St. Brendan's Podcast
The St. Brendan's Podcast exists to equip you with rigorous, practicable, and affordable Christian education for many generations to come.
St. Brendan's Podcast
The Paideia of the Lord: An All-Encompassing Education for Your Child
When Paul uses the Greek word paideia in Ephesians 6:4, what did he mean? What is the paideia of the Lord? And how comprehensive was its scope?
Well, it certainly wasn't minimalistic or truncated.
God isn't only Lord of our hearts, or of STEM, or of the kitchen. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. In Christ are hidden ALL the treasures of knowledge and wisdom.
Christian education, then, must pursue a full Christian scope.
Join Headmaster Kevin Love and Pastor Eric Conn for Season 1, Episode 4 as they discuss the importance of this principle for our children's education.
P.S. if you haven't already, make sure you sign up for the New Christendom Press Conference in June 2024. We'll see you there!
P.P.S. join us over on Patreon if you're looking for more resources as well as community with other like-minded parents.
As Werner Jaeger tells us in his monumental Paideia the ideals of Greek culture, the primary benefit the Greeks bequeathed to us was their relentless pursuit of an ideal. This, for many of the Greeks, was not a theory up in the clouds we're not talking here of Plato's theory of the forms but rather this ideal was an embodied ideal. It was visible, it was tangible, it was almost achievable. But how did they get there? How did they take the uninitiated child and guide him step by step to this ideal? This is where paideia comes in. For us English speakers, it's easiest to use the original Greek word, because every English gloss or translation falls far short of what this battle-hardened word communicated to the Greek mind. Did it mean education or discipline, mind or morals, chastisement, instruction, enculturation, training, formation? It would be wrong to pick just one, because it meant all of these things. In reality, paideia was nothing less than the total enculturation towards an ideal citizen in a particular society. If their ideal was the peak of the Rocky Mountain, then Paideia was the journey to the top Many steps, many paths, hard work, but all pointed toward that same goal and destination. Though most of us do not immediately think of the Spartans when we consider education, they do serve as a clear and concrete example of what we mean by Paideia.
Speaker 1:Let's start with their ideal citizen. For them, it was obvious In their men they wanted to create the best soldiers possible, and this idea pervaded every aspect of life in Sparta, even what it meant to be a true Spartan. It started from the moment their children were born, for the weak babies were simply thrown out or left exposed to the elements. And it continued as the children were young, for all around them they saw men training for or going out to war. They were saturated with violence. When they turned seven years old, they would leave their mothers behind and, through the agogae, training would fix their focus on preparing with the other men. Their economy was an oddity in that it both influenced and was influenced by Paideia. The men had helot slaves work in the fields for them, thus making constant training for battle a possibility, and these same Messenian revolts also required this constant training so they could quell the rebellions. Their ideal influenced how they viewed what it meant to be a man and so influenced the rites of passage. Their children were purposefully starved and made to forage and steal to survive. They would walk in the snow barefoot to learn how to endure the pain without either giving in or betraying their feelings with a grimace. This all culminated with the oft-practiced pattern of a boy becoming man having to sneak away to kill one of their Messenian slaves typically a targeted slave who was becoming rebellious. And all of this had to be done without getting caught.
Speaker 1:The dishonor wasn't so much in the stealing or the killing itself. No, the dishonor was first and foremost in others finding out, in showing weakness, in giving up, in displaying pain or cowardice. Every cultural standard, their likes and dislikes, what was honorable or dishonorable, was directed toward making courageous and fierce warriors, as their ladies would even say to their men, departing for war with it or on it, meaning you were to come back with your shield in the triumph of victory, or you were to come back on your shield because you had died fighting bravely and hadn't thrown your shield down in retreat. This cultural idea even shows up in their myths and legends. This cultural idea even shows up in their myths and legends.
Speaker 1:One story comes down to us from the pen of Plutarch and his Moralia. This was the story of a young boy, probably no older than eight or nine years of age, still a recent initiate in the Agogae training. He, just like the others, was often starved and made to steal to stay alive. Daily he would train to fight with the other men, even sharing their same table. That is when he was allowed, forcing down their disgusting gruel, a strange mixture of meat, blood, salt and vinegar. This was no K-12 education as we commonly see it today. It was simultaneously simpler and more severe, and certainly less intellectual. They were training warriors. They were training men Under the cover of night. This boy and his compatriots did what they had often done they stole. This time it was a fox, if you'll remember. That was not immoral to them. In fact it was encouraged. It was part of the system.
Speaker 1:The difficulty for them was escaping detection. The dishonor was in getting caught. Eventually the owners of the fox came searching. So to hide the fox, they had this boy slip it under his tunic while they were questioned. On the outside, the boy made sure he was cool and collected. But while he was being interrogated, the fox was viciously clawing, tearing and biting through his flesh, ripping open all his vital organs. Yet he did not grimace, for that was cowardice. He did not whimper, for that would bring dishonor. He would not allow himself or his friends to be found out. When the adults finally left, this boy collapsed to the floor, clearly dying from his wounds. Though his friends chastised him and told him it would have been better to be caught than to die, he responded.
