Education Choice for Christian Parents
LIVE FROM THE Mecca of Mormonism Salt Lake City, Utah This is HOTM Where together we are learning how to live in the Age of Christian Fulfillment.
And I’m your host Shawn McCraney.
Show 13A – Baby at Da School Taped Tuesday March 9th Aired Monday March 15th 8PM
So last week we talked about a new baby in the house and the way I would go about raising a child in the age of fulfillment. Now that baby is four or five years old and it's time to decide how to educate her or him – let’s name the baby X for simplicities sake.
Of course, in strong Christian homes, the traditional view for several decades on the best way to educate a child is for the child to go to what we call a Christian school. Pre-school, Kindergarten, grade school and of course Jr. and Senior High Schools. Some parents choose to homeschool as a means for X to escape all the evils of the world and its school and as a means to provide him or her with a superior education but many brick-and-mortar churches build their own schools and allow their congregates and others to attend there under the banner of a Christian education.
I think it's time for Christian parents to get smarter than this. I really do. And what I am about to say has to be balanced with the Spirit and how you are lead when it comes to raising your own child or children. So let me start off by saying that good educations can be had at religiously driven schools.
Pros and Cons of Christian Schools
If all we are talking about is education and curriculum whatever – some “Christian Schools” are right up there with secular schools when it comes to instructors, instruction and essential curriculum. This starts to change when you branch off into the sciences at the upper levels, but generally speaking and at the core level, Christians schools and education – great. But this brings me to what about everything else that happens in school – culture, extracurricular activities, clubs, parties, friends, dances, rallies, and the like?
Looking at it, it appears that parents want their child to attend a Christian school for five general reasons:
- Parents want their child to be taught, governed and disciplined by adult “believers.”
Parents want their child to be taught subjects from a “Christian perspective”
They want their child to make and associate with other Christian children,
They want their Child to be protected from the environs of the secular world, and (perhaps)
They want all of this to ensure that their child becomes, stays, and never strays from the faith.
Heart of the Matter
And this brings us to the final reason why many Christian parents send their children to go to Christian school – they sincerely desire that their child will become, stay, and never stray from the faith. That by giving them this schooling they assume the child will be stronger than others who were exposed to secular teachers, teachings, and educations.
Response to 1: Certainly, in some cases, there are great lovers of the Lord who make great leaders of children and youth – but not always. And how will you know? In addition to the good that some do, what about the bad that others do IN THE NAME of GOD?
Response to 2: Do you really want your child to be taught “everything” from a Christian perspective? And what does that look like interdenominationally? What is the Christian perspective of everything from a Reformed Theologian, an Arminianist, a hyper-charismatic Spirit-filled Pentecostal and a Jesus is coming back soon Calvary Chapelist?
And then will these “garnered perspectives” enable or hinder your child when they are confronted and challenged by other perspectives in their lives?
Response to 3: Of course, we all want our children to pick good friends but good friends mean just that – whether they are Christian or not – and that is something that we have to admit – our children can have good friends – even better friends who are not necessarily of the same faith. A good friend that is a Christian is great – wonderful but the fact of the matter
Christianity and Friendship
When we mix Christianity with friendship, both tend to suffer unless the friendship and the Christianity are genuine and authentic. So, let’s leave Christianity as it is – the Good News that Jesus came and reconciled the world to the Father and opened the way for all who want a relationship with him to have one. Leave friendship where it is – a very unique relationship that is very rare and does not always mean sharing the same religious leanings.
Additionally, what happens when kids who are supposed to love Jesus at the Christian school wind up being mean to our child or are not good friends, even though they might be good Christians? What happens when a friend is from a Christian family but lies, cheats, and steals? What if our child learns religious hypocrisy from her friends, the old Eddie Haskell approach, and worse yet, what if his friends teach our child to use God as a tool? And what about cliques that run rampant among the religiously minded – especially teens?
The Challenge of Christian Education
Response to 4: Okay. Preschool, grade school, junior high maybe – fine. I get it. But high school? College? And to this, I ask: Protect them until when? Until they are adults? By what will they compare and contrast their understanding of things? How will they know where they stand and, more importantly, why they stand where they do?
But more importantly, what are we creating when we put our children in a “Christian Environment” to be educated? We are creating children who have been created as cultural Christians! Do we see and understand this? This is very much the take of the behavioral psychologist BF Skinner who said:
“Give me a child and I’ll shape him into anything.”
And
“I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.”
I think Skinner was onto some important things in his assessment of behavior, but here is the important point – listen: When it comes to Christianity, it is more often than not behaviors that stand in opposition to Christ that lead to Him. Christian schools forget this and instead try and cookie-cutter people who appear to be Christians but who have never become such from the heart.
Parental Influence and Education
Response to 5: And so, what the parents are really doing is taking their child and raising them through a system of regimentations, instructions, and cultures that form the child into the “thing” their parents want them to be – which is the type of Christian their parents want them to be. And as we said last week, much of this comes from the Old Testament ideas of spare the rod, spoil the child and “train up a child the way he should go and when he is old He will not depart from it.”
In addition to what I presented last week, I want to provide some things to consider in response to what we have long called the benefits of giving our children a “Christian Education.” I think that these things must be taken into account if we really want our children to grow up strong in the LORD.
RESPONSE TO #5
I want to share an insight with you that I shared last week and it is this: The more strident a parent is with their children about doctrine and religious practice, the more they actually drive the child away from the solution to their lives. I am not talking about devout Christianity seen in the form of agape love from the humble lives of Mom and Dad – I am talking about demonstrable dogma acted out with force upon the hearts of the children. It will either kill their heart for God or it will kill their love for others – and they will follow their dogmatic parents in their footsteps.
