A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Bob Harvey works full-time building ecumenical charismatic Christian communities in Windsor, Ontario. He has been involved in the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, Michigan. While there Bob was a member of a Presbyterian church. This article was first published in the Challenge newsletter, P.O. Box 581, Sterling Heights. MI 48311. in May, 1986. It appears by permission of the editor.
Christianity begins in the home – in more ways than one. That’s where Christianity should first be taught, because it’s most effectively passed on there, and that’s also where we need to apply our faith first. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 5:4 that “if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents.” This passage is one of many in Scripture that just assumes believers will learn their faith from their parents and grandparents, and pass it on to their children and grandchildren.
Another example is in Psalm 78:5-6, where the psalmist tells us: “He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.”
For hundreds of years, Christian families have been successful in passing on their values and beliefs through generation after generation. But that picture is changing rapidly. In the United States and most western countries, a trend has developed since 1950 in which young adults are less likely to attend church than middle-aged adults, and middle-aged adults are less likely to attend church than old people. The dropout rate may even be speeding up. In Canada, for example, a recent major survey of teenagers showed that only half the teenagers in church at age 15 are still in church at age 19.
The conclusion is irresistible: our Christian homes are not passing on their values and in the future fewer homes will even be trying to pass on Christian values. In some ways, that’s not surprising, because it’s much harder today to raise any children, much less Christian children.
For proof, all you have to do is think back 25 years and look at how times have changed:
- The sexual revolution hadn’t taken off yet, and the birth control pill wasn’t even around.
- Abortion hadn’t been legalized.
- Television was not yet eating up more hours than school in a child’s average week.
- Youths weren’t using drugs and alcohol to any great extent.
- Few young people had cars, or even frequent use of their parents’ car.
- Fewer mothers worked outside the home, and fewer children spent long periods on their own.
It really is getting harder to build a Christian home. As parents, our concern is not only to get to heaven ourselves, but also to take our children with us. That’s always been one of the purposes God ordained for the family, but because of the nature of the times I think parents today have to make extraordinary efforts to build a Christian home. For those efforts to pay off, we’ve got to start with the right blueprint. Jesus tells us in Matthew 28:20 that his disciples are to be taught to obey all his teachings, and where else do we find his teachings but in the Bible?
The Bible is to be the guidebook that takes us to heaven, and the family that doesn’t build its way of life on the blueprint of Scripture is what Jesus would have compared to a “foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matt. 7:26-27). Christian homes are crashing today because they’re not built according to the right plan. The Bible is not just the guidebook for discipline and training of children, but also the guidebook for everything in our lives, from how to worship to how to succeed in business.
The Bible may be the blueprint, but Jesus Christ himself is the foundation of a Christian home. To build a Christian home that will stand, you’ve got to mix Jesus right into the cement so that enemies will see the strength of the foundation and pass right on by. On the night of the first Passover, the Jews marked their homes with the blood of a lamb, and the angel of death passed them by. Unless our homes are also clearly marked with the blood of the Lamb, God will not claim us as his own. In Matthew 10:32, Jesus tells us: “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.”
We need to teach our children not only to be open about their identity in Christ, but also to be proud of it. For my family, that means things like putting up a cross on our door, talking with friends and family about what the Lord is doing in our lives, and telling our children how we and others came to know the Lord. Once the house has been designed, and the foundation laid, then we need to bring in the right tradesmen. We ourselves may be able to do a lot of the work, but generally we’re going to need help. Christians are meant to be part of a body, and building a Christian home without being part of a body is like a carpenter trying to build a house without the aid of an electrician or a plumber.
I believe it’s almost impossible today for Christian parents to succeed in bringing their children to know and obey the Lord without joining together with other Christian families. The pressures of the world are just too great for that. We need to make peer group pressure work for us, instead of against us. We need to draw on the combined expertise and strength of a community of Christians. To make our homes turn out right, we also need frequent consultation with the architect. All our doors have to be open to Jesus Christ, and all our work has to be subject to his correction. Our homes need to be physical and social environments where Jesus is Lord. One way to test whether your home really is a Christian environment is to ask the question: “Is Christ honoured here? Would he approve of our records, our books, our decorations, our friends, our activities?”
Turning toward Jesus necessarily means turning away from the world and ignoring the advice of any competing architects, for James 4:4 tells us, “Friendship with the world is hatred towards God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” But turning away from the world doesn’t mean hiding from it. Our families are intended to draw others into a joyous Christian life. Jesus tells us in John 15 that we’re meant to be in the world, but not of it. If we live in the world, we can’t protect our children from all worldly influences. But what we can do is teach them Christian values, and teach them to screen out what doesn’t mould them more and more into the image of Jesus Christ.
As we work on building our Christian homes, we need to start thinking like the architect if we’re really going to fulfill the potential of the blueprint he’s given us. To develop this mind of Christ, we need to put more Christian material than worldly material into our heads. We try to do that in our family, first, by limiting the influence of the worldly media. We play almost exclusively Christian music, limit and carefully select the television we watch, and buy mostly Christian books and magazines.
Second, we work hard at increasing the Christian input into our minds. We read Scripture at table, read Christian books to our children after dinner and before bed, and build many of our special family times around explicitly Christian traditions like celebrating advent with candles and a wreath, and bringing in the Lord’s Day on Saturday night with a candle, wine and special prayers. Also part of our program to make Christ the most important influence in our lives is our attempt to associate with other Christian families, and to encourage our children to build relationships with other Christian children.
And that brings me to a final caution: None of this program to build a Christian home can work unless the parents themselves have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A Christian home can’t be built without the aid of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is severely limited in what he can do in your life unless you regularly spend time with him. The goal of all our efforts with our children is to bring them also into a personal relationship with God. Our efforts will be a failure if our children merely come to know a lot about God, instead of coming to know God himself. That would be like giving our grown children a house they could never live in. The house might be attractive at first, but it would ultimately crumble and fall for lack of maintenance.