We read in Deuteronomy 6:7, “And these words which I command thee this day shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto they children…”
This passage is rather generally used to indicate the necessity of Christian day school education, and I believe that this use is justifiable. In this article, however, I wish to say something about the educational program of the Church, particularly the official catechizing of our youth by the pastors or elders.
In the Christian Reformed Church attendance at such classes is compulsory. and this very strict attitude toward the work has borne rich fruit for the Church. Actually parents cannot sustain membership in this Church without supporting and participating in the catechetical training program of the Church, for when they present their children for baptism (article 56, Church Order), they must say that they “promise and intend to instruct these children, as soon as they arc able to understand, in the aforesaid doctrine, and cause them to be instructed therein, to the utmost of your [their] power.” And already in 1881 Synod adopted as a denominational rule the following:
If parents do not send their minor children to attend catechism sufficiently, they shall be admonished; if they persist in their neglect, they shall be disciplined; and if this be of no avail, they shall be excommunicated.
Why does the Church take this kind of a stand with respect to the training of the youth of the Church? I would suggest three reasons: because the Church appreciates the importance of the child, because the Church would share its rich heritage of truth with the child, and because the Church must enlist the child in the battIe against her enemies.
DOES THE CHILD HAVE AN IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE CHURCH?
The answer of Reformed churches to this question is all unqualified Yes. From the viewpoint of the Covenant, Reformed churches have been impressed with the fact that it pleases the Lord to continue his Church in the way of succeeding generations, as well as by accessions “from without.”
The basic reason, however, for this high evaluation of the place of the child in the Church is not the welfare of the Church, nor even the welfare of the child, but the fact that it has pleased God to place our children ill the particular office of church member from their very birth. As such the Covenant child stands in a vital relationship, ecclesiastically and religiously, to the entire congregation, and must be trained to profess its faith with all the saints.
I think that it is very important that we re-emphasize the official character of the Christian life in general, and of our membership in the Christian Church in particular! Especially today is it relevant to say with Dr. K. Sietsma,
Office is the only justification and the only proper limitation of human power and authority. No one has the right of determination with respect to human and creaturely life except by way of and in office. Not a single instance of obedience is properly founded and justifiable except it be shown in relationship to that something official.
And office alone establishes fundamental boundary lines. For God alone is absolute; all human existence and all human right to act is by the nature of the case limited. The pretense to absoluteness here on earth contradicts directly and inherently God’s sovereignty. It is the idea of office which expresses this delimitation by its demand that we stand under God’s direction, under His commission and in responsibility to Him.
At the same time office itself is always that which marks out the boundary for the offices. The marshaling or arranging of the different offices in the spheres of human life is itself the most powerful resistance to transgression of these boundaries. And so office makes for the fundamental ordering of human life. It is the basis of all connection and relationship.*
It is within the boundaries of that which is properly ecclesiastical that the Covenant child must be catechized. He must be catechized, because he has a right to it as all office-holder in God’s church. And he must be catechized, since he must from the very beginning be included in that on-going conversation of the Church of which catechism is a part. For catechesis is in essence an on-going ecclesiastical conversation. Questions are asked, and answers are given. These questions are regularly asked in the worship services in connection with the preaching according to the Heidelberg Catechism (a most important feature of Christian Reformed tradition!). And in these “Catechism sermons” the children are not to be ignored, for by means of them as well as the specific catechism classes the youth of the Church are to be trained for an ever-increasing exercise of their office as members of the Church of Christ.
If the child in the Church is so important, then we ought to know the answer to a problem which is growing in significance among Reformed people. I refer to this question, Must the ecclesiastical training of our children stress merely the element of personal belief in Jesus Christ, or seek principally to build an intimate personal relationship with the Church?
These clements are extremely important, of course, but if we are not vigilant on this score our children may easily gain the impression that their personal interests and not God’s official interests lie at the heart of the Christian religion. We must not forget that the particular office of church member has all its doors and windows wide open to admit the full light of Him who is the Life, and whose benefits cannot be reduced to any single aspect of that full-orbed life, not even the personal. The Church will have its children say with Samuel, “Speak; for thy servant heareth” (I Sam. 3:10b )—for it knows that the children of the tabernacle will thus come to deepest personal satisfaction in an all-absorbing life of service!
