When we worship an eternal, omnipotent, and sovereign God, our response should be nothing less than visionary.
There is no way to faithfully live the Christian life and avoid hard, stressful things. Loving and serving others will necessarily come with anxiety, stress, and challenges we must meet with faithful rigour and not retreat.
So the goal is not wonder but wisdom. But Proverbs tells us that “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child and the rod of discipline drives it from him.” Which means there will always be a certain amount of conflict (i.e. discipline) involved in teaching a child.
We don’t want our kids to grow up and face adversity wondering, Do I have what it takes? We want them to know. We want them to have witnessed so many heroes living with integrity and fighting their weaknesses that they trust in the sureness of doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. We want them to stand up like warriors.
For classical educators striving to “integrate the disciplines,” music provides an invaluable instrument of integration. Music studies harmonize with every core discipline of he curriculum: the music of various periods vocalizes the movements of history, the formal structures of music correspond to the formal structures of poetry, the theory of music applies principles of mathematics, the physics of music makes audible the laws of science.
Christian education demands that we teach students what to love and how to love, for love is simply the greatest kind of knowledge. A classical education aims to train the affections and show a man how to “rightly order his loves” (ordo amoris), though a man cannot order his loves until he knows what they are.
