This kind of teaching requires that the truth being taught be incarnate in the relationship between men, which was what God did in Christ. The teaching of Christ is contained not only in His words, but also in His life. His life gave meaning to His words and made them uniquely different from any other words that had ever been spoken. Actually, many of the things that our Lord taught were not new, but His life was, and this made His teaching unique. The same principle must apply to us. Some instruction given in the name of Christian education is dull, monotonous, and irrelevant. There is nothing untrue about it, but it is taught without the conviction born of experience, and it is not expressed in what goes on between man and man. On the other hand, a recognition of the responsibilities of this kind of teaching should be coupled with the joys and satisfactions of it. It is the kind of teaching that can relieve us of some of the anxieties of accomplishment. _A Word of Encouragement_ Many parents and teachers are concerned about the quality of the care and teaching which they give children, and they are particularly worried about their failures and sins in relation to them. Present in many of us is the fear that we may have permanently impaired the future welfare of those for whom we are responsible. This leads us to try to be perfect in the discharge of our duties and thus prevent serious injury to our children. In other words, we would like to love them perfectly, which, if we were able to do, would ill prepare them for their life in this world. Furthermore, and more importantly, implicit in this anxiety is a grave misconception of what it means to be a Christian. The test of our love and faith is not the absence of failure and sin and problems, but lies in what we are able to do about them. Of course, Christian parents get angry with their children and say and do things that hurt them. We are haunted by the signs in our children that we have failed them, by the evidences of their anxiety, by the problems they sometimes have in relation to other people, by their lying and stealing, by their hostility and quarrelsomeness, and by their excessive competitiveness and jealousy. Sometimes the scenes around the family table are far different from our image of what Christian family life and fellowship should be. We wonder where we have failed, grow discouraged, and fail again. We are embarrassed by the contradiction that our children see between the things that we say and the things that we do.