The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - How Public Schools Are Turning Children Against Their Parents

00:00:00.000 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to another

00:00:04.020 episode of Theology Applied. This week, we have a special treat for you. What we're doing here

00:00:09.440 at the end of the year is we're taking a few of our favorite episodes that we've ever recorded

00:00:13.740 with Theology Applied, and we're airing them for all of you who have missed them and for some of

00:00:19.460 you who maybe watched this episode in the past but wouldn't mind a refresher. So this episode,

00:00:24.740 one of my personal favorites, is with Ben Merkel. Ben Merkel is the president of New St. Andrews

00:00:30.760 College in Moscow, Idaho. And the title of this episode is How Public Schools Are Turning Children

00:00:38.320 Against Their Parents. How Public Schools Are Turning Children Against Their Parents. If you

00:00:44.160 want to be aware of what's going on in public schools and why it is absolutely vital that

00:00:49.620 Christians provide for their children a distinctly Christian education. This is the episode for you.

00:00:57.500 Real quick, before we get started, if you would prayerfully consider supporting Right Response

00:01:02.360 Ministries, we would be incredibly grateful. You can do so by giving a gift of any amount

00:01:07.660 at rightresponseministries.com slash donate. If you're not able to support this ministry

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00:01:25.300 family. We need your help, and we pray that you would consider supporting us in this endeavor.

00:01:32.400 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:38.100 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries.

00:01:46.020 This is another episode of Theology Applied, where our whole goal in this podcast is to help Christians not only salute the inerrancy of the Word of God,

00:01:56.080 not just recognizing and acknowledging God's authority through His Word, but the sufficiency of God's Word.

00:02:02.660 realizing that that all of the scripture needs to be applied to all of life and so it's very

00:02:10.560 fitting our guest for today we have Dr. Ben Merkel who is the son-in-law of Doug Wilson and

00:02:17.200 the whole saying kind of mission statement that they've had there in Moscow where they live with

00:02:21.060 the church and with the school and all these different things is all of Christ for all of

00:02:26.620 life we want to take the whole Christ and his authority executed through the agency of the

00:02:32.180 Word, so all of Christ, all of the Bible, all of His Word, and apply it to all of life,

00:02:36.980 not just, you know, Jesus, Lord of my heart, not just applying the Scripture to church

00:02:41.920 and the home and parenting, but politics and media and entertainment and vocation.

00:02:49.300 And today, our episode is education.

00:02:51.760 So we're going to be looking at what the Bible says about education, the importance, the

00:02:57.620 significance, but then also getting really practical and how to apply a Christian worldview

00:03:04.700 and the sufficiency of scripture in the way that we educate. And so we have Dr. Ben Merkel. He is

00:03:12.160 the president of New St. Andrews College. And I'm going to let him take a moment right here from the

00:03:17.820 outset and introduce anything else, Ben, that you might want to share about yourself.

00:03:22.540 No, that's a great introduction. It's a pleasure to be here. Enjoy your ministry and your church and look forward to our conversation here.

00:03:31.720 Great. All right. Thanks for coming on. So first thing that I want to ask a little bit personal, but just people getting to know you some for you.

00:03:39.000 When and how did you first get interested in being an educator? What got you excited about education?

00:03:45.940 Well, you know, it was kind of a multi-step process. So it started during my undergraduate. I was at the University of Idaho, and I was taking a lot of chemistry classes, but I didn't really like chemistry.

00:03:59.840 And it was during my time at the U of I that I really felt like I had a heart for going into ministry of some sort. And virtually every pastor I knew was a teacher.

00:04:09.260 and so I got a secondary education degree in chemistry thinking that that was the way you've

00:04:16.060 got yourself ready to be a pastor. I know I did not really ask for any advisor counsel or anything

00:04:21.240 it just seemed like that's what pastors did. I started as soon as I graduated I came on staff

00:04:28.900 with the local church here doing evangelistic work to the University of Idaho leading Bible

00:04:33.120 studies, going in and speaking to fraternities and doing that sort of thing. Um, but during that

00:04:38.760 time, um, new St. Andrews college started and I was doing pastoral training through our church.

00:04:45.000 Greyfires hall had just started. I was the very first Greyfire student. And, uh, so I was doing,

00:04:50.860 uh, ministerial training and new St. Andrews started and Doug Wilson, my father-in-law asked

00:04:55.520 me if I would TA a class for him, which I, I did. And, uh, it's kind of a long series of events,

00:05:02.180 But one of the things that I noticed was that the impact that I was having on the students in my classes versus the impact that I was having in my Bible studies on the U of I campus, it was really interesting that it was in the context of education that I was seeing their souls opened up and people were ready to do a deep dive into what they actually thought.

