Our Spiritual Heritage

27 Sep

Our Spiritual Heritage

When I was a senior in high school, I played the part of Captain Hook in the senior class skit for our Homecoming Pep Rally. Of course the audience booed when I entered, in the tradition of melodramas, because I was, after all, the bad guy. I had a mustache taped to my face and I made the red jacket with shiny gold buttons myself. My mother is the one who taught me to sew and, in spite of the discouragement of frequent ripping out of seams during the learning process, for many years I sewed most of my wardrobe myself. Those skills were necessary for our young family struggling to survive on a GS-3 level salary during Dan’s first years as a federal employee.

Last weekend would have been my parents’ seventy-third wedding anniversary. This summer, putting their wedding picture up on the wall along with other family photos made me start thinking about the heritage they passed on to my generation. Sewing, home-making, financial, and organizational skills, while important, are certainly not the only heritage my parents gave me. The most important heritage is their spiritual heritage, biblical truths taught me by both my mother and father, as well as the dedicated Sunday School teachers my parents intentionally made sure I sat with each Sunday morning. That heritage of faith and biblical knowledge was also intentionally passed on to Dan by his parents and it continues to strengthen and uphold us through all of life’s twists and turns forty-five years after our own wedding.

In 2 Timothy 1:4-5 Paul cites the generational transmission of the issues of faith in Timothy’s life: “I greatly desire to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice. And I am persuaded that [it is] in you also.”

In Romans 16:13 Paul requests the recipients of his letter to “salute Rufus, [the son of Simon the Cyrene (Mark 15:21)] and his mother and mine.” There is nowhere in Scripture that indicates that Paul and Rufus were brothers. This suggests that the mother of Rufus ministered to Paul somehow in his journeys that made him consider her a person who mothered him as his own mother would.

His own mother and father certainly did their duty to transmit their spiritual heritage to the next generation, though. As Jews, they closely followed the command in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 4 to “Hear, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” As a result Paul declares himself to be a zealous and highly educated Jew in Acts 22:3, someone who learned at the very feet of the renowned Rabbi Gameliel.

While we are no longer bound by Old Testament law because Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection gave us the New Covenant, the mandate to transmit our spiritual and biblical heritage to the next generation continues and is communicated in Ephesians 6:4, “And, you fathers, provoke not your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” This heritage is passed on primarily in the way you live out your faith in your home and in the marketplace. But it is also an intentional supplying and talking about spiritual and biblical truths with your wife and children. Among my clearest memories of growing up are those involving Dad reading the Bible to us, at least a chapter after each evening’s dinner. Purposeful attendance at a solidly biblical church is also part of the equation.

When it comes to training our children in the way they should go (Prov. 22:6), we cannot expect them to just absorb Christianity by osmosis. We are called to actively lead and teach our children biblical truth.