[00:08:23] Dan: up with your aim, your goals, then lay out what key levels of understanding or knowledge goals, whatever it is you want to label them as, but you basically break up the larger goal into smaller ones.  that are then going to inform how you go about teaching it. You want to also look at how you’re going to know, so you get evidence of learning.

[00:08:42] Dan: So, yes, I’m going to have my child read the Bible, but how do I know that they’ve read it? How do I know that they’ve read the whole thing? How do I know that they’ve understood it? So I then need to have… You know, some kind of way of checking that they’ve got evidence of learning, what we call at school, but it’s, you know, I can have a Bible reading chart that they’re ticking off and I’m listening to them read, or I’m having questions and discussions with them about those passages afterwards.

[00:09:06] David: So when you look at the pedagogy that’s in the Bible itself, it pictures mum and dad reading the text, telling the stories, passing on the information, and not leaving it there. making the kid remember the story. So the memorization thing,  that you, you go through the Old Testament, the New Testament, look at the word, remember?

[00:09:29] David: Mm-hmm. .  remember, remember, remember we’ve embedded practices or God embedded practices in the life of his people that are to remember.  the story of what God has done to save us. The Lord’s Supper is an example. But reading the scriptures publicly, reading the scriptures privately, remember, remember, remember.

[00:09:52] David: So, in this world where people mock memorization, I’m going to come back really hard, and say, if you haven’t memorized it, you don’t know it. And your understanding then is limited. Yep, definitely. You haven’t got the hard data to do the understanding. Now let me talk about understanding a little bit. We were absolutely knocked over by a fella called John Frame.

[00:10:21] David: Yep. And I want to recommend to anybody listening, go out and buy all of John Frame’s books.  but he worked on,  working out of one John and the rest of the Bible and the fact that God is Trinity, three persons. So you have this normative revelation of a body of information.  you have absolute truth, absolute standards, absolute right and wrong.

[00:10:44] David: This is revealed from God. Then you have the situation in which that applies. And that means that we might have the information. But do you, the answer, but do you know what the question is?  so the question is going to come up through life’s experiences and through life’s experiences, we’re going to go back to the information, the Bible, and we’re going to find out what the answer is.

[00:11:06] David: And then we’re going to come back to our situation and work out what to do with it. So in the Bible itself is embedded,  not only the data, the information, and the stories, but examples.  you have precedents for how the, how to apply this. It’s all there. We’ve got to read it in order to then go out and work it out.

[00:11:29] David: Hmm. Now with that comes this other perspective, which is what’s going on inside me. Yeah. So he talks about the, that internal subjective,  the Bible uses the word spirit in the sense of my mood, my attitude,  And it’s not a part of the, the, the, the spirit of a person,  can just be, you know, an evil spirit.

[00:11:56] David: You’re in a bad mood,  you know, Saul was in a bad mood. Chucked a spear at David, our attitude that we bring to the text. Changes what we do with the text. It limits or it opens our understanding of the text. So to come to the text with a humble, teachable spirit, to come to the text and get, when it tells me something I don’t want to hear, that we don’t immediately neutralize it and explain it away, but we say, okay, I’m wrong.

[00:12:30] David: I am repentant. I’m willing to listen. So all those three dynamics are happening. If the Bible tells me that over here, I’ve got to do something that I don’t want to do. It’s interesting by doing it. My attitude changes and my understanding of the text changes. So as we’re approaching the child, we’re doing all three.

[00:12:53] David: But we’re never, and it never stops, every experience opens my understanding of the text. Every experience challenges my attitude. My attitude sends me back to both of those. Vern Poythress uses the word coinherence. I mean, he’s a PhD mathematician genius, so he’s got some cool words, but coinherence means you can’t separate those three.

[00:13:18] David: Yeah. So people who talk about knowledge versus understanding don’t understand that these three things constitute knowledge.  so, and we do, we just, you know, some people just do memorization. Some people just do discovery learning or something. We do a bit of it. But Frame is challenging us to do the whole.

[00:13:43] David: And when we go back to the Bible, you say, that’s what God has been doing all along. He gives you information and then he walks Israel through some incredible experience in history from which they’re supposed to learn all these lessons by experience.  And then you look at their attitude and you go, well, gee, wish you didn’t do too well on that one.

[00:14:03] David: And the next generation have got to go back and say, well, gee, what did our parents do? And that’s, that’s what it is about. When we bring this knowledge of the word of God to our children, we’re bringing the whole package. But it starts with the Bible. Yeah.

[00:14:21] Dan: Because ultimately the normative is what you keep going back to, to check everything else.

[00:14:25] Dan: That’s right.  and so Dad, We’ve got our kids, students, whoever, like these little people, they’re reading their Bible.

[00:14:33] David: From birth

[00:14:34] Dan: to whatever. The complexity that’s involved in being able to read and know, understand your Bible, to be able to apply it, to refresh your character, and to think about how it works in this particular context, is actually a very complex skill.

