Restoration of Education:
The Role of Parents and the Body of Christ
by James Boyes, Host
Christian Education Awareness Network (CEANet)
The Source of Genuine Wisdom and Knowledge
According to the Christian worldview, where does genuine wisdom and knowledge originate? Scripture (Proverbs 1: 7-9) tells us the source of wisdom rests with our relationship with the Lord, and according to this same passage, parents are to be involved in transferring this wisdom to their children. One may also turn to the Bible and locate a plethora of Scripture which points to the responsibility of parents and Church leadership toward the inculcation of each generation of children and their children in remembrance of God’s created works, wisdom, knowledge, and truth (See the APPENDIX at the close of this article).
On the other hand, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to locate biblical references that stress the importance of parents to delegate this responsibility (in loco parentis) to a government education system which is philosophically opposed to, and has essentially banned, the revelation of God through His Word. Regardless, if the state were to somehow become “godly” in its agenda, the Bible fails to direct parents to delegate the education of their children’s souls or conscience minds, into the hands of those outside of family and Church authority. This observation is well worth repeating: The Bible provides absolutely no basis for the contemporary practice of in loco parentis of Christian children, by Christian parents, into the hands of the United States federal/state school system.
Can Public Schools Draw Students Toward Jesus Christ?
The answer to the above question is obvious; but how many parents, pastors and Church leaders consider this question, and consider the results of the answer? It appears as though few of us have contemplated the tremendously fertile soil of false doctrines, cultivated and expanding in the absence of biblical truth. This is particularly sad when we consider the state’s desire to impact and develop the “whole child” with politically correct attitudes, conscience, character, emotions, psychology, and worldview. Such an education leaves little room for parental and Church influence.
Unfortunately, few Church leaders trace the transformation of American society via its public education system. However, this transformation or “need for change” so excellently promoted by the media and education establishment is actually the motivation to abandon biblical revelation in favor of “progressive” indoctrination and religious Humanism. In short, the stage for the departure from truth, from Christ, from Scripture, unfolds before our very eyes. The deception level is rising very rapidly, aided by a pronounced silence from many Church pulpits and a dangerous desire by Christian leaders to avoid the issue because of perceived controversy it may evoke. The end result is a dangerous intellectual and spiritual passivity which breeds continued expansion and influence of Humanist philosophy at the expense of the Christian worldview.
According to Scripture (See APPENDIX below) the transfer of knowledge, wisdom and doctrine rests with parents assisted by godly authority. Christian parents are to retain and exercise control and ultimate responsibility over the education of their children. Why? The Word of God is abundantly clear on this issue: the content of what we know and the need to continue the transfer of godly wisdom, knowledge and truth must not be allowed to die.
We already know the important transfer of God’s revelation cannot occur within the spiritual confines and compulsory suppressive nature of American public schools. The public school establishment belongs to the state and federal governments. The American public education system is the end product of the political process, in effect, the antithesis of academic and spiritual freedom. And because it is completely impossible to educate minus a worldview, or belief system; for the very reason we prevent government from controlling our houses of worship, we need to keep government from educating Christian children. It’s a matter intellectual liberty, freedom of conscience, and freedom of belief.
This foundation of American culture no longer lives inside public education. Quite the contrary, our government schools are an excellent example of conceptually collective socialism, a model that has failed everywhere it has been tried. Public school administrators for the most part, can no longer articulate their own ideas, their thoughts. Instead, they parrot the misleading euphemisms of current faddish reform. Their verbal trains evidence a language which pervades institutions supportive of a party line. In order to get past the rhetorically deceptive store front, Christians need to peel away the linguistic layers of touchy-feely reform, and review and test what remains in light of Scripture (1 Thessalonians 5:21). As a pastor, when was the last time you closely examined the contents of a public school textbook; examined the underpinning philosophy for the doctrines therein?
