I decided not to go with blogger comments.

Interestingly, everything worthy of taking out of the workplace violence training is a biblical principle. I actually sort of liked it… except for the one lady that kept complaining about everything under the sun.

In the comments to kristen’s education post, I said that I thought she and mike were “spot on” (a phrase I unintentionally stole from Jason, who used it in a comment on my blog…). But, I must confess, I don’t really think they are 100% spot on. I agree with most everything they say, and still think kristen’s comments are really good. It’s just the exception stuff that I disagree about. I’m not sure there’s ever an exception to send a child to the public schools. Kristen used a single mom that can’t work from home (to homeschool), and can’t afford private christian school, and whose church has failed in their duty to provide a christian education for the child(ren) as an example of someone that could send her child to the government school. But I’m not convinced of that. “What other option is there?” you might ask. Well, I don’t rightly know. But I don’t think that God ever puts us in a situation where our only option is to sin (and I think sending our kids to the public schools in our day and age is sin). One might say it is an exception to the basic principle, and not a sin in such a situation. But I’m not convinced of that (though I do believe in such a thing as situational ethics). We don’t believe this woman’s position allows her to steal if she can’t afford all her groceries one month, do we?

Shouldn’t we just do what God requires of us, and trust Him to provide?

This morning I “get to” have two and a half hours of workplace violence training. Yay!

Kristen posted some great thoughts on education. Her last sentence is especially powerful. I was just talking with Phil the other day about how the church has failed rather miserably in this regard.

Here’s my contribution to the education discussion…

Antithesis in Education

“And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15)

Thus begins the age-old distinction between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, between believers and unbelievers, the Church and the world. This is the antithesis; and the battle rages on even today, reaching into every area of life — including how we educate our children.

The antithesis in education is actually quite easy to recognize. We need only answer one simple question in order to determine for which side any given educational system fights: “Is Christ Lord?” There are only two ways anything can be taught; either in submission to the authority of Christ, or in rebellion against it. If any educational system falls into the latter category, we, as Christians, are to reject it as we would the teachings of the serpent.

One prominent method of fighting on the Devil’s side today is joining with the government schools in pretending the antithesis simply doesn’t exist. One deceives himself into believing that, concerning God, he can be neutral. The government schools, it is said, teach only knowledge and facts, and leave any religion to be taught from the home or church. No religion is either encouraged or discouraged, or at least that is what we are led to believe. Unfortunately, many Christians accept this as an accurate description.

Math, geography, economics or any number of other subjects, we say, can be taught without referring to God. Some subjects, such as biology, might have some religious implications (what with evolution and all), but as long as creation (of some type. We’ll save this for another issue) is given equal time in the classroom, biology’s in the clear, too. We fail to realize that our very solution to the problem is, itself, the problem. In putting Christianity in the pot right alongside evolution and all the other muck taught in government school classrooms, Christ is – without question – denied as reigning King over all things. Instead, the lesson learned is that Christianity does not have the sole claim to truth, and false and damnable teachings are presented with just as much credibility as Christianity. It begins in reading, writing and arithmetic for the lower grades, and only expands from there as economics, history, government and the sciences are added to the curriculum. As our children grow, they learn that God has increasingly less and less to do with the world that surrounds them.

In attempting to be religiously neutral, the public schools deny the total Lordship of Christ. You either teach that He is Lord, or you do not. When you remain silent concerning Him, you are actually speaking volumes about Him. When it is not taught that Christ is Lord over all, it is taught that He is not Lord over all. This is a fact that we cannot escape in the world God has made. “He that is not with me is against me,” says the Lord. Neutrality is not possible. When a Christian child is sent to the government schools, he enters an environment where God is not mentioned. The child is passively taught, not that this body of knowledge requires God, but that God is essentially irrelevant. That God is an option, which can be added like bacon bits to a salad — it might improve the experience, but that is entirely up to your preference. These are the lessons our children learn in the government schools. They are not neutral. They are anti-Christian. It goes against everything the Bible teaches about knowledge and wisdom. To quote Dr. Greg Bahnsen:

It should come as no surprise that, in a world where all things have been created by Christ (Col. 1:16) and are carried along by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3) and where all knowledge is therefore deposited in Him who is The Truth (Col. 2:3; John 14:6) and who must be Lord over all thinking (2 Cor. 10:5), neutrality is nothing short of immorality. “Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

For whose side are you training your children to do battle? Will they grow to be faithful servants of the Lord, “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”(2 Cor. 10:5)? Or will they be aligned with the seed of the serpent, and thus be trampled under the feet of the righteous?