Sinclair Ferguson

So what is life all about?

Well, life is about the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves, and these two things belong together.

And that's what the catechism is saying, in some ways, in an even more wonderful form,

by saying what our life is about is about God.

And what God's purpose for us is, is that we should actually enjoy Him.

And when you think back to the fact that this catechism was written by the people we nowadays call the Puritans, and most people have a very fixed idea of what Puritan is, you know, tall heart, dark clothes,

stony face, very severe, certainly doesn't want to enjoy life.

But they wrote, our chief end, that is, this is what we are for, is actually enjoyment and supremely the enjoyment of God.

And then also the notion that we can't actually fully enjoy this world, even in its fallen condition, unless we first of all enjoy God.

But then when we enjoy God,

we are able to enjoy the world that he has made and enjoy each other.

Yeah, I think that's a great question, Nathan, because actually the shorter catechism was written

for younger people.

The larger catechism was written for people like ministers to learn.

So it was like a next stage.

But I've quite often said, usually fairly quietly, I suspect that a 13-year-old boy in the Highlands of Scotland in the late 17th century would be able to articulate

more theology clearly than many seminary graduates from many seminaries would be able to do.

And when you think about, I mean, I think nowadays I sometimes say one of the things we need to help our young people to do is to out-think their contemporaries, to out-think them.

And that's one of the things that the Shorter Catechism enabled youngsters.

You know, historically it was probably used more in Scotland.