Why wonder?
This question penetrates as I contemplate why I want to instill in my children a longing for wonder.
Why is wonder important? Does it make a difference when they leave the safety net of home and venture out on their own? How does their knowledge of wonder translate in the real world? Will it?
As parents, we desire our children to succeed. We want the best for them. This is why we are willing to put in the long hours of schooling, training, and teaching. Our passions automatically overflow into their lives.
As a follower of Christ, my thirst for His majesty not only causes me to want more of Him but it incites in me a desire for my children to taste His glory. Wonder is the natural outpouring of a heart that has witnessed His majesty.
When we wonder at Who He is, discovering His attributes through His Word and nature, this creates a longing for more. We want to know the Creator of the Universe. We want to worship Him through stewarding the world He has made. We crave beauty in a culture that reeks of rot.
Why wonder? So that we might teach our children to love the things they ought.
C.S. Lewis discussed this educational philosophy in his masterpiece, The Abolition of Man. He takes his cues from St. Augustine who, “defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.”
If that sounds complicated, it’s really not. It simply means we should Learn to love what we should and hate what we shouldn’t.
Lewis aptly sums it up this way:
“Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”
What do we want our children to like? What do we want them to dislike? Do they love justice, mercy, freedom, the Word of God? Do they hate lying, pride, bitterness, anger?
Wonder points us to God Who shows us what to love.
The Scriptures remind us over and over that God is love, and when we know Who He is, we practically understand what love is. Creation reveals to us a God Who is glorious. The majestic mountains, falling autumn leaves, raging rivers lift our eyes to the Creator who is powerful enough to speak this world into existence.
Wonder awakens our children to love the majesty, beauty, and power of God.
Wonder is training. It is cultivating a love for “whatever is noble, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely.” It instills in young hearts an “ordinate affections”. We order our affections, directing our wills on what to love.
If we don’t foster wonder in our children, left to their own devices, the god of this age will devour their souls and minds. We witness it every time we turn on the news and see hate disguised as love, logical fallacies being abdicated as truth.
This weapon of the enemy yields power to those minds that are not founded in wonder. Lewis describes how Plato recognized this truth centuries before:
In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart.”
We cannot begin soon enough instilling in our children a passion for wonder. The fate of their souls is at stake. Wonder must weave its way through our daily rhythms, it must guide the fabric of our curriculum.
What a beautiful thought: we have the opportunity to establish a foundation where beauty is received into our children’s souls.
Beauty nourishes the soul. Wonder awakens the heart. It is no trivial matter. If we fail to train our children to love what they ought, there is little doubt they will become tolerant to ill-grown truths.
We witness daily the adolescent left to ill-devices. A culture of promiscuity, death, and hate result in our failure to instill these virtues early on. It is true that each child makes his own path, but how many would have been spared if we had fought harder to order their affections from the very beginning?
The fight for wonder is real. The battle to teach our children what they ought to love requires perseverance. The conflict rages strong, but it is not too late. When we taste the glory of God, we want more of it, we want to pass that on to the next generation.
Why wonder? Because the souls of our children are at stake.
We cannot instill a love for wonder and beauty in our children if we ourselves are not basking in wonder daily. One of the primary ways to instill a life of wonder in our own lives is through the Word of God. It is a lifeline. That’s why I’m offering this BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL where you can receive 30% off my weekly Mend devotionals. This year my paid community will also receive exclusive emails focused on resources I’m currently finding helpful in ordering my children’s affections (as well as mine!)
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