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B.B. Warfield told the tale of a U.S. Army officer in a city that was in the midst of tumult. As he passed through the chaos, the officer spotted a man with remarkable bearing and calm. The two men turned toward one another, and the stranger asked the officer the famous first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man?” The officer replied at once: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” “‘Ah!’ said he, ‘I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks!’ ‘Why, that was just what I was thinking of you’ was the rejoinder.”
Catechesis—a form of religious instruction through memorization, often in the form of questions and answers—is immensely helpful in raising covenant children in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4) and in fulfilling the command of Moses:
“These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (Deut. 6:6–7)
I am a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian, and two of my proudest moments as a father were those when I felt most Presbyterian. The first was when my daughters were baptized shortly after we adopted them. The second was when my older daughter publicly professed faith and was received as a communicant member of our church.
Like many other churches, our church takes children through a communicants class to prepare them for taking the Lord’s Supper for the first time. The class covers the basics of the Reformed faith, what constitutes a credible profession of faith, what happens in the Lord’s Supper, and the meaning of the church’s membership vows. To teach these things, the class makes heavy use of the Shorter Catechism. Like countless other Presbyterian children through the ages, my kids have been learning the Shorter Catechism, so my daughter already had many of the answers memorized.
It is hard to overstate how helpful it is to have close at hand scriptural answers to important questions and to therefore be able to think through the concepts that the answers teach. When young Christians struggle with assurance, they can recall that they are justified not because of their own works but “only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone” (WSC 33; see Eph. 2:8–9). When they want to explain to a friend what it means to believe in Jesus, they can say that it means to “receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel” (WSC 86; see Gal. 2:15–16).
Catechesis helps Christian parents prepare their children to stand on their own in the faith. Well, therefore, did Warfield conclude: “It is worthwhile to be a Shorter Catechism boy. They grow up to be men. And better than that, they are exceedingly apt to grow to be men of God.”