This summary about Jesus’ enculturation is, in my view, one of the most informative of all passages on the matter of the nurture and education of a child in maturing as an individual and a member of society. We need to be reminded that Jesus, to fulfill his mission, did not confuse his humanity with his deity. What occurs to other persons in the course of human mortality occurred for him. We get hungry. He experienced hunger and needed food. We are tempted. He was tempted as intensely, even more so, than we are. He resorted to prayer so was strengthened spiritually in his human person as faithful prayerful persons are aided. He noted, when asked some questions, that he in the natural context could not offer answer – noted in his response about the ending of the age, which information he identified with the Father. He was reared as a normal child. At 12 years of age, and absent from the caravan returning to Nazareth, he was sought by Mary and Joseph. He was located by Mary who held normal expectations for all of her children. So it was that he could say to Mary, whose information about him in experience was larger than any other mortal, that she should not be surprised that even at 12 years of age he was: about his Father’s business. His nurture and response to it in his parental home was so normal in that devout and standard family that even Mary may have diluted the information she had about the specialness of her Son. Every child should be offered human specialness in that God gave it high honor in following the human process in the introduction of Jesus to mortal experience – something no other creature can claim in the humility of God. The concept of only begotten of God has the meaning of uniqueness – the only person of the kind. The French translation of John 3:16, accents the concept of uniqueness in the person of Jesus. We learn in Luke 2:52 that the education and nurture of a child embraces four large contexts: the physical development of the body (so to respect health factors); the cultivation of wisdom (so to respect education for the purpose of becoming personally informed, to the understanding of meaning, to the application of conduct); the involvement of social relationships (so to respect work, service, and interaction in mutual concerns for the good of community and experience of life); and, the addition of faith (so to submit to God in righteousness that forms the nature of the individual and influential in all other factors of life).
The above constitutes what we may call the objectives of education, both formal and informal. All other advancement relates to training. In our time the objectives of training have largely overtaken education. The consequence is that for a large segment of the population we may have excellent practioners with little education. A person highly skilled as an engineer, or physician, or farmer, or mechanic, or some other skill by which he or she makes a living, may be poorly educated. I have met a number of these, as I also have met a number of academicians who are poorly trained to teach. Joseph trained his sons to be carpenters, the trade he knew. They gained some education from the practices of the family in interrelationships among themselves and neighbors. They likely learned to read and write in the rabbinical school. We know that Jesus gained this education in that he introduced his ministry in turning to a Messianic passage in the Torah, rolling the scroll to the passage he wanted, reading it aloud, and expounding on it. The close planning of children, parents, community and teachers (dealing with natural/spiritual issues) was vital in the culture of ancient Israel, and strong in developing communities in the centuries. Although the pattern is somewhat weakened in our time, a materialistic age, the process is continued for many and serves well. We may be aided by some new approaches that can restore attention to parenting. For example new studies show that children may be conditioned by parents in ways that lift or defeat them in adult years. When a child is at play in a room where a mother and a caregiver are present the child may be doing well or poorly. When the mother leaves, the child is upset to some degree – depending in part on the feeling about the caregiver. The study runs a long course in great detail, but the response of children in the study designs becomes informative about how the adult person will treat others. The studies may be used to counter the present approach – elusive parenting that fails the child in search of life purpose. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020