All quotes are adapted from “A Sermon on Keeping Children in School” by Martin Luther
God has not given you your children and the means to support them simply so that you may do with them as you please, or train them just to get ahead in the world. You have been earnestly commanded to raise them for God’s service.
Now if you have a child who is able to learn, and you are in a position to keep him or her at it, but do not do so, . . . then you are doing all in your power to oppose worldly authority.
Every occupation has its own honor before God, as well as its own requirements and duties. You may rejoice and be glad from the heart if you find that you have been chosen by God to devote your means and labor to raising a son who will be a good Christian pastor, preacher, or schoolmaster, and thereby to raise for God a special servant.
For my part, I would rather earn ten gulden by a work that is a service of God, than a thousand gulden by a work that is not a service of God but serves only self and Mammon.
The children of the common people will necessarily rule the world, both in the spiritual and the worldly estates.
These ideas ought to be impressed particularly by the preachers on the people from their youth up, by schoolmasters, and by parents, so that they may learn well what estates and offices are God’s, ordained by God, so that once they know this they will not despise or ridicule or speak evil of any one of them but hold them all in high regard and honor. That will both please God and serve the cause of peace and unity, for God is a great lord and has many kinds of servants.
All God-pleasing professions and occupations are to be praised as highly as they can be, and none despised in favor of another.
Learning is not easily acquired, nor easily put to work. For although such works do not make men righteous before God or save them, nevertheless, it is a joy and comfort to know that these works please God so very much—and the more so when one is a believer and is in the kingdom of Christ, for he thereby thanks God for his benefits, bringing to him the finest thank offering, the highest service.
I hold that there was never a better time to study than right now, not only because knowledge is so abundant and cheap, but also because of the great wealth and honor to which it leads.
From Parents Crosslink Spring 2011 © 2011 Northwestern Publishing House. All rights reserved.