Speaker 1:This story captured an ethos similar to our George Washington and the cherry tree. It shaped their loves. It shaped their desires. Now we don't have to agree with the ideal the Spartans set forth and, quite honestly, many other Greeks didn't either. But that doesn't change the fact that the Greeks as a whole were focused on an ideal and pointed every facet of their lives toward shaping their future citizens toward that perfect standard. As Yeager says, the greatest work of art they had to create was man. The Greeks were the first to recognize that education means deliberately molding human character in accordance with an ideal.
Speaker 1:What's interesting in this whole conversation is that in Ephesians 6.4, what's interesting in this whole conversation is that in Ephesians 6.4, paul deliberately sets forth paideia as something Christians are commanded to give to our own children. To be clear, he required this to be the paideia of the Lord. So he didn't mean for us to adopt the Greek idea in total, but as Christians don't. We have a clear standard we are directed toward as well. Remember, in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, paul tells us All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Speaker 1:And while the law was written on the tablets of stone, 2 Corinthians 3.3 says we Christians have the standard written on our hearts.
Speaker 1:Even more than this, we have the privilege of seeing a perfect living standard in the Christ, the God-man himself. And Romans 8.29 says For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. Paul says elsewhere that we are to grow up into the fullness of Christ. So if we are to give our children the paideia of the Lord, then we too will use every facet of our lives to direct our children to Christ, from our nursery rhymes to our formal education, to the way we run a plumbing business, to how we adorn our homes and, yes, even to how we vote or serve in political office. We want to see all of Christ for all of life, and that is the full-orbed paideia we want to pass along to our own children. Welcome to the St Brendan's Podcast, where we exist to equip you with rigorous. To the St Brendan's Podcast, where we exist to equip you with rigorous, practicable and affordable Christian education for many generations to come.
Speaker 2:We all belong to Jerusalem above, and we'll sail for Eden's shores.
Speaker 3:Well, welcome to this episode of the St Brendan's Podcast. I'm one of your hosts. I'm Eric Kahn, a pastor here at Refuge Church, joined by Pastor Kevin Love. Headmaster Kevin Love, kevin, it's good to be with you today. Yeah, glad to be here. It sounds like from the cold open that we have some exciting new curriculum for the St Brennan students.
Speaker 1:Is this the Agogay training?
Speaker 1:This is the Agogay training when you enter first grade, you leave your mother and you'll just be training with the men. How long can you keep a fox under your tunic? Honestly, that story is crazy. It is. It's crazy in the sense that one it's so hard to picture for us because we don't live in that culture, we don't live with those kinds of standards. We are not pointing our children in that direction.
Speaker 1:But they did Right. I mean you have to, you have to understand the context for. But they did right. I mean you have to. You have to understand the context for for the you know the milieu they were living in. They would. They were constantly fighting others, right? So they had an army that would go out. But then they always had to keep an army behind. Right, they had, I think it was called a duarchy. They had two Kings. One King would lead the men out, the army away, so they could go fight, you know the Athenians, for example. But then they had to keep an army behind. Why? Well, because they had all of those slaves that were working the fields. That what happens if they revolt? You needed to be ready at a moment's notice. It does not matter if it's home or abroad, you needed to be ready to fight.
Speaker 3:Well, and it's crazy because, um, I think this idea that you were talking about that having an ideal yeah, for any of the Greek people having an ideal, what's the ideal citizen? What is the aim for creating the ideal man? Yeah, and then bending everything in their life toward that. It's interesting to me because I remember in my early life, as we started thinking about kids and then education, I remember thinking I don't think I've ever given a minute of thought to what the ideal person is, let alone what that education should be Sure.
Speaker 1:I mean many of us, right, cause we're not steeped in this thought, it's not something that we've inherited. It would be really nice if you were. You know, in a way not not that I would want my kids to be a Spartan, but if you were just raised from your youth you were so saturated in this ideal that you net one you never questioned it, but two, you were like, yeah, I was going to pass that along to my kids as well. Right, we didn't get that. We didn't get that kind of Christian paideia one because it's not baked into the culture anymore. Right, that's a big part of this.