[00:14:49] Dan:  and requires, you know, it is a deeper level of knowledge that you need for everything,  for your critical thinking and for, so much. So as we’re developing our kids, it’s not just teaching them to, to read. Because. In order to really understand the Bible, you, they need to also understand, you know, the cultural backgrounds,  where we’re sitting in the world, what the geography actually looks like, what, what’s the, like, you know, when Jesus is talking about different seeds and different types of soils, or they’re talking about grapes and harvesting grapes and treading it, treading out grapes and all that kind of stuff, You’ve got to actually know how that kind of works and how farming works,  when he talks about different peaks and, you know, the cities, you’ve got to know where they are and their histories.

[00:15:38] Dan: So it’s quite complex to go through and be able to take something that’s, you know, when at the initial level of reading it, that might be fine, but then to be able to go through and the hermeneutical skills, I guess,

[00:15:50] David: if you want to fancy a word. So we’re not, we’re not reading a bedtime story. Now to, to go back a little bit.

[00:16:00] David: What parents need to do is to, and, and churches and everybody, when we are dealing with children, we need to know that you’ve got to lay your foundation right the first time. And to do that, you as a parent, a teacher, a Sunday school teacher, whatever, you have to be on top of your game. And I think one of the problems that parents have is that they’re fly in the busyness of the world.

[00:16:27] David: We’re flying by the seat of our pants. And so when Mum and I were at seminary together, we had the opportunity to sit down and plan, and we had the opportunity to think through what we wanted to do. And we found it to be perfectly honest, overwhelming, initially overwhelming. How do you do this with, you’ve got a life in front of you that you are responsible for

[00:16:54] David: to give that child the best informed choice and information to cope with life that you can. How inadequate do I feel to do that? That’s a, that’s a responsible parent response. And so that drives the parent, the Sunday school teacher, themselves to the text. To equip ourselves for the work of ministry to teach those kids.

[00:17:18] David: It sends me back to the local church to say, what are you doing to teach me enough Bible to teach it to a four-year-old? And can I tell you, I’m much more comfortable running a postgraduate seminar in theology than I am talking to a four-year-old. And the reason for that is when you talk to a postgraduate student  they’re adults.

[00:17:45] David: They’ve got lots of questions. You can clarify what you’re saying. You can modify, you can nuance, you can wrestle around until you get it right. A four-year-old walks up to you and says, Hey dad, and I, this is an actual experience. Did God know that Adam and Eve were going to sin? Yes. Why did he make them then? now you’re not going to be able to give that four-year-old a PhD answer.

[00:18:19] David: You’re not going to be able to, you don’t have time to go through the, all the nuances of, you know, the integrity of human choices and God’s plan and all those Bible passages. You have to be able to give him a sentence in words, a four-year-old understands. and the way that we did that with our children, the way that I found helpful was we used catechism.

[00:18:41] David: And again, we go back to memorizing data. My answer to your older brother when he said that was, “for his own glory.” Mm-hmm. , why does God do anything? He does it to glorify himself and the glory of God justifies what God does because it’s worth it Now. To glorify God and enjoy him forever. That’s the reason we’re on the planet.

[00:19:07] David: So teaching the catechism with the Bible gave us this springboard of phrases and answers that we could relate the Bible to, that we could relate our questions to. We had hooks to pin it on and then build. We had a foundation,  and that, that pairing, being able to learn to put the most complicated theology, if you like, in, in forms that we can then use in each situation as it comes up and then prompt us to go back and search the scriptures for more information.

[00:19:45] David: So, to plan to do that means that when we’re reading the Bible with our children. We’re doing, we’re formulating these ideas and then we’re going out and working them out. So we used,  in our thinking, we plan ahead and you say, this is how I want to teach the Bible to my children. And at each stage of their development, we’re going to change how we do that.

[00:20:12] David: But along the way, we’re going to lay a firm foundation and that firm foundation involved doing the catechism with them at an early stage. Because

[00:20:22] Dan: the Catechism is basically giving them the kind of correct theology, biblical theology that it’s hard, like, you can’t, it’s hard to teach that,  at that age.

[00:20:36] Dan: Like, it’s hard to go, well here’s the piece here and here and here and here and we’re tracing this, you know, three-part theme that relates complexually. But they’ve got the… The answer, like I remember,  lots of people when you talk to them about what their experience is like when they go to Bible college or something, and they go, basically what they do at Bible college is they take what you know, they completely deconstruct it, make you think you don’t know it, and then show you how you do know it.

[00:21:01] Dan:  and it’s It’s that level of, you know, while we’re teaching the children, you know, the narrative, right?  and the storyline and, you know, we have been created in a way where story is a fantastic way to teach things. Yeah. We also can pin in these key theological points,  so to speak, or this, this kind of systematic biblical theology and establish that within the children at a young age so that.

[00:21:28] Dan: As we continue to go like as they’re reading the Bible and they come up with their questions There’s these pins like you were saying that you can go back to to build on  and you go, well, you’ve got that question, this is the answer, that’s two sentences, but then they’re going to follow up that with something else.

