THIS is what I believe.

Where has time gone? Summer is already half gone, I officially graduate high school (with my college general education AA degree...) in two weeks, and will be off to Covenant College in August. As usual, I began the summer expecting to be bored (which, I can assure you, has not happened yet!) and so prepared a long list of books to read, knowing I would plow right through them (like that ever happens when I plan on it.... Ah, well, c'est la vie!). However, I am slowly working my way through a few very good books, three of which I am especially enjoying: Shepherding a Child's Heart, by Tedd Tripp and Home Education, by Charlotte Mason (books on children, education, etc.), and What is Reformed Theology?, by R.C. Sproul (spiritual/theology). I also began our church's membership class, the second session of which goes into the doctrine our church holds to. I am always completely shocked by how everything in life fits together without planning on it. Here is what I mean...

One of Charlotte Mason's main principles in her philosophy of education (in fact, the first) is that "children are born persons." Fundamentally, this means that children are complete persons, completely responsible for their own actions. A few days after reading this in Miss Mason's own work, I was reading Shepherding a Child's Heart (Tripp). The second chapter discusses the "shaping influences" on a child's life that the parents provide (structure of family life, family values, family roles, family response to failure, family history, family conflict resolution, etc.) Moving on from there, Tripp confirms that it is not the shaping influences that determine the child's outcome, but the child's response to what he is taught: “Whatever the shaping influences of life, it is the child’s Godward orientation that determines his response to those shaping influences. The child is either worshiping and serving and growing in the understanding of the implications of who God is, or he is seeking to make sense of life without a relationship to God and worshiping idols.” As I was reading, I began to doubt. "What is the point of parenting? If the shaping influences I, as the parent (or teacher, depending on the role), provide don't determine the child's success, why is my role so important?" Then, I realized. Just as Charlotte Mason establishes in her educational philosophy, the teacher's role is not to make the student learn, but to provide the student with the tools and information. It is, ultimately, up to the child/student to decide whether or not he will accept the tools and information provided. This same philosophy applies to parenthood. The parent's role is simply to provide the very best shaping influences possible, to provide the child with the information, to walk the walk, be an example. However, until the child makes the decision to take the life himself, those influences (notice they are simply influences not determining factors) are simply yet another possible path for him to choose. 

Now, I have been contemplating and mulling over this for about a week. At the same time, I have been reading and listening to the accompanying lectures on What is Reformed Theology by R.C. Sproul (Sidenote: listening to the lectures was a wonderful way to pass the time blueberry picking...). One of the basic points he makes is that Reformed theology applies every doctrine of Christianity to every other doctrine. "For example," he says in the first chapter, "I have never met a confessing Christian unwilling to affirm that God is sovereign.... When we press the doctrine of divine sovereignty into other realms of theology, however, it is weakened or destroyed altogether. I have often heard it said, 'God's sovereignty is limited by human freedom.' In this statement God's sovereignty is not absolute." Basically, his point is that if God is sovereign over everything, then he must be sovereign over election. Not only does this mean that God has chosen us "before the foundations of the world" (Eph. 1:4), but it means that God works in us before we choose him. Tonight was the second church membership class, which, as I said before, covers the church's doctrine. Naturally, soteriology (a word I only just learned today, meaning the doctrine of salvation) and the Gospel came up. Our material (which, unfortunately, I do not know exactly who to credit to....) summed it up wonderfully: "The gospel is good news because sin and judgment are such bad news. Sin is not only what we do, but who we are: apart from God, we are sinners by nature. So, if we're truly 'dead' in our sins (Eph 2:1) and powerless to change, how is it that we are able to respond to the gospel at all? It is here that the gracious nature of salvation becomes even more amazing: God acts, so that we can act." 

[If you've made it this far into my ramblings, I applaud you. But, if you've made it this far, you've also finally made it to the part where I bring all my ramblings to one basic point. Congratulations. ;)] It was at this point in our class that a little voice in the back of my brain began to throw bits of Mason and Tripp to my attention. All I could remember was that recently I had read or discussed something *so* similar, but I couldn't put it into a clear thought. Finally, everything came together. Children are born persons. However, they are born sinners. They have free will to sin. All the shaping influences in the world cannot change the fact that every person on earth is born a sinner. Parent are instructed to "train up a child in the way he should go" (Prov. 22:6), but instruction is not enough. God must act. It takes God's supernatural work in the heart before any of that can change. Once God has changed the heart of the child (or person), the child (or person) has only the free will to sin. Once God has changed the heart, he gives us the freedom in daily life to choose sin or to choose righteousness. And none of this possible except through faith in Jesus Christ. Romans 3:23-26 states, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." It is only through trusting in Christ and his work that we can be saved from the eternal wrath we deserve. Glory be to God for his mercy and grace!