Speaker 1:I think it was a pastor, doug Wilson, when I was just reading his the paideia of God, I believe it's called where there's a chapter in there where he actually makes the claim that this kind of Paideia isn't actually achievable in its fullest sense without a largely Christian society, because, again, it does influence even the laws of the land. Right, if you grew up under pagan laws, how can your kids grow up being shaped by Christian laws? Because they're not. They're not Christian laws, right, so they don't even have, at least in how they're born and raised. They don't have a category for that kind of thought, right? They didn't get that from their youth?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think even as many Christians have found there's this. You know there's a cross-current, if you will, where you're aiming at Christian children, but then the culture is aiming at something totally different. It kind of ties in Kevin to, I think, where we've been so lay out for us. Just we've talked about Christian foundation, christian lens, I guess. Give us just an overview of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we've been trying to set the stage, in a way, for the rest of our efforts together in this podcast, which is really trying to set forth a robust, a rigorous, practicable and affordable way of educating our kids, giving them the paideia of the Lord. So we're asking this question of well, what is a Christian education in the first place? What are the left and right limits? That could be for a homeschool family, that could be for a private school family, it doesn't matter, right? But as you're considering this, what is Christian education in the first place? And we're looking at it from multiple angles. So we did talk about pouring a Christian foundation. If you don't have that, how can you say it's a Christian education, right? But then also, last time we talked about and I think it was a fun conversation you have to give your kids a Christian lens. You have to give them a way of looking at the world, not just the particulars of. You know, two plus two equals four. But why? Right, as you're looking at that, you have this lens that you are seeing through that gives you color and it also gives you clarity, right? That's what the, that's like what a prescription lens does. So we have to give that to our kids so that when they graduate our homes, like they leave our homes and are establishing their own lives, they are going to take that with them to all the other particulars that we didn't get to cover when they were with us, cause there will be other facts, other particulars they have to interact with.
Speaker 1:So, again, if we're trying to give them this Christian education, we have to understand that this is, it's comprehensive, it's a big task and we're trying to see this from a few different angles, which kind of leads us, honestly, to today's discussion, because it's something that I see, it's kind of a concern, it's a problem that I see across the culture. But even in circles, you know, even in our own circles, there's a problem that I that I see, uh, across the culture. But but even in circles, you know, even in in our own circles, there's a temptation, I think, when we're thinking about education, uh, where, where we try to play this game and and you, you know, cause we've all played this game before, you know uh, your dad says, uh, you need to go out and wash the car, and so what do you do? Well, you go out there and you spray it down with the hose and he comes. You come back inside and he's like wow, that was really fast. You wash the car, you go. Yeah, absolutely, I did wash the car.
Speaker 2:And he goes okay, Define wash.
Speaker 1:Define wash right, Okay. So because we all play this kind of like pharisaical game, in a way where we say let's just make this very clear standard, I want to be asking what is like the bare minimum I have to do to fulfill the role that you've given to me.
Speaker 3:Well and honestly, kevin, we've covered it in the King's Hall, but this goes back to even in the early 20th century. The whole concept of fundamentalism was, they said how do we boil everything down just to the central elements? And that in and of itself was kind of like it is good to know what your central doctrines are, yes, but what ended up happening was saying and everything else doesn't matter?
Speaker 1:Doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:So at the church we even talk about theological maximalism. Yep, we want to take all of life for all of Christ, but that is going to require, particularly in this conversation, an education that is full-orbed, covers in one sense everything.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah. So we have to talk about kind of the problem that we're seeing. The problem that we see is there's a temptation to lower our vision of education or to truncate kind of the way we go about this education. Right, if you had let's just you had 21 different things that you could do to educate your child, well, you're saying, well, I mean, but for it to be Christian, I just have to do these three? Right, and the answer is no.
Speaker 1:But there's a few different ways that we see this happening. One of them is this, and probably this, in a way, is the primary thread that we see tying a lot of these things together. But it's this utilitarian or pragmatic approach, what I'm calling a utilitarian scope, because, again, we're considering all of the different avenues. I said, every facet of life is directed towards this ideal. Well, is there a way that you can just hone in on these three and cut out the rest? There's this temptation, because education is hard, education is so comprehensive in its aims, in the material that it uses, all of that, it is so comprehensive and difficult that there's a temptation and we all experience this to cut back and say, well, what's the minimum really that I have to do to do the checkbox. I checked the box, I did the Christian education thing. You got the Christian education. You're welcome. Have a good life.
Speaker 3:Well, and you can see a lot of people too saying yeah, I was just reading a Joe Rigney book last night and it was about we're going through Shakespeare. Joe is and I'm thinking this is hard and he's explaining it and I'm working through the thought process and how God it's about, how God has ordered the whole creation. Ulysses is talking about this and what's interesting to me is you could read that and you go, yeah, but all all we really need to teach our kids is like how to go be a computer programmer to develop the next AI, just so they can get a paycheck.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's what you're seeing kind of across the culture. Is Just, so they can get a paycheck? Yes, and that's what you're seeing kind of across the culture. Is this focus on STEM? Yeah, right, so STEM is science, technology, engineering and math. Right, well, let's just you know, those are the things that really move the needle in society?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely know, like who needs it, right? No-transcript. The problem with all of that, other than just the fact that you know what is your lens going in there, right, it's that. Well, I'm going to do what's most useful, right, and we'll get to why that's a problem. But if you just think about it ironically, if you think about it pragmatically, right, if you think about what that's going to do, how that's actually going to work out in practice, you are going to graduate, really, really. You know technically minded PhD engineers, for example, who don't know how to read well, think well and speak well and are going to probably be very immoral, right? Because when we say amoral, right, you know the trend is going to be immoral. When we say we don't focus on that, who needs it? Well then what's going to happen? How are you going to use those tools in that production?
