Why Christian Schools - Part 3: What's the Harm?

by Dick Buckingham
Administrator

I know we would all agree that education is one of the most important elements of our lives.  From the time we are born until the day we leave this earth, we are continually learning from a variety of sources.  One source of education, which I will call formal, is highly valued and we strive for the best possible formal education for ourselves as well as our children.  Therefore, decisions about where I place my child to receive this education and by whom are some of the most critically important decisions I make as a parent.

We are told in scripture that if we “train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not part from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)  Training (or education) is the process of molding the mind, heart, and character of a person.  Just like a potter’s hands guide and direct the final outcome of the piece of clay to be a pot or a vase or a cup, so a child is molded by the various teachers in their lives as to how to think, act and respond in and about the world.  As Christian parents, it is our greatest desire that our children understand and know truth as revealed by God, be well trained in how to think like God thinks, and act the way God desires His children to act. 

However, there is a problem with public education.  Proverbs  1:7 enlightens us that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”  And again in 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  God’s Word makes it very clear that if we try to separate the knowledge and love of God from the rest of what is commonly called truth, it is not truth, because our understanding about God is critical to the understanding of the world.  If reality about the world is that it includes God, (and it does, He is the reason why everything exists both as the sole cause and purpose) then anything called knowledge that is considered separate from Him is not true knowledge.  One of the criticisms that has been leveled at Christian schools over the years, is that they shelter children from the “real” world.  Since Scripture defines true knowledge as being entirely dependent on an understanding of God at the beginning, Christian schools do anything but exclude reality.  We teach children to see the entire world along with the truth that God is Creator and Sustainer.  This criticism also assumes that we must expose our children to the things they will encounter in their lives as adults in order to adequately prepare them for the ideas, attitudes and wrong actions in the world.  Sending our children to the Christian school doesn’t prevent them from seeing and experiencing wrong thinking and evil actions in their neighborhoods, communities and the world.  There is plenty of contact with these without giving them a daily immersion of it in the government schools.  To be brutally honest, it is the public schools that are sheltering children by not teaching them an accurate view of the world because they must, by requirement, exclude God.

In the first blog of this June series, I made the case that public schools harm our children (and us) by instilling within us a worldview that is at best secular-humanist and most likely much worse.  Our worldview is what shapes how we think about everything and how we act and respond.  Those who were the founders of public schools knew that it was possible to change a culture, to transform a nation by simply teaching the children to think the way the founders wanted them to think.  As the children grow up and become the movers and shakers of the society in business, politics and life, they will automatically instill the kind of worldview that was taught to them as children.  Many of the dramatic cultural shifts that we have experienced in our society can at least be in large part traced back to the worldviews that were established about one generation ago.  For example, those who hold the most influence today are the ones who grew up in the generation of love and peace we commonly connect with the hippy movement.  “Free love” (sex),” make love not war”, were some of the prominent sayings of the people of this decade.  Is it any surprise then, that promiscuity, divorce, and sexual extremism are some of the key things we are fighting losing battles over in our society today?  And why do you think the choice drug of the hippies, marijuana, is becoming more and more acceptable in today’s society?  This did not just happen accidentally.  It happened as a result of the worldview change of a generation.

Education is designed to influence children’s minds and hearts.  We take our children and put them under the care and protection of adults who are called upon to impart the truth and knowledge they believe is important.  We place them in a room of peers who exert a great deal of influence to conform to the thinking and mind set of the whole.  All of these things place a significant amount of pressure upon our children to agree with and accept everything they are told without question.   Therefore we shouldn’t be surprised, as alluded by Voddie Baucham, that when we send our children to be trained by Caesar, they come out acting like Romans.* That is the purpose and design of education.

However, if we desire our children to think like God thinks, and act the way God desires us to act, then we are going to have to send them somewhere else to be educated.  Many parents choose to teach their children at home, to make sure the worldview of their children agrees with their own.  Others choose to send their children to Christian schools because they know the teachers and the things taught are more in line with the things of God.

What harm is public education for your children?  Plenty!   As parents we only get one shot at raising and educating our children.  Once they have been taught and trained, it is next to impossible to counter or change their worldview.  If we send them to Caesar, they will be Romans.  Therefore we want to get it right from the beginning.    What will you choose?