Christian parents and Church leaders need to be aware of perhaps the most influential spiritual battle taking place in public school classrooms. Education is a powerful instrument when placed into the hands of loving, and prayerful parents. Christian education is the means by which to cultivate a strong relationship with the Creator, parents, family, and Church; resulting in no small number of benefits to society. The opposite holds true if we permit the demise of Christian education via delegation of this responsibility to the state. The negative results of abandoning our children to the Humanist state schools are clear: moral and mental poverty, weakened family and Church relationships, and a distorted view of God, His creation and His purposes.
We are surrounded with the evidence of a need to restore parental responsibility in regards to the education and rearing of Christian children. There is a Christian worldview, a Christian philosophy, a Christian theology, a Christian view of economics, academics, science, and origins. This worldview will rapidly locate its deathbed if Christian parents and Church leadership do not awake and biblically respond to this spiritual war.
HOSEA 4:1, 6 -- [1] Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: "There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land... [6] my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of God, I will also ignore your children."
America's public school system controls the philosophy and educational content of nearly 85-percent of U.S. school-aged children; the philosophy of which is juxtaposed to Scripture. Yet, we continue to promote all manner of social, entertainment, and other means to increase Church membership, but fail to comprehend the source of spiritual and moral rot dressed up as “public education.” We understand the spiritual significance of Sunday School, yet neglect the spiritual damage that occurs during public Monday School, Tuesday School, and Wednesday School, etc., inside public education.
Our children bear the image of God, and therefore belong to Him. They do not belong to Caesar (the state), and we should not be sending them to Roman government schools for the development of their souls and moral intellects (Mark 12:17). If knowing and learning about the Christian worldview is significant on Sunday, its importance does not diminish as the clock strikes midnight on Sunday evening.
Conclusion
There is no need to “reform” or “restructure” our public (government- operated, and politically- controlled) schools. Socialism cannot be improved upon; it must be identified as a fallacious doctrine and immediately abandoned. If we could see the public education establishment as having crashed into a hidden iceberg, the lower decks as having caved into the deceptive pressures of deadly Socialism and religious Humanism, it would do no good to continue the aesthetic practice of re-arranging deck chairs. This ship is sinking, and Christians had better locate their spiritual lifeboats, and find them fast!
COLOSSIANS 2:6-8 -- [6] So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, [7] rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. [8] See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world rather than on Christ.
Absent of truth and the principles of godly living, our public schools are spiritually, morally, and cerebrally dead. Therefore, Christians must begin to consider removal of their children from this spiritually damaging government bureaucracy. Doctrine, curricula and philosophies which result in eternal death are by no means the way to educate our children.
Christians must consider the eternal consequences of the spiritual warfare taking place over their children’s hearts, spirits, and minds, and must act accordingly. This will most likely necessitate a complete revamping of family budgets reflecting a needed change in priorities. No doubt, alternatives to state education will need to be decided upon (Christian home-, or Christian private school).
Christian leaders who hold positions of influence, after having studied the consequence of state schooling upon the Body of Christ, need to consider encouraging their audiences with the biblically sound logic and reasoning to remove their children from the grips of world Humanism. There is a window of opportunity where this process can take place legally. It is unknown how long this window will remain open. The education establishment is beginning to get wise to the rising number of home and private Christian schools.
Pastors need to realize the tremendously powerful tool that education has become in the hands of federal and state legislators; and how this tool, as an instrument of state Humanism, is working against Christ and His Church. Christian seminaries need to reconsider the spiritually negative impacts of their relationships and connections with the mainstream education establishment. Seminaries should graduate pastors who possess the wisdom and knowledge necessary to articulate with authority, the primary and ancillary issues which surround this subject. For example, the cultural and spiritual impact of origins (Evolution vs. Special Creation) upon the Church and society.
Pastors need to study and perhaps re-examine the philosophical underpinnings of American public education from the writings of its false prophets and historical leaders. Pastors need to visit the mission and “vision” of public education and contrast the same with the vision and mission of Christ’s Church. Pastors can then articulate the results of this research into programs and sermon series which inform congregations of the status and purpose of state schools, and encourage parents to take appropriate steps toward the removal of their children from what have become anti-Christian seminaries of World Humanism.
