The Power of Parents
Xon over at After Darkness has put up his thoughts concerning public schools. Here are my own thoughts arranged within his points.
Point 1: Christian parents are obligated to provide their children with a ‘Christian’ education.
An emphatic 'YES!' But it's not that simple (as I'm sure you guessed).
Xon writes: "God wants education in His ways to be something that takes place all the time. This doesn’t mean, obviously, that every single breath has to be devoted to talking explicitly about God; just like the New Testament exhortation to "pray ceaselessly" doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to play tennis. But we should be a "prayerful" people, a people for whom prayer is so naturally a part of our lives that it is always in the back of our mind."
Just as praying ceaselessly can allow for people to not pray while playing tennis, a public school education is allowable as long as the parents of the child are teaching the child in addition to the public school. There is a false dichotomy drawn by Xon here when he posits that a public school education precludes a child being taught in the way God wants the child taught.
Xon continues: "Every thought must be brought into captivity to the obedience to Christ. Not just ‘spiritual’ or ‘moral’ thoughts. A biblical worldview doesn’t give us the luxury of compartmentalizing ‘sacred’ from ‘secular’, or ‘spiritual’ from ‘physical.’ So, education is something we should always be doing (Deut. 6), and it is something that requires us to bring every thought captive to Christ (II Cor. 10)."
Every thought belongs to God and it is the recognition of this through a parent's teaching that a child can be shielded against the possible negative outcomes of a public school education that Xon seems to imply is the only available consequence of a public school education. Everything belongs to God, so whatever our children learn in public school is already His domain whether or not He is explicitly mentioned within the classroom. Surely, no one can deny that. So, it follows that a parent who teaches his or her child to recognize and know this as commanded by God is not unwise to send his or her child to public school.
II Corinthians 10:4-5 talks about casting down a high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God -- not that we should never hear about those things. A child may indeed encounter such high things in any setting (Christian school or public school) but it's up to the child's parents to teach the child how to cast down such high things. How can high things be cast down if they are never encountered?
Point 2: The Christian education that Christian parents are obligated to provide excludes any other ‘worldview’.
Xon writes: "If every thought must be brought captive to Christ, what will happen if we don’t make the effort? We will be left with thoughts not obedient to Christ, and this means our thoughts will be hostile to Christ. There is no ‘middle ground.’ So, again, everyone has a worldview, the question is whether or not we will have a Christian one."
By taking your children out of the public schools you are the one not making the effort. You are allowing some thoughts to go unchallenged by withdrawing into a safety net of household, community, and church. "We'll challenge the non-Christians on the weekends during our outreach time." Bullcrap. If Christ's kingdom is all-encompassing, and you allow a venue to go unchallenged, then you are denying the all-encompassing nature of His kingdom. If no Christians were in public schools, what do you think would happen? No one would be challenging them at all. Your children, if you teach them well, will still have the correct worldview regardless of where they are taught "neutral" subjects. They will be in the world, but not of the world. You will make the subjects captive to Christ, and perhaps the children who come into contact with your child will see Christ -- and more thoughts will be captive. Xon would be the first to say that God does not want wetblanket weak believers, but what are we saying when we deny Him the chance to reach others through our children? God, you're just not strong enough to protect my child during the day. I'm just not a good enough parent to instill Christ's love into my child. God, you're just not strong enough to use me to this end.
3. Worldviews are largely implicit.
Xon writes: "If we don’t think seriously about Christian worldview and seek to see the world through that lens (and to teach our children to so see it), then we will absorb something else."
and continues:
"This is the way human beings are in the world that God made. We all see the world through some lens (or worldview), and that lens is (as lenses tend to be) often invisible to us."
Parents will help to make the lens visible and powerful over all others. If public schools were the only education that a child was getting, then I would agree with Xon. But a Christian family will not leave their child unprotected. Parents, Church, and peers who share the Christ-centered worldview will balance out the equation so that the only remainder is the chance for a child to be a light in the dark.
4. Fire must be fought with fire.
Xon writes: "If we resign ourselves to the idea that the “city of man” is going to have sway, and that we should focus simply on having some kind of sway amongst ourselves on Sunday mornings (and perhaps Wednesday nights), then we have “retreated” in a different kind of way."
Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights? Hmmm...I hate to think of what kind of relationship this implies between Xon and his children, if this is the only alternative to a Christian education. I obviously don't think Xon will fall into this trap, but then why can't he see that a parent's job does not fall into the Sunday/Wednesday category? A child's parents, friends, and church are more influential than that. How quickly we forget where our walks with God started, where the seed was planted.
Xon continues: "A secular system teaches them for 7 hours a day, five days a week, through some of the most formative years of their life. And we reap the whirlwind—our kids grow up to be nice little secularists who either keep their Christianity quiet (because it’s just their own ‘private’ ‘religious’ choice) or abandon it altogether (because it doesn’t really matter)."
Let's break this down, because it keeps getting thrown out here:
7 hours x 5 days = 35 hours -- THE HORRORS!
What's that leave us with? Let's say an hour each morning with Mom or Dad or both (1 hour x 5 days) and about 5 hours at night (5 hours x 5 days). That's 30 hours during the week. 35 secular hours versus 30 Christian family hours. Now add the weekends -- I'm saying 13 hours or so each day (13 hours x 2 days) -- that's 26 hours on the weekend. 56 hours for the total week!
Lest we forget that during school, if a parent has taught his child well as God commands, the child will befriend other Christians and always have the parent's (God's) teachings in the back of his mind. So we cut those 35 hours in, let's say, half and we get 17.5 hours of secularism. Secularism which you have taught your child to be wary of and to filter through his Christian worldview lens.
Summary:
To deny the power of parents, the power of nurture, is to deny God one of His major tools in raising His children in His son's service. To give such power to public schools is to admit that there is an entity out there that is more powerful than God and that God cannot use to glorify His son.
The way I was raised was in the above fashion. My family, friends, and Church kept me under close watch and made sure to give me freedom while reigning me in when I faltered. I admit that perhaps my parents didn't do as much as they could have in terms of keeping me safe from other worldviews and secularism by explicitly speaking to me about such things, but in spite of this (and due to the job they did do teaching me to follow God) they allowed me to be a minister of God during my public school years.
I'm not trying to brag at all -- I'm using myself to make a point. I lived my position, so I know it well. I think I see parents as so important because mine were to me; they did as God commanded them to do in regards to my education in all facets of life. Without my firsthand experience, if I hadn't been raised by such parents, I might think differently. I might agree that parents should dominate their children's lives in all areas so that they might stay believers -- that parents are powerless over secularism. I might see myself as the exception to the rule -- the public school educated Christian who somehow was able to overcome the nefarious teachings of the evil government...but I wasn't that kid, so I don't think Xon or Doug Wilson is fully correct. I think Jmac is another shining example of the power parents play in a child's life.
The main points Xon makes are good ones, and it would do us well to consider them. I actually agree with all of the "point" statements he makes -- I differ in my conclusions about the consequences of believing those points. Even after consideration of his conclusions, though, the only way I would endorse Xon's views is if a child were alone in the secular world, if a child didn't have parents who were doing the job God commands of them, and if a child were exposed to such secularism in pleno (in full) and at expense of all other worldviews for 12 years. This isn't the case. Again, we have a false premise as we did with the sensationalized 35 hours argument. The fact of the matter is this: If a parent is doing the job that God commands of them, then their children will be exposed to secularism and Christ simultaneously for those 35 hours a week for 12 years. Christ will be in the child's heart while the secularism can be filtered through His Word. The child will be in the world but not of it -- thanks to God and thanks to the child's parents as agents of God.
Just as Xon points out that he might be wrong, so might I. I do not think anyone who does either option, leaving a child in public school or pulling a child out of public school, is sinning, unwise, or a more or less mature Christian. I do believe that there are areas where these distinctions are applicable, but I don't, at this point, think this is one of those. If your child cannot handle the responsibility of being light and you as a parent cannot handle the faith required to let your child leave the safety of your watchful eye for a short time each day, then, by all means, teach them yourself or send them to a good Christian school. But, if you are doing your job as parent, you will have nothing to worry about. That's the power of a parent.
posted by Russell @ 1:12 PM
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