“Christian Nationalists are not interested in Christian values. They are only interested in legislating Christian dominance. Christian Nationalism (CN) is putting prayer in schools and taking free lunches out. CN is teaching the bible in schools but refusing to give teachers a pay raise. CN is forcing schools to post the ten commandments while nominating a candidate for President who has violated almost all of them. It is not about Jesus. It is about power.”
James Talarico
Texas State Congressman
1.) If Christian Nationalists are not interested in Christian values then they are not, by definition, Christian Nationalists.
2.) What could possibly be wrong with legislating Christian dominance? Is it only Christianity when one legislates the dominance of other non Christian religions?
3.) I am a Christian Nationalist. I am not interested in putting prayer in schools but I am interested in taking “free” lunches out. In point of fact, what I am really interested in is legislating a dominance that results in closing down completely government schools.
4.) There is no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody, somewhere is paying for that lunch.
5.) I am a Christian Nationalist. As a Christian Nationalist I am opposed to the humanist hacks they call “teachers” to teach the Bible in government schools. Can you imagine how badly they would do so? I am also opposed to giving teachers a school raise. In point of fact, in my Christian Nationalist world all government school teachers would be out of work since all government schools would be shut down. I would shut down government school since, as a Christian Nationalist, wanting dominance, I do not want humanists being dominant over children as seen in their teaching the children that humanism should be dominant in their thinking.
6.) If schools are shut down then the idea of posting the ten commandments is now big deal. However, if government schools are not shut down, why shouldn’t the ten commandments be posted since the refusal to post them demonstrates the States desire to have its religion be dominant.
7.) This chap was adamantly opposed to posting the 10 commandments in Texas schools and he contributed to killing the bill in Texas.
8.) In desiring to post the ten commandments while nominating Trump who has violated all of them, Christians are involved in contradiction for sure. However, all because someone supports something wrong (nominating Trump) doesn’t mean it is wrong for them to support a good thing (posting the ten commandments.) It merely means they are inconsistent. Talarico’s inconsistencies are all over this stupid quote. Does that mean everything the man does is wrong?
9.) What ever could be possibly wrong with wielding power? So what if it is about power? When one embraces Christ are they at that point no longer to have authority or power? Should they not have the power of Fathers or Husbands? Should they not have the power of employer or politician?
10.) Why is it that the idea of embracing Jesus automatically means the idea of giving up power? I don’t doubt that for some Jesus is used as a mask to grab power but that doesn’t mean that automatically Christianity and power are incompatible.
Uh oh. Guess who agrees with you?
“Supporters of the so-called pseudo-volkisch movement emphasize again and again that they will, in no circumstances, adopt the use of negative criticism, but will engage only in constructive work. That is nothing but puerile chatter … for a Weltanschauung is intolerant, and cannot permit another to exist side by side with it. … The same holds true of religions. Christianity was not content with erecting an altar of its own. It had first to destroy the pagan altars. It was only by virtue of this passionate intolerance that an apodictic faith could grow up, and intolerance is an indispensable condition for the growth of such a faith.” p. 308.
there are all kinds of people who agree with me on this or that point who I wouldn’t let near my grandchildren.
I am glad he got this one correct.
Children and animals loved him, and they have good instincts about people.
Some may be convinced by the “children and animals” argument. I don’t find it convincing.
You are aware that all the reformers taught that both divine institutions (church and state) should work together to ensure that all the children of a nation should get a Christian education?
“It is impossible that the gay little folks should guide and teach themselves. If parents neglect, the
responsibility rests with magistrates. Some parents have not piety enough to do it, and the majority
are unfit. Parents must look to a special class, set apart for the purpose. Hence council men and
magistrates must watch over youth with unremitting care and diligence.
“This is the best and richest increase, prosperity, and strength of a city, that it should contain a
great number of polished, learned, intelligent, honorable, and well bred citizens. We can neither
hew such citizens out of stones nor carve them out of wood; for God does not work miracles, so
long as the ordinary gifts of his bounty are able to subserve the use of man. Hence we must use the
appointed means, and with cost and care, rear up and mould our citizens.”
“The magistrates are responsible if the young grow up wild.”
“I hold it to be incumbent on those in authority to command their subjects to keep their children at
school: for it is, beyond doubt, their duty to insure the permanence of the above named offices and
positions, so that preachers, jurists, curates, scribes, physicians, schoolmasters, and the like may
not fail from among us, for we cannot do without them.
“If they have the right to command their subjects, the able bodied among them in time of war to
handle musket and pike, with how much the more reason ought they to compel the people to keep
their children at school.”
Joshua,
I would have no problem with Government Education if it was providing a Christian education, but as Gov’t education is not now providing anything at all reflecting Christian Education I am adamant that we close down the Government schools. They are, after all, now providing a anti-Christ education.