Speaker 3:Well, it's funny too, because you know we have this running joke because we have so many engineers in our communities here because of the government and all those things that we joke about the low EQ function of a lot of the engineer types and of course many of them aren't that way, but even at that model, if you just needed STEM, what is always fascinating to me is but you still need engineers to manage departments, which means you have to have people skills, you have to have an understanding of the world.
Speaker 3:You have to understand how humans are wired and what they're for. But even this picture of you know you think about history and how history is. Solzhenitsyn said if you wanna kill a people, you gotta cut their roots off from the historical past. You look at the Bible. It's like keep telling your children what the history of who God is, the history of God's people, because that's central to culture as well, as I mean, of course you know knowing math, that's great. We're not saying it's, it's not important. But you need this full orbed view of what education is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, otherwise you get somebody who has an A-bomb at their fingertips without the moral discernment and training to not go use that on people. Right, right, like, yeah, sure you, you did produce that. That's wonderful. And when I say wonderful I mean like, like literally, that is a wonder, like that, that is it. That's mind boggling that we can create something like that. But then, because we focus on STEM, stem, stem, to get to that point when now you have a whole, not just one particular man who's there and can, can, click the button, but you have a society of people who have trended in a certain direction, that don't have the moral formation to say no, and so now there are a lot of people who would just click the button, not even think about what it's going to do, or not care even if they did think about it. This is a. There's a really good quote.
Speaker 1:I'm holding a book right here. It's John Dewey and the decline of American education how the patron saint of schools has corrupted teaching and learning. It was put out by ISI wonderful book on John Dewey and how he just ruined American education. But on page 80, he has this really good quote. This is Henry T Edmondson III, by the way he says. Here we have a paradox. In making utility the chief goal of education, we sacrifice much of its usefulness. A merely utilitarian education is largely ineffectual precisely because it does not seek to make a student good, or at least to teach him what is good, or even to provide him with those principles that guide good behavior, all of which qualities are essential aspects of true utility. In other words, when we're looking at the greatest good for society, it's not just how many bridges and how many train tracks, how many trains can you build? Right? You could do that really well and have a completely immoral, a decadent society that actually isn't going to be for our good. So when you so tightly refine the scope of what is useful in the first place, you actually cut the legs out of under us, because you make us less useful for the common good. So that's one thing we're trying to push against is this pragmatism, this utilitarianism. You see this with STEM. Another way that we've seen this, though, is actually in homeschooling Not to pick on the homeschoolers, cause I think this can happen even in the private school, depending on how you treat this at home.
Speaker 1:But in some, in some homeschool circles, right, you kind of have the unschooling right. There's a temptation to kind of drift towards the bare minimum or those who say, well, he's 13 years old, he could just start working, right. So that's kind of for for boys. You see a trend for the boys, uh, for for the girls, and I I've heard this plenty of times even um, just considering, like why you would have a private school in the first place for ladies, like what, when they just learn best just cooking and cleaning at home with mom?
Speaker 1:Like why, why do you need to? Why do they need to be educated in that sense, like why, why do that? And honestly, it's condescending, it's patronizing to women, right, as as if, like that's that's all they're good for. Right Is just to be in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, right? There's a good quote I think it was. It was a pastor Wilson again, but he said something like a failure to educate your daughter is a failure to educate your grandson, because you recognize that a lot of the day-to-day mom is helping disciple these children. And if you have a young lady that you raise who is not competent and confident in that role, you're actually affecting your generations down the line too. But there really is this temptation, I think, to lower our vision, to lower our standards for the kind of education which is. It's an inheritance, like it's nothing less than an inheritance that you are passing on to your children, but there's a temptation to lower that, to lower the standard.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's interesting, kevin too. You were talking about specifically for women, kind of the lowered standard. Yeah, and certainly we would affirm you know mothers in the home and you know women in the home as mothers and the glory of all those things. Yes, but one of the pictures I think that's helpful, even in scripture, is Proverbs 31. So you could look at Proverbs as this you know a whole book of warnings about the. You know a king saying to his son avoid the foolish woman. And then the glory in Proverbs 31 is and now you've arrived at the godly woman.
