William Zinsser’s priceless observation: “Like the minister’s sermon that builds to a series of perfect conclusions that never conclude, an article that doesn’t stop where it should stop becomes a drag and therefore a failure” (On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 63).

I have heard those sermons and read those articles. “A drag and therefore a failure,” ouch.

The Didache is one of the earliest manuscripts we have on Christian teaching, written at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. Regarding Christian charity, the Didache quotes from an unknown source: “Let your gift to charity sweat in your hands until you know to whom to give it.”

“The establishment of a Christian school movement is in principle a threat to the current establishment, and the establishment knows it” (Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education, 36).

“The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said that without an infinite reference point, every finite point is absurd. This statement is exactly correct and explains why every secular classroom is a manifest absurdity. The need for an infinite reference point explains why an understanding that each child bears the image of God is so central to the process of Christian education” (49).

“In order to teach a child rightly, his parents and teachers must know both who and what they are, and they must know this on the authority of God’s Word. They must understand that mankind has fallen away from the initial task assigned in the Garden of Eden, but that Jesus Christ came in order to make it possible for people to resume work on that task. Given the nature of the case, men and women must either serve God or refuse to do so. They must either serve God or man. This is the fundamental question before us in all our debates about education” (50).