What Are You Giving To Your Children?
In the business world, there’s a lot of discussion about legacy, stewardship, and strategic planning. We want to be diligent stewards of our time and talents, and employ the resources we have to productive ends in our respective jobs and industries. It’s a worthwhile discussion, but our professional work is only one sphere of our life and (often) less important than other areas.
Why don’t we apply the same level and degree of analysis and discussion about legacy, stewardship, and strategy in our homes, particularly with our children? What’s the legacy we are trying to project into our children’s future? Who do we want our children to become? And why is it so crucial for us to plan strategically to accomplish that?
Wealth Is Transitory
My wife and I make the point with our children that there are very few things in our lives that have any lasting significance. Any money or possessions that we might be able to give them (either now or in the future) are fleeting at best.
Our wealth cannot last. We may be able to guard it and pass it on through generations, but for each of us as individuals, the possessions we enjoy or finances we command have a shelf life. When we pass away from this life, those material prizes will hold no value for us. Instead, we must daily give more attention to eternal things, whose significance will remain moving forward beyond this life.
Faith And Worldview
Throughout each day, we emphasize to our children the priority in our family life: strive to lead lives that are grounded in faith. It’s a foundational First Thing in our household. Without a systematic worldview and answers to the deep, ongoing questions of our existence and spirit, how can we hope to engage actively with our lives and the world at large?
We hire financial planners to monitor our retirement accounts. We balance our home budgets each month and assess our purchases. That’s a lot of effort for mere money; what about the spiritual character of our children? We need a systematic plan for teaching our children in the faith, beliefs, and worldview that we hold to be true. And we need to monitor and reassess that plan constantly.
What’s The Plan?
Our society holds mistaken ideas about truth and instruction. Instead of conveying truth, we have shifted our outlook to individualism. Reality is now in the eye of the beholder, and education needs to be entirely personalized for a personal “truth”. Those false ideas make it difficult to instruct the next generation in the way they should go. Parents often hold back from explicitly passing on their world view for two reasons:
- They not convinced of the strength of their own opinions, or…
- They mistakenly believe that they need to leave their children as a blank slate, free to make up their minds about the world.
Neither of these ideas understands that truth is objective, not a choice. And we cannot leave truth up to osmosis or chance; our children need systematic instruction in what to believe and why. Without this foundation, we leave our children adrift in a world that cares little about them. This absence of faith and foundation forces them to tackle the trials of life without a firm set of tools found in a cohesive worldview.
Methods of Instruction
To execute our plan to pass on our faith and worldview to our children, we strategically use a variety of recurring activities, each of which is teaching the same fundamental truths to our children. These habits are in addition to regular weekly church attendance, itself a critical piece of instruction.
Catechism class: our church has a weekly catechism class for children and young adults. Catechism instruction is no longer in vogue in the modern church, which is unfortunate since it is a step-by-step instruction in matters of faith, truth, and how to live a righteous life. The minister, or an elder, leads this study.
Daily family devotional: each evening, our family reads a chapter of the Bible and discusses it. Those children who can read take turns reciting aloud for the rest of the group. We read straight through the book, Genesis to Revelation. When we finish, we start back at the beginning. This familiarizes our children will chapters, verses, Biblical stories, and principles.
Daily Biblical stories and history: each AM, our family takes a few minutes to read a short story from the Bible, written for a child audience. We add in some context so that our children can make a better sense of how the story fits in a historical timeline. This practice familiarizes them with classic stories and ties them together.
Bible study: every two weeks, myself and several of our older children attend a group Bible study at our church. Not only do we discuss the Bible and our beliefs as a group, but our children get to hear firsthand from other church members about how they live, struggle, and seek the biblical principles discussed.
Lasting Value
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis
This world is not enough, and we know it. And we know how we exit this life, but the specifics of the life to come are less clear. But we do know that our children and their spiritual preparation are the only blessings in this life that we will take into the next. So we prepare.
The only thing of lasting value that we have to give to our children is what we believe about God, man, and their relationship. That truth is the only thing of eternal significance. And it is worth all the effort.
Moving forward
Do you have a vision for what you are passing on to your children?
Start today: develop a plan to put that vision into action and actively instruct your child on how to live.
