The Design

The diagnosis is now complete. Five chapters have named what has changed, why it reaches children so young, what the empty home costs, and how the floor dropped to where it is. What follows is the design—what God put in place before any of this happened and what still holds.

God did not leave the formation of children to the institution of the school. He gave it to the family.

Deuteronomy 6 states the design with precision that still holds:

"Listen, Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength. These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up." — Deuteronomy 6:4-7 (NET)

Notice what is not said. There is no curriculum. There is no school. There is no designated time or formal structure. The formation God designed runs through the ordinary hours of ordinary days—the house, the road, the lying down, the rising up. It is embedded in life, not scheduled alongside it. It presupposes that the parents possess the words before they speak them to the children. It assumes a household ordered around the love of God, from which the formation of children flows naturally.

That is the design. The school, at its best, supplements it.

Schools are institutions; they expand into available space because that is what institutions do. The displacement named in this book is not a failure of the school to stay in its lane. It is a failure of the home to occupy the territory that belongs to it. When the home is empty, the school fills the space. When the home speaks, the school is an adjunct to a formation already underway.

The formation of children in the knowing that is eternal life cannot be outsourced. Not to the Sunday school. Not to the Christian school. Not to the pastor. These are genuine gifts and genuine supplements. The primary formation institution is the home—eating dinner together, walking to the car, lying down at night. That is where Deuteronomy 6 places the work. That is where the work has to happen.

Chapter Seven