Speaker 3:But she is multi-competent, still based in the home, focused on building up her household. She's not what we would consider a career woman all that we agree to but she's this lady wisdom. She's a picture of lady wisdom as well, and so I think when you're looking at you know we can look out in the real world and we see that, whether it's homeschool or Christian education in a classical environment like we're talking about, it really is this picture of like women who are stirring up and building and fueling the culture for future generations. Yeah, so to your point, this really can't be a minimalistic type mindset about what education itself is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't have this in the notes, but it's really important to bring up here at this point is we're kind of considering this. You have to think about what this education does Like I think we might have talked about it last time the trivium was meant to and especially like, kind of how we're using it is meant to make you a master of words. You need to be able to think well, you need to be able to read well, you need to be able to speak well. Words, words, words, right All the way across. Oh yeah, because we talked about us being disciples of the word, right, like, we are committed to the word. We are students of the word.
Speaker 1:So, as we're thinking through this, what does this education do and this is why we're pushing back against STEM, by the way, too this education is going to be taken into every area of life. This education is going to equip you to do even better in every single area of life. It's going to make you a better mother. It's going to make you a better father. It's going to make you a better plumber. It's going to make you a better electrician. It's going to make you a better school teacher. It's going to it doesn't matter right All the way across the board. It's actually going to make you better, more equipped, you know, higher capacity, higher speed in how you perform your function before God. That's what we want our education to do, and that includes for our young ladies, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's really helpful. So if you think about sort of what we're rejecting, which is this minimalistic view, what then would you say, are we trying to put in its place?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think we need to just say broadly and this is our principle number three, if you were to call it this Christian education pursues a Christian scope. So, christian education pursues a Christian scope. And what I mean by that is simply that the education that we're going to give to our children is going to be comprehensive. We'll kind of dissect this in a second, but you know, like it's in Deuteronomy six, where you see that the discipleship that we are to give to our children, uh is, it's constant, they're saturated in it. Right, you shall teach them diligently. Uh, you shall talk to them when you sit in your house, you shall, uh, when you go by the way, when you lie down, when you rise, it's, it's an all the time kind of thing, it's a, you know, this just popped up in your life. We should talk through that. Right, I'm your father, we're going to work through this together. So if you were to think through this as far as what we're imparting to our children as Christians, number two principle number two said that we needed to give them a Christian lens. So that's concerned with how we see and understand the world.
Speaker 1:Our principle number three here pursuing a Christian scope, that's a little different in the sense that it's concerned with using all lawful means that God has given to us. So if the lens gives you depth, then the scope covers breadth, right. So, in other words, scope is now taking that lens into every area of life. So there's going to be a lot of fodder for conversation there's. You know, it's going to be in their Bible reading, of course, but it's also going to be in their math. It's also going to be in their history. It's going to also be in, you know, addressing laziness in the classroom. It's going to be when you're feeding the chickens at home. It's going to be right, it's going to be every aspect of life. We can't just try to truncate it. We can't just you know so so tightly define our scope that we cut out so much of life. Right, this education is preparing you for a robust Christian life, and if that's true, then we're going to teach them to work through that in every area.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's so important, again, a picture that you see in Proverbs. Recently, I was reading and then teaching chapel through Hebrews 12, and we think of paideia in terms of Ephesians 6,. You know this training, this instruction I want to ask you in just a minute about that, but it was interesting. In Hebrews 12, it's translated discipline, mostly most translations, and same word though, yeah, and so it's interesting because this is what the Father is doing for us. Yeah, he's putting us through this paideia of what it means to be a Christian. It includes trials and suffering and hardship, to your point.
Speaker 3:Formation yeah, it's not just an official class two days a week. Yes, it's all of life that God is training us, so I just want to ask you how should we begin to think about this educational paideia?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think it's helpful to have kind of a bigger picture way of teasing this out. So the first thing that we need to recognize is that we're not just talking about duty here, right, because we do have a duty Ephesians 6, 4, right, fathers are to give their children the paideia of the Lord, the paideia and euthysia of the Lord. So, as we're thinking about this, it's not just duty, though, because if you were to ask it like that, we're already asking the question wrong in the sense of like what is the minimum that I need to do to check the box, of like, what is the minimum that I need to do to check the box? What we need to think about instead is we.