AND, I don’t agree that the State has the right to command their subjects in time of war UNLESS such a war is in keeping with just war principles.
Thank you for your reply. The quotes above are by Martin Luther, as you may have guessed.
Part of me wants to agree with you – shut down all government schools. But your reasoning is similar to the argument against capital punishment: the justice system is corrupt, it wrongly executes people, therefore we should take away the State’s right to execute criminals.
Hello Joshua
Interesting reasoning on your part.
I would say that if the State was misusing the sword as Stalin or Mao misused the sword I would argue that the state is illegitimate and so should be overthrown so that a state bowing to Christ might handle the sword in a righteous fashion.
If the Gov’t schools were Christian and only got education wrong in the same low percentage that the justice system gets the death penalty wrong then I might go with your argument. But our school system is providing a catechetical system that is indoctrinating children in a false religion. At the very least, it is sin for Christians to send God’s covenant seed to Government schools because to do so is for them to violate the 1st commandment. Ideally, the government schools should be shut down because they demonstrate that our Gov’t in general is no longer legitimate because it is anti-Christ.
Thanks for the conversation
Joshua writes;
I hear this argument a lot: government schools only corrupt and indoctrinate. They do more harm than good. It is a sweeping accusation, but is it true?
Bret responds
Yes it is true, generally speaking;
Look, I’m not going to look up all the stats for you on how bad our secondary education is. Here are just a few;
63% of American 12th graders are rated “basic” or “below basic” in reading achievement, the Education Department revealed.
The Education Department also said the statistic that 37% of 12th graders would not qualify for entry-level college courses is accurate if it refers to a particular National Assessment of Educational Progress (or NAEP) test that the National Assessment Governing Board has said can serve as a proxy for entry-level college work.
While looking up the stats, if you want you can also look up how superior homeschooling numbers are too public school numbers.
Now factor in how bad the education is at the teacher colleges of those who get degrees in “education.”
I think the thing for me to do is to recommend a few books so you can get up to speed on the subject.
“The Messianic Character of American Education — R. J. Rushdoony
“The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” – Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
“The Worm In The Apple” – Peter Brimelow
Anything by John Taylor Gatto
Anything by Samuel L. Blumenfeld.
Look, I’ve been all over this subject over the years. I’ve read tons of the material. I know what I’m talking about when I say public schools almost universally suck. If you can find a Unicorn among them … congratulations.
Joshua writes
Is every public school like this? I know of homeschooled/Christian schooled kids who went to public high school, and were surprised at how much study they had to do to stay afloat. Surprised too, that the school had rules, and would expel kids for breaking them.
Bret responds,
Anecdotes hold no water. Do the reading and get back to me.
Joshua writes,
The rhetoric resembles Dabney’s (courageous and brilliant man) but he was proud of his secular university education and he taught at another one.
Bret writes,
There is no such thing as “secular.”
And the education given at the University in the early 19th century is apples and oranges from where we are now. You’re making category mistakes.
Joshua writes,
Schools are terribly secular but they are still studying general revelation.
Bret responds,
There is no such thing as “secular.” All education without exception is hopelessly religious.
Since man’s reason is fallen general revelation is only as good as the religious presuppositions that fallen man brings to the general revelation. Currently, those presuppositions are thoroughly anti-Christ and as such the general revelation he will read will confirm his anti-Christ presuppositions.
Joshua writes,
It is better for millions of children to be studying that rather than nothing at all.
Bret responds,
As a Pastor I have told people consistently that they would be better served having their children stay at home not being formally educated at all then sending them to government schools where they will be catechized into a false religion and where they will learn to read general revelation in such a way that confirms the false religion.
Shoot… if you want I can link you to a video where the chap teaches that Natural law (a subset of general revelation) teaches that sodomy is perfectly in keeping with Natural Law.
Joshua writes,
Obviously they would get a lot more out of their studies if they also studied special revelation from a Reformed perspective, began and ended each school day with prayer, etc. But you and I are communicating right now in part because of pagans who have studied the book of nature well enough to make advancements in technology.
Bret responds,
You and I are communicating only because fallen man;
1.) Is never consistent with his Christ hating presuppositions
2.) Borrows from the capital of a Christian world and life view in order to get his Christ hating worldview off the ground and running.
Fallen man gets things right not because he reads general revelation aright but he gets things right despite his reading general revelation wrongly.
You and I are not on the same page about education and neither are we on the same page in terms of worldview and epistemology.
Joshua writes,
But not studying general revelation at all is what Satan and Rome would prefer. You remember the medieval mindset: “ignorance is the mother of devotion”. Uneducated people are much easier to manipulate and control. Rome therefore argued that only the clergy and a few others, in the tight grip of the Church, should have an education.
