Belief owing to education

By reasonable conviction, I mean, a conviction founded on real evidence, or upon that which is a good reason, or just ground of conviction. Men may have a strong persuasion that the Christian religion is true, when their persuasion is not at all built on evidence, but altogether on education, and the opinions of others; as many Mahometans are strongly persuaded of the truth of the Mahometan religion, because their fathers, and neighbors and nation believe it. That belief of the truth of the Christian religion, which is built on the very same grounds with a Mahometan's belief of the Mahometan religion, is the same sort of belief. And though the thing believed happens to be better, yet that does not make the belief itself to be of a better sort; for though the thing believed happens to be true, yet the belief of it is not owing to this truth, but to education. So that the conviction is no better than the Mahometan's conviction; so the affections that flow from it, are no better in themselves, than the religious affections of the Mahometans.
[Jonathan Edwards, Religions Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John. E. Smith, vol. 2 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), 295. cited in John Piper, God is the Gospel (Wheaton, Il.: Crossway Books, 2005), 82.]

I can't express how often I think of this selection from Edwards' Religious Affections in reference to raising children. How easily we take belief owing to education as Spirit-wrought, when it is no different in nature from the way children are raised in Islam. O Lord, grant our kids true knowledge of you.