Speaker 1:It really comes back to vision. What is your vision for the education that you're giving to your children? What is your vision for what a Christian education actually ought to look like? We remember that you know the two greatest commandments we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. That means for us in particular, that means our little neighbors, right, and we are loving them by giving them this very robust, broad but helpful, really, at the end of the day, again talking about utility, true utility, a helpful education. There's a few different ways we can think about this. I want to kind of contrast them. So the first one is a low vision. You could have a low vision for the education for your children. That's what we talked about last time. With, like the, you know you have your top ramen and you open up the little seasoning packet and you sprinkle that in there, right?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you know, we just want prayer back in the classroom. You know prayer, and if they had a few Bible verses, and you know, I mean they do have Sunday school and church on Sunday and they go to the kid's church and you know that that'll do it. Well, the thing is, those two hours on Sunday are not going to fix the 35 full hours of anti-Christian education that they got during the week. This is why we're saying public school is just a no-go. It's not even on the table, right. It's because it's in those hidden assumptions, it's in the foundation they're giving them, it's in the lens that they're giving to those students. They're actually giving them an anti-Christian education because they're teaching them that all of this education stuff could be understood without reference to our creator, god, to Jesus Christ himself.
Speaker 1:So there's this low vision. That's the first one, that's the worst one, right? So that's the one we're kind of just throwing in there. The next one up would be a medium vision, this medium vision of education for our kids. So this would be more focus on prayer, bible reading, catechism, theology and shaping and forming moral character.
Speaker 1:Or, you know, this is where you'd have some people saying, like, well, just preach the gospel, like it's all about that, just reading the Bible, preaching the gospel, you don't need to worry about you know those Greek myths and they don't really need to read the classics. And you know why are you spending so much time in Latin? That's just a big waste of time. They just need to know the Bible and those are all good things. Like, like we, we need to recognize that that's not.
Speaker 1:We're not saying those are bad things, we're just saying that when you so tightly refine the scope to say that, well, that's really their education, that's actually not good. Right, because Christ isn't just Lord over the Bible, christ isn't just Lord over our hearts, he's not just Lord over our minds, right, but Christ is Lord is actually a political statement that was proclaimed and actually had people killed for it, right? If you said, oh, no, no, I just mean he's Lord of my heart, that's all I'm saying. They go, oh, that's all you were saying. Okay, cool, we're good. Then, right, like that's what the Romans like who cares?
Speaker 3:right? I saw a meme about this, kevin, and it was, you know, the statue in Iowa and it's the Star Wars, right With Anakin and Padme. So there's like the four quadrants, but in the first one he goes. I want to tear down the idols and she's like but just the ones in your heart right, just the ones in the heart.
Speaker 1:Wait just the ones in your heart, right.
Speaker 3:And he just has this look on his face. But yeah, that's right. If you have this truncated view and it's really just about you and your personal life, A, nobody cares, but that also doesn't impact the world at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't. I really want us to maybe focus our conversation at this point on this high vision. Right, so we said we said low vision, we said medium vision has a lot of good things to it, but but what I want all of us and this is listeners as well I want us to be able to set our minds. I want us to be able to cast this positive vision, this high vision for what Paideia is meant to be, and to do this, we need to recognize that the task of paideia, the task we've been given as fathers but mothers, you are right there alongside as well in raising these children, it is nothing less than a monumental cultural task. Again, we're trying to teach them to see Jesus Christ as the answer for everything, and that means we're going to use every angle possible, we're going to use every facet possible, and we're aiming at children who, by the time that they've graduated, are homes in a way, are high speed and high capacity, because they can actually read well, think well, speak well. All of that they can serve well. We actually want to think bigger and bigger, instead of trying to ask the question of what's the minimum that we have to do. We want to see the kingdom of God grow again, made with living stones, with Christ as the cornerstone. But we have to recognize that that happens by the formation that we are giving to our children. We are trying to equip them to think through this as well, so that then they give that to their children. They give that to their children. It's an inheritance that's being passed on, this very robust world and life view that they're going to take into every area of life, right, all of Christ for all of life. They are going to take that with them because they are fundamentally changed as well. So you see this, there are a few places we see this in the Bible.
Speaker 1:I think it's good just to linger on this for a second. We've already talked about Ephesians 6, 4,. Right. You have paideia and euthysia. He uses the specific word. The Greeks knew what that word meant. That was not a surprise. That was not an accident, okay, it's also not new to the Hebrews, right. We talked about Deuteronomy six. It was a comprehensive education. It wasn't just a, you know, just a little sprinkling of Jesus on there, right, that's not what that was, but I think we should linger on this. So one that's really helpful is just to consider kind of the final parting words, right? Jesus gives the great commission and he says that his disciples but also us by extension are to disciple all the nations. They're going to baptize them and they're going to teach them to obey all that the Lord commanded. This is not like a little here. Memorize some Bible verses and then the rest is all. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember a seminary professor saying this, but he was like I don't think that we fully grasped when Jesus said teach them all that I have commanded yeah, and the scope then of the nations. But basically to his point, he's like you could spend your whole life with your kids teaching them all that Jesus commanded and you wouldn't be done.
Speaker 1:Yes, Because you're taking it into every corner of life, but also, in this case, in Matthew 28,. In every corner of the world, right To all the nations. This is so radically comprehensive it's hard to understand. This is why I think it's helpful when Jesus just says hey, you guys wouldn't get this. Let me just give you a parable right.
