Christian Parenting - What is a Biblical Worldview?

Are your children being taught to think like the Scriptures?  When they encounter the ethical questions of life, will they work through these difficulties based on the teachings of Scripture or the indoctrination of secular philosophy?  As Christian parents, we are called to train up our children in the way they should go and one of the best ways of training them is to ground them in a Biblical Worldview.

A Worldview is a set of beliefs about the way life is to be lived.  We all have a worldview.  We all believe certain things about how to interact with each other, how to best punish or encourage one another, or what is right and what is wrong.  Similarly, a Biblical worldview  (BW, for short) views these questions and countless others through the eyes of God as he has revealed himself in the Bible.  A BW sees all of life as the gift of God, it sees all of humanity as creatures called to live in submission to God.  This is the foundation from which all ethical, social, political and economic decisions must be made.

How do you instill this into your children?  First, you have to live it yourself.  Do you believe that God is God and has the right to tell you how to live?  Do you believe that your finances, time, relationships and politics should conform to God's plans for humanity?  If you don't, you will never succeed in giving your children a BW.  But if you do, then you can move onto the step 2.

Step 2 is to pray for your children.  Practice the other disciplines we have discussed earlier in these posts: family worship, obedience, spiritual formation.  These lay the groundwork by modeling the importance of taking time to seek God and living under authority.  When this is in place, or concurrent with it, start to catechize your children.

Catechizing is a process of teaching children core truths of the Scripture by question and answer.  Our family is currently using the Westminster Shorter Catechism as we work through Starr Meade's book, Training Hearts, Teaching Minds.  By memorizing the questions and answers, we are planting the foundations of a scripture based worldview in our children.  I am currently working on a similar book related to the Heidelberg Catechism.  Each of these catechisms cover things like: Who is God?  Who is man?  What is sin?  What does the 10 commandments teach?  The Lord's Prayer?

As children learn these 100-127 questions the foundations are established.  Then over time we can invite our children to reflect on political and social events from their understanding of the Scriptures.