* “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” ― Voddie T. Baucham Jr., Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God

Why Christian Schools - Part 2 - The Public School is a Great Place for My Kids to be Salt and Light

by Dick Buckingham
Administrator

"You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”  These are familiar quotes from the gospels usually attributed to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.  Many of us have been motivated by these statements of Jesus to be active in our jobs, neighborhoods, even the world to let our “light shine before men so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”  It is one of the marks of a disciple, that we are willing to step into the world to represent Jesus and all that He teaches.  It is common then, that a parent, desirous of teaching and training a child to be a disciple, would think that a perfect place for their child to be salt and light is on the campus of the local public school.  After all, if we pull all of our children out of the public school to put them in Christian schools, who is going to be left to witness to the masses in our schools?  It is a question truly motivated by a love for the lost and it may almost seem uncaring to counter it.  Yet it deserves a carefully reasoned response.  There are some assumptions that are being overlooked to conclude that God would have us place our children in the public schools to be “salt and light.”

The first assumption to address is that schools are mission fields.  They are not.  Schools are specifically designed to impart certain knowledge and train pupils in a specific worldview or way of thinking.  It is not the same as sending a missionary to go to a foreign land to labor among the people and in the process of living life among them, influencing them in such a way as they would listen to and receive the good news of the gospel.  Schools are designed to do just the opposite.  Young people who are impressionable and teachable are brought to adults who impart philosophies and ideas that may or may not be in line with truth.  At its very best, public education teaches some form of truth, but it extricates if from the whole truth that includes God as the ultimate Mover and Maker of the world.  We also know that some of what is frequently taught in public schools is in opposition to the truth as revealed by God in His Word.  How is it possible then for a child to assert influence over anyone in a setting where it is by design that they are the ones to be influenced?  And the worldview they are presented with and taught is not one based upon the truth of God’s Word, but the worldview the government desires its citizens to have.

A second assumption is related to the first and is that a child is a missionary.  The problem is nowhere in the scriptures do we see children being called to be missionaries.  Instead we see over and over and over again the emphasis placed on parents to teach and train their children.  Consider the following:

Deuteronomy 6:6, 7 – And 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.

Ephesians 6:4 – Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Here are two passages that clearly indicate that our children are not to be doing the missionary work

of adults who have developed more fully in their thinking.  Instead of being teachers, children are to be taught.  Certainly parents play a major role in this training and our local churches assist.  But when you consider the sheer number of hours that our children are under the teaching and training of their teachers at the public school, there are not enough hours in the day for us to begin to counter what may be taught as truth but is not.  When most parents ask their children what they learned in school, the answer is “nothing.”  The students themselves are unable to communicate what is being learned that might be dangerous to them in terms of their thinking and worldview.  How is a parent ever able to make sure truth is weighed in with the false ideas presented?  Many times, we find out after we see the fruit of this false knowledge worked out in the life of our child.  Then, many times, it is too late.

Please be aware that I am not implying that God can’t or won’t use children to affect others.  I know you can give me examples of many times God has been so gracious as to accomplish His work through our kids.  But just because He can and does sometimes, does not change what our children are primarily supposed to be doing (learning the truths of God) and what we are supposed to be doing (teaching our children the truths of God).  Nowhere does God command us to make our children into little missionaries.  A good friend and colleague of mine, Franklin, puts it this way: “Nowhere in scripture are parents with a choice compelled to have their children taught in a secular institution.  If anyone can show me scripture that says otherwise, I will change my position.”

The final thing to consider in this discussion is not a false assumption but a brutal truth.  As parents, when we drop off our children at the public school, we are implicitly transferring our authority to the teachers and staff and implying that we agree with what they teach.  Our children, trusting us, feel it is safe to accept what is being taught and for the most part do so without hesitation.  It is as though we were teaching them ourselves.  Are you in Biblical agreement with everything the public school teaches? What about 90%?  50%?

When you bring your child to the door of a Christian School, you transfer the same authority.  Are your beliefs and teachings more in line with what the Christian school teacher is teaching your child or the public school teacher?

I will continue this series on “Why Christian Schools” next week.

Find out more about Faith Christian School at www.faith-christian.org

Train Up A Child

by Dick Buckingham

Administrator

There has been something heavy on my heart over the past several months and I have been ruminating about it often.  It is: “Why would Christian parents who have a choice send their children to the public government schools?”  Another way of putting it more pointedly...why would the godly send their children to be discipled in an ungodly system?

I know that by that very statement, some of you are already putting up a defense. You may be thinking that I am biased as a result of my position as the administrator of a Christian School.  Why wouldn’t I speak negatively against the competition?   Doesn’t the Chevy dealer try to convince you that a Ford just doesn’t measure up?  (Everyone knows it doesn’t, but we will save that for another time!)  This is not about me trying to preserve my job or increase my influence.   Believe it or not, I was just like many who thought public education was just fine.  After all, I attended and graduated from a public school.  What affect did it have on me?  The implication in that question is that public education didn’t affect me and I turned out just fine.  How often I have heard parents say that very same thing as a justification that putting their children in public schools will not be a detriment to them.

