“How many things are necessary for you to know, that you, enjoying real comfort, may live and die happily?” “Three: First, how great my sins and miseries are. . . .” That is the way our old Compendium, almost exactly repeating the second question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism, introduces its systematic teaching of the Christian faith as the way of salvation. That kind of beginning is not just an expression of a past medieval culture whose interests and concerns are vastly different from our own. It is a conscious effort to exactly express and copy the way in which the Bible itself consistently introduces the same subject. One may begin reading the Bible with the opening chapters of Genesis to discover almost immediately the account of the Fall followed by that about the first child’s murder of his brother. One may turn to the book of Isaiah, sometimes called “the gospel of the Old Testament” and observe that it begins by exposing the behavior of the people it addresses as worse and more inexcusable than that of their oxen and donkeys. We notice that the New Testament gospel history begins with the career of John the Baptist who had to prepare people to appreciate the coming of Christ by exposing in equally harsh language their sin, addressing them as a “brood of snakes” (Luke 3:7). Then we see how Paul in his letter to the Romans, in a pattern that is copied by the Heidelberg Catechism, begins his systematic exposition of the way of salvation by showing the universal need of it in man’s inexcusable sin and guilt (Romans 1:18–3:20). The Apostle John in his first letter, more briefly, takes exactly the same approach: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Even more emphatically, he continues, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8, 10). To anyone who receives the Bible on its own claim as God’s revelation of His gospel, this introduction of it by exposing sin, appearing in it at every turn, should be conclusive.
This kind of introduction of the Christian faith, understandably, always aroused opposition and has never been popular. Calvin on occasion observed that the devil attempts to make man‘s plight incurable by obscuring its cause. Never has that effort to obscure and deny the reality of sin been more common than it is in our time. Among the most vocal and influential of the leaders who in our time deny the reality of sin are psychologists and sociologists. One of the more colorful exposes of their influence in the field of education was written by Dr. Max Rafferty several years ago in his book, What They Are Doing to Your Children. That reformer–superintendent of California’s public schools, in a chapter entitled “Sin No More” wrote:
Have you thought much about sin lately? Seen any sinners around? Don’t bother to look. Sin is no more. It’s gone with the dodo and the passenger pigeon. You couldn’t sin if you tried. You don’t believe me? Listen:
Suppose you run off with another man’s wife, or another woman’s husband, as the case may be. You’re not sinning, friend. You’re just evidencing social immaturity.
You drink up the weekly pay check at the local bar, come home, beat your wife, and kick the dog. But you’re not a sinner. Don’t ever think it. You’re sick.
Have you become addicted to compulsive lying. . . ? This is one of many classifiable traumas, probably due to something somebody did to you when you were six weeks old.
Do you steal whenever you think you can get away with it? Why worry about it? Doesn‘t everybody? After all, our millionaires all steal from the consuming public, our oil producers steal from the Treasury Department, and our ancestors stole the country originally from the Indians. How can stealing possibly be a sin? Under the Law of Consensus, nothing can be a sin if everybody does it, and everybody’s doing it now. So runs the refrain.
As a result, we can justify everything we do or want to do. We can blame our every action on society or heredity or the fact that someone locked us in a dark closet when we were kids. How can we sin when something or somebody else is responsible for literally everything we say and do? By the same token, virtue—the opposite of sin—is vanishing too, and for the same reason.
Well, I for one am not having any part of this. . . . I think we had better blow the whistle mighty soon on this bland, unctuous, cloying, sick philosophy now spreading over the land like so much malignant margarine. I’ve seen its effects in my own profession for lo these many years (pp. 34, 35).
Despite the plain teachings of Scripture and Confessions that we must teach the facts about sin and guilt if we are to effectively lead people to appreciate and receive Christ the Savior, and despite the fact that even some secular leaders are calling for a renewed recognition of sin and moral responsibility if our society is to be preserved from the movements that are destroying it, there are indications that even in some of our homes and schools the false theories of the psychologists rather than the true doctrines about sin and deliverance are in control.
In the October, 1981, Christian Home and Schoo~ a former Christian school teacher and mother writes about “A Birth in the Family,” describing the reactions of older children to the arrival of a newcomer.
Children, especially firstborn children, often feel cheated of their parents’ time and attention. They do not feel like sharing their parents. . . . The jealousy that arises can often become a genuine dislike for the infant which may or may not be expressed openly. And the expression may take any one of a number of forms. It might merely be verbal, “Could we take the baby back to the store?” or “I don’t like her; she’s not any fun!” It might be an active aggression, hugging the baby too tightly, or hitting or sitting on the infant. Another possibility is a negative behavior—a regression in toilet training, disobedience, or a reversal in social behavior.
No matter what the expression, it is important to let the older child know that his or her feelings are all right. Ifthe child keeps the hostility hidden or begins to feel guilty about it, much deeper problems could develop.
How can we ever expect our children to be seriously interested in Christ and His salvation if we go to such lengths as this to shield them from babyhood on against any suspicion that their jealousy and other bratty behavior could possibly be sins which ought to make them feel guilty and from which they, like we, need to be delivered? Our love for our children must move us as Bible–believing Christians to defy the misguided warning of some psychologists and early teach them the difference between right and wrong behavior, to feel guilty for the wrong, and to turn for deliverance to Christ the Savior of sinners.
