"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." - Deuteronomy 6:6-7This weekend I went out of town to visit some friends, including my dear brother in Christ, Zach Snow. Zach and his wife Jessica have three children: a four-year-old boy, a two-year-old girl, and a baby girl. As part of their regular family worship times around the reading of the Word of God, they're also teaching their two oldest children the "Catechism for Young Children: An Introduction to the Shorter Catechism." Yes, that one. Yes, it's 145 questions long. And yes, they plan to follow it up by teaching them The Westminster Shorter Catechism.
And lest you think that's an unrealistic goal of young, idealistic parents, their four-year-old son gladly and correctly answered each of the first fifty-six or so questions I asked him. Fifty. Six. Questions. Answered rightly by a four-year-old boy. And these are not the typical modern-day Sunday School questions and answers. For example:
Q. 33. What befell our first parents when they had sinned?Oh, and their two-year-old daughter can answer the first 20 or so questions. Yeah.
A. Instead of being holy and happy, they became sinful and miserable.
Q. 34. Did Adam act for himself alone in the covenant of works?
A. No; he represented all his posterity.
Q. 35. What effect had the sin of Adam on all mankind?
A. All mankind are born in a state of sin and misery.
Q. 45. What did Christ undertake in the covenant of grace?
A. To keep the whole law for his people, and to suffer the punishment due to their sins.
Q. 48. What is meant by the Atonement?
A. Christ's satisfying divine justice, by his sufferings and death, in the place of sinners.
Zach has planned ahead and changed questions 129 and 130 as follows:
Q. 129. Who are to be baptized?These corrections actually make the catechism more consistent with itself (and Scripture!), as question 127 asks, "What does this [water baptism] signify?" and answers, "That we are cleansed from sin by the blood of Christ."
A. Believers. [not "Believers and their children"]
Q. 130. Should infants be baptized? [not "why should infants be baptized?"]
A. No, because they have not repented of their sins. [Rather than, "Because they have a sinful nature and need a Savior."]
Do the children understand the words they're reciting? Not yet. And mere recitation of facts is not evidence of biblical conversion, though you wouldn't learn that from most modern pulpits. Yet these faithful parents are carefully laying a massively solid foundation of truth in the young minds of their children, that God may, in His time and by His sovereign grace, move through that biblical truth and regenerate their souls. I praise God for their faithful refusal to lead their children through an empty "sinner's prayer," but are teaching them to desire and seek biblical salvation, marked by true repentance of sin and faith in Christ through the cross.
To paraphrase my brother Zach, "Why are we [Christians] John Piper to the world and Joel Osteen to our children?" Your children are capable of much more than you may think. Are you being diligent to teach them?
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I wholeheartedly agree with you on the ability of children to learn catechisms. I taught my daughter (then 4) the Truth and Grace Memory Book by Tom Ascol, which includes an adaptation of a Catechism for Boys and Girls. She knows about sixty of them. We actually slowed down a bit this year, as she entered Westminster Christian Academy and started learning their new children's catechism, which was slightly different (but substantially the same). And the amazing thing is she's actually old enough (and was at age 5, now 6) to discuss the consequences of Adam's fall to all humanity and how Jesus' death atoned for the sins of God's people, etc. Basically, she knows more theology than many adults my age at your typical evangelical church (thankfully, neither you nor I go to a "typical evangelical church").
I highly recommend catechisms! For any interested, here is a pitch I made to our Sunday School class at a previous church to encourage catechism usage.
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