I finally got around to listening to another of the messages that C.J. and Carolyn Mahaney gave at the 2005 Men’s and Women’s Conference of the Bible Church of Little Rock.

This one is titled “The Soul of Modesty” and is a terrific and helpful exposition of Scripture addressing the subject of feminine modesty. However, lest you misunderstand modesty to mean “prudeness” or “unattractive dress,” let me commend you to listen to this message, which instead defines modesty in a gospel-centered rather than fashion-centered way. In other words, C.J. is not interested in having you all dress as if you lived on the set of Little House on the Prairie. Instead, the goal is to dress as women mindful of the gospel, both in relationship to other believers as well as the lost. The message was especially helpful to me as a father of a daughter (soon to be two!) and thinking about how to help them in this area in the future.

If you’re short on time, a brief summary of the points made in the message can be found on the Sovereign Grace Ministries site. Nevertheless, I’d encourage you to make the time (about an hour) to hear C.J. deliver this humble and powerful sermon.

Note: C.J. makes reference to a helpful two-sheet guide called a “Modesty Heart Check” written by his wife Carolyn and their three daughters. You can download that from the same site.

UPDATE: The audio & SGM links have been updated.

I received a question from Evers’s brother regarding the classical education information I provided in the below post. Since it is a good question, I thought it would be beneficial to respond in a new post rather than in the comment section.

Question: is there anything that makes a classical education particularly more Christian per se, or is it simply one of a number of options for education consistent with Christian values and/or priorities?

To answer this question, I’ll direct you back to the interview with Susan Wise Bauer. Mrs. Bauer said:

Why haven’t I said anything about “Christian”? Because I strongly believe that parents who are Christians will give their children a Christian education while following this pattern. . . . .

She then defines what Christian education is:

a Christian education is one that grapples with the ideas of history, science, and literature in the light of God’s truth, revealed in Scripture and through the faithful obedience of Christ’s church. If you want to give your children a classical Christian education, you’ll have to work at it; there are plenty of resources to help you, of course, but you’ll have to commit yourself to faithful membership in a local church, and to continual self-education in the foundations of your own beliefs, so that you can provide your children with the wise discipleship they need as they encounter the ideas - good and bad, true and false - of men and women throughout history.

She further defines what a Christian education is in her article entitled “A Neutral Education?” (This is a very long article but definitely well worth the read for the interested)

Christian education is that which has the knowledge of God at its core.

Christian education is not which method you employ nor what curriculum you use, rather, it is how parents educate their children. I know there are non-Christian homeschoolers who use Christian curriculum such as A Beka. These parents certainly don’t uphold the Christian doctrines and will thus provide a secularized education for their children. On the other hand, Christian parents can utilize non-Christian material to give a very Christian education.

So then, does one have to employ a classical method in order for it to be Christian? No. Can one use a different method such as unit study, Charlotte Mason, or unschooling and still have a Christian education? One certainly can as long as the parents uphold the “knowledge of God at its core.” I personally don’t believe that classical education has an advantage over the other methods for being more Christian. Evers and I have decided on classical education because of its model (trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric stages). We especially like its emphasis of teaching children how to learn thus producing a lifelong love of learning. Because we are Christians, we are striving to give our children a Christian education to the glory of God.

To summarize, I’ll leave you with a quote from Mrs. Bauer:

In the end, Christian education is that given to children by Christian parents who are in obedience to the elders of Christ’s body, the local church.

We are following the classical education model for our homeschool and are using The Well Trained Mind as our curriculum. I recently discovered an interview on Debra Bell’s website with Susan Wise Bauer, author of the aforementioned book. If you want to know what classical education is about, this interview summarizes the ideas very concisely.

Evers as a baby followed by our dear Andrew at 21 months old.

For the past couple of weeks, the CD being played repeatedly in our house is Sovereign Grace Ministries worship project Awesome God, which is their first worship CD especially targeted for kids (target age group: 7 and up). The CD was kindly provided for free by SGM as part of an offer from Bob Kauflin on his Worship Matters blog to bloggers willing to give it a listen and provide a review on their blogs. This CD has thus been our daily music intake for a couple of weeks on end so that we could get a real feel for it. Granted, our two boys are only 3 1/2 and 21 months old respectively, but they have enjoyed many of the worship songs/hymns that we’ve sung with/to them over the past several years. Our younger son can even hum the tune to Before The Throne of God Above recognizably although he doesn’t even really talk yet! Well, enough preface, here goes…

Bob Kauflin describes the CD in his blog entry this way:

The 12 songs on this CD were written, selected, and arranged to help kids better comprehend the nature and attributes of God, including the fact that He is holy, eternal, the Creator, triune, and our Savior. We wanted the music to be contemporary, accessible, and singable, without it overshadowing the lyrics. We also tried to make most of the songs deep enough so that kids might get more out of the lyrics as they mature.