If the life of our children is set within the perspective of such full-time service, we should be done with all efforts to stress the personal at the expense of the official. This has special bearing on the kind of songs sung by our children in their own meetings. I do not think that our children ought to be deprived of the great hymns and the matchless psalms in favor of those choruses which so often replace the pronoun Thou with the first person singular. Let us rather be consistently covenantal and official in our youth work, and that calls for a deliberate effort to train our children to love those songs which are more emphatically God-glorifying. The old custom of having the catechumen commit to memory one verse of a psalter selection per week was a good one.
I should like to spell out two more implications of the idea that our children are by Cod’s official calling to be regarded as having a full place in the fellowship of the Church. The first of these is that this calls for real cooperation and a genuine mutual respect by all parties concerned with any e,riven agency for the instruction of our Covenant youth. The pastor in the catechism class may not forget that a primary responsibility for the education of the children before him belongs to the parent, and that he must coordinate the work he has to do for them with that which the Christian home is doing. This applies to all areas of education, of course. The most learned professor in a Christian college or university will never ridicule the simple parents of some student, nor even his rather ordinary and possibly mediocre pastor. That kind of competition among office-bearers is unwarranted.
In this connection I should like to express the considered opinion that we must let the individual find himself in the fellowship and communion of the saints. Our class method of instruction tends to exclude the more unusual types of people, and to stress the need for the individual to conform to the group. We all know that “the all-around boy” is often pictured as the ideal, and so the more delicate and sensitive types, for example, are brushed aside as “long haired sissies,” etc. Such attitudes and practices ought not to exist among Christians! For we do not seek our oneness in dead conformity, but in Christ, who is the Head of the Body, and who has not made all members alike. We have a common office, thank God, but in the exercise of its obedience he has been pleased to make and to use all kinds of people. and this for the praise of his grace.
A second implication is that although there must be a mutual respect among office-bearers, this does not mean that there is no room for criticism and correction. Let’s face it: an uncritical youth would be something quite undesirable as well as impossible! Reports persist that even the Communist is not able to stifle criticism among Moscow’s youth. The dominie who cannot stand to hear criticism of the Church and other holy things from his young people may be able to silence them with the (non-official!) use of the power of his position. but he is not really getting away with anything at all. and he may be the cause of severe spiritual damage to the lambs of the flock.
Here again the only wholesome way to cope with the critical spirit of youth is a sound view of office. For office emphasizes the fact that we are nothing apart from God’s appointment. and that all we do must be governed by and is accountable to the God of the Word. A true office-bearer will not even shrink from telling all those whom he must teach that the obedience he must demand is based only on the will of God as revealed in the Bible. Even the child is so important that he does not have to obey office-bearers who deviate seriously from the Scriptures.
The Church and its agencies, the Christian family and its activities are not designed to establish a slavish conformity. There is a lively conversation going on in these circles. and the voices are not always subdued and sweet. There is often occasion for spirited discussion and debate, for in this conversation the fathers are seeking to capture the hearts of their children for that full-orbed faith to which they are committed. And these fathers know that they too must learn in and from the teaching situation in which God has placed them with their children. In fact, even the pastor and the professor must confess that they can learn much from their fellow-believers, even though they be mere freshmen or beginners in catechism. If we esteem the child highly for his work’s sake as an office-bearer of God, there will be a great reward for them who always gain the first-fruits of the labor these children require!
WHAT MUST THE CHURCH TEACH THE CHILD TO SAY?
The Church’s task is to make fellow confessors of the children given by the Lord. 1 choose the word confessors deliberately. since a confessor is “a person who professes his religious faith in spite of persecution” (Webster). The Church has no objection to the use of “one’s own words” in the profession of faith so long as they are agreeable to the Scriptures. but since the art of communication is long and hard to develop, it gives the very words of this confession to its younger office-bearers.
These words which our children must memorize are not strange to them! And so they do not resent having to learn them “by heart.” They have been hearing the Truth day after day as father reads the Bible for and with his family. Their little ears have listened with utter amazement to the terror and the grandeur of the Book of Revelation, for example. And so when they are told in catechism that theirs is the only comfort in life and death, that they are owned by Jesus Christ and that therefore not a hair can fall from their head apart from the will of the Father, then they are hearing again exactly what they knew all along. For they are the children of the Church.
Many of you will realize that I am talking about the Heidelberg Catechism in particular when I say that the instruction of our children often is carried on in the atmosphere of an undisturbed peace, whereas its origins lie in circumstances of terrible persecution. The confusion of those days was not merely the possibility of physical torture and death, but even more the terrible effect of a government which did not understand its true calling under God, and a false church which likewise assumed an authority beyond the limits of divine appointment.