Bret responds,
LOL … we spend tens of millions of dollars on education and we have to be one of the stupidest peoples on the planet. Do the reading of the books cited above.
Secondly, it strikes me that many, if not most, of those who have terminal degrees are the most easily propagandized and manipulated people I come across. Clergy and Professors are the worst of all. I know very very few educated clergy and they all have either Masters or Ph.D’s.
“Education” hasn’t delivered people from ignorance. Putative education has merely made people confirmed in their ignorance. Indeed, I’d say that currently we need to flip your proverb and say, “Education is the mother of devotion.” That is tongue in cheek of course.
Joshua wrote,
And it is just not the case that if the government gets out of education, all parents will step up and work harder than ever to make sure their children get educated. In his lectures defending the establishment principle, Thomas Chalmers points out that education is not subject to the law of demand and supply. The less educated people are, and the less access they have to education, the less they desire it. “Men love darkness rather than light”- including the light of general revelation. Especially when their bellies are full.
Bret responds,
I’ll place my bet on parents. I’ve seen and know what Government education looks like. I have known countless secondary school teachers. I’ve yet to come across one that was intelligent. Now, I’ve known a few University types who were sharp but not so many that I have concluded that they are the norm.
That men loved darkness rather than light is true. It explains why they are so comfortable piling up degrees.
Joshua writes,
Christian parents will try to educate their children no matter what, but when they do it themselves, the results are mixed. Homeschooling advocates point to high SAT scores of homeschoolers, but that’s only counting the ones that actually take the SAT. I know of many burnt out homeschooling parents and half-educated children who resent the fact that they are studying well into their 20s, while working a full-time job, to get the education they should have gotten in their teens.
Bret responds,
I’m not interested in your anecdotes. I have anecdotes also that are different then your anecdotes.
Believe me … those home educated children you’re talking about should instead thank their parents that they didn’t send them to a place where the interest is not in education but in reinforcing societal control mechanisms. You can’t really believe that the secondary schools have any interest in educating.
Read the sources I posted. If you believe that you’re deluded.
Joshua writes,
I want to see a Christian nation as much as you. But to convince others, we have to steer clear of bad arguments. One argument against government schools sounds Anabaptistic:
The government must be secular and have nothing to do with religion (or education)
Therefore the government (schools) will be anti-Christian.
Therefore the Christian should have nothing to do with government (schools).
Bret responds,
You’re first premise is faulty. There is no such thing as secular. That means your 1st conclusion is faulty since unless schools are explicitly Christian they will by default be anit-Christian. There is no such thing as neutrality.
However, per the 1st commandment your conclusion is true.
The anabaptists believed that anything outside of their community (“the world”) was evil. I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that what is not Christian is evil and government schools are not evil … nor are they neutral (secular). They are hopelessly religious and the religion that they advocate and teach is NOT the Christian religion.
Joshua writes,
But if government, Christian or not, is a divine institution, then it can provide good things. Its secular nature does not mean everything it does will be harmful. This includes education. Texas University Professor Dabney would agree.
Bret responds,
Governments that are not Christian are by definition anti-Christian. Neutrality is a myth. There is no such thing as secular. That is a classical liberal mindset. One that I do not share.
If Dabney were alive today he would agree with me. Read his stuff on Education as can be found in his “Secular Writings.”
Look Joshua, you strike me as a bright chap with a sharp blade but your blade is set at the wrong angle and though sharp, is cutting wrong with every cut.
Thanks for the conversation. I don’t think we are going to make much progress though as we are each beginning at different starting points.
Cheers
I hear this argument a lot: government schools only corrupt and indoctrinate. They do more harm than good. It is a sweeping accusation, but is it true? Is every public school like this? I know of homeschooled/Christian schooled kids who went to public high school, and were surprised at how much study they had to do to stay afloat. Surprised too, that the school had rules, and would expel kids for breaking them.
The rhetoric resembles Dabney’s (courageous and brilliant man) but he was proud of his secular university education and he taught at another one.
Schools are terribly secular but they are still studying general revelation. It is better for millions of children to be studying that rather than nothing at all. Obviously they would get a lot more out of their studies if they also studied special revelation from a Reformed perspective, began and ended each school day with prayer, etc. But you and I are communicating right now in part because of pagans who have studied the book of nature well enough to make advancements in technology.
But not studying general revelation at all is what Satan and Rome would prefer. You remember the medieval mindset: “ignorance is the mother of devotion”. Uneducated people are much easier to manipulate and control. Rome therefore argued that only the clergy and a few others, in the tight grip of the Church, should have an education.
And it is just not the case that if the government gets out of education, all parents will step up and work harder than ever to make sure their children get educated. In his lectures defending the establishment principle, Thomas Chalmers points out that education is not subject to the law of demand and supply. The less educated people are, and the less access they have to education, the less they desire it. “Men love darkness rather than light”- including the light of general revelation. Especially when their bellies are full.