After spending two weeks listening to the CD, we have been much impressed by it, especially as children’s “worship” music goes. There is a lot of variety of musical styles on the album, from several meditative slow songs to the very “bouncy” Forever God track (whose chorus repeats, “You go on and on and on and on…” etc.). From a production standpoint, it’s excellently done, avoiding the mistake of the dime-a-dozen “children’s praise” CDs so common on discount racks that are frankly unimpressive musically speaking. Most of the songs on the CD also feature the voices (in both solo & choir) of obviously gifted teenagers and younger children.

But what’s really enjoyable is that content-wise the songs don’t simply dwell in the realm of “Father Abraham Had Many Sons…” type children’s church songs. Instead, consistent with many of Sovereign Grace Music’s other worship projects, every song is filled with solid content about God and his attributes and the blessings of the gospel. Excepting the youthful voices featured in this album and some of the more “fun” presentations of a few of the songs, every song could just as easily found its way on SGM’s other worship CDs. In fact, at least one song is on another SGM worship album: The Gospel Song, which I really enjoy for its simplicity in declaring the gospel in four lines and in my opinion would be a much welcome replacement to “Jesus Loves Me” in children’s ministries.

As a matter of personal preference, I might’ve liked a greater percentage of slower “singable” songs. By “singable” I simply mean songs that I can sing with my kids without pulling out a guitar and drums and from which they can easily meditate on the truths within. My personal experience suggests that songs that kids hear and want to “dance” to, they’ll dance to; and songs that they can sing a cappella, they’ll learn the words and sing. Naturally, since I see these songs as a tool for learning and expressing truth about God’s glories, I lean towards the latter as a preference.

Our kid’s assessment? They want to listen to the album every morning when they wake up! I look forward to teaching these songs alongside all of our other “adult” worship songs to my children in future years. Many thanks to SGM for demonstrating a real love for children in putting together this project.

Evers and Matthew went to McDonald’s this evening on the way back from an errand to get a couple of ice cream sundaes (one for me and one for Daddy - and none for Matthew), and upon returning, Evers asked me (in front of Matthew):

Evers: “Does Matthew deserve any ice cream today?”
Lois: “No, he has been very unkind to his brother today. He kept picking on him all day.”
Evers: “Why should we give him any then, even when he doesn’t deserve it?”
Lois: “Because of grace.”
Evers: “What is grace?”
Lois” “Grace is when we receive something that we don’t deserve.”

Evers then turned to Matthew and explained that in the same way God shows grace to us when we don’t deserve it. Matthew certainly did not deserve this treat this evening, but because of grace, he had the privilege of eating it.

This may seem over his head, but from past experiences, I believe he gets it. If not now, he will in the future. I had a hard time with him today because he continued to mistreat his brother even after repeated corrections. When Evers got home I expressed my frustration and disappointment to him. This unexpected trip to McDonald’s was beneficial because it gave us an opportunity to teach Matthew about grace and God. Even though today’s events didn’t go so well, I’m happy to have had this little conversation with Matthew.

I was struck this evening by this portion of Ezra’s prayer to God upon discovering that the remnant in exile had sinned by intermarrying with the peoples of the various pagan nations:

And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this, shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations? Would you not be angry with us until you consumed us, so that there should be no remnant, nor any to escape? O Lord the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this.

What greater description of God’s mercy can there be but this? Even though he lived before the coming of Christ, Ezra knew mercy when he saw it. He knew the patience of God. And when he learned of God’s people sinning in spite of the full mercy of God, it brought him great grief. He never once questioned the justice of God in punishing sinners but rightly saw that anything less than complete and total destruction was “less than our iniquities deserved.”

I think of J.C. Ryle’s commentary on John 13 when he wrote that God’s love is in one sense even more amazing toward the redeemed than the lost. He reflected Christ’s immense patience with the continued sins of those who’ve been shown mercy, as opposed to those who’ve never experienced it. How often we redeemed forget the mercies of God and reveal our ungrateful hearts.

It is my hope that I may have something of Ezra’s heart-brokenness at my own sin especially in light of the cross, where surely God has “punished us less than our iniquities deserve” by laying that punishment on His own beloved Son. May I set myself daily at the foot of the cross in wonder at His mercies and strive to live a holy life not out of a desire to justify myself but as a response of worship of the mercies of my risen Savior:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)