00:05:26.520 and I started to see that I was having a more profound impact on um in discipling them and

00:05:34.520 mentoring them and whatnot through education than I was just in my normal pastoral work

00:05:39.040 and so that just got me intrigued and I threw myself more and more at it and saw

00:05:42.940 it blessed more and more as an outlet where there's something about those years from 18 to

00:05:49.080 22 23 and that first moment when you've left home and you're out on your own for the first time

00:05:56.540 there's something really significant that happens there and it happens in those classes that shapes

00:06:02.380 lives in a really profound way and i found that that was just something i wanted to be involved

00:06:05.840 in that's cool yeah so just massive amount of influence at a very a very uh pivotal time in

00:06:12.580 people's lives and just realizing it really is significant yep okay so let me go ahead and just

00:06:19.320 get right into it um our topic for today we've titled it christian education and the myth of

00:06:25.720 neutrality christian education and the myth of neutrality so i think a good question for us to

00:06:31.360 start with is uh what is the difference and is there a difference between christians in education

00:06:38.220 versus a Christian education. 0.97

00:06:41.400 Yeah, that's a really good point. 0.98

00:06:43.040 And I think, you know, I feel really strongly

00:06:44.780 about the necessity of a Christian education,

00:06:47.420 but I think there's a distinction to make there

00:06:49.920 because I think that parents owe their children

00:06:53.640 a Christian education.

00:06:55.320 At the same time, I know that there are people

00:06:57.600 working in a public secular school system

00:07:00.320 or Christians that are trying to do their best

00:07:02.900 to make an impact where they are.

00:07:04.520 And I don't want to necessarily say

00:07:07.100 that they're in sin for their job, but I do think that parents really need to focus on giving their

00:07:11.980 children a Christian education. And one of the differences between those two, you've set up two

00:07:17.660 things that are kind of opposed to one another or at least could be opposed to one another. And I

00:07:22.560 think that you need to dive into that a little bit and define the difference really between

00:07:27.780 Christian education and then the secular version where Christians might be a part of that, but it's

00:07:34.180 not a um it's not a coherent christian education that's being given over there um i think that

00:07:41.340 there's a slowly dividing but but something is creating a massive divide between two different

00:07:47.600 takes on what education is whereas there's there's from a christian perspective we have

00:07:53.440 the obligation to teach our children um to love god with all their heart soul and mind to pass

00:07:59.980 this faith onto them and to teach them to see the world in the light of scripture.

00:08:05.600 In unpacking our church's mission statement, that's a good description of this idea that

00:08:11.940 we want to root our children in the word and then teach them that that word is a foundation

00:08:16.760 on which they can stand and see, or maybe a lens through which they can see the whole

00:08:21.420 world.

00:08:22.140 And that's a very deep discipleship that happens.

00:08:26.120 And when you're doing that kind of work, you're tending to work on the big picture questions, the sort of, why am I here? What is life about? What is beauty? What is goodness? You're wrestling with questions that have to do with the transcendent standard that we live under.

00:08:44.480 So we have a God whose character has shaped this whole world.

00:08:49.000 And when you're in that kind of education, you're understanding – you're looking to God's character.

00:08:53.500 You're unpacking that.

00:08:54.620 You're understanding what his character is like.

00:08:56.600 And then you're taking that down into this world and you're starting to see this world in light of that transcendent standard.

00:09:03.440 And so then that sets you up for arguments where you are trying to deduce the laws of logic that God has revealed to us via his word but also through his law written on our heart, natural revelation.

00:09:21.540 It's this law that we see from him that we then interpret the rest of the world in.

00:09:27.040 And we can have lots of arguments where, you know, I have this standard.

00:09:31.580 How is that consistently applied in all of these different areas?

00:09:35.380 That's one way of thinking about education.

00:09:38.720 That's not at all what any of our current schools are doing.

00:09:42.820 Our current schools are far more oriented towards imparting very basic vocational skills.

00:09:49.880 So you're trying to teach people how to use Excel, how to use, how to code, how to write, whatever.

00:09:57.040 You're teaching them very specific vocational skills.

00:10:01.920 And to the extent that there's anything larger worldview about it, it's a lot of indoctrination in a very God-hating kind of philosophy.

00:10:10.700 But it doesn't look to any sort of transcendent standard.

00:10:13.780 Um, you'll see things like, um, uh, well, have you noticed that like over the last say two years, how many conversations have you seen between two people who, um, have very different perspectives come from two very different worlds and have two ideologies that are very opposed them.

00:10:36.260 And yet they were able to have a very clear and calm and rational conversation where they

00:10:42.700 recognize, yes, none.

00:10:45.460 So that doesn't exist anymore because we don't teach people that anymore.

00:10:49.080 What you see is the venting of emotion.

00:10:50.900 You see the attempt to manipulate the system in which in a way where I can be the one who's

00:10:56.020 the victim.

00:10:56.800 You're trying to trump each other with those kinds of sort of childish maneuvers and basically

00:11:02.720 a lot of screaming and obscenity.

