Luther on Raising Children.
“But this at least all married people should know. They can do no better work and do nothing more valuable either for God, for Christendom, for all the world, for themselves, and for their children than to bring up their children well.”
“For bringing up their children properly is their shortest road to heaven. In fact, heaven itself could not be made nearer or achieved more easily than by doing this work.”
“By the same token, hell is no more easily earned than with respect to one’s own children. You could do no more disastrous work than to spoil the children, let them curse and swear, let them learn profane words and vulgar songs, and just let them do as they please.”
“There is no greater tragedy in Christendom than spoiling children.”
“Therefore, it is of the greatest importance for every married man to pay closer, more thorough, and continuous attention to the health of his child’s soul than to the body which he has begotten, and to regard his child as nothing else but an eternal treasure God has commanded
him to protect, and so prevent the world, the flesh, and the devil from stealing the child away and bringing him to destruction.”
Martin Luther – A Sermon on the Estate of Marriage (1519)
Interesting and telling how it is the Catholic World that is bringing this issue into focus more and more with this, the fortieth anniversary of the landmark papal Encyclical Humanæ Vitæ…
Read it today, it is worth it.