Academic Motivation for Your Children
Do you struggle to motivate your children when it comes to their academics? Does it seem as if your kids have no drive to work hard on their school assignments? If so, what have you tried to do to motivate them?
Maybe you’ve offered to reward them, providing money, toys, or outings in exchange for honest effort. Maybe you’ve give them threats, warning them that they will lose certain privileges for lackadaisical effort. It could be that you’ve tried sitting down with them and explaining the negative long-term effects of apathy. Of course, these approaches, while perhaps helpful in limited quantities and very specific circumstances, are merely outward modifications to their behavior. Is there anything that addresses the heart?
For Christians, the answer is obvious: only the Gospel can renew a person to the extent that they become a new creation, having been regenerated and united to Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). Apart from a saving knowledge of Christ, all efforts to motivate, no matter how well-intentioned, are external and temporary. Knowing the hard work that Christ performed in order to bring about our redemption is the greatest motivation for us likewise to work hard. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord and not for people, knowing that it is from the Lord that you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve” (Col. 3:23-24).
Of course, that pat answer doesn’t provide concrete direction for putting it into practice.
That’s where the expository parenting philosophy of ministry comes into place. When you seek to deliver the full counsel of God to your kids, walking verse by verse through the Scriptures with them, and bringing them each week to a church that does likewise, the motivation for study becomes very apparent, very quickly. That’s because teaching the Bible is not an easy task. It requires diligence to the highest degree. And in order for your kids to understand the teachings of Scripture in the most meaningful way possible, they not only must be taught by one who has given academic effort in preparation, but must also invest themselves intellectually while they listen. It requires, as one pastor has called it, “expository listening.”[1]
It is within the context of verse-by-verse Bible teaching that the secret to academic motivation is found.
The Secret to Motivation
One of the remarkable things about expository preaching is that the very act itself instills a love of learning in both the teacher and the hearer. God’s grace, acting through His Word in the lives of His people, gives them an affection and desire for greater biblical knowledge, which consequently breeds a desire for greater general knowledge. Historical research, grammatical details, language, logic, and rhetoric all find their place within meaningful Bible exposition. For example, in order to understand the significance of the Assyrian attack upon the nation of Judah, in which Sennacherib was unable to finish his conquest at the gates of Jerusalem, one must not only be a student of theology, but history (see 2 Kings 19:35). In order to understand the difference between true and false faith in John’s Gospel, in which he typically uses present-tense verbs and participles for the former and aorist tense verbs for the latter, one must not only be a student of theology, but grammar (see John 6:40). In order to feel the full impact of the prophet Zephaniah’s warning that the Day of the Lord is near, in which he described its horror and gloom in staccato fashion, one must not only be a student of theology, but rhetoric (see Zeph. 1:15-16). And on and on it goes. Those who truly want to understand the Word will find themselves investing a great deal of mental energy into learning general knowledge that will support their study. Turn off your brain and you’ll forfeit the treasures of God’s Word that lie below the surface.
Of course, I shouldn’t be saying anything new at this point. Yet, because of the rampant anti-intellectualism in many churches, the word “disciple” has been almost entirely misunderstood to mean a passive “follower” of Christ. And while it is true that the disciples of Jesus followed Him, that is far from its only meaning. A disciple is also a student, a pupil, an adherent to a particular set of doctrines, and one who embraces a set of teachings. All of this necessarily implies that a Christian is one who actively invests himself in learning. Those who “just aren't into study” are going to have a hard time being a Christian, since growing in knowledge is one aspect that defines a true disciple (cf. 2 Pet. 1:2, 3:18).
All this to say, one hallmark characteristic of any good expositor who teaches, and disciple who listens, is that he loves to study and learn. It simply comes with the territory. To explain the historical background, grammatical nuances, and theological implications of any given passage requires an amount of work that only a love of learning could accomplish.
That’s where the secret to motivation is found.
Dr. Steve Lawson explains this in his own experience:
When I was in high school, I remember I took accelerated English and other English classes, and I just really didn’t want to have anything to do with English grammar. I just wanted to play football, baseball, basketball, run track, and I really was kind of left behind. The other students were so smart, and I—as my father told me—was, but I just didn’t want to apply myself (which was true). When I went to college, I was a finance major. So I never really took English classes. Grammar never became important to me, until the time God called me to preach. And when God called me to preach, it was like a switch was flicked inside of me, and I suddenly became obsessed with the details in a particular passage of Scripture. And in order for me to interpret a passage correctly, I had to make very astute observations of that passage. Well, this brought me back to the world of grammar—something that I just loathed when I was a high school student. Something I gave no attention to when I was in college. But now that I’m a preacher of the Word of God, I have to understand grammar. And I remember when I went to seminary and took Greek and took Hebrew, I learned more grammar by taking Greek and Hebrew than I ever learned in my English classes, but that was because I’m now motivated.[2]
Of course, don’t think for a moment that this means a love of learning is only for pastors. Rather, the point of Lawson’s testimony is that there is a direct correlation between a love of the Bible and a love of learning in general.