00:11:04.460 that's all of our public discourse now because we've lost our ability to have this other kind

00:11:09.680 of conversation um so so when you i i think that you could have somebody who's teaching you a

00:11:17.400 vocational skill and i obviously you need to learn vocational skills you don't need to have

00:11:21.440 you know if somebody's teaching you how to um drive a truck um and they're showing you how to

00:11:27.020 shift gears you know they could be muslim or they could be jewish or they could be trinitarian

00:11:32.900 in and it still is okay. Like there, there's some basic fundamental skills, but you lose all of that 0.98

00:11:38.520 other larger perspective. And when you reduce education to just those skills, well, you lose

00:11:47.660 the ability to have any of these kinds of conversations. And so one of the things I've

00:11:52.840 been trying to point people out, point out to people is that we think that education is just

00:11:57.060 about vocational skills. Like you go to school so you can get a job. If you don't get that kind

00:12:01.320 degree you won't be able to get a job i want to point out that when you when you sure when you

00:12:07.220 get a vocational degree you can get a job but when you raise an entire generation that has no

00:12:13.080 education but they only have vocational skills you can't have an you can't even have an economy

00:12:18.820 so we we're currently living in a world where everything is shut down we're burning our towns

00:12:24.880 right we we um all common sense is gone and we're destroying looting and pillaging all of it

00:12:31.600 we might all have vocational skills but we don't have any education and when you ignore the

00:12:37.940 education and jump to the vocational skill you do get that job in a very short-sighted way

00:12:45.100 but you lose your entire economy just a little while after that and i think that's the tension

00:12:50.640 that we need to see yeah I think that's really good if I had a dollar for every single time I

00:12:55.240 heard leaders even in the church say hey we're going to have a conversation about some kind of

00:13:01.300 controversial topic like race but it's never actually a conversation what they mean by that

00:13:05.620 is we're going to have an echo chamber that that everybody here already holds the same view

00:13:10.980 and it's you're right it's it's kind of it's just this power play and I think you know we're

00:13:16.000 reacting, I think our culture is reacting to, well, the, the oligarchy or those people who

00:13:21.140 were in positions of power, um, they always got to be right. And now we're, and now all we've

00:13:26.480 really done those, we've just shifted the narrative. So now there's a new position of

00:13:30.380 power, namely the victim, the person who is powerless by your powerlessness, you now have

00:13:35.940 power, but, but neither one considers what's most important, which is regardless of, of,

00:13:41.920 the position of power or power that comes by being powerless, what really matters is, but who's

00:13:48.240 right? What's truth? But there is no objective truth anymore because we've rejected God's

00:13:55.680 standard. We've rejected the standard of truth. So yeah, I completely agree. Talk to us a little

00:14:01.120 bit about, because I've heard you speak on this before, and I think it's super helpful. I think

00:14:05.960 a lot of Christians, part of the reason why they feel like, oh, I don't have to homeschool my kids

00:14:09.440 or I, our kids don't have to receive a Christian, you know, education. We can send them to public

00:14:15.340 school or, or, or any, any kind of alternative. I think part of the thinking there is, um, in terms

00:14:22.600 of they still kind of are holding on to what, what I would consider. I know you would also

00:14:27.220 the myth of neutrality. They think that they think that, um, that there actually exists some

00:14:33.820 realm where you can be taught, right? So you kind of alluded to this a little bit about like being

00:14:38.480 a truck driver and they're just being some very practical skills that can be taught by the Muslim

00:14:43.300 or an atheist or a Christian. But when it comes to math and English and literature and science, 0.51

00:14:50.440 I know you would disagree in those subjects, but there still seem to be a lot of Christian

00:14:55.580 parents that think that neutrality actually exists where they can send their kids, outsource

00:15:01.260 education, and they can be taught by someone something that is not Christian, but it's also

00:15:06.060 not opposed to Christ. Where does that come from? And is neutrality in education, is that a myth?

00:15:13.380 Am I right about that? No, I completely agree with you. And I would even push it and say,

00:15:17.560 even to a certain extent, the truck driver and the plumber need to have a Christian view

00:15:21.560 of their discipline. And I think that there's something unique and distinctive about approaching

00:15:27.180 these things from a Christian perspective. But it has to do with, there always has to be a why.

00:15:34.220 You always have to have – you have to ultimately be able to explain the why.

00:15:40.760 Why does two plus two equal four?

00:15:43.340 Why – and within the Christian worldview, you're able to put that on the bedrock foundation of who God is and the world that he has made.

00:15:52.760 Now, we believe in – because I'm a Christian and because I read my Bible, one of the things the Bible tells me is that God's law is written on the heart of all men and that God's attributes can be perceived even by the unregenerate through natural revelation.

00:16:08.980 So I believe that there is a natural law and a law of God written on the heart of those who are outside of Christ, and therefore there are things that I can learn from them that they understand this world in real and true ways.

00:16:23.240 But that only makes sense ultimately because the God of the Bible is true.

00:16:28.100 And what you find is that everything always leans and moves towards consistency over time.

00:16:41.100 There are inconsistencies that you can have in your life that over time will work themselves out and will reconcile themselves into a consistency.

00:16:51.480 You know, I'm looking at today's news of Jerry Falwell and what was what's going on there.

00:17:00.620 And you have all these crazy things that are coming out.

00:17:03.820 And one of the things you find is that you can hold on to things that are contradictions, that are that are hypocrisies for a little bit of time.

00:17:10.780 But there is this, you know, my father in law would describe it as like somebody who's trying to sit on a beach ball underneath the surface of the water.

00:17:18.020 You know, you can hold it down there for a time, but sooner or later, you know, it shoots up over here. 1.00

00:17:23.480 And the Christian's job is to poke their arms. 1.00

00:17:25.560 What do you got there? 1.00

00:17:26.220 What do you got there?

00:17:27.120 Right.

00:17:27.560 Yeah.

00:17:28.440 And so so I think an education, you know, even the public school system, you could go back 50 years and you could go to a public school.

