Oak Cottage Homeschool Enrichment Statement of Faith
At Oak Cottage we believe and teach the power of story, and that the true, perfect story guiding our lives was given to us by God in the Bible. We believe that in the Bible, God tells us who we are, Who He is, and how He wants us to live. These are truths we believe to be foundational to education, and which we share with our students.
We believe that God was never created but has always been, and that while one God, he expresses Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The very first words of God’s story tell us that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We believe that God directly created the world and all that is in it, and that he has also lovingly created each person in His own image and desires to have a relationship with us.
We believe and teach that Adam and Eve chose to sin in the Garden of Eden, and that this cut off mankind from an unbroken fellowship with God. In His love, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth. Jesus lived sinlessly as fully God and fully man, and died on the cross for the salvation of the human race. He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. We believe that our only hope of joining Him there is through God’s mercy toward us based on the finished work of Christ on the cross, and not through any effort of our own.
We believe that because God created each of us, every human life is loved by God and of immense value. We defend, protect, and value all human life. We also believe that God directly created us at conception and made us biologically male and female, and that these designations do not change but are a lifelong gift and integral to our personhood. We believe the Bible teaches that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman, that all intimate sexual expression is reserved for this covenant, and that sexual expression outside of it is sin.
We believe in the sobering reality of evil and sin, and that Christians are called to live differently than the world.
This is a joyful message leading to life, and one we are honored to share in our Oak Cottage community. Although we don’t require that each family participating hold to our own beliefs, they must be aware of them and supportive of our atmosphere as a Christ-based community in the Charlotte Mason tradition. How these beliefs are walked out within our community is ultimately the decision of the owners of Oak Cottage.
“But we hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education (which may at the same time be reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection.”
— Charlotte Mason