10 Things Parents Must Teach Their Children (and Learn For Themselves)

10 Things Parents Must Teach Their Children (and Learn For Themselves)
Edith Schaeffer
Baker Books
1994

I was teaching an early elementary Sunday School class a couple of summers ago, and the curriculum kept featuring quotations from this book in the margin. And the quotations were always so good. I decided the book was worth checking out.

It's taken me a while to read this gem--not because it's hard reading, but because it's thought-provoking and meaty. I didn't want to skim through it, and I was so tired mentally from schoolwork during the school year that I often picked up lighter reading before tackling something like this.



The title is a bit misleading--this is not a parenting book. This is a wonderful exposition of the 10 Commandments, how they relate to us today, how they help us understand who God made us to be, and how we can only meet these requirements through the help of the Holy Spirit and because of Christ's work on the cross. Simultaneously convicting and encouraging/grace-centered, this is a book worth reading. Honestly, it's one of the best explorations of the 10 commandments I have ever read.

The final quotation in the book:
God gave the Ten Commandments to the people He had made in His image so they could understand who they are, how to live with each other, and how to live in communication with Himself. They have been broken for centuries, but they remain what they have always been: a guide for living in the light of what really is, what truth is, what the cosmos is, who we are, and who God the Creator is.


Cover image from goodreads; book from my personal library