00:17:40.280 And somebody with my convictions would say, that's a bad idea. 1.00

00:17:43.740 You need something that's explicitly Christian. 0.96

00:17:45.740 But somebody who was at a public school 50 years ago could be excused for saying, you know, you say that, but this seems pretty good.

00:17:53.060 And I would say, no, no, it needs to be explicitly on God's word.

00:17:57.980 And sooner or later, this inconsistency will come out.

00:18:02.740 So over the last 50 years, what we've seen is that public education getting worse and worse.

00:18:07.560 And you'll have even parents now, like I see this when I'm talking to parents about sending their kids off to college.

00:18:12.700 They'll say, I'll say, look, you know, the secular college is God hating and blah, blah, blah.

00:18:17.880 And they'll say, yeah, I hear you say that.

00:18:19.940 But I remember when I went to college and it was God hating, but there was also a lot of really good about it.

00:18:25.140 And it was actually where I became a Christian and on and on.

00:18:28.060 And and and what they don't realize is that that was 20 years ago.

00:18:33.160 The college campus of today is so different.

00:18:36.500 But the college campus of today was is consistent with that college campus of 20 years ago.

00:18:43.640 It's one long trajectory that over time it's going to become more and more consistent with itself.

00:18:49.340 And so there are plenty of areas where I don't have a problem dipping my foot in that water because I know it's I know that this book is inconsistent with God's word, but there's some stuff in here that's really useful.

00:19:06.980 But I want to be really careful and conscious of the fact that over time that inconsistency is going to come out and it is going to destroy it.

00:19:15.420 And I think that we are really, really short sighted when we think that particularly with where the schools are now, that we can hand our children over to that and not have that have a catastrophic effect on their lives.

00:19:31.160 I completely agree. I think of music, you know, I think we're just hardwired because we're made in the image of God because of natural law, natural revelation. We can't, human beings cannot sit well with dissonance, right? We want to resolve the note. You got to do one or the other. And because of the doctrine of total depravity, because the heart of man, apart from regeneration, as you referenced, is opposed to God, not just neutral, but Romans 8 says hostile towards God.

00:19:58.000 It does not submit to his law, nor can it because of that disposition in the heart of

00:20:03.640 man being opposed to God and because of being, so in terms of total depravity, there's an

00:20:08.920 opposition towards God.

00:20:10.180 So that's not a viable option. 0.99

00:20:11.760 We cannot submit to his law, but because of the Imago Dei, we also can't really sit with

00:20:17.440 inconsistency or dissonance.

00:20:19.060 We want to resolve, but the resolution is always going to work away from God apart from

00:20:24.500 new hearts.

00:20:25.580 So we're going to have to resolve.

00:20:27.240 We can't live in this inconsistency. We're going to have to pick one or the other.

00:20:30.740 But because the heart of man, apart from regeneration, is opposed to the things of God,

00:20:35.040 because they're spiritually discerned and because he's hostile towards God, he's at enmity with God. 0.71

00:20:40.340 Because of all those things, there's just going to be this natural, apart from a Christian education,

00:20:45.620 apart from a Christian worldview, and really ultimately apart from regenerate hearts. 0.83

00:20:50.320 It's really not if, it's just when. It's a matter of time.

00:20:53.140 There's going to be this constant downstream towards not order, but chaos. And I think of that, I think of Darwinism. I think Doug said this, but I think of Darwinism being taught for decades in the public school system. And now all of a sudden, it's like, all right, we want revolution. We want to change things and we want to make them better.

00:21:13.980 And what's the immediate default strategy among young people coming out of public school systems, taught Darwinism?

00:21:21.380 The strategy is, well, let's burn it all down.

00:21:24.060 But that doesn't fix anything.

00:21:25.360 But it does for the Darwinian because if you just do chaos, well, what comes out of chaos?

00:21:31.200 According to Darwinism, according to evolution, order.

00:21:34.200 Whereas the Christian worldview would say, if you want to fix things, you can't burn it.

00:21:37.820 You can't go to chaos because chaos produces nothing.

00:21:41.240 We believe in God, who is a God of order. And so even that, it's like, we maybe don't draw the connections. But my point is, I think, you know, the riots and burning down cities and defunding police, you look at that and you think, oh, like, this is, this is silly. But it's actually not. It actually is, I think, the culture trying to resolve the dissonance.

00:22:08.660 It's it's picking a lane. It's it's I think that's really true. Consistency.

00:22:12.780 I am. So actually, I just did our last on Friday.

00:22:17.340 We have a weekly dispute audio and I gave our first dispute audio talk.

00:22:20.560 And I based a lot of that quote from Lewis in that hideous strength.

00:22:26.140 And he makes this observation that I think is really profound, where he says I think it's his character, Dimble, who says this.

00:22:32.140 He says that he's just kind of pontificating to his wife.

00:22:36.480 And he says, have you noticed that the world is always sharpening and coming to a point?

00:22:41.860 The world is always getting narrower and pointier.

00:22:45.380 And there is something about as we grow up, it seems like every day God takes the world that we lived in yesterday and he puts it in front of us today and he divides it in half.

00:22:58.420 And he says, pick which one you want, you know, and we need to pick faithfulness.

