by Chris Alexion, Copyright February 08, 2006, all rights reserved. 308 views
Many well-intentioned Christian parents don't agree that a self-consciously Christian education is really necessary. Public or secular schools are fine, they say, because they're only teaching "secular" subjects like math and history. Why can't Christian kids learn about multiplication at public school, and learn spiritual subjects at home and in church? It's a straightforward question, and calls for a good answer.
This answer would begin by questioning the strong distinction between "the sacred" and "the secular." Why is "the spiritual" limited to Sunday and Wednesday night? Such a limitation, whether we realize it or not, must insist that God has nothing to say about most of the curriculum–but we can bring Him in for chapel. Machen nailed this point decades ago:
Our whole system of school and college education is so constituted as to keep religion and culture as far apart as possible and ignore the question of the relationship between them. On five or six days in the week, we were engaged in the acquisition of knowledge. From this activity the study of religion was banished….On Sundays, on the other hand, we had religious instruction that called for little exercise of the intellect….What wonder that after such training we came to regard religion and culture as belonging to two entirely separate compartments of the soul? (J. Gresham Machen, Education, Christianity, and the State (Hobbs, NM: The Trinity Foundation, 1995 [2nd ed.]), pp. 46-47)
Paul's epistles, on the other hand, point us to Christ as the dwelling place of all knowledge (Col. 2:3), the one who turns human wisdom on its head (1 Cor. 1:26-30), and the one for whom we should bring every thought into captivity (2 Cor. 10:5). The fear of the Lord, Solomon said centuries before, is the starting point of all knowledge (Prov. 1:7). Yet our first response is to relegate all this to some kind of spiritual realm. "Oh–that's talking about knowledge related to salvation." But on what basis do we uphold this dichotomy? I would argue that the burden is on our friends to show that Scripture really does cut a divide between the sacred and the secular.
The second thing a reply to our friends' question must do is to touch on the point of neutrality. Public schools aren't (for the most part) hostile to Christ, right? They simply take no definitive position. To quote Gordon Clark, "many people reply, though they are not Christian, they are not anti-Christian, they are neutral." But hear Clark's reply:
[L]et one ask, what does neutrality mean when God is involved? How does God judge the school system which says to him, 'O God, we neither deny nor assert thy existence; and O God, we neither obey nor disobey thy commands; we are strictly neutral.' Let no one fail to see the point: the school system that ignores God teaches its pupils to ignore God, and this is not neutrality but the worst form of antagonism, for it judges God to be unimportant and irrelevant in human affairs. (Gordon Clark, "The Relationship of Public Education to Christianity")
We can hardly believe that Paul envisioned this view of learning when he exhorted the Ephesians to bring up their children in "the nurture and admonition of the Lord." In a non-Christian educational setting, Christian kids spend the greater part of their day being taught that God, whatever He may say on other days of the week, has no bearing on "what we do here."
And we persist in believing that we can undo six or more hours of practical atheism with fifteen minutes of devotions before bed.
1 • Hadam Hiram • February 09, 2006 • 9:50 AM
Wow. This is some seriously scary stuff. The Muslims who are burning Danish flags and getting themselves killed over silly cartoons are desperately impoverished, have essentially no formal education at all, and are fully obligated by their beliefs to interpret the Koran as the literal word of God. What could possibly be your excuse?
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