Speaker 1:He just says you know what the kingdom of heaven is like? A mustard seed. It's the smallest seed that you can find, but it's going to grow up and eventually that tree is going to house birds. Birds are going to make their nests in it, right, it's going to give shade to all the ground, everyone underneath it. Or it's like it's like leaven hidden in three measures of flour, right, and it grows and grows and grows until the whole dough is leavened. That is what the kingdom of God is like, because it is going to be world swallowing. It's going to be so comprehensive.
Speaker 1:That is the kind of education, that's the kind of thing you know, tangible thing, culturally that we are handing down to our children through paideia. This is not a limited scope. This is not like a tiny little thing, right, it's going to swallow every aspect of life. It's going to inform every aspect of life. You also see this in 1 Corinthians 12, right, that's the kind of famous section where Paul's talking about us not being just individuals, kind of floating out there. We're one body with many members.
Speaker 1:One thing that's been important to me even how I think through business and how I think through what we're equipping our children to become in this community is recognizing that we want to fill every seat possible with Christians, and what I mean by that is we. You know, we. We want plumbers, definitely. We want doctors, we want a PhD electrician who actually teaches up at Weber. We want a Christian in each of those seats. Right, because that is actually going to be to God's glory. And the way that you do that is you teach them to think through every area of life Christianly Science, plumbing, all of it, everything. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's not just STEM.
Speaker 1:It's not just STEM, it goes into every area of life. Another kind of pivotal point of this conversation is in 2 Corinthians 10, in verse 5. That's the section where Paul is saying that we are going to tear down every lofty opinion raised against God. Right, the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly. They're not. We're not literally taking out the sword and saying you know, you are going to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, tomorrow, right or today, but we actually are going to tear those down, which means we need to teach our children to interact with those ideas as well as.
Speaker 3:Christians. Well, it's interesting too because, you know, a lot of the Christianity that many of us grew up with was sort of like a you know, I don't know mainline evangelical or just like watered down Baptist or something like that. And it was interesting because it was like the only thing you really need to know is the core tenets of the gospel so you can evangelize people. You know, maybe memorize a few scripture verses. But one of the things recently I was thinking about is that in Colossians we're told that all wisdom is found in Christ. We also know from the Gospels that Christ is the one greater than Solomon who has come.
Speaker 3:And when you look at the scope of Solomon's wisdom, he was planting gardens, so he's like a botanist and a gardener. He was building great public works, so he's a master architect in construction. And he's deciding these really difficult moral cases, so he's really a great judge and political leader. So you think about the scope of his rule and his wisdom. It's like everything. What is Solomon really good at? Knowledge, but also application. On the wisdom side, it's really easy everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you think of it like that and that's Christ, and make it just really concrete. I think that's helpful because you recognize that this wasn't meant to just be like a few. You memorize your 25 scripture verses before you graduated the home and you're able to give kind of the plan of salvation. You know, here's the story arc of redemption. Good job, now go, just do whatever everyone else is doing. You know, is that more to God's glory or is it the Solomonic wisdom that actually takes it into every area of life?
Speaker 3:Well, and that's what's crazy. Right Is then, and then you know we're in Christ. You know right, and then we're in Christ, followers of Christ. We're in Christ, we have union with Christ. But we're told that Christ is far greater than Solomon. Yeah, so if he's this king and ruler, what kind of wisdom is he imparting? It's even greater than what Solomon had. It's not just like a Sunday school Bible lesson that's cute and all those things, but it's gonna be about when you're in heaven and you're talking to Christ about astrophysics. He's not gonna be bewildered. No, no, no, he's like what I put that there. And again, talk about everything, like plumbing, like everything is like you talk to a great, you know building contractor, you know Kevin Griffin. You're like this guy's brilliant, but in a very different way than, say, like Pastor Brian. Yes, you know different, but all of that is contained in the wisdom of Christ, yep.
Speaker 1:Which is again what we're trying.
Speaker 1:What we're laboring to do is we are trying to cast this, this big vision, a high vision, not not just for the education, but honestly, what the education will bloom and blossom to become, which is culture, right, like this, this education is going to show forth with a, with a student who went through this very high and robust training to love the Lord and to see him in every area of life.
Speaker 1:They're going to grow up and they're going to be in our community and that is going to be to God's glory because, yeah, they're going to be the best plumbers, they're going to be the best politicians because they've had this robust training.
Speaker 1:And, to be completely honest, as we consider the fact that all of the wisdom and knowledge is hidden in Jesus Christ, we recognize that God has given us the manual, he's given us the playbook to make you even that much more successful again through Jesus Christ, in every area of life. Because, when it comes to even political decisions, right, you're able to think through that, as a Christian, you know what would actually be best for everyone. Right, you are informed, you are the man who has become wise, who is not swept away by every wind of doctrine. You are the man who is planted beside streams of water that yield its fruit in its season, because you are committed to God's word and seeing that through in every area of life. That's what we're trying to do. That's the kind of vision that we're trying to cast for our children and our community in general.
