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“Christian, no one can love your child the way you can. No one can meet his or her needs the way you can. Because God has called you to parenthood and entrusted you with your child’s soul, He will equip you to train and disciple your child better than anyone else possibly can.”
–REAGAN ESCUDÉ SCOTT
I’m sorry to say this, but we live in a nation that seeks to devour children.
You probably already knew that, especially in consideration of the wickedness that has become more prevalent in recent years and taken hold of every facet of our society. There is nothing slowing down the widespread state of evil within our government, our cities, our schools, and even in some of our churches. However, over the last two years, the evil has taken a darker turn as the attacks on our children have escalated.
Consider the following realities in our country now (and please be warned: some of the links here are graphic and disturbing): Activists are now attempting to normalize sex between adults and minors. Doctors have no problem performing medical experiments on kids, and hospitals are performing hysterectomies, double mastectomies, and phalloplastys (where skin on the forearm or thigh is removed to create a non-functioning penis), on young girls.
No laws are being enforced to protect kids from sexual predation at “family-friendly pride” events where kids are welcomed onto stripper poles with naked women. Schools are hiding information about children from their parents and inviting drag queens to have a “story hour” with them. Teens are being encouraged to perform at night clubs and bars for cash. Pornography is filling the shelves of school libraries. Teachers are grooming children with radical gender theory and lessons on transgenderism, kinks, and BDSM, lying about our history, and prioritizing activism over education.
And the federal government’s “equity” policies are letting pedophiles walk free while enabling, encouraging, and condoning all of this abuse.
This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the last 50 years that legalized abortion has taken the lives of tens of millions of innocent children.
Christian, everything you’ve known America to be is gone. Everything you thought you could trust about our government, our society, our medical establishment, and our education system should be squandered.
So this is my appeal to you to protect the hearts and minds of your children and train them up yourself, lest someone else train them for you.
Scripture has a lot to say about training children:
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”
Colossians 2:8
In the words of Voddie Baucham, “How can we look at these biblical principles about the training of the mind and not apply them to the way that we educate our children?”
In other words, the responsibility of training your children’s hearts and minds belongs to you, Christian, not the government.
If it hasn’t been obvious by now, the government seeks to transform your children into activists to work on their behalf. What will you do to protect them? How will you uphold your responsibility as their parent to train them up in the way they should go? How can you be sure that no one takes them captive by philosophy and empty deceit? What are you doing to diligently teach your children the Scriptures? How can you be sure that your children will look more like Christ and less like the world?
In his letter to Timothy, Paul makes a plea to Timothy to guard the truth that has been entrusted to him:
“O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.”
1 Timothy 6:20-21
How can we properly teach our children to guard the truth if we send them into battle against the evils of the world without armor?
You might respond to this by insisting: “I can teach them after they come home from school.”
That’s all well and good until you consider this reality:
When will you be able to make up for the lost time? And, if you find the time, how will that measure up to the 14,000 hours they will spend at their desk in a classroom?
Perhaps Charles Potter, a signer of the Humanist Manifesto and architect of the modern education system, knew what many Christian parents today refuse to acknowledge:
“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday school, meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?”
Christian, no one can love your child the way you can. No one can meet his or her needs the way you can. Because God has called you to parenthood and entrusted you with your child’s soul, He will equip you to train and disciple your child better than anyone else possibly can.
For years, we’ve been sold the lie that only people with education degrees are qualified to teach children. But a cross-sectional study found that whether or not parents were certified to teach had no impact on the achievement scores of home-educated children. In fact, students received slightly higher scores if neither parent held a state-issued teaching certificate than if one or both parents had.
Luke 6:40 says this:
“A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.”
As parents, or as people who plan to be parents, we should seriously consider this passage with regards to how our children will be educated. Whoever teaches and educates our children will inevitably be their discipler. Can we really trust strangers with education degrees to train the hearts and minds of our children for eight hours a day?
You might say, “I’ve known my daughter’s teacher for years. She goes to our church and loves the Lord, so, yes, I’d trust her with my children.”
It’s true that teachers like this exist, and they are wonderful and needed in the classroom. Unfortunately, the curriculum they teach is not up to them. It’s determined by the federal government and the teachers’ unions. So the better question to ask might be: “Do we really trust Caesar to train the hearts and minds of our children for eight hours a day?” Do you want your child to look more like the government or more like Christ?
In the words of Charles Spurgeon,
“No neutralities can exist in religion. We are either ranked under the banner of Prince Immanuel, to serve and fight his battles, or we are vassals of the black prince, Satan. ‘To whom belongest thou?’”
To whom do you belong, Christian? To whom does your child belong?
Is trading 14,000 seat-hours in the classroom over the course of 13 years worth your child’s heart and mind?
As optimistic as we would like to be, It is simply not possible for a biblical worldview to be taught in schools. It’s not possible for teachers, even Christian teachers, to be under the authority of the government’s curriculum and teach children all that God has commanded of them.
And if we were to settle for a “neutral” worldview, believing we could make up for the time lost at home, we would be fooling ourselves. Again, nothing is neutral. John Kleinig of Macquarie University authored Principles of Neutrality in Education to outline, if possible, a framework for neutrality as policy within the classroom. He concluded his paper with this:
“I have tried to show that contrary to appearance, there is a great plurality of principles of neutrality, difficult to formulate in any satisfactory manner.”
Worldview matters. In his presentation He Who Controls the Schools Controls the World, Pastor Voddie Baucham beautifully breaks down the elements of a worldview and how a carnal worldview in the public school system is unavoidable. His outline was as follows:
Do you see the difference? In the education setting, your child only has two options: to learn a biblical worldview which God says to be good and true, or to learn a carnal worldview which man says to be good and true. There is no in between.
Should it be of concern to us that 61 percent of millennials consider themselves to be Christian, yet only 2 percent hold a biblical worldview? Should it be of concern that 46 percent of evangelicals reject absolute moral truth? I think so. How will you make certain that your child will not become just another statistic?
Christian author David Alan Black says this:
“No academic skepticism, no secularist authors, no blatant materialism can so undermine the spiritual life of the country like the completely secularized training of a child under the authority of the State. Bible-based education is mandatory for Christian parents. If we think we can keep our children in a secular school system and escape the dumb down, amoral, and immoral results of secular humanism in schools, we are sorely mistaken.”
I am very sympathetic to you. I have friends whose husbands are not convinced that homeschool is the best choice, and out of obedience to Christ, they submit to their husbands. They do everything they can to stay in constant communication with their children’s teachers, receive lesson plans and book assignments before they are put into practice, and make up for the lost time at home.
I know families who feel that it’s financially impossible to educate their children at home and also make ends meet. But I also know families who have sacrificed everything to make it work.
If you find yourself in either of these situations, know that God sees your submission as a wife, and He will provide for you and your family if you choose to sacrifice your finances out of obedience to Him. However, if you hesitate to educate your children at home for reasons like socialization or not having any educational training, I would encourage you to read this article as you continue to pray over your decision.
The bottom line is this: As a Christian, you should reject the idea that the government is your co-parent. Reject the idea that you share responsibility with Caesar to train your children. Your children belong to you, dear Christian. How far will you go to guard their hearts and minds?
Follow Reagan on Twitter! @thereaganscott
Ready to dive deeper into the intersection of faith and policy? Head over to our Theology of Politics series page where we’ve published several long-form pieces that will help Christians navigate where their faith should direct them on political issues.
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