Excellence is not a light switch. It’s not something that you wake up one day and you suddenly are, like a birthday. It’s more like getting grey hair; it happens one strand at a time.

The process of excellence is important. Like a baby chick must struggle to shed its shell, the struggle to learn is necessary and rewarding.

Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. James 1:3, 4

The trying of our faith increases patience. This increased patience (fruit of the spirit) brings increased perfection, or wholeness. It is a glorious chain reaction that we would never wish to short circuit in our children. He has struggles for them in their learning, in their reasoning, in their finding their way in their own faith. If they never get the chance to reason from Scripture for themselves they will never get to the wholeness, to the security of their own faith in Christ.

And this is true excellence. Ownership of your own faith, not your parents’ faith. Internal government, governing self with Christ’s superintendence and the Holy Spirit’s faithful guidance. The ability to give an reason for the hope that lies within you (1 Peter 3:15).

My goal is to this: to give my children every opportunity to struggle, not to be a stumbling block but a coach that pushes you farther than you thought you could go. I love that scene in “Facing the Giants” when the Coach Taylor shows Brock that he had more in him that he thought possible, driving him to crawl the entire length of the field with another player on his back. Once Brock got a vision, once he saw what was possible, he was like a new player and he influenced all the other players.

I want my kids to push and struggle and fight with all their might. I want them to give their all and lay exhausted in the end zone, amazed at what their God was able to do through them.

What sweet satisfaction, this excellence.

In American society today there  seems to be an allergy to excellence, at least to the Christian idea of excellence. On the one hand you have children afraid to look “smart” in front of their peers. and on the other we have the Martha Stewarts working hard to convince us that perfection is possible. Kids are texting and losing what little grammar skills they may have once possessed while they try hard to be “gangsta.” The excellent is, for the most part, not valued or praised or even seen as something to strive toward.

What is the Christian idea of excellence? I submit that it is not simply getting good grades. It is your internal character and not your “book smarts” that make a person excellent. For example, Daniel in the Bible was described as having an excellent spirit in Daniel 6:3. This fueled hatred among the leaders of the land and that’s how he ended up in the lion’s den. He was not excellent because he was the smartest. He was excellent because of his character.

Christians should set the standard in education. American Christians are blessed beyond measure. We enjoy liberty in every area. Nothing has been held back from us. We have to most to be thankful for—and the most responsibility. We should always strive to work toward excellence. God’s idea of excellence. As we become more and more excellent on the inside, our outward fruit will be excellent as well. We will work harder, be more diligent and make more of an effort to be a good example to others, in word and in deed (Col. 3:17).

The point is not knowledge but wisdom and fear of the Lord. As a Christian my goal is not simply to fill my children with facts until they are ready to pop. They must be able to correctly apply knowledge in real life.

My next post will finish up by discussing the process of excellence and applying scripture to our educational goals.