The Family Legacy Vision

Building a family legacy is not a vision peculiar to homeschoolers. It has appeal to nearly everyone in a family. A family legacy communicates the idea of values and vision being bequeathed or transferred from one generation to the next. There is an identity within the family that creates a sense of belonging, value and purpose. The fact that we describe families that lack these things as “dysfunctional” is testimony to the near universal ideal and desirability of a family legacy. Those in a “dysfunctional” family know there is something missing and wrong.

This search for family legacy finds itself expressed in various cultural phenomenon. The popularity of TV series such as “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” are examples of this kind of latent desire. They also indicate that we feel we have lost those values in our culture today and tend to look into the past to discover where we went wrong and how we can recover them.

One thing we notice from the past is the role of the church and Christian values in building community and families. The original and early settlers of America came here with a vision of establishing a “City set on a Hill,” an allusion to Matthew 5:14-16.

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

When we look at the entire text we can see that their purpose was to glorify God and so at the birth of our country the Bible was the foundation for law and government. Christian morality was an integral part of education. In the teaching of history Christianity was taught to be the moving force. So, homeschooling and other Christian families look back to the past to find role models for how to conduct their families today.

One thing they notice is family togetherness. In the early days of America, families worked together. Children could easily see the connection between learning academic subjects and their use in daily life. Business education was an everyday affair for children. Another thing they notice is that the father’s work did not take him away from home. Whether on a farm or in a trade, children observed their fathers doing their work and learned from them. While the obvious example was the family farm, that family work unit was also seen in other trades.

This working together allowed parents to leave their children a rich family legacy – family togetherness, values, work ethic, property and a business – all based on Biblical principles.