I was doing some maintenance on my personal blog on Saturday, when I bumped into a couple of old posts that would have properly belonged over here on Strategic Inheritance . . . if I had been writing Strategic Inheritance at the time!

So I thought I’d more or less copy them here. I think they deserve another look by another audience.

(Originally posted, in slightly different form, at Tithing and Sabbath as Freedoms?!?

I was listening to a marketing seminar. The speaker asked his audience how many of them had studied trigonometry or Latin in high school. Almost everyone raised his or her hand. “Since graduating from high school, how many of you have used that knowledge?” he asked. No one raised a hand.

“I find that interesting,” he said. “Here our educational system focuses on all kinds of subjects that no one will ever use, but it fails to teach subjects that would come in handy every day. Like: How to communicate effectively with your spouse, or . . . ”

Since the speaker was divorced, he had some choice thoughts on the subject of teaching people how to communicate effectively with their spouses. But that wasn’t his main point. His main point was that he thought it is absolutely stupid for educators to teach any subjects besides those that have immediate practical application. . . .

Now, I myself can see that all manner of subjects that have no immediate practical application can be extremely helpful in one’s education. They can help to make one’s mind pliable, flexible, able to think beyond the here-and-now, discover new solutions to problems that no one would think of otherwise. . . .

But I was impressed by the man’s comments about a number of practical subjects not covered in the standard curriculum that probably ought to be . . . and about subjects often never discussed by parents with their children.

In fact, I was so impressed that I talked with Sarita about what the speaker had said. At one point she said: “Let’s think about this and offer our customers a list of subjects that might be useful to students that aren’t normally covered by regular academic programs and, maybe, the best sources we’ve found that deal with the subjects. . . .”

We came up with a short list and shared it with some friends to see what they might have to say.

Among the subjects, we included reference to tithing/giving and taking a Sabbath rest, two practices I’ve followed since high school, when I read a short book called The Ten Great Freedoms by Ernst Lange. (The “Ten Great Freedoms” Lange was referring to were, in fact, the end results of what most of us know as the Ten Commandments.)

Lange characterized the Sabbath, for instance, as “Vacation” . . . and I jumped on that idea with both feet: “I get 52 days a year of vacation! By order of God!” –Quite the freedom, indeed! . . . It takes faith, but it is quite the freedom. And our family has adopted a Sabbath rest as its birthright as well.

I often forget: Others don’t usually view things in quite this way. So when our friends saw our list, instead of being excited or inspired by the idea of teaching their children about these spiritual disciplines, our friends viewed these things in rather negative terms. And rather than encouraging us to suggest parents ought even to discuss such matters with their children, some of our friends pointed to those two items as uncomfortable and potentially offensive:

Is the tithe really something Sonlight wants to promote? . . . [P]ersonally, I think this is more a denominational thing–an Old Testament law that I believe was replaced by grace. . . . Taking a Sabbath rest. Is this Biblical? Didn’t Jesus work on the Sabbath and say he had fulfilled the law and the prophets? Another denominational thing. . . . This kind of stuff makes me cringe because it is so personal and there is so much room for abuse and misinterpretation.

It’s striking to me: where others fear (and, maybe, even, loath?) the thought of Sabbath and tithing, for us, they are, as Lange’s title suggests, wonderfully freeing disciplines.

I’m not sure where further to go with this particular subject in this post.

But I’ve written this in anticipation of something I want to write about tomorrow.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

 |  Email This Post  |  Print This Post  |  Subscribe to It!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under charity, faith, giving, heritage, kids, values. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.