00:23:03.920 And then, and then he does that again tomorrow. And, and it's funny because there are, um, there are friends that you had 10 years ago that you could not fellowship with now because God matured you and he's growing you more and more faithful.

00:23:21.840 And for you to grow up is for you to choose the half that God wants you to choose.

00:23:28.260 And it's not to say that 20 years ago you were disobedient for being where you were.

00:23:35.680 But God keeps wanting you to grow up and he keeps making you right choices.

00:23:39.980 And my observation to the students, which is pointing out like how over history, you know, you look at you look at King David, godly, righteous, righteous man. 0.63

00:23:49.060 And we know he stumbled with Bathsheba and everything. But even if you were to go before that, and we were if I was to take King David and put him on the stage, you know, right now, we would be looking at a man who was a complete barbarian, who has a multitude of wives, one of whom he won by with a necklace of Philistine foreskins.

00:24:10.500 um it wouldn't fly now like we need to grow up we need to we need to mature from that and every

00:24:18.400 year god is going to ask you to get sharper and and i say this because i think that 20 30 40 years

00:24:26.800 ago christian education felt like a principle that certain men were was they were advocating

00:24:34.220 this principle because of things you know peculiar convictions that they had whatever

00:24:39.640 But it seemed like it was an option and you could go in any number of different directions.

00:24:46.680 Where we are now, we see that the peculiar convictions that these guys had were actually not that peculiar but were actually some really, really incisive foresight who saw the way this thing was going, who understood the ground that we needed to seize now and that that option is no longer much of an option.

00:25:07.940 And the world is divided in half, and you need to pick which one.

00:25:11.500 And whichever one you pick, one's going to endure and preserve.

00:25:16.000 The other one's going to fall off.

00:25:18.160 And so I think we have to be really decisive right now.

00:25:21.420 That's so helpful.

00:25:22.280 I mean, that's helpful for our listeners, but that was really helpful for me.

00:25:25.520 I feel like you just kind of made sense of the last 10 years of my life when you gave that illustration of like it's like every day.

00:25:32.260 I've never put it into that kind of language.

00:25:34.440 That was just very helpful for me.

00:25:36.120 every day. It's like the Lord, he takes the world you were living in the day before and he divides

00:25:40.620 it in half and says, pick one. And the way you related that even to friendships, right? They're

00:25:46.140 like there, cause I, that's, I think that is just the experience of anyone who's actively

00:25:50.880 and faithfully following Jesus. And that's certainly been my experience that there are

00:25:54.800 people who right now it's like, yeah, I mean, we just, we don't have the relationship that we

00:26:01.220 once had. And it's like, what happened? Cause five years ago, it's like we saw eye to eye on

00:26:05.260 everything. But the reality is we saw eye to eye on everything because in that state, that degree

00:26:10.240 of maturity that I was at five years ago, I just didn't see as much. So it's like, if you're only

00:26:16.700 seeing 10 things, well, it's a lot easier that just the laws of average to see 10 things the

00:26:23.140 same way with somebody else, it's a lot more likely than to see a hundred things the same way

00:26:28.280 as somebody else. And so it's just, as we continue following Jesus and he begins to reveal to us from

00:26:33.560 his word, both, well, really both in special revelation for his word, but also in general

00:26:38.200 revelation by what's around us and making sense of his world, according to his rules

00:26:43.040 for his world, um, again and again, again, we're just seeing more.

00:26:46.380 And the more and more we see the less and less likelihood, um, that we're going to share

00:26:51.460 all that in common with everybody else.

00:26:53.960 And so it's, as we pursue Christ, it's, it's like our relationships get fewer, but deeper.

00:26:58.880 Would you agree with that?

00:27:01.040 Oh yeah, absolutely.

00:27:01.980 Well, it's like Jesus says, to whom much is given, much is required.

00:27:06.360 And what happens is every day you get just a little more inheritance from him.

00:27:10.920 But that inheritance, it demands more of you.

00:27:14.860 But the thing is, if I continue on with that talk, one of the things I noted was if you take that analogy and you run with it a little bit too long, it starts to feel like – well, it feels very negative.

00:27:30.480 Cause it feels like, um, are you like sitting on a, uh, a shipwrecked boat and like every

00:27:36.040 day half of the boat like breaks off and falls away and sinks, you know?

00:27:39.760 And so you've got to keep, so, so by the end of your life, you're going to be just on this

00:27:43.060 little one plank that's left or something that sounds negative.