Bringing It Home
So how do we apply this principle in the home?
While your kids learn school subjects like history and grammar, they are likely at some point to ask, “What is the point in learning this?” As one who is made in the image of God, they are seeking ultimate purpose and meaning (that we all do at some point). And how does the world respond? “To get good grades.” Why? “To get a good job.” Why? “To make a lot of money” Why?
Though the world may provide a number of different reasons to that final question, none satisfy the soul, nor motivate the mind.
The Christian, on the other hand, has a much better answer to those questions. One of the most important reasons for kids to learn subjects like history and grammar is so that they can understand the Bible better. “Why?” So they can know the God who made them. “Why?” Because He made them for that reason. “Why?” Because it pleased the Lord to make all things for His own glory. There simply is no better reason than that. As John Calvin rightly noted so long ago, “Therefore, when it is asked why the Lord did so, we must answer, ‘Because He pleased.’ But if you proceed farther to ask why He pleased, you ask for something greater and more sublime than the will of God, and nothing such can be found.”[3] In other words, children who want to please the Lord in all things will find that academics can be leveraged as a means to knowing and glorifying their Savior more. When God graciously grants a child a new heart, no greater motivation is needed. A love for the Bible will naturally breed a love for study to the best of one’s ability.
By applying the biblical worldview to academics, the ultimate questions are met with the ultimate answers.
Do you see the difference? The world looks to motivate based on earthly success, which is ultimately fleeting. The Christian motivates based on a knowledge of God, which is eternal. Which one do you think is worth drudging through another language arts lesson? Your kids will recognize the same thing. Encourage your children to study hard so that they can better learn the Bible, and you will have hit a goldmine of motivation. We exist to know Christ and make Him known, and academics function for that grand purpose.
Make no mistake about it: this does not mean that your children will automatically transform into a straight-A student on fire for their own educational development. As a host of passages in Scripture suggest, children are inherently young, immature, and underdeveloped (cf. 1 Cor. 13:11, Eph. 4:14, Matt. 18:6, Prov. 22:15). They are exceedingly susceptible to laziness, indifference, misguided priorities, and negative influences. (Side note: this is also why Scripture nowhere sanctions the idea that children are to be sent to government schools supposedly to be “salt and light.”) It’s difficult for them to understand the far-reaching implications of their education. But what this does mean is that if you tether education to the Bible, your children will be rooted and grounded in the highest possible motivation to excel.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, while your children may not be mature enough to recognize the importance of learning, if you are walking through the Scriptures verse by verse with them, the need for a sound mind will become evident. As you lead them through the Bible, expressing excitement at all the truth you unravel together, learning will naturally happen. Furthermore, when you take them to a museum to see artifacts that affirm the rise and fall of kingdoms that you read about in Scripture, they will begin to appreciate history and archaeology. When you point out a grammatical nuance in Scripture that is often misunderstood, they will feel encouraged (and privileged) to recall past grammar lessons that help them recognize what so many others missed. And lest you think that mathematics is somehow outside the purview of this approach, it should be noted that math is simply the application of logic to numbers. If there is one thing that Bible teachers know, it’s that one of the greatest sources of interpretive errors comes from readers who commit logical fallacies in their thinking. So while it is undoubtedly true that some people are naturally more adept at math than others, the bottom line is that genuine exposition of the Scriptures—exposition that follows the arguments of the biblical writers—develops the mind to think logically, which means it also develops the mind to think mathematically. As the British expositor Martyn Lloyd-Jones famously quipped, “What is preaching? Logic on fire!”[3]
In the end, as your child’s thirst for Scripture grows, so will his or her motivation to learn. Teach your kids the Bible verse by verse, and see what God can do in other areas of their lives.
References:
[1] https://www.crossbooks.net/products/40027-expository-listening
[2] http://www.onepassionministries.org/expositor-podcast/2021/1/21/how-to-make-grammatical-observations-in-scripture
[3] John Calvin, Henry Beveridge, ed., Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2008), 626.
[4] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 110.