Cautions About Education in Faith-Based Environments
I would be very cautious about believing that a school of believers will raise and educate your child or children. Remember, children attend school for an education – and when we mix faith with anything else, it is the faith that suffers. This is the problem with church and state and politicking in the name of Jesus – Jesus loses or is tarnished along the way. When men take the Good News and mingle it with the education of children…
Christian Education in the Home
All sorts of really bad associations can form between the two – just ask any kid who went to Catholic School.
The bottom line – and this is the hard cold reality every parent must embrace: The greatest Christian education a child will EVER receive is directly from her or his parents by and through their example of Jesus’ love in their lives, and it is this factor more than any other that lends to the heart of the child growing up and receiving the Lord. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, I stand on this. Christianity is best known from the home and hands of parents, and it is often the parents that stand by to fix and correct all the garbage that their children are exposed to in the schools they attend – Christian or not.
Parental Responsibility in Faith Education
When parents admit that they want their child to be taught the Christian perspective of things, what they are really saying is they want their child to be dogmatically conditioned in and through their education. While we all do this with our children to some extent or another, I suggest that in this day and age we want to avoid this as much as possible. We want our children battle-ready, which means battle-tested, and that comes from leaving the harbor and going to the high seas, not remaining hidden in the safety of the dock.
Remember, Christianity is taught in the home – and it is in the home by the parents that a child sees what the faith actually looks like in action. It is here they learn what the faith actually looks like, not in a classroom culture that borrows from the faith and mixes it with societal views and issues. Education ought to be education because, in reality, what is the Christian view of electricity, history, and math? These things are – we have a worldly understanding of them. Let the education be the education, and let the faith be the faith!
The Role of the Holy Spirit
I admit that in a perfect blessed world our children would find like-minded believers who love Jesus and would wind up being devoted, life-long friends with them. But in the age of fulfillment, the age with religious institutionalism fading fast, I am suggesting that believing parents wise up and do two things relative to their children and their schooling: Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and try to let Him govern in your children’s lives, and two, take on the responsibility to teach your children what the faith really looks like and means from the home and heart.
And as we pointed out last week, most or all of this stuff is founded on the strongly held belief that if parents train up a child in the faith when they are old they will not depart from it. But as I also pointed out last week, there are some factors that must be included in our assessment of our children. These factors include the biblical facts that (LISTEN NOW):
- Nobody is born a Christian. Becoming a Christian is not a process of how we are prepped or trained. That,
- True Christians are such by and through the Holy Spirit, and there is no other way where this happens, and that
- The Holy Spirit cannot be manipulated by men, words, music, or emotions. As Jesus said, the Holy Spirit is like the wind and it goes where it wants.
In the face of all of this, we are left with some rather problematic realizations.
The first is I see a direct conflict with the idea that putting a child in a Christian school is a surefire way of having the child become a real Christian. To say that it is “at least a good start” is to suggest that we are in control of who becomes a Christian and who doesn’t by virtue of where we send our children to be educated – but this belief does not accord with what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit and how it works.
I can see a greater potential for children to become a false Christian by them attending a Christian school, because of peer pressure, emotionalism OR I could see them becoming a non-Christian more readily because of undue pressures, bad instructions, and poor treatment from people who use God as a club or a rock to hypocritically hide behind.
But this idea of Christian parents sending their child to Christian school as being “a better choice” for
Christian Education and Children's Spiritual Development
Parents and their children confuses me. I mean, won’t this lead to the child believing that they have been always just been a Christian – since as far back as they can remember? And won’t it, if the child EVER decides to test what he or she has been taught, give them some heavy pre-conditioning that won’t allow them to really test all things and hold fast to what is good? And don’t most children at some point rebel AGAINST all that they have been taught as youngsters – so aren’t we actually setting our children up to rebel against Christ by sending them to Christian school in the first place?
To me it seems like parents in this age of fulfillment would do much better putting the setting of “all things Christian” really really low during the child’s younger years and replace it all by the parents exemplifying what a Christian is (in the home) rather than having them be taught what one is, and then allowing the Child to naturally rebel against the parents and society around them in their teens instead of against Jesus and God. Just a thought?
See, in the age of fulfillment we are not raising up an army of politically active people who will govern the land in the name of God in the future. This is kind of the mind-set of many Christian home-schoolers and Christians schools and the parents whose children fill their desks. Nor not hoping our children will help usher in the second coming of Christ, and be worthy enough to be on team rapture.
As their parents we are hoping and praying and longing for our children to (of their own free will and choice) to ask Jesus to be Lord of their lives, to be forgiven of youthful lusts and to help them walk the Christian walk when the Holy Spirit prompts. That is the hope and desire of every true Christian parent. What does it profit a child if she has all the Evangelical I’s dotted and all the T’s crossed if they have not been born from above?
The Heart of the Matter with Christian Education
HOTM
This is the heart of the matter with Christian Education. If it is not approached properly, it will ruin a child for Christ – unless the Holy Spirit is allowed in to make reparations. We can do better than this. We can begin by resisting the man-made idea that Education and Christianity ought to be blended. That is from the mind of zealous men and women who have failed to see that the faith is spiritual, internal and not materially based.
A New Approach
When a set of parents dedicate themselves to Christian love, and open communications, and allowing their children to look into the eyes of the monster, God works – where religion has always failed us.
Write your comments below! Love to hear your insights – which we will read tomorrow night HERE on heart of the Matter!
