Catechism

This might sound a bit trite but… in order to do something, you have to actually do it. When you are given a responsibility that usually means that the thing won’t happen… by itself. On its own. “That wood won’t cut itself.” I’m sure I read that somewhere.

And yet when it comes to raising their children, it seems that many modern parents think that they will ‘raise themselves’. That is, when it comes to raising them in the nuture and admonition of the LORD.

Parents have been given one of the most awesome and significant responsibilities on the planet, and it seems to me that many us wear that responsibility very, very lightly.

Government Schools

“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”

― Voddie T. Baucham Jr., Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who walk with God

The most incredibly obvious example of the light wearing of this responsibility is that the overwhelming majority of ‘Christian’ parents send their children off to someone else to be educated. Indeed, I have the feeling that they actually believe that this is historically normal. That there existed some public school in some local town where Shem, Ham, and Japeth were educated. That Absalom and Amnon sat in little desks and copied out their lessons along with dozens of other local youth.

Any reading of history will reveal the error in that thinking… assuming that they do think that. But any reading of Scripture will quickly and easily reveal that it certainly isn’t what God had in mind when he gave children to parents.

Sunday School

Here is an amazing thing. Sunday School is a brand new phenomenon, historically speaking. It began as an outreach of the church to poor children, teaching them to read and write (from God’s Word, of course) in order to help them get a leg up in life.

And now it has come, in the minds of some, to represent the sum total of their responsibility for raising their children in the faith.

Now, first of all, would that the church took this responsibility seriously. It is a false responsibility, a deadly error, but few churches seem to even take it seriously. They don’t even try to carry out this false responsibility. They hand the child a colouring page with Noah on it and think they are done. They teach them to sing (when they teach them to sing at all) vacuous unBiblical songs about Jesus as my best friend.

But secondly, and infinitely more importantly, it is a false responsibility. The responsibility for teaching the children of the church is… their fathers. Their mothers and fathers. But not ‘the Sunday School teacher’. Look long and hard. You will neither find ‘Sunday School’ in Scripture… nor any functional equivalent. What you will find is a father’s (and mother’s, but the focus is on the father) responsibility to teach, train, discipline and punish his children.

Family Worship

Deuteronomy 6:6-9

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

When I was growing up every couple of years some pastor, evangelist, or other Christian speaker type person would come through our area, or our church, and give a sermon or series on ‘family worship’. Or, as it was sometimes known, ‘evening devotions’. And my parents would by the latest book, or follow the latest advice and, for a few days or weeks, we would do ‘evening devotions’. And then it would fade away until the coming of the next speaker.

I am unaware of what goes on in the vast majority of modern Christian churches but I must say that from what I have heard, anyway, this seems to have fallen by the wayside. The very idea of a father having to deal with his children on a daily basis and teach them about God seems too ‘radical’.

Authority

Or, maybe, it isn’t that it is too ‘radical’. Maybe it is too ‘authoritarian’. Maybe the idea is that children have to grown up and decide on their own what religion to follow.

Maybe the problem is that the father would like (theoretically) to have all of his family gather, once a day, and read God’s Word and sing His praises… but they won’t come. He can’t force them! Or, to use the Biblical language… he can’t ‘command’ them.

In the book of Proverbs, the pre-eminent ‘father to son’ talk in history, there are a whole variety of words used by the father when talking to his son. (And the mother.) These words include such zingers as ‘my law’. They include ‘instruction’, ‘wisdom’, ‘correction’, ‘doctrine’, ‘my words’, ‘my sayings’, and… ‘commandments’.

Notably missing is the word ‘advice’.¹

Catechism

Joshua 4:21-24

And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?

Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.

For the LORD your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over:

That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the LORD your God for ever.

So now I finally come to the erstwhile subject this post: Catechism. But let us start with the verb form:

CATECHISE, verb transitive

1. To instruct by asking questions, receiving answers, and offering explanations and corrections.

2. To question; to interrogate; to examine or try by questions, and sometimes with a view to reproof, by eliciting answers from a person, which condemn his own conduct.

3. Appropriately, to ask questions concerning the doctrines of the Christian religion; to interrogate pupils and give instruction in the principles of religion

Webster’s 1828

To ‘Chatechise’ is to instruct by asking questions. And, I might add, by teaching questions that are to be asked, and their answers. But the principal root is: to ask questions. To deliberately ask questions

CATECHISM, noun

1. A form of instruction by means of questions and answers, particularly in the principles of religion.

2. An elementary book containing a summary of principles in any science or art, but appropriately in religion, reduced to the form of questions and answers, and sometimes with notes, explanations, and references to authorities.

Webster’s 1828

And so a ‘catechism’ is a system of such questions, or a book in which those questions and answers are contained. And while the word can be used for questions and answers on any subject (think modern day FAQ) historically it has been used in the Christian church as a means of teaching Christian doctrine.

Keach’s Catechism

Q. 100. What is Baptism?

A. Baptism is an holy ordinance, wherein the washing with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, signifies our ingrafting into Christ and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord's. (Matt. 28:19; Rom. 6:3-5; Col. 2:12; Gal. 3:27)

Q. 101. To whom is Baptism to be administered?

A. Baptism is to be administered to all those who actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ; and to none other. (Acts 2:38; Matt. 3:6; Mark 16:16; Acts 8:12,36; Acts 10:47,48)

Q. 102. Are the infants of such as are professing believers to be baptized?

A. The infants of such as are professing believers are not to be baptized; because there is neither command nor example in the Holy Scriptures, or certain consequence from them, to baptize such.

Q. 103. How is Baptism rightly administered?

A. Baptism is rightly administered by immersion, or dipping the whole body of the person in water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 3:16; John 3:23; Acts 8:38,39)

The Baptist Catechism by Benjamin Keach

“But I’m a Baptist! Surely all of that is for high church Anglican’s and Presbytarians!”

Well, sorry, I have news for you: there is a Baptist Catechism. It is commonly known as The Baptist Catechism by Benjamin Keach… and it is Baptist in nature.

Most Baptists could teach 90% of the Westminster shorter or larger catechisms without the slightests hiccup. Indeed, the hiccups might be the best part… where the father instructs his family on where he differs from what the catechism teaches. None of the old catechisms cover everything that a modern parent needs to… there is almost nothing about the evils of transgenderism or the dangers of government schools, for example.

But these lacks are a call to a father to work harder, not to ignore his responsibilities. To use every means at his disposal to follow the Biblical command and… train up his children.

Conclusion

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

One can read article after article bemoaning how few young people are coming to church, how many of them lose their faith in college. But surely CS Lewis told us why this would happen, no? They had no Christianity to lose. They coloured Daniel and the Lions in Sunday School; they have no idea what ‘the faith once delievered’ is. They have not ‘studied to show themselves approved’. They aren’t even cultural Christians! They just ‘grew up in a Christian household’… and barely that.

The other day I saw someone trying to prove, with diagrams etc, that religion always declines. Which is nonsense, of course, but one sees where he is coming from. Modern religion… that is modern Christianity… that is modern wishy washy Christianity… always declines.

But when we look around at faiths, including Christian denominations etc., that catechise their children… who teach them when they rise up and when they lay down, when they walk in the way… they aren’t declining. They are growing.

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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

https://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/keachcat.htm

1. The word is used once in the Proverbs, but not in the context of a father with his son.