00:27:46.820 But what Jesus tells us is that, um, you know, he, he gives us that analogy of, um, the one,

00:27:54.940 the disciple who chooses Christ over, um, brother or sister or wife or family or wealth, or so you,

00:28:04.800 you choose Christ over each of these things. He says that you will receive a hundred times that

00:28:11.200 back and eternal life. And so what's, what you find is, is that, that God is stripping things

00:28:17.860 away from you, but as he strips things away from you, you find that something a hundred times

00:28:23.340 bigger emerges and that, and with eternal life plunked on top of that. And so it's not you

00:28:29.840 getting narrower. It's actually, it's the miracle of the gospel that when you, when you let go of

00:28:36.520 something, you find that he gives you that thing back multiplied by a hundred. And that's just the

00:28:42.560 way Jesus loves to work, right? Like it's always, you want to go to the front of the line, go to the

00:28:46.460 back line. You want to be at the top, go to the bottom. You want to be the master, go be the

00:28:49.720 servant you want to have all of these things well then let go of all these things and you get them

00:28:55.480 all back multiplied by a hundred and that's just the way the gospel works and so you do get massively

00:29:01.240 richer you get so much richer by doing that spiritually possibly physically possibly not but

00:29:08.180 you you definitely get so much richer uh spiritually through all of that wow that i i feel kind of

00:29:15.000 surprised that edified me i didn't know our conversation would go that direction but that

00:29:19.260 was so good for, I hope it's good for our listeners. Maybe it's just me. Maybe that's

00:29:22.880 just something God's been doing in my heart recently, but that was really, really encouraging

00:29:26.440 for me to hear. Um, let's shift gears now, uh, as we kind of wrap up, maybe if we could just get

00:29:31.800 five more minutes, um, of your time, but could you talk a little bit about, um, we've talked

00:29:36.720 about Christian education. We've talked about a Christian worldview, but, um, I know that, um,

00:29:41.680 you're involved in classical education and, uh, even for myself. So my, my sister is a teacher

00:29:47.700 at Cambridge here in San Diego, and I know they've taken some cues from the K-12 school

00:29:55.240 that you guys have there in Moscow. But New St. Andrews, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's also

00:29:59.680 it's not just a Christian university, a Christian college, but it's classical. What is that? What

00:30:05.040 is a classical education, and why is that important? Yeah, so the classical Christian 0.95

00:30:11.080 education was um it kind of exploded here started in 1981 with logos school and then it kind of

00:30:19.400 took off across the whole u.s and now the world um you have a lot of accs schools scl schools and

00:30:25.580 then it's uh jumped over into the homeschooling world classical conversations and a number of

00:30:30.400 homeschoolers use curriculum in one stripe or another that uses classical so that was originally

00:30:34.920 a k-12 movement and then new st andrews college was started as a college that tends to pull

00:30:40.080 primarily from kids who come out of that classical education and there is um well there's a whole lot

00:30:46.340 to say about what is classical um but let me let me give you my really quick summary um i described

00:30:53.280 earlier that um contrast between looking at education as being designed to impart a particular

00:30:59.440 vocational skill versus education looking to understand who god is who this world is in light

00:31:05.360 him. Classical is basically reflecting back on what is the classical tradition, a long tradition

00:31:12.060 that went throughout, really derived from the early church and through the medieval era into

00:31:19.600 the 16th, 17th century. There was a process of education that classical education, as it began

00:31:25.740 here in 1981, was an attempt to recover some of the elements of that tradition. And the goal is to,

00:31:33.680 instead of going straight to vocational skill, but it's instead trying to actually train the mind

00:31:39.980 itself at a more fundamental level. So to use an illustration from if you remember,

00:31:47.120 like in the 1980s, when you were getting your computer, you would you could get your your your

00:31:53.320 tower. But then, you know, as kids, we always wanted like the graphics card or the speaker or

00:31:59.420 you know some sort of impressive screen or whatever but you could have all these accessories

00:32:06.540 but if your actual processor couldn't support it it was dumb you needed a powerful processor to

00:32:14.060 to run everything else think of classical education as aimed at that processor itself

00:32:19.640 so it's looking at what now in the workforce is now referred to as the soft skills it's the skills

00:32:25.820 that are a little bit closer to the heart, the mind, the soul, and it has to do with

00:32:30.320 your ability to do critical thinking, your ability to communicate with clarity, to be

00:32:36.160 able to speak and to write, to be able to get up and argue and not be flustered, to

00:32:41.400 be able to be given a huge stack of assignments to go home and know how to, on your own, figure

00:32:49.180 out how to work through this and logically break it down, work through it all, come away

00:32:55.100 with a coherent understanding of it be able to interact with others on that subject it's not

00:33:00.800 any one of the professional skills but it's these soft skills that um it's interesting in the

00:33:05.700 workforce now you get a lot of kids that come with their vocational skills but they don't have

00:33:09.620 common sense they don't know how to write they don't know how to speak they could code but they

00:33:13.500 don't know how to make eye contact it's it's um right so it's the stuff that's a little bit closer

00:33:18.620 to home in the mind of the person, but then it's connecting that to their understanding

00:33:26.280 of who Christ is and who they are in Christ, so that they see the world through the lens

00:33:32.020 of Scripture.

00:33:33.480 That's really what classical Christian education is doing, and it has to do with focusing

00:33:37.400 on the ancient arts of logic, grammar, rhetoric, and putting the mind together.

00:33:44.260 It tends to privilege the great works of the Western tradition because these tend to be the works that bring out that kind, those kinds of intellectual skills and as well as give them a sense of their Christian tradition and the inheritance that they have in Christ.

