Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7

And we are all familiar with the verse that says

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Proverbs 9:10

This world sees wisdom in terms of academics, in terms of success, in terms of wealth. Our son Joshua helped me write a short article on Success which takes a look at what God deems as success – it certainly isn’t in terms of scholarly pursuits.

Proverbs is full of comparisons between worldly wisdom and Godly wisdom. Godly wisdom will preserve you, will satisfy you, will guide you, will give you peace, will give you eternal life.

This is what I want for my children.

So it is with care that I set out my children’s formal studies. I want to keep it in balance with what God desires for His children. At no time does the Proverbs presentation of wisdom appear to be purely academic; wisdom is a practical outworking of knowing Jesus.

This helps me place these studies in their right place. I encourage you to read our Scope and Sequence as it shows very clearly where our priorities lay.

Using our Brain to the Glory of God
God has given us a brain, and I believe the story of the 10 Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) is an appropriate reminder here. God gives us different talents and abilities and we are to do the best with them that we can. God doesn’t want us to bury our brains thinking that it will become corrupt, or thinking we will gain worldly wisdom and become “puffed up”. God has given each of us a brain to put to work for His Glory.
Our first goal in using our brain is to learn to think like God, to understand the Word and to apply the principles He lays out there for us to live our life by. This is the second part to relationship – the first part is to know God; that is a heart response. The second part is to understand His Word; that is the brain part.

So though academics are at the lower end of our priority in our Scope and Sequence we are using our brain when we pursue Relationships especially in terms of speaking and listening. We are using our brain when we master our Responsibilities. We are using our brain when we understand ourselves and practice our Talents. We are in no way encouraging laziness in this area of our children’s lives, rather an excellence which comes from broad and practical applications.

The pursuit of academic studies studies does not have to be working toward the success of man; worldly wisdom. God wants us to understand His creation (after all He commanded us to have dominion), He wants us to understand His Story (history), He wants us to go out and tell the world (Communication), He wants us to give an account for the hope that is within us (Biblical world view, thinking, reasoning skills). Our goal in all that we study needs to be for the glory of God.

We have divided our formal studies into three areas. They are prioritized and this helps us with keeping our days in balance – keeping our eyes on what is important. It must be understood though that in all that we do we are presenting to our children what God says about things. Even before we start to look at these areas of study we are quoting scripture to them, helping them memorise scripture, and understand who God is, what He is about, and why these things are important. Attaining a Biblical World View begins from toddler – way before we begin to think about their formal studies.