Those of you who know me know that I am deeply concerned about not only false teaching, but particularly the shallow insubstantial teaching of the Scripture in a growing number of our evangelical churches. This leaves this generation of Christians un-equipped and the next generation with very little knowledge of the Christian faith to not only follow but to pass down to the next generation.
The dumbing down of the church is dishonoring to God, harmful to Christians, and consigns future generations to either perish without the truth or to live only principles of Scripture without knowing God in a way that allows them to teach the generation that succeeds them–if there is such a generation.
Simply put, one cannot teach what one does not know, and if the church abrogates her teaching responsibility, those who should be learning the faith to pass it on will be no more than emotional Christians.
C. S. Lewis (1898 -1963) taught at Oxford for 29 years and later held the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge until his death. He saw the necessity and importance of correct teaching and spoke pointedly about it in one of his God in the Dock Essays.
He said, “This very obvious fact–that each generation is taught by an earlier generation–must be kept very firmly in mind . . . None can give to another what he does not possess himself. No generation can bequeath to its successor what it has not got. You may frame the syllabus as you please. But when you have planned and reported ad nauseam, if we are skeptical we shall teach only skepticism to our pupils, if fools only folly, if vulgar only vulgarity, if saints sanctity, if heroes heroism.
Education is only the most fully conscious of the channels whereby each generation influences the next. It is not a closed system. Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils. We shall all admit that a man who knows no Greek himself cannot teach Greek to his form; but it is equally certain that a man whose mind was formed in a period of cynicism and disillusion, cannot teach hope or fortitude. A society which is predominantly Christian will propagate Christianity through its schools: one which is not, will not. All the ministries of education in the world cannot alter this law . . . ” ((C. S. Lewis, “On the Transmission of Christianity,” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology & Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1972), 116-117.))