00:34:04.180 that's what the k-12 movement is doing and it's produced i think a really um incredible product

00:34:13.120 when held up in juxtaposition against most other educations and i do think it's interesting because

00:34:20.340 when i talk to christians and i say okay as a christian for a moment let's speak critically

00:34:25.420 about what's going on in the world of education and if i'm speaking the world i'm speaking usually

00:34:29.420 in the world of higher education. Most Christians, their sole category for critiquing colleges from 0.96

00:34:37.440 a Christian perspective has to do with poking holes in the financial system, people going into 0.79

00:34:45.120 debt, people blowing all kinds of money on a ridiculous, you know, campus experience and 0.82

00:34:51.920 whatnot. And there is so much to be said to critique colleges on the financial end. It's

00:34:56.720 It's just a complete waste of money.

00:34:59.420 But our critique needs to go a lot deeper than just the financial thing.

00:35:03.420 We need to actually understand what is a uniquely and distinctively Christian education look like at the college level.

00:35:09.620 That's the piece I don't think we're we're I don't think we have which classical education actually has helped us to recover.

00:35:17.620 That's really. Yeah, that's really helpful.

00:35:19.360 Would it be fair to say it like, because isn't there a piece in classical education that kind of follows the development of a child and when they're, so would it be fair to say that like grammar, it's kind of like the first third in that K through 12, the first third is like grammar and we're just, we're just memorizing and just we're putting all this information in and then logic.

00:35:40.760 So now it's not the what, but it's the why and how, and the how, like how to use all this kind of stuff. And then, and then, so it's like grammar, logic, and then rhetoric and how to, and now it's how to persuade, how, how to, how to disagree without needing a safe space, you know, or being triggered.

00:35:59.480 So is that fair to say grammar? Is that the right order, I guess? Because you mentioned those three things. But is it grammar, logic, and rhetoric? And does that actually follow the development of a person? I've heard that before. Is that true?

00:36:12.780 I think that's a really important part. So I mentioned this started here in 1981. There was a essay written by Dorothy Sayers, I think it was in the in the 1940s, that she called the lost tools of learning. And she she structured what you just described as a kind of experimental thing where she said, look, let's take this medieval system and break it down like this.

00:36:35.660 wouldn't this be a really interesting thing to try? My father-in-law being the kind of rare bird

00:36:42.740 that would say, well, let's do that. Let's try. He began Logos School and structured it along those

00:36:50.740 lines and doing exactly that, taking advantage of the natural proclivities of kids who are,

00:36:56.900 you know, eight years old to memorize the precocious nature of your junior hire who wants

00:37:02.160 to argue teaching them the actual laws of argument the weird sudden insecurities that afflict your

00:37:09.760 high school student that they suddenly become so concerned with how they come across and how other

00:37:15.640 people think of them that that actually is what rhetoric is about and that teaching them here the

00:37:21.980 here's the art of rhetoric and the art of persuasion and here's how you control how you

00:37:26.760 come across that it takes advantage of the natural development of the student. I'm, as a father of

00:37:34.180 five kids, I have three that are now here at NSA and two that are at Logos School, that very first

00:37:39.520 classical Christian school. And it's just been so fun watching their developmental stages coincide

00:37:46.540 with this curriculum, making them just come alive. It's just a blast. That's really cool. Well,

00:37:51.720 thanks, Ben, so much. This has been really helpful for me personally. I hope it's helpful

00:37:56.360 for our listeners um for those who are listening to this episode or will be listening once we air

00:38:02.160 it and they want to find you and follow you keep up with some of the things you're doing learn some

00:38:06.820 more from you um how can they find you how can they follow you well definitely check out the

00:38:12.140 new st andrew's web page as well as the nsa uh facebook page those are the best places to see

00:38:17.680 what we're up to uh i think you were about to segue to our our after hours conversation and

00:38:24.140 Those that will be about some things that showed up on our NSA Facebook page.

00:38:28.860 OK, great. So real quick.

00:38:31.380 So we have some bonus questions just to kind of begin to spark the appetite of our listeners.

00:38:36.700 These are for our responders, our club members.

00:38:39.500 If you're not a responder yet, please become a responder.

00:38:42.320 We're building a bonus reel of a lot of great kind of behind the scenes questions being answered by our guest on this podcast, Theology Applied.

00:38:51.580 So here are the two questions I'm going to be asking Ben for our after hours conversation.

00:38:57.760 So the first one is that I've heard New St. Andrews has been under fire for a particular video advertisement that they aired recently.

00:39:05.740 And so kind of getting a behind the scenes scoop on that and kind of the really just the controversy and the push back and forth between the college there and those and the civil authorities in Moscow.

00:39:19.680 And the second question I'm going to ask him in our bonus reel is, what is kind of a behind-the-scenes look at being the son-in-law of Doug Wilson?

00:39:30.880 Doug Wilson is an incredibly faithful man, but he's known by many in the evangelical world as being controversial.

00:39:36.660 And so I thought it would be really interesting to hear Ben talk about, from a closer-to-home perspective, what it's like to be a part of his family.

00:39:44.480 Maybe the Doug, the side of Doug that we common folk don't get to see.

00:39:49.180 So tune back in with us, become a responder, check out the bonus reel with those two questions.

00:39:54.760 And thanks again so much, Ben, for coming on the show.

00:39:57.160 Thanks for having me.

00:39:59.000 Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries, wishing you a very Merry Christmas.

00:40:05.320 This year of our Lord 2021, God has far exceeded all of our wildest expectations.

00:40:12.100 On our YouTube platform alone, we've reached this year 1.2 million views.

