Reverend Peter Marshall's Commentary Archive

 Christian Schools and Home Schools vs. Public Schools

". . .Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Luke 12:56)

     Last week I had the privilege of speaking to a fund raising banquet for the Riverside Christian School of East Grand Forks, Minnesota.  To those of you who pray for the Lord's blessing on my speaking engagements---thank you for your prayers!  The entire day was richly blessed with the Lord's grace and anointing.  Toward the end of my speech that night the Lord led me to talk about the difference between a Bible-based Christian education and a secular public school education.  The response to this part of the talk was, predictably, mixed!  More about that below.

I began the speech by talking about the nation-wide epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, the 2 million plus people in our prison systems, the ongoing holocaust of abortion, the explosion of gambling addictions, and other problems that indicate we are a society in moral and spiritual crisis.  I quoted the Biblical question: "If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?" and said that I have two answers for that question.  First, we must rediscover the original American vision---the sense of national purpose and destiny that comes with learning about God's plan for our nation.  That involves recovering the truth about America's Christian heritage.  For example, the fact that the Pilgrims and Puritans of early New England, who laid our nation's moral and spiritual foundations, believed that God had called them here to put the Biblical principles of self-government into practice and thereby create a society of liberty and justice for every soul. 

Second, the Christians in our society must put God's formula for revival and restoration into practice, as stated in 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways: then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land."  This, however, was not my focus in the banquet talk last week, and is covered at length in my DVD's and CD's.

I told the audience that the future of America is our children and grandchildren, and that if we want them to help bring our nation back to God then the necessity of a Bible-based education for them becomes obvious.  If they do not learn the truth of God's plan for America and if they do not know our Christian heritage---even if they become Christians themselves, how will they understand what it means for America to come back to God?

I pointed out to the folks in North Dakota and Minnesota (the banquet was in Grand Forks, North Dakota but the school is actually located across the Red River in East Grand Forks, Minnesota) that modern Americans no longer know about our Christian heritage.  Why?  Simply because the stories of God's miracles in our history and the truth about the Christian faith of the Founding Fathers and other past heroes and leaders has not been in the school history books we all read for over a century.  This is why I have been called by the Lord to help us get back these truths.  The Bible says: "Without a vision the people perish." 

In my talk last week I went on to give "chapter and verse" on our Christian heritage, quoting Pilgrim Governor William Bradford on their reason for coming to America, and giving examples of the Christian faith of the Founding Fathers. 

I then told the audience that I was aware (I had been briefed) of the fact that in their local area people were generally happy with the public schools.  Christian education has up until now not received very much support in the Upper Midwest.  This area of the country was settled in the last decades of the 19th Century by staunch German and Scandinavian Lutherans, whose traditional farming and small town way of life has created a stable society that has avoided most of the upheavals of urbanized America.  A main-line, quietly pietistic and traditional Lutheran Christianity predominates in the area, and that would probably describe the religious sentiments of most of the teachers in the public schools. It is not easy to convince people of this persuasion that a Bible-based education (especially one that will cost the families that choose it additional money) is more desirable than what they have had for decades in their public schools. 

But, here's the real problem with public education in America these days: Let's assume that this predominantly "Christian" culture in the public schools of North Dakota allows six-year old Sally's valentine to Jesus to be tacked up along with all the other valentines on the bulletin board outside her classroom next February 14.  Sally and Johnny and Susan and Jose are still being taught from a totally secular curriculum five days a week, K through 12.  And even if their parents are good Christians and they go to church and Sunday School, if you think that the few hours a day that they are at home and the few hours that they are in church on Sunday morning are enough to counter the influence of that secular education, you've got another think coming! 

At the very least, I told my audience, those children will be in constant internal conflict between the Biblical worldview that they are getting at home and church and the secular worldview they are getting in school.  Who is right?  Their parents and their Sunday School teachers, or their public school teachers?  The books their parents want them to read, or their school textbooks?  What is the truth about America's founding: Were the original settlers of America all rapacious white European males who constantly exploited the Native Americans and stole their land, or were they committed Christians who sought to live by the Bible and its teachings?  What are Sally and Johnny supposed to believe about the origins of the earth and human beings: That it all came about by the hand of a loving Creator God, or that by mere chance all of nature evolved out of some primordial ooze, including us human beings? 

But, you might object, they can pick up a Biblical worldview later.  They can get all of this worked out after they get out of school.  Well, that's true. However, consider this: Do we really want Sally and Johnny and Susan and Jose to have to spend their entire educational process having to sort out these conflicts?  Can you imagine now much educational time this wastes for students?

And what's going to happen if and when they go to college?  If they attend anything but a blatantly Christian college they will encounter some militantly secular professors who will get right in their faces with attacks on all things Christian.  Their Christian faith will be subject to ridicule in class and among their peers.  If Sally and Johnny have been confused and conflicted between the Biblical worldview they received at home and church and the secular worldview they received at school, what in the world makes anyone think that they will be able to withstand the onslaught of a much more intense and totally secular worldview in college?  I suspect that this goes a long way toward explaining why so many supposedly Christian kids fall away from the faith in college.

Wouldn't it be far better for them to have a consistent and Biblical worldview that will enable them to grow, not only in knowledge and learning but in moral and spiritual stature, to the point that even before they finish their education they will be committed to being "salt and light" in our society, and helping to bring America back to God?

What I said at the very end of the talk, I was told later, turned out to be the tipping point for a father who had been debating whether to send his child to the Christian school.  I felt moved to illustrate the difference that a Christian education can make by posing a hypothetical situation, which, when he heard it prompted him to enroll his child in the Christian school the next morning.  Here it is: Suppose that Sally has been given in her public school education the usual secular and Darwinian evolutionary worldview.  She has been taught that the rule for all of nature, including humanity, is the survival of the fittest, and that most people believe that there is such a thing as a life not worth living.  What is she going to do when she gets married and becomes pregnant and is told that she has a spinal bifida or a hydrocephalic baby?  If she has not been taught a Biblical worldview, and does not believe that every human being bears the image of God and is therefore of great value to God; if she does not believe that our worth and value comes from the God who loves us, irrespective of our "quality of life," then she and her husband might very well choose to abort that baby.  And what if that baby is your grandchild?

Or, I added, what if you, dear reader, are Sally's parent, and you become aged and infirm, with a not terribly good "quality of life"?  What will Sally do with you?  Will you be "gotten out of the way" early because you seem to have become useless?

I would submit to you that the answer to that depends a great deal on how Sally was educated, and what kind of worldview she has learned to live by. 

Copyright, 2007, Peter J. Marshall. All rights reserved.

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