I would love to just jump out of the gate, and start with my first reason (which, as I tried to emphasize last week, is the biggest reason of them all), but I must first deal with a major objection. The sad truth is that many Christian parents will refuse to even engage in this discussion, and default to one exclusive argument: My child needs to be a light in the schools. If I pull him/her out, the schools will just get worse. Some even go so far as to equate pulling your children out of government schools with sheltering them, as though if we shouldn't put our kids in schools, then we shouldn't bring them to the grocery store, because what's in the schools is in the stores too. This line of thinking comes from a severe lack of thinking on the issue. I hope to address both the issue of children being light, and the difference between the school and the store.
Oftentimes, parents will claim that their children are to be the "light of the world" (referencing Matthew 5:14). While I would certainly question their interpretation, that is outside the scope of this post (for more info, I point to Dr. Bill Mounce's work, especially his sermons from about a decade ago). In short, it might be wise to notice that the light is not with the darkness, but away from it. Lighting a lamp under a basket illumines the basket. Lighting a lamp on a lampstand illumines the whole room.
In any case, the argument rests on several presuppositions.
First, it is presupposed that the institution itself is capable of positve change in the first place. Unfortunately, we have no evidence for that. Government education started off ungodly, and it has only gotten worse. The schools cannot go back to what it never was.
Second, it is presupposed that our children are Christian. At the risk of sounding insulting, I would venture to say that most high school students who claim to be Christian are not actually Christian. I say this not as a pretentious adult, but as an adult who recognizes that he himself was not saved. I was, as Matt Chandler has called, a "nerdy lost kid". When I graduated, I was a virgin who had never been drunk, never got high, and claimed to be a Christian. But I had no concept of repentance. In all honesty, I didn't even know what the gospel even was. Most "Christian" kids fall into this (if you doubt this, research the percentage of people who leave the Church after their first year of college).
Even for those who are genuinely saved, that doesn't mean that these children should be tossed into a cesspool with little to no Christian supervision. After all, do we throw people into combat the day after they sign up for the army? Absolutely not! Before they are useful for combat, they must be instructed about how combat works. A lot of training goes into a soldier before their first day of active combat. It is the same with Christians. How dare we think that we can give our children 3 hours of religious education at church per week concurrently with more than 5 times that at school and think that we are adequately training our children! No. We need to train our children diligently so that they are adequately prepared to share the gospel.
Third, it is presupposed that children are to be reached within the confines of the school building. Don't public school kids socialize outside of school? Homeschool parents are regularly thrown the charge that homeschooling inhibits socialization. Certainly they wouldn't throw that accusation if public school children have the same problem. Homeschooling teaches children how to make friends without being forced to sit next to people. After all, kids go to malls, and restaurants, and theme parks, and zoos, and swimming pools, and libraries. Why limit evangelism to one building?
It would also do us well to remember that school aged children become non-school aged adults. It isn't as though once they graduate, they can't get saved. No matter how tightly a high-school student wants to stay in school (because there are so many of those), they will be thrown out into the real world. If we can’t get them in school, we’ll get them then.
Fourth, it is presupposed that our unsaved children will become saved. If the above presuppositions had merit, one could at least advocate for a Christian parent’s saved child going into the school. But how many parents only put their child in public school after they get saved? While I do not discount young conversions, I think we can all agree that most conversions happen after the age of 7. In my state, you have to start schooling your child at 7 (whether it be sending your child to school, or homeschooling them). In other words, most people find themselves in the odd position of actually putting in children they know aren’t saved in school. Why? In order to be light? You can’t give off light if you are full of darkness! So we put them into the government school system in the hopes that at some point they will get saved, and then be a light. I say that is a very risky move.
Fifth, it is presupposed that the children are the ones to be evangelizing. If we pull the children out, they say, who will share the gospel with the children? The answer should be clear. I say it is not primarily the job of the Christian student to be a light, but rather the Christian teacher. The Christian teacher should put their jobs on the line, and use their position, having been trained with the gospel (unlike most students) to stand for Jesus Christ in the schools.
These presuppositions, as I have hopefully shown, are baseless. Therefore, the conclusion drawn from them is also baseless. So please, for those who plan on shutting me out simply because our kids need to be light in the schools, please take a hard look at the arguments above.
For those who would go so far as to equate taking kids out of school with taking kids out of grocery stores, allow me to explain the difference to you. Simply put, when we send our children to school, whether it is a Christian school, or a public school, we are enlisting those teachers as representatives of us. We are implicitly endorsing everything they say. I would not put my child in a school based on the Qu’ran, or the Book of Mormon, because I myself do not believe those books. This isn’t to say that we agree with absolutely everything, but when we implicitly tell the schools “Teach my children”, we are really saying “[I trust you to teach my children well, therefore] teach my children.” Therefore, educators are put in something of a position of authority over the children. When this educational authority figure says that homosexuality is perfectly normal and should be embraced, it carries with it a weight that you, parents, have entrusted to them. This is a weight and authority that simply does not exist at the grocery store, or the DMV, or the mall. It is found exclusively in the educational context. Therefore, we have to be significantly more careful about who we let teach our children than what they glance at in the tabloids.
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