00:40:17.980 And that's aside from all of our other social media platforms.

00:40:22.040 And I've been wondering about this.

00:40:24.000 Why is it that people have found our content and our ministry to be helpful?

00:40:29.240 The Puritans believed that a minister of the word had not faithfully preached God's word

00:40:34.260 unless his sermon was composed of at least three parts.

00:40:38.560 Number one, exegesis of the text.

00:40:41.460 Number two, doctrine, drawing out and emphasizing specific theology and doctrines within the text.

00:40:50.820 But number three, read any of the Puritan works from John Owen to Thomas Watson to Richard

00:40:56.060 Baxter, and you will find at the end of their writings, at the end of their books, and at the

00:41:00.240 end of their sermon manuscripts, application. Application. It's a text with exegesis. It's

00:41:07.640 doctrines fleshed out, but then it's those truths applied to every single realm of human life

00:41:15.800 and nothing less. Our nation is desperate for God's commandments, God's precepts, God's word

00:41:24.520 to be applied to culture, to be applied to politics, to be applied to economics, to be applied

00:41:32.200 to the marketplace, to be applied to all these things.

00:41:36.860 And that's been our flagship show.

00:41:39.140 As I'm sure you're aware with Right Response Ministries,

00:41:41.920 the show that most of you tune in for

00:41:43.880 is called Theology Applied.

00:41:47.120 When I came up with that idea,

00:41:48.580 I didn't feel like I was even coming up with an idea.

00:41:51.280 I thought this was the most basic idea you could ever have.

00:41:55.420 It feels inauthentic or deceitful to even call it an idea

00:41:59.420 that makes it sound like it was innovative

00:42:01.120 or it was some kind of, you know, amazing creation. 0.98

00:42:04.340 Theology applied, isn't that what Christians have always done? 0.96

00:42:07.520 Apparently not, not anymore.

00:42:12.280 Because when we apply the word of God

00:42:14.440 to areas of human society that don't want God's word,

00:42:19.880 all of a sudden there's conflict.

00:42:22.280 When you start applying God's law to the medical field,

00:42:26.400 when you start applying God's law to how people should vote,

00:42:29.720 when you start applying God's law to Roe versus Wade,

00:42:33.740 when you start applying God's law to economics,

00:42:37.180 to socialism, to all these other things,

00:42:40.040 then all of a sudden, people are bothered.

00:42:44.360 You know why people are bothered?

00:42:46.820 They're bothered when the church becomes a threat.

00:42:50.360 Jesus was crucified because Jesus was a threat.

00:42:54.820 He was a threat to the kingdoms of this world.

00:42:57.440 He was a threat to the wisdom of this age.

00:43:01.260 He was a threat to principalities and to rulers

00:43:04.100 and to governing officials.

00:43:06.620 Jesus was a threat then.

00:43:09.000 And if we would only preach him,

00:43:11.440 if we would only preach Christ again today, 0.50

00:43:14.380 he will be a threat to all his enemies once more.

00:43:18.380 God is supreme.

00:43:19.480 He has something to say.

00:43:21.540 Will we open our mouths?

00:43:23.240 Will we reflect his image?

00:43:25.600 Will we reflect his truth?

00:43:28.020 Will we preach the whole counsel of God?

00:43:32.000 By God's grace, that's what we've done.

00:43:33.880 And I believe that's why we've grown.

00:43:35.960 That's why you like our ministry.

00:43:37.540 That's why you've been willing to be generous

00:43:39.520 and support our ministry.

00:43:41.060 And so we wanna continue.

00:43:43.780 And we don't wanna just continue in the way that we have.

00:43:46.620 We wanna expand and multiply our impact, our content,

00:43:51.680 our reach in every single regard.

00:43:54.120 but we can't do it without your help.

00:43:57.180 You've been so encouraging in your comments, your emails.

00:44:00.920 You've prayed for us, you've cared for us

00:44:03.440 and you've generously supported us.

00:44:06.760 But if it's not too much to ask,

00:44:09.160 I humbly request that you would prayerfully consider

00:44:11.720 financially supporting us at the end of the year once more

00:44:15.780 and that you would pray that we would remain faithful.

00:44:20.720 The last thing I want is for this ministry to grow

00:44:23.120 but for me to shrink in cowardice. 1.00

00:44:27.000 I pray that God kills this ministry tomorrow 0.99

00:44:29.660 if I'm going to be a man who compromises. 0.98

00:44:33.620 So pray that the ministry grows,

00:44:36.080 but pray for me personally.

00:44:38.400 I'm asking you, pray for Joel.

00:44:40.840 Pray that I would be courageous.

00:44:43.120 The righteous are as bold as lions.

00:44:46.380 Pray that I would not shrink back

00:44:48.020 and that I would continue to apply

00:44:50.480 the whole counsel of God to the whole of human life. Pray that this ministry would be a threat

00:44:57.980 and that we would faithfully equip Christians all over the world to likewise be a threat, 1.00

00:45:04.820 a threat to every principality, every evil power, every wisdom of this age, every lofty opinion, 0.85

00:45:13.220 every ruler who sets his face against the lordship of Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas.

The NXR Podcast - December 22, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - How Public Schools Are Turning Children Against Their Parents

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