I am not asking for sympathy but this can be a hard time of the year. Look at the home education groups on social media and you’ll see many people discussing how to handle it when all your friends are going to their school prizegivings and boasting about their awards, certificates, marks, exam results and class position. For at least some of us, it’s not so much the feeling of missing out but the feeling of despair that people’s lives revolve around such trivial things.
It should be easy for Christians to know how to respond. In fact, it seems like quite a valuable opportunity for a moral lesson. We should be saying to our children, ‘Well, dear, that’s just the way of the world. It’s what the Bible calls vanity, chasing after the wind, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. We are seeking better things.’ But what do you do when it’s your Christian friends doing it?
Didn’t Augustine say that the first three principles of Christianity were humility, humility and humility? Putting others first must come into that somewhere, presumably? Seeing yourself as the chief of sinners and less than the least of all God’s servants? Are these not the things we are supposed to be learning? How then can Christians call ‘education’ a system that revolves around trying to get ahead of everybody else?
And what about the children who don’t come from nice Christian families, who don’t get nutritious meals every day, or whose lives have been ravaged by violence or substance abuse? Is it any wonder that your children do better than they do? Is it fair, or even reasonable, to think that yours are more ‘clever’? All you’re really boasting about is the social status that you brought into the situation with you.
I know not everybody is like this and I’m not here to evaluate and give you a mark out of 10. Just talking about ideas. The difference between diligently learning a trade or profession in order to serve God and your fellow man and pursuing empty honours and meaningless qualifications is not superficial and not merely one of degree.
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
That’s the prizegiving that I want to be at.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”
That’s the prizegiving that I want to be at.
