What’s the difference? Why choose Christian Schooling for your kids.
Public Schools are needed
One of the myths that I hear frequently from some of my colleagues in education is that Christian Schools are in opposition to public schools. That is simply not true, there is a great need for public schools, as a matter of fact I wish that there was no need for Christian Schools. But as long as the secular humanist progressives control the curriculum and ideology in public schools we need Christian Schools!
William F. Cox Jr., PhD, is a professor and the director of Christian education programs in the School of Education at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He points out that “God holds parents and particularly fathers responsible for their children’s education, communicating to them both the content and the methods of education (Deuteronomy 4–7; Psalm 78:1–7; Proverbs 22:6, 23:23; and Ephesians 6:4). By God’s grace, this parental responsibility extends to enlisting the aid of others (Galatians 4:2). It is alignment with such biblical expectations that by definition constitutes Christian education.”
Cox continues, “Public schools, attended by the vast majority of U.S. children, are legally prohibited from supplying the kind of education that God commands. Consequently, textbooks typically teach relativistic values, tolerance for all beliefs, feelings as a reliable test for truth, personal invention of truths, evolution of the human species, and human self-sufficiency. Even when textbooks promote morality, it typically is a civic morality rather than a biblical morality, regularly omitting reference to the Bible as the ultimate standard for morality or to the loving ministry and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.”
“Promotion of any such system of values that does not comport with God’s ultimate truth is, in fact, not even education in truth; it is indoctrination against truth. As a result, children come to believe that there is no God or that He is essentially irrelevant to life’s circumstances. This ungodly perspective is actually a substitute religion for Christianity, and classrooms serve as the pulpit for such orthodoxy.”
Salt and Light
Now I have many friends, and parents of our school’s students, who teach in public schools. May God bless them! They act as “salt and light” in a place where they are needed! They are missionaries in a hostile culture, often dealing with discouraging and insurmountable problems. But I would argue most children are ill equipped to present an effective arguement for Christ in the hostile and sophisticated public school classroom. It would be like sending our army recruits to Al Qaeda for boot camp. They may come back skilled in fighting but their ideology would more than likely be opposed to those who sent them! And the research supports this!
Cox points out, “Tragically, studies by the Nehemiah Institute, Josh McDowell’s ministry, and the Barna Group show that Christian youth are increasingly adopting secular worldviews. More than half do not believe that Christ rose from the dead, that He is the Son of the one true God, and that the Holy Spirit and Satan are real entities; but they do believe that all faiths teach equally valid truths. Predictably, these findings are commensurate with the findings that born-again adults have similar belief profiles. Just as it was prophetically portrayed in Psalm 78, this intergenerational tragedy dramatically underscores a major problem in—and hence a warning to—the Church.” What I can’t understand is why the pulpits of our churches aren’t vocally supporting Christian Schooling!
Last week at the ACSI Convention in Sacramento Michael Evans, Assistant Director of Urban School Services for ACSI posed the key question.”who do you trust to teach your children, the state or the Christian School?” Evans also asked “why do you do what you do (teach or administer) in a Christian school”? As I thought about that question the demise of our culture came to my mind and I was reminded of the story of Israel. My desire is to raise up a remnant that will survive the captivity, a group of “Daniels”.
So if your desire is to raise up children or grandchildren who are strong in the Lord, get them in a school like Summit and support it! Or if you have the ability, home school your children using Christian curriculum. It is absolutely essential that we leave a Godly legacy for what ever the Lord allows in the future of this nation.