Who would have the heart to catechize in such a world? The Church did, because it believed that the best advice to give its youth on the eve of destruction was that contained in this testament of Truth. Communication is a difficult art, and so questions and answers were carefully framed to enable even smaller children to speak under the fearful circumstances in that age. And in the very giving of this treasure to her youth the Church revealed that there is indeed only one comfort ever, and that is in the Savior. Jesus Christ.
The Church must teach its children to confess, and to do so today—yes today, when our political leaders speak almost glibly of the imminent possibility of destruction on a scale unbelievably large! Today, when the U.S.S.H. announces that its newest “plan” will achieve the elimination of both capitalist wealth and Christian morality. There is to be no need for Jesus Christ whatsoever in the socialist society of the future! And this devilish movement is not minded to tolerate those who profess that the only comfort in life and death is Jesus Christ.
Shall we catechize today? Of course we shall. since our children are office-bearers in the Church of God, and theirs is the solemn duty to share by way of profession the faith of the Church. We must catechize today, when too many parents have lost all consciousness of the seriousness of their official duties. when so many churches have redefined the Christian religion so as to eliminate all reference to duty and calling. Even today we shall teach our children to speak the language of the Church, which is the language of Jesus, the Christ.
WHAT MUST THE CHURCH TRAIN THE CHILD TO DO?
Catechism aims at the enlistment and the training of the children of the Church for the warfare and struggle of the Church.
I am quite aware of the fact that this kind of language is in disrepute so far as some leading voices in today’s Reformed community are concerned. “The mind of love” must be developed, and the belligerent, militant mind is to be rejected. at least to a great degree. This kind of talk, however, does not impress me as being particularly helpful to Christian parents today. I pray that my children may become militantly Christian, that is, office-bearers of God who love him enough to be willing to join the army and do battle for him wherever the issue is joined. The catechism class cannot avoid developing such a loyal devotion to the cause of the Church, if it uses the creeds of the Church!
And a remarkable fact in connection with the catechesis of its children is that the Church thereby confesses its faults to the youth of the Church! For the creeds which form the material of their ecclesiastical instruction were composed in opposition to the false church. And this erring church had become an enemy of the true Church, oppressing its members and persecuting them because they rebuked her.
The catechisms of the Reformed churches have this enemy in mind, and they ask the children of the Church to enter wholeheartedly into the struggle against this enemy. The Church asks her children to reject the heresies and errors of this enemy, and to resist every effort to consolidate this wrongdoing in any fashion whatsoever.
This does not mean that the Church is out to develop a younger generation of anti-Papists or “Catholic haters.” But it does mean that our youth must be given to understand that the Biblical requirements for the true Church are hard to come by. and that constant effort and continuous reform are always necessary. There is no room for the smug, complacent “we have arrived” attitude in a Reformed Church!
The Church must be very open and candid, therefore, in its dealings with its youth. It must be quick to admit fault and weakness and imperfection. It must not act as if sin were something theologically familiar but actually strange or infrequent among us. The Church catechizes in the light of the Reformation, and no one can fail to be impressed with the bitter fact of the Church’s persistent weaknesses and sins in this context.
It is so disgusting, therefore, when so many seem to be determined to change the battleground of the Church into a playground or amusement park. This is done by those who make light of the need for reformation, and who have no appreciation for the fact that the great Jehovah came to the aid of his embattled children in the 16th century Reformation, for example. The Church rears her children to be heroes in Christ, and to heroic action they are calJed by Christ. Anyone can laugh at the weakness of our children, as anyone would have laughed at cowardly Gideon and his insignificant band. But the Church which hears the sure sound of the trumpet knows that it will accomplish things far beyond the limits of her own strength!
S0 it is with the work of catechizing the youth of the Church!
God calls them as Covenant children; God calls parents and pastors as well. It may seem so routine and so ineffective, especially if we listen to the halting answers, and take note of the half-hearted work so many do. There is only one cure for the discouragement one always feels in connection with this work of the Lord, and that is to return to his Word. For there we read such things as this, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8:2). God is doing nothing less than that through the children of the Church!
*Dr. Ambtsgedachte, published by S.J.P. Bakker, Amsterdam, page 8. Translation ours, J.H.P.