Christianity Today says Christian parents should be sending their kids to public school for the sake of their faith. Also, the IVF industry is rightly under scrutiny for some sketchy practices in the state of California. Today s all about how Christians must stand against corruption and stand against evil for their sake of children. This episode is brought to you by GoodRanchers.
00:02:17.680Let's get into the topic set in hand today.
00:02:20.080I've been wanting to cover this for a long time, for a few weeks now.
00:02:26.920And we finally have gotten around to it.
00:02:29.960We're taking a pause from imminent politics and election discussion to talk about what I think is a really important cultural and even biblical piece that came out in Christianity Today,
00:02:40.780on September 6th, about public school.
00:02:44.940So this is titled, Public School Can Be Training Ground for Faith.
00:02:48.300I responded to it on Acts, but I've been wanting to give a fuller response on the show.
00:02:54.920This author, Stephanie McDade, is a theology editor at Christianity Today.
00:03:00.340And many of you know Christianity has been leaning left for a while.
00:03:04.500And so we're not all that surprised when we see arguments like this.
00:03:07.620But it still has its influence in certain circles of Christianity.
00:03:11.640So it matters what we're seeing on the pages there.
00:03:14.880McDade argues in favor of Christians sending their children to public school because, she argues, research shows regular church attendance is more important than school choice.
00:03:24.340She also sees more benefit in exposing her children to worldly ideas and values while they live under her roof rather than attempting to keep them sheltered in a Christian school, which is the only reason for sending children to a Christian school that she addresses.
00:03:39.840So her assumption is that the only reason we would send our kids to a Christian school is to shelter them from scary ideas that we don't want them introduced to.
00:03:48.360And if we want them to get antibodies, I'm actually probably giving a better argument than the one she gives in her article.
00:03:54.480But if we want them to have antibodies to be able to refute secular arguments, then we need to send them to public school to make sure they are able to combat those lies.
00:04:09.580She says, last month, actor Kirk Cameron described Christian parents who send their children to public school as subcontracting their parenting and discipleship out to the government.
00:04:21.220He said that public school is creating little Marxists, little statists, little atheists, drag queens, strippers, drug dealers, you name it.
00:04:27.820By contrast, author Jen Wilkin has made faith-led arguments in favor of public education, citing benefits for children, including a more diverse socialization.
00:04:40.700I'm not even addressing whether or not that's a good reason.
00:04:43.500But I don't think that we could say that's a biblical reason.
00:04:46.440A healthy exposure to different worldviews and fulfilling the call of loving their neighbors by being in the school system.
00:04:52.220Now, I would love to stop right there and give my entire refutation of those statements, but I've actually done an entire episode refuting what Jen Wilkin has said in defense of sending kids to public schools.
00:05:05.500We will link that episode, the YouTube episode, as well as the audio form of the episode if you would like to go check that out.
00:05:14.440And this article writes that as a new school year starts with an election underway, the Christian case for public schooling is worth revisiting.
00:05:24.100She writes that she and her husband have decided to send their daughter, who is currently a toddler, to a public school for several reasons.
00:05:30.840So first, I just want to address this.
00:05:33.240We've got someone telling you that public school is totally fine, who doesn't even have their kids in public school.
00:05:48.760You can be informed about this subject without having kids in school.
00:05:53.460But what you don't really have the authority to do is to tell you, is to tell parents, even more experienced parents, that public education in this country is fine for your children.
00:06:06.900That it's a healthy choice, a healthy option.
00:06:09.380And really accuse the other side of fear-mongering, of exaggerating, of not really having any biblically-based or logic-based arguments.
00:06:18.660That you can't really do because you don't have a firm grasp on what's going on in the public school system, even though you should.
00:06:27.180You could have an idea without being in the public school system because we see it.
00:06:33.900I listen to parents who talk at these school board meetings, who talk to me about what's going on, even at the public schools in pretty conservative suburbs in red states.
00:06:44.320They're seeing things like gender ideology and social justice and progressive forms of SEL.
00:06:50.780But with all the wisdom of a mother of a non-school-aged child, she says Christians should, for the sake of their children's faith, send their kids to public school.
00:07:07.180She says studies show there are more important elements for building and safeguarding our kids' faith in the school they attend.
00:07:13.420She is referencing research that suggests taking children to church regularly matters more than finding the right school.
00:07:23.080Okay, even if that is true, I haven't looked at the methodology of that particular study.
00:07:28.300But even if that is true, even if it is true that church is more important than the school you go to, I don't think there's anyone denying that.
00:07:38.420So right off the bat, we've got a straw man there.
00:07:40.320I don't think anyone is saying that your child's school is determinant of their salvation or is the driving factor of their sanctification.
00:07:51.940That's not the argument those of us who advocate for Christian education, whether that's homeschool or Christian school, are arguing.
00:08:07.160What happens at home might be more important, but that doesn't make your education not important at all, right?
00:08:13.940So right off the bat, we've got a poorly formulated argument.
00:08:18.640And the interesting thing is, when you look at this study, you find that the marginal differences that this article cites between public school Christians and Christian-educated homeschool or private school-educated Christians is actually a lot bigger.
00:08:38.500Like, we looked at the study and it found that homeschoolers are 51% more likely than public school children to frequently attend religious services into their young adulthood.
00:08:47.480Students at religious schools had a higher likelihood of frequent religious service attendance, becoming a registered voter and fewer lifetime sexual partners than public school students.
00:08:57.280So she really brushes over the conclusions of the very study that she bases her argument on for sending her kids to public school.
