"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."
—John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756
Someone posted this quote to a homeschool list that I'm on, and I just love it! "If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." How true!
This afternoon in Relief Society we talked about the importance of learning "by study and by faith" and visited one of my favorite scriptures:
"Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.
And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come."
If these things are important for us as parents to remember, to make sure that we are continually learning ourselves, how much more so that we remember to teach them to our children, to teach them to value learning! Joseph said, "Knowledge is necessary to life and godliness."
Our lesson today was about gaining knowledge of eternal truths, specifically about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but there is a great deal of truth out there to be had! Brigham Young talked about that:
"A fact is a fact, all truth issues forth from the Fountain of truth, and the sciences are facts as far as men have proved them. ... There is not truth but what belongs to the Gospel. It is life, eternal life; it is bliss..." Discourses of Brigham Young pg 3
In addition to the vitally important study of Gospel truths, the Lord commanded Joseph to study all sorts of things: "obtain a knowledge of history, and of countries, and of kingdoms, of laws of God and man, and all this for the salvation of Zion."
1 comment:
Amen!
Post a Comment