Legacy
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

My son Campbell is actually a Robert. So am I. So is my dad. So was his dad. So was his dad. We're all Roberts, and we're all Cs, but all the C's are different. I always knew that if God should bless me with a son that he would be the walking whiskey bottle, RC the Fifth. The goal of course is not to establish some sort of dynasty. Though what I do is something like what my father does (in the same way that a paper airplane is something like a NASA rocket), none of us hold political office nor aspire to it. And though I would like to see a monarchy established one day, I don't expect I'll be the King. Instead the similar names communicate a legacy. They suggest to each son that there are expectations placed upon them at their birth.

The story is told that as Alexander the Great's armies rolled over the known world that at least one of his soldiers wasn't much enjoying all the fun. He deserted the army, for fear of death. Instead of finding peace, however, the cowardly young man was captured and brought before the young emperor himself. "What is your name, young man?" Alexander is said to have asked. "Alexander" the deserter meekly replied. "Well, young man, either change your name, or change your behavior." I want my son to remember that he carries not only my name, but my father's, and his father's and his father's.

I'm going to die, just as my father's father, and his father before him. Yet just as those great men still live in my father, my son, and me, so too will I live on when I am gone. And what is left of me depends on what I leave to my son. And that is whv we teach my son at home.

In this column we have argued against the wicked instruction going on in government schools. We have argued that Deuteronomy 6 rather straightforwardly leaves the job of instructing children in the hands of the parents. We have encouraged parents to not fear either the strange looks of family and friends, nor the burden of this task. But there's another reason why I'm committed to homeschooug my children. I have too much to tell them to be able to spare the time to let someone else teach them.

I want my children to learn more from me than "Don't believe everything you hear at government school." I want them to believe what I believe, but with greater fervor and conviction. And what I want most for them is wisdom.

During family worship right now we are reading together through the Proverbs. We all know that Proverbs is the wisdom book. But what we don't often know is that so much of it is devoted to this bit of wisdom, that it is wise to seek wisdom. Proverbs is not a long book, yet the first nine chapters do not so much explain wisdom as extol it. These chapters repeat the same refrain, "Get wisdom, get wisdom", without really dispensing much.

But if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, I suspect that step two is the recognition that wisdom is a good thing to have. And so these are the steps we're taking with our children, telling them, "Fear God, and seek wisdom." And this is the center of the content we are trying to teach them. One of the problems we have as the first generation of homeschoolers (of course we're not really the first, just the first in a long, long time) is that as teachers our concept of education has been formed by at best the Christian school we attended, and far more likely, the anti-Christian school we attended. We hold onto the stated goal of the state school, to create productive members of society, even when we reject the state's ability to reach that goal. We hold onto the stated goal of the Christian school, to create productive members of society that believe in creation and know a Bible verse or two, even when we decide that we can do it cheaper.

But we need a deeper Reformation. We need to go back to the Bible to see what the end goal is. We want to raise up adults who are steeped in biblical wisdom. We want them to know the Word of God, and to know how to handle it, to apply it to their circumstance. We want children that neither fall into sin through ignorance, nor find themselves foolish enough to be seduced by it. We want children who know the holiness, sovereignty of God so well, who understand it so deeply, that they will stand immovable before a rebellious world. We children who know what to do, and why they should do it, for every circumstance that comes their way.

That's a very different goal not only from "learning to embrace differences" that our OBE PC masters want to get in their heads. It's also very different from having as our goal that they know the Pythagorean Theorem. Such is not a bad thing to know, but remember, we only have so much time. Yes our sons may need one day to know that Pythagorean theorem, not because "the job market" dictates how we teach our children, but as an aid in exercising dominion, but first, they need to get wisdom.

Folly is presented in Proverbs as a whore, calling out to young men, trying to seduce them. But she is a clever whore. She isn't content with trying to woo my son from wisdom via sexual temptation. She has a variety of costumes, including the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit of power, the pursuit of the favor of men. The banquet of illicit pleasures fills many tables. But we want to dine on wisdom, to be satisfied with the pleasure of knowing, believing, and acting on the truth. And we want our children to want the same. In all your giving, give wisdom.