00:09:08.520We've got more on this in just a second.
00:09:11.000Let me pause and tell you about our first sponsor.
00:10:11.500The other argues that she would rather most of her child's first close encounters of the worldly kind happen while the child is still under her parents' roof, not after she leaves home.
00:10:24.840But see, your child can still have worldly experiences, can still encounter worldly secular arguments under your roof without being inundated by these arguments for eight hours a day, five days a week, for 13 years of her life.
00:10:44.940Like, that is a lot of propaganda imbibing that you are just hoping and praying that she is able in her young mind to refute.
00:10:55.300Really, what you're saying is that you want to put your child on the front lines of the battle before they are even big enough to hold up their shield.
00:11:04.440See, if my children are going to encounter worldly ideologies, like gender ideology, for example, I want to be the one.
00:11:15.200I want their dad to be the one to talk to them about this, to introduce those ideas to them in a way that they can understand, in a way that is framed by God's truth.
00:11:29.740I don't want them hearing those ideas first from someone who believes that they are good and true.
00:11:37.640There is authority that comes with being the first one to introduce a concept to a child.
00:11:47.180Whoever gets there first tends to be the one that the child listens to.
00:11:52.720I want the school to do their job, the Christian school to do their job.
00:12:00.420I want them to teach theology that is in accordance to what scripture says.
00:12:06.100I want them to show how God is in math, how God is in science, how God is in literature, how God is in history.
00:12:16.200I want them to learn how to write, and to reason, and how to memorize, and how to calculate.
00:12:23.380Well, that's what I want from Christian education, again, whether that's at home or in a traditional classroom.
00:12:31.140I want them to have excellent academics where they are learning not only what to think, but also how to think,
00:12:38.720how to research, how to persuade, how to argue, how to apply God's word to every area of life.
00:12:47.640That's what I want for my children, eight plus hours a day, five days a week for 13 years.
00:12:53.640And within that, yes, you learn apologetics.
00:12:56.980Within that, you learn about worldly ideologies and worldly arguments and different forms of faith and religion
00:13:05.340that you have to use God's truth to combat.
00:13:08.740But I want them to hear those things from the perspective of someone who knows what is actually good, right, and true
00:13:17.860and is not trying to evangelize to my child in the name of progressivism or moral relativism
00:13:27.680or any form of secularism or paganism.
00:31:41.080And I don't want my child to be one of those little ones that is caused to stumble by the activist teacher who believes that he is liberating children by telling them they might be born in the wrong body.
00:31:56.760I don't want that teacher to be the one that introduces that child to different definitions of marriage or who tries to make my child into a social justice activist.
00:32:08.080So I agree that children should be protected.
00:32:17.000I agree in being against any harm to children.
00:32:20.300And there is so much harm that is done to children through the public education system.
00:32:26.760She writes that we can't permanently protect our children from the world and its influences.
00:32:30.560And at the very least, they'll encounter the worldliness of their own sin.
00:32:47.600My worries about sending my child to public school are more about her physical safety, especially when school shootings happen an hour away.
00:32:54.860Also, those tend to happen, not always, but they do tend to happen more at public schools than her exposure to people and ideas that might cause her to wrestle with her faith values or sense of self, even at a young age.
00:33:07.420You see, I just think that is a complete dereliction of duty as a parent.
00:33:11.760We are supposed to protect our children.
00:33:14.100That doesn't mean that we overly shelter them.
00:33:16.500That doesn't mean they don't meet different kinds of people.
00:33:18.740But we are supposed to protect them, right?
00:33:22.100We're supposed to protect them from evil.
00:33:24.480We're supposed to protect them from darkness.
00:33:27.300And if we want them to get the antibodies necessary for a strong faith, we can introduce those.
00:33:32.520She says that hostility is the reality in which we parent as Christians, the hostility of the world towards Christians, and that tension of witness and holiness, shrewdness and innocence, is what we must faithfully navigate, whatever schooling decision we make.
00:34:43.500The sexual and moral revolution has sped up and its victims are getting younger and younger.
00:34:52.180I want my kids to have the best foundation of theology possible so that when they do encounter wrong ideas, when they do encounter lies, they know what is good and right and true.
00:35:08.300I don't need them to know every single lie to know the truth.
00:35:13.060I don't need them to know everything that's wrong and bad and evil for them to know the truth.
00:35:18.560I want them to know the truth, to know the truth.
00:35:22.680And by the way, if you're looking at, for example, classical curriculum and like Charlotte Mason is like this and other forms of classical curriculum, they are teaching kids how to be apologists.
00:35:35.180They are teaching kids how to be theologians.
00:35:37.260They are teaching kids how to research, how to write, how to argue, how to defend their faith.
00:35:42.800We basically took an apologetics class when I was a senior.
00:35:47.000We had to read Reason for God by Tim Keller.
00:35:49.200I know there are some things that Tim Keller has said over the years that we don't agree with, but it was a great book.
00:35:55.040Understanding questions about God from a skeptic's perspective.
00:35:58.860I read Mere Christianity in high school, and we read all kinds of secular books, too.
00:36:06.580And I really think, again, just academically, so excellent in the things that I had to be exposed to, but in learning how to see God in all of it.
00:36:17.140And so I think that I was much better equipped, actually, to defend my faith than a lot of friends who just didn't have the same theological foundation.
00:36:30.340Now, is it true that your parents matter more?
00:36:35.140Is it true that your parents are your primary disciples?