The truth is, the very fact we make such a statement as that, shows that we were profoundly affected by the public education we received.  The effect is that we cannot understand or discern the difference between a system that teaches a worldview where man is the main course and God is a side dish at best, and a Biblical worldview that sees God at the center of everything.  We can’t see it because our own worldview has been tainted by the public education we received.

God graciously saved me when I was in junior high, so much of my formative schooling years was at a time when I was immature in the faith and biblical understanding.  I was diligent about learning the truth as revealed in God’s Word, but understanding there was a different way of looking at things was the furthest from my experience, because I continued to be in the realm of public education on a daily basis.   While I endeavored to integrate my faith into my school life, it was relegated to being part of the “extra-curricular” Christian club on campus meeting before or after school, and a released time Bible study held daily at the Mormon facility across the street from the school.* Unfortunately, the way I was taught to think and honestly the way I thought, was not much different from any of the other students on campus.  We listened to our teachers, took what they told us as true, and applied it to our lives without ever considering what the Bible had to say about it.  I was taught a secular humanist worldview which places man at the center, and around whom all things revolve.

Following high school (not as a result of high school, but God’s grace) I knew I wanted to be involved at some level of ministry.  I had done some music with my church youth and had enjoyed being before people and encouraging them with words of truth.  My thought and assumption was that I would train for the pastorate.  In pursuing this goal, I wound up attending a small seminary in Philadelphia.  For the first time, I was being taught all things from a Christian worldview.  As we talked about history and life from this perspective, it was like I had been viewing the world through a window filthy with the grime of the world, and it had now been flung open so that I could see easily and breathe freely the fresh air of God’s perspective of our world.  My worldview was radically changed in a relatively short amount of time.  My initial thought was, “every Christian should go to seminary to get their eyes opened as mine had been opened.”  I still had not realized that the problem was that I had been taught a worldview as a child that was contrary to the truth.

My education in worldview perspective, though, was not over yet.  After a few years serving as a youth pastor, I was given the opportunity to teach in a Christian school.  I thought it a great opportunity to continue my ministerial work with youth.  Little did I know that it would radically transform my life and thinking.  Now I was teaching some of the very same things I had learned in high school but it was with a curriculum from a Christian publisher with a Christian worldview.  Since my eyes had been opened in seminary to a correct view of the world, I could now see the potential of teaching children correctly about God and His world from the beginning.  I became excited about the potential of training children in the truths of God and helping them to integrate them into their understanding in history, science, math and English.  I began to see Christian teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19, emphasis mine)

Education as the way to teach and train children from Christian families with the correct worldview from the beginning, grounding them in the truths of God so that they would be strong and not waver in their faith.  It was truly discipleship as Jesus had commanded in the Great Commission, “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and

Some 30 years later, I am still serving in the ministry that I believe God called me to, seeking to teach a Biblical worldview perspective to students from Christian families.  It has not been an easy road.  The greatest opposition that it has faced has been from the very ones you least expect it from, Christians.  I am convinced that it is at least in part because they have been trained in a secular worldview when they attended public school and they simply cannot see the difference.

Can you be honest enough with yourself to answer the following questions?  Could it be that your public school education affected the way you think about the world?  Could you be thinking it is harmless for your children because your own worldview has not been thoroughly transformed to a Biblical worldview?

Over the next couple of weeks I will continue to address this subject in several blog posts.  I will consider some of the following concerns that I hear from parents:

• Shouldn’t our kids be salt and light in their public schools?  Are we just going to abandon this important “mission field?”
• Why not public schools?  What is the harm?
• The Christian school doesn’t have band, choir, drama, (you fill in the blank). Isn’t my child   going to be at a disadvantage when they compete with students from public school who did?
• Does God’s Word really compel us to put our kids in Christian Schools?

*Probably needs some explanation.  In our community, there is a strong Mormon presence.  As a result the political powers that be in the local government and school boards allowed a provision for Mormon students to choose to leave their high school campus one period a day for “released-time seminary” as it was called.  The Mormon church conveniently supplied a building usually right across the street from the high school for these students to go.  Not to be outdone, the Christians in the community insisted upon nothing less than the same opportunity for their students to study God’s Word with those who elected this option.  Sometimes the Mormons would even allow the Christian group to use their facility.

To learn more about Faith Christian School, please visit our website at www.faith-christian.org