Considering that God is Creator and we are His children, we need to allow Him to have possession of our children’s education. Thus, this message calls for the courage of Church leaders and parents to understand and act upon the education of the current and next generation of Christian children.
In the final analysis, we must pray and seek God’s will and be prepared to trust and follow His lead, even though it may displease those who do not understand the battle. We must allow Christ’s light to shine upon this issue and respond to what He shows us:
“In darkness there is no choice. It is light that enables us to see the differences between things; and it is Christ that gives us light.”
-- J. C. & A. W. Hare, (from Understanding the Times by David Noebel)
Profound Quotations:
“I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now. Nobody is to blame for this except the pope, the bishops, and the prelates, who are all charged with training young people. The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell.” -- Martin Luther, Luther's Works, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44, p. 207 (1966).
"You say: 'There are persons who lack education,' and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property."
-- Frederic Bastiat, June 1850, The Law, The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudosn, NY 10533, p. 32.
“Christianity must be a present element of all the training at all times, or else it is not a true and valuable education. The human spirit is a monad, a single unit, spiritual substance, having facilities and susceptibilities for different modifications, but no parts. Hence, when it is educated, it is educated as a unit. The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason; so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. The nature of responsibility is such that there can be no neutrality... between duty and sin. It follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. God is the rightful, supreme master and owner of all reasonable creatures, and their nearest and highest duties are to him. Hence to train a soul away from him is robbery of God. He has not, indeed, committed to the State the duty of leading souls to him as its appropriate task. This is committed to the family and to His church. To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but `to place a sharp sword in the hand of a madman.' Practically few do recognize and obey conscience except those who recognize the authority of the Bible. There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity.”
-- Robert L.Dabney, (1870?), Discussions Vol. IV, published by Ross House Books, Vallecito, California, and Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, Virginia (1979).
Please examine the Scriptures below and contrast the message they provide with what children receive in government schools:APPENDIX
Scriptures Related to Instruction, Teaching, Doctrines, Origins, and the Transfer of God’s Wisdom, Knowledge and Truth From Generation to Generation:
Genesis Chapters 1-thru-11 (The source of origins, marriage, the Fall, sin, wearing clothes, flood geology, etc.)
Genesis 18:18-19
Exodus 20:8-12
Deuteronomy 4:5-10
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Deuteronomy 11:18-21
Deuteronomy 32:45-46
1 Chronicles 12:32
Psalm 11:3-4
Psalm 78:1-11
Psalm 145:4
Proverbs 1:7-9
Proverbs 1:20-33
Proverbs 4:1
Proverbs 4:20-27
Proverbs 6:20-23
Proverbs 12:1, 15, 28
Proverbs 15:2, 5, 7, 14, 20-22, 28, 31-33
Proverbs 19:2, 3, 8, 20, 27
Proverbs 22:6
Proverbs 23:12-14, 19, 22-26
Ecclesiastes 10:2
Isaiah 5:11-13
Jeremiah 10:2
Hosea 4:1, 6 Mark 12:13-17
Acts 17:16-28
Romans 1:1-7, 13, 18-32
Romans 16: 17-19
1 Corinthians 2:1-14
1 Corinthians 5:9
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
Ephesians 4:10-26
Ephesians 5:6-33
Ephesians 6:1-4 Colossians 1:16-18
Colossians 2:1-10
Colossians 2:18-22
Colossians 3:1-3, 8-10, 16-21
1 Thessalonians 5:1-8, 15, 21, 22
1 Timothy 6:20-21
2 Timothy 1:5
2 Timothy 2:15
2 Timothy 3:14-17
2 Timothy 4:3-4
Hebrews 13:7-8, 17
2 Peter 2:1
2 Peter 3:1-7
2 Peter 3:17-18
1 John 4:1-6
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