CMP Review 2024-04-18

April 18, 2024

A contemporary resource defines discipling as “deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ.” It seems to imply that there is another kind of good we can do to someone, to help them towards some other good end. Perhaps the label we give to that kind of service is education.

I am currently reading John Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence. But I didn’t start with Chapter 4, “The Vaulted Book,” which Charlotte Mason quotes so extensively in her works. Rather, I started with Chapter 1. And I’m glad I did.

In the second chapter, Ruskin presents his interpretation of Giotto (1267–1337) and the impact of his life and work. “Domestic and monastic,” writes Ruskin. “Giotto was the first of Italians—the first of Christians—who equally knew the virtue of both lives; and who was able to show it in the sight of men of all ranks.” According to Ruskin, Giotto showed the world that “household wisdom, labor of love, toil upon earth according to the law of Heaven … are reconcilable, in one code of glory … with the repose of folded hands that wait Heaven’s time.”

Benjamin Bernier, in his 2009 book Education for the Kingdom, asserts that Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education is at its core a theology of discipleship. He refers to her work as an “educational vision of discipleship.” Household wisdom, labor of love, and toil upon the earth are spiritual activities, as much under the instruction of the Spirit of God as lessons in Bible and theology.

Ruskin said that Giotto “makes the simplest household duties sacred, and the highest religious passions serviceable and just.” Isn’t that just what Charlotte Mason does? Hasn’t she shown us that the call to educate our children is a most spiritual call? That grammar, drill, chores, and math all take their place in unfolding to us the knowledge of God?

Perhaps Mason has shown us that the contemporary definition of discipling does indeed describe what we do. Not because we’ve expanded our definition of discipleship, but because we’ve expanded our definition of what is spiritual.

@artmiddlekauff