On catechizing our children

Today, we are often content with "God" words and with warm feelings about Him. In a society rife with faulty ideas of God, we fail to give a definition to the word when we use it. Eager to include and to think the best of everyone, we rejoice when we hear those "God" words, assuming the person using them is one of us. When we combine this failure to discriminate with our natural sympathies toward children, we are even quicker to assume children are Christians when, in reality, they have no idea at all what it is to be one.

Those of us who care about passing on the baton of historic Christian truth must awaken to the importance of faithfully imparting its doctrines to our children. We cannot depend on haphazard, hit-or-miss Bible stories and memory verses, hoping that somehow our children will distill from them Christianity's important teachings. Rather, we must provide careful, systematic instruction in doctrine. Children need a grid through which to sift all that they see and hear. We must provide this for our children while they are still young. Doctrine cannot wait until children are teens, because adolescents are making major life decisions. The theological framework on which to base those decisions, the biblical worldview, must already be in place.

Starr Meade, Training Hearts Teaching Minds: Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (Introduction, pp. 5-6)