Speaker 3:So I totally agree, kevin. One of the questions I would have is, as you start to think about bringing these you know principles down to earth, landing some of them in your context, maybe as father, headmaster, like what you know, let's start there. But how are you landing this? Like, what are you thinking through?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, so kind of parting, parting words in a way, first off as as a headmaster here at St Brendan's, but then also just as a father, first and foremost just doing my best to not think through this minimalistically. But as we're casting this high vision, I want to actually lean into this theological maximalism. I want to see, I want literally to pray that God would actually have Jesus Christ, knowledge of Jesus Christ, in every corner of the earth, in every facet of life, and that's what I want to hand down to my children, right? So I want to cast that for them as well. And this is going to influence how we treat sports, you know, like we have a wrestling team, how we, you know, encourage our children to interact with their friends, what kind of video games we do or do not allow them to play. It's going to be their geometry, it's going to be their school environment that we try to cultivate here.
Speaker 1:The book choices that we use everything, every single facet of life.
Speaker 1:The Christian parent is going to use them wisely, is going to use them to direct their children to that final aim, which is conformity to the image of the sun, right?
Speaker 1:And what this means is that we cannot assume that one hour of Sunday school and one hour of church service on Sunday is going to just fix everything, as if that is enough formation to guide them to Christ in this very robust, rigorous, deep way. Cause that's what we want All of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength, not just a little bit, not just a little corner of my life, not just on Sundays, but every single day, every single area of our lives we want to direct toward loving God. And if we do this well and this is the last point if we do this well, we need to recognize that cultivating these talents in our children because that's what they are we could bury them, we could bury it, but cultivating these talents in our children will actually be one more to God's glory. And two will make them so that they can love and serve their neighbor even better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a phenomenal point, kevin. As we close down this show, I want to let people know that we do have a Patreon channel. There's a number of tiers. Walk me through, kind of, what the point of this is and what people can get access to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we want to put out free resources for you. All these conversations are a big part of it, right, past that we actually want to help equip you with a lot of the concrete nitty gritties whether it's questions getting answered, finally, or it's just resources that I've been creating and you know you can always, you know, drop us a note either on social media or send an email or something telling us if there's something specific that you want to see. But the big thing, the reason for Patreon in the first place, is so that we can put out more of these resources and pass that, so that we can create a community around other people who are pointed in the same direction, who don't want a low vision for their education, for their kids. If you don't want a low vision, you're going their kids. If you don't want a low vision, you're going to ask a lot more questions, right, because you're going to say, well, how do I do this in math then? Right, how do I think through this, anyone else using some good resources for this? So that would be the community aspect that we're trying to cultivate and encourage through Patreon.
Speaker 1:We have a homeschool specific thread, we're going to have a private school specific thread, but basically the way that this lines up is if you're on our bronze tier, that's 595. You have, basically, you're just trying to give general support, keep this project going, but then we are also giving ad free episodes, right? So just cuts that out for you. On the silver tier, you have the more like the behind the scenes Q and a bonus resources getting put out. We have that for 10 95. Uh, you also have the gold tier.
Speaker 1:This is for homeschoolers specifically, right? This is again that community where you're going to get more resources put out specific to homeschoolers, and then you'll have others that you could ask a question. You could get answers that way. That's $25.95. Then there's a platinum tier. That's the private school specific one. That's $50.95. And then there's even a corporate tier. This is for businesses and entrepreneurs who see the importance of this task, because they too have that high vision and they want to see this continue to go and grow again to God's glory and, I think, to our children's good as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome, so we encourage people to check out the link in the show notes. You can sign up on Patreon today. Of course, that helps support this show but also, as Kevin said, gets you access to a lot of great content as well. We are still working on our sign-off. I propose that we do a Latin sign-off. That was six simper terrenis.
Speaker 1:Kevin was like that's incorrect.
Speaker 3:Not for this podcast. That doesn't even make sense. So maybe for our Patreon supporters, we'll kick this to them. What do you guys think the sign-off of the show should be? It's not going to be Stay.
Speaker 1:Frosty, is it Ad Fontes?
Speaker 3:Is it To fight Is?
Speaker 1:it ad fontes? Is it, you know, to the sources? What is it?
Speaker 3:We should have a Twitter poll.
Speaker 1:Let's do it.
Speaker 3:So look for that, but until next time we'll catch you guys on the flip side. Kevin, thanks so much.
Speaker 2:That's all I got. We all belong to Jerusalem above and we sail for Eden's shores and we sail for Eden's shores and we sail for Eden's shores.