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Dr. Greene - Articles
What About The Public Schools?
Two recent articles in prominent Christian magazines have dealt with the relation of Christians to the public school. In neither publication is there evidence that the authors really understand the difference between a Christian and a secular approach to education.
Hence it seems worthwhile to interrupt the series of articles on Christian education which we had begun in order to discuss the topic of Christians and the public school.
The September 6 issue of Christianity Today included an editorial, "Stay in School: Why dropping out of public education is a bad choice for Christians" and an article by Vera Gillmor entitled "Chicago Hope: How Christians are transforming public education". The August, 1999 issue of Focus on the Family carried an article by Cheri Fuller entitled "Rebuilding Hope for Public Schools" which encouraged Christians to pray for, work with, and keep their children in public school.
In response, we need to be thankful for every effort Christian parents and teachers are making to influence public schools. These are important efforts which God can and does bless. At the same time we need to urge Christians to be aware of the perspective from which secular education by law proceeds and what the Bible says about Christians involving themselves in it.
To begin with there is the difficulty of the church/state separation which is so commonly cited as the reason why Christianity should be excluded from public education. That separation was suggested in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist pastor; it does not appear in the Declaration or the Constitution. What the Constitution says is that there should not be a national church, as there is, for instance, in England. Actually it is impossible to separate government from religion, as some of the most prominent of the founding fathers said clearly. The Supreme Court has in recent decades seriously mis-interpreted this part of the Constitution. The result is that public school promotes in students' minds an alternative religion of secular humanism and hides behind the facade that this isn't really a religion at all. That's not true. God has made us in such a way that we all have a religion, whether we call it that or not.
This means that secular education is really a powerful form of modern idolatry. The Scripture is very clear that we are to avoid idolatry diligently. The first two of the Ten Commandments stress that. The entire Old Testament illustrates the Jews' tendency to become involved in it and God’s dislike for it, resulting in the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of God's people. The New Testament is no less insistent on the danger of idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:1-14, for example). For Christians to subject their children for twelve years to an idolatrous school system ought to raise serious questions in their minds.
The basic problem is that modern thinkers have concluded that facts are neutral; they have no meaning but are simply useful items that contribute to our power to control the world. Christians have too often bought into this perspective, thus dividing their lives into two realms, sacred and secular. But this is contrary to the Bible (1 Corinthians 10:31 for example), and facts are not neutral. They are created and upheld by the Word of God for the specific purpose of revealing God to us (Psalm 19:1-6 & Romans 1:20).
They are a channel through which God shows Himself to us and through which we can respond to Him. This is why, when God wanted to show Himself most clearly to us, Christ became a human being. Facts, as popularly understood, do not call on us for any response. They are just useful. If they reveal God, then they call on us for a response of deepened awe and love for God, deepened praise and service to Him. The influence of culture is powerful, and it is not easy to erase the effect of twelve years of secular instruction from the minds and hearts of children.
There is one further problem here. What does the Bible say is the business of human government? It is public justice, and that does not include education. It is impossible to teach school without promoting some view of morality, and the government has no right, under the lordship of Christ (Matthew 28:18), to dictate to parents what their children should think about values in human living. The government should help parents get an education for their children, and there are plenty of people who will continue to want what public school now offers, but Christians should not, in a democracy, have to pay for that kind of school and their own in addition.
This does not mean that Christians should cut themselves off from public culture. It means setting up signposts in the field of education to show what it would be like if Christ's lordship were acknowledged. We will never bring in the millennium this way.
The Bible is clear that things will get worse rather than better as the end nears, but it would be good if we were found headed in the right direction when Christ returns. In setting up Christian schools that have a radically different approach to the curriculum (which is the creation) than the secular school does, we actually bear witness to the public school concerning Christ as the truth and concerning the real meaning of the creation.
In this way we can offer a more balanced approach than the two magazine issues cited above to the proper relation of Christians to public education. The points above could easily be enlarged, and it may be necessary to do that in next month's essay before returning to the series of topics we had begun.
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