Thou Shalt Have No Other God’s Before Me
— God
“Every child entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well–by creating the international child of the future.”
Psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce,
Addressing 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar
Similar quotes coming from sundry other people influential in the realm of government education, as that which is cited by Pierce, could be reproduced many times over, and yet despite this clearly stated intent to reprogram children, Christians continue to send their children to government schools. Some Christians tend to think that their local schools are different because the teachers there are “nice” and maybe even “smart.” What they fail to realize is that “nice” and “smart” is always used in service of the reprogramming of children — often times without the nice and smart teacher being themselves self-conscious of the malevolent design of government schooling. The most effective reprogramming is that reprogramming that is done with a smile on the teachers face. The Christian community has to realize that the Christian teachers in the school system where they are sending their children have yoked themselves to a system that is at war with Biblical Christianity, and that the Christianity of those teachers is either a Christianity that is in abeyance or is a Christianity that has been reinterpreted to fit the mold of the humanistic agenda of the government schools in which they are employed. A Biblical Christian teacher who taught their subject matter from a Biblical Christian worldview in a humanistic school system would be fired in weeks if not days. My friends the government schools are not populated by the kind of Christians that can help your children think God’s thoughts after him.
Government schools are committed to the religion of humanism where man, considered either in the individual or the collective is the god of the system. This is so true that government schools really ought to be considered churches. Just as Christian churches are charged with teaching children to think as Christians through catechisis so the government schools are charged with teaching children to think as humanists through their lessons. In the Church of humanism the teachers are the ministers. In the church of humanism the curriculum in the schools is the equivalent to the catechism in the church of Christianity. In the church of humanism there are high holy days that the adherents celebrate just as christian churches have their own high holy days that they celebrate. In the churches of humanism people can be expelled for sinning against humanistic rules of political correctness just as in Christian churches people can be excommunicated for sins against the Christian faith. All the dynamics that one finds in Christian churches and in the Christian faith are all present in government schools. Government schools are the temples of humanism where the initiates are indoctrinated in the ways of a false religion. Don’t let anyone tell you that Americans don’t have an established religion.
Now in light of all this and in light of the reality that the first commandment forbids us to serve other gods why do Christians send their children to government schools where their children are immersed in learning the covenant ways of a false religion? And having sent their children to government schools why do they become surprised when their children remain consistent with what they’ve learned of the faith of humanism and leave the Christian faith?
Some in would object to all of this by positing that education does not need to be specifically Christian since education is not spiritual but rather is only intellectual. The reasoning of these people is that education is not religious but rather is one discipline that falls within a common realm where both Christians and non-Christians can labor together despite significant differences in presuppositions. The reasoning of these folks insists that education is to be done not by the standards of God’s word but rather by the standard of natural law. They insist that God’s word doesn’t teach anything with regards to the disciplines one might expect to find in a liberal arts education. The truths of these disciplines are taught by natural law and are self evident.
The first problem we would note to this objection is that it seems to be an objection only raised by some Christians. Other adherents of other faith systems understand perfectly well the importance of an education in keeping with their faith. This is why we can find people of other non Christian faiths insisting on the importance of an education that is in keeping with their faith.
“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”
Adolf Hitler
“Give me your 4 years olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”
Vladimir Lenin
Here’s another one I came across yesterday:
“In the establishment of a teaching body [government schools], my principal aim is to have a means of directing political and moral opinions; for so long as the people are not taught from their childhood whether to be Republicans or Monarchists, Catholics or freethinkers, the State will not form a nation.”
— Napoleon, qtd. in Robert Nisbet’s The Sociological Tradition, pg. 38.
If the state is idolatrous then isn’t it indeed sick and insane that a five-year-old comes to school with allegiances to our founding fathers and elected officials? I would think you’d find much, albeit not all, to applaud in Pierce.
“This is why we can find people of other non Christian faiths insisting on the importance of an education that is in keeping with their faith.”
So unbelievers can figure out what you have about education. That would seem like a W2K argument, until one realizes that what is agreed upon is that education is a redemptive project, not a creational one. Oh, so close to getting a W2K button, only to be held back by joining pagans in their worldliness by utterly confusing law and gospel, creation and redemption! Douglas Wilson is on line two for you.
Government schools have long been used as centers of social experimentation. The agendas of all sorts of evil people have been imposed on the children there (we see it big-time in our state, especially with the sodomite cadre). It’s so obvious, I don’t understand how thinking Christians can participate in it any longer.
That’s what baffles me: that only Christians don’t get this. All the other religions get it.
The state may be idolatrous but that doesn’t mean all the families are that comprise society from whence these five-year-olds are coming. Let’s pretend they are coming from a home that while not explicitly christian has still been largely influenced (perhaps unconsciously) by the remnants of a Christian worldview. As such they have taught their children the whole notion that the founding fathers were good and decent men who were fighting for a just cause. (Drat that Witherspoon … if he’d only been R2Kt.) They come to school and the teachers find it necessary to teach, quite to the contrary that the founding fathers were scalawags who only had their own interest at heart. Also you conveniently left out the part where Pierce talks negatively about five-year-olds having allegiance to their parents. To you find that normal that Pierce desires to scrub that away as well?
In short, these projects that Pierce mentions reveal that Pierce has a religious agenda.
“This is why we can find people of other non Christian faiths insisting on the importance of an education that is in keeping with their faith.”
These adherents of other religions (there is no such thing as unbelievers Zrim) do see education as being redemptive. Education is redeeming their children from other religions. Through schooling the sons of Allah are redeemed from a Christian education or a Hindu education. I would say that Education is redemptive on the sanctification end of redemption. Learning to think Christ’s thoughts after Him in every area of life is an example of grace restoring nature.
So now its worldliness if one doesn’t subscribe to Radical Two Kingdom Theology.
There is no confusion of law and Gospel primarily because we are not talking about justification. We do not divorce creation and redemption. Like Bavinck we insist that grace restores nature.
I hope you keep commenting Steve. Your objections help clarify my position for me.
Thanks,
Bret
Zrim said,
There is a difference between a fun fight with a good measure of authentic passion mixed in and taking oneself more seriously than one’s ideas to the point of charging more sin and stupidity on another’s behalf.
Christian education is not salvific in any redemptive sense. I’m not sure who exactly argues for that.
The real issue is what regime’s creation order will be taught. Obviously, if you agree that education is a “creational project,” then you would probably also agree that that project will explicitly and implicitly center on the Creator. See Deuteronomy 6 for example.
Now take the fact that the quotes above show statists and idolators arguing that their idol should function in the Creator role in education. Voila, you’ve got one of our reasons why we don’t like public schools. The regime in charge of these schools is a mix of polytheism and humanism. Kids in public schools will learn the myths of that regime. Just like kids in a Christian homeschool or private school will learn the myths of that regime. I don’t mean “myth” in the sense of a lie, but instead of a deep, core belief.
So the issue is, whose creation order will be taught?
Great and cogent response Joshua M.
But I would guess that R2Kt guys would say that the creation realm is neutral and that Natural law can be used in the educational program to reach pluralistic comity with other faiths.
But I would guess that R2Kt guys would say that the creation realm is neutral and that Natural law can be used in the educational program to reach pluralistic comity with other faiths.
Or in the case or R2Kt a pluralistic comedy which is treason and that’s a tragedy.