[00:21:43] Dan: And then you go, okay, let’s see, let’s expand that a little bit for you at your age level. You know, if it’s a 16-year-old asking me that question, that’s going to be a whole day’s,  conversation with them. And I’m going to be writing them multiple page emails back,  with references to biblical, like, right?

[00:21:57] Dan: But for, you know, my son, like you are, you’re saying about a four-year-old asking you that question. It’s, you know, you’ve got to keep it nice and simple and, and direct And for, for us actually, like even for adults to know their catechism Yeah. Is actually helpful for adults to be able to go, well this is a simple answer.

[00:22:16] Dan: And that’s kind of what the catechism was designed for, is for you to be able to Yeah. Have, here’s, here’s the answer. Some very key biblical truths that flow through the Bible. And, you know, it’s something like the Westminster confession of faith, which is a long thing, but the catechism that goes with it has question, answer, references, question, answer, references.

[00:22:34] David: So what we did when we were raising our kids and when we were planning our church program for children, we looked at that and said, we’ve got to lay this foundation. We’ve got to set up questions and answers that will lead to conversation while we’re reading the Bible narrative. And then those two things are going to connect.

[00:22:53] David: So we start with a really basic stuff. Who made you? God made me. What else did God make? God made everything. Why did God make you and everything else? For his own glory. Where do you learn how to love and obey God? Only in the Bible. Who wrote  the Bible? Ah, men who were given the words by the Holy Spirit.

[00:23:08] Dan: Right.

[00:23:09] David: Okay. You never forget it, do you?  Okay, But I found that the Westminster Shorter Catechism was in language that no four-year-old or five year old would understand.  we had to rewrite it. Spurgeon had done some work to that end. He had a little catechism for boys and girls. We went back to that.

[00:23:30] David: We looked at a whole bunch of collections. And over 30 years, we kept revising that. So what we have on our website, Q’s and A’s 4 Kids.  with,  and we didn’t do all the Bible memory verses, sorry, the Bible proof texts. What we did was we put a memory verse to go with it so that you know that we’re hanging it on a hook from the text.

[00:23:53] David: And that is to provoke the child to go back to the text and look for more and look for fuller answers and find other verses and come back and say, how does this verse work with that question? So we’re stimulating the question. But I think. The point where we start is, I am a parent, I’m a Sunday school teacher, I’m a pastor with a children’s ministry, I’m a school, Christian school that’s about to run a program for teaching the Bible to kids.

[00:24:22] David: What am I, where am I aiming to get to with this? And at what age do I aim to get to each step along the way? And when we’ve got our aim and our, we can set out our objectives. And when we’ve got those objectives sorted out, then we go to at this aim with this objective at that age group, what lessons do I need to do and what method will I use to teach it?

[00:24:49] David: And then you’re starting to look at, I’ve actually put some thought and some planning into what I’m doing with my children, with the children in the church. Rather than just randomly saying, Oh, the pastors, you know, we’ll, we’ll do this book this week, or we’ll do this, you know, cause that looks like a good idea at the time.

[00:25:12] David:  and we need to think about that. So this is, this is a little document we put together for high school kids. And

Our aim is to teach every student the whole counsel of God, Acts 20:27, enabling them to have read the whole Bible with understanding by the time they’ve completed their schooling, and by doing so equip students to make their own informed responses.

[00:25:37] David: Now, to make that happen, in the course of the program, students will have read the Bible. Step one, be able to locate passages within the biblical text. So now we’re doing sub skills. Can the child find those references?  your mother used to do,  drills in pioneer girls.

[00:26:00] Dan: I did them in my classroom. Yes, have competitions and give out prizes for the kid who felt like the person who found the most of them as we Yeah, just like here’s the verse find it stand up and read it. The first person to stand up is the one who reads What’s the reference great? That’s a point for you next.

[00:26:14] David: Yep Yeah, so being able to find the references develop the necessary knowledge of the cultural geographical historical background of the text This this isn’t myth.

[00:26:25] David: This isn’t you know bedtime stories. Develop the skills required to grasp the intended meaning of the author. Always asking the question, not what do I want it to mean, but what did the original author mean?  because the original author ultimately is God.  to, to trace themes, to be able to connect Bible passages and realize we’re building our understanding as we move through the text.

[00:26:52] David:  Look at the application and the cross cultural application to be able to appreciate that this over here and over here is going to be different.  and then all those other things that go with it, but to sit down and have planned that sort of an outline for our children at each stage of their life.

[00:27:15] David: And where do we want them to get to by the time they leave home? Yeah. You know?  What are we aiming, whether they make the choice to believe Jesus or not, what, what do we want them to be able to do and to know by the time they get there?

[00:27:33] Dan: Alright Dad, well that’s going to be the end of this episode. Our next couple of episodes we are going to be looking at Particular age groups, what we’re going to be doing with them,  we’re going to recommend some resources and stuff as well. As we go through that section, we’re going to start with the younger ones and work our way into the older ones. So make sure you come back and join us for that. If you have questions, you can fill in the form. You can find the form at trainingforliferedeemed.com/119. And we hope you hit the subscribe button, come back and join us next week as we continue to work our way through this stuff around the theology of the child.