Going to the Polls - How would Jesus have us think about Marriage, Family and Education?

Going to the Polls

Election 2016

How would Jesus have us think about

Marriage, Family and Education?

Monday, September 19, 2016

Jeff Lampl

“These are the commands . . . . God directed me to teach you  . . . so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God  . . . and so that you
may enjoy long life.. .  be careful to obey so that it may go well with you . . .

 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

 Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.”

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

What do moms, dads, guns and schools have to do with one another?

The Bible presents to us a God-ordered world, structured around the building block of in-tact families consisting of a mom and a dad who are married to each other for life and who take responsibility for raising their children to know and love God.   Marriage (the trinity of God, husband, wife) is given by God as God’s human picture of Himself (the Trinity of Father Son and Holy Spirit). In Jesus’ day education took place primarily in the home and consisted of loving God, teaching children how God’s world functions and training them to be partners with God in the operation of God’s world.

Fast forward a few thousand years to 21^st century America where parents blame bad schools and bad teachers for their child’s ‘bad education’.  Although schools are good things generally speaking they can only be as successful as the families from which the students come. 

It looks to me like Chicago has a problem with bad schools, shootings (3,000 shot so far this year alone), fatherless homes, youth unemployment and poverty. I find it difficult to imagine that a new jobs program will help much if children grow up in homes where mom has no husband and the children do not have a dad, who teamed with mom, will teach, love, and train them in the fundamentals of life. I find it difficult to imagine that better schools can ever do a job for which, generally speaking but still importantly,  in-tact families are suited.   

So, what’s the answer?  If government can help at all perhaps it and we together could begin to imagine and dream.

What if we were to put on the Jesus Lens and imagine what educating our children would look like as Jesus would want it to look?  Some of the following “what ifs” are beyond what a government can do, but they are not beyond what our children’s primary teachers, eg. their parents and grandparents,  can do.

·         Imagine a government that valued and became incredibly creative in strengthening the family, valuing and promoting the value of dads sticking with moms as husband and wife in a home where children would be loved, trained, taught, valued and given values that will help them be able to succeed in school and hold jobs.

·         Imagine our children growing up with the understanding that God is real and life apart from God is foolish to attempt.

·         Imagine parents, grandparents, and teachers comfortably telling our children that sex is a fusion of self-giving souls and that God intends it for marriage where it will be holy, not just a physical act, and where men become husbands and then fathers who are there for their children for the rest of their lives

·         Imagine understanding marriage and subsequent fatherhood and motherhood as a visual of God himself, if not explicitly at least implicitly.

·         Imagine our children knowing that cloning and the taking of human life from the ‘womb to the tomb’ are acts that tamper with the sacredness of every human life because God is the father of every human life.

·         Imagine our children being taught by parents and grandparents and teachers that human beings are people with souls, people who are holy objects, not just as people who exist to make me happy or get in my way.

·         Imagine our nation’s children understanding American citizenship as a responsibility to love and respect others including our enemies.

·         What if our children had the knowledge, not just belief, but knowledge that the value of a human being  is not in what they contribute to society?  Rather it is in their value to God as their father. 

·         Imagine our children growing up in homes and schools being taught that foreign policy is not just about what works for America but also about America making the rest of the world work better too. 

·         Imagine our children growing up know that work is about far more than earning money to live on, rather work is what I am made for, it gives us dignity.  It is partnering with God to build a society that is a blessing to others be it at McDonalds or DuPont 

·         Imagine our children being trained to be able ask themselves is my “cell phone use and social media use making me more connected or less connected to actual human beings. Am I more or less lonely.? Am I kinder and more about helping others or am I more isolated and self-centered?

·         What if our children knew the difference between shopping that is fun and useful and shopping that degrading?

·         What if our children were to learn that beauty is a real thing and that it is not in the eye of the beholder, rather beauty is that which communicates an awe inspiring, humbling awareness of God

·         What if our children were to study physics, and chemistry and literature and poetry, all with the knowledge, not just belief, but actual knowledge that God is the maker and sustainer and operator of every physical law in the universe and therefore finds it impossible to consider the study of science apart from the make and sustainer of science.

These are all God questions:   questions that Jesus summarized with the most important way to know anything in the universe.   And that way is not first and foremost information sharing but it is by loving god and loving others.  Doing those two things is the path to the real world and to the information we need to live in it.

As we go to the polls in November, ask these questions;

·         Which candidates for president of the United States or for school board director and everyone in between define education in the ways described above?

·         What policies might further opportunities for this kind of education?

·         What policies would strengthen the family, strengthen the value of marriage and strengthen the possibility that children grow up with a father and mother committed to them and to each other for life?  Which candidates know that this kind of education is first and foremost the job of parents and not the job of the state or of the church.  

·         Knowing however that most families won’t do this, even Christian ones, what does that mean for funding public schools, or providing vouchers for school choice, or for strengthening private schools, Christian schools and charter schools?

·         How can we Christians lead the way in praying for our schools and teachers, mentoring students, involving ourselves in sports and activities as people who know that real knowledge is not judged by test scores, rather it is judged by knowledge of God