Christian parents will try to educate their children no matter what, but when they do it themselves, the results are mixed. Homeschooling advocates point to high SAT scores of homeschoolers, but that’s only counting the ones that actually take the SAT. I know of many burnt out homeschooling parents and half-educated children who resent the fact that they are studying well into their 20s, while working a full-time job, to get the education they should have gotten in their teens.
I want to see a Christian nation as much as you. But to convince others, we have to steer clear of bad arguments. One argument against government schools sounds Anabaptistic:
The government must be secular and have nothing to do with religion (or education)
Therefore the government (schools) will be anti-Christian.
Therefore the Christian should have nothing to do with government (schools).
But if government, Christian or not, is a divine institution, then it can provide good things. Its secular nature does not mean everything it does will be harmful. This includes education. Texas University Professor Dabney would agree.
I hear your point about secular. I do not understand it to mean neutral.
Happy to replace secular with anti-christian. Are antichristian governments incapable of providing something good?
This is where your reasoning is taking you. All schools are religious. If they are not Christian they are antichristian. Therefore they do nothing but harm.
Cue the anabaptists: all governments are antichristian. They can only do harm. Christians should have nothing to do with them.
But if antichristian governments are still a legitimate institution of God, then they can provide things of real benefit to everyone, Christians included.
The Church has benefited from inventions of the Cainites, Moses and Israel from the learning of the Egyptians, the apostolic church (at times) from the law and order of the Romans.
To accurately compare public schools and homeschooling, you have to compare how Christian students do at home and how they do at school. A parent who homeschools is going to instill a value for education in their children. But that value enables the same child to do well in public school.
Your analysis of schools is misguided if you compare children of highly dedicated homeschooling parents with children of parents who don’t care. A large majority of students in schools have parents who don’t care. Every teacher I’ve talked to says that the number one factor in academic success is parental involvement
Joshua;
I hear your point about secular. I do not understand it to mean neutral.
Happy to replace secular with anti-christian. Are antichristian governments incapable of providing something good?
Bret responds,
As we start here would you mind telling me how old you are? Are you a school teacher yourself? Did you (do you) send your children to government schools?
As to your query … Yes, they are capable.
Now, let’s talk about degrees of anti-Christ. What degree of anti-Christ are we currently at in our government schools?
If, we as a people, were only a wee bit removed from Christian education one might argue that one could navigate around the problems. However, if you will do the reading of numerous books I recommended you would see that it’s not just that we are off a wee bit. The whole agenda is educate in such a way to create non-thinking clones. It’s all about command and control. If I want children to be free to think as mature adults I will not want them to attend government schools. Indeed, I am of the conviction that to do so is child abuse.
Joshua writes,
This is where your reasoning is taking you. All schools are religious. If they are not Christian they are antichristian. Therefore they do nothing but harm.
Bret responds,
If I threw children in a pond w/ crocodiles some of them might learn how to swim really well. Throwing them in the pond would therefore not do “nothing but harm.” But would it be wise therefore to throw them into a pond with crocodiles?
You’re argument here is “let us sin that grace may increase.” Because some good might happen let us ignore the 1st commandment and have our children catechized into a false religion.
Joshua writes,
Cue the anabaptists: all governments are antichristian. They can only do harm. Christians should have nothing to do with them.
Bret responds,
Cue the 1st commandment. “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me.” Current secondary education catechizes children into a false religion and makes them servants of false gods. As such Biblical Christian in this climate should have nothing to do with them unless they want to destroy God’s covenant seed.
Do you really think that God would’ve had the Children of Israel attend the schools of Canaan in order to learn the Canaanite ways?
Finally, virtually all Christian do have something to do with government schools. They support them with their taxes.
Joshua writes,
But if antichristian governments are still a legitimate institution of God, then they can provide things of real benefit to everyone, Christians included.
Bret responds,
Yep … just like Stalin and Mao provided things of real benefit to everyone, Christian included.
Joshua writes,
The Church has benefited from inventions of the Cainites, Moses and Israel from the learning of the Egyptians, the apostolic church (at times) from the law and order of the Romans.
Bret responds,
Sure… we should plunder the Egyptians because it is all ours to begin with. But as we are plundering them and taking back what was our to begin with we should not become Egyptians.
However, currently Christians don’t have to attend the Maphomet Elementary school in order to access education. Have you heard of this thing called “the information age?” Never have we lived in a time when schools were more unnecessary.
Joshua writes,
To accurately compare public schools and homeschooling, you have to compare how Christian students do at home and how they do at school. A parent who homeschools is going to instill a value for education in their children. But that value enables the same child to do well in public school.
Bret responds,
But I don’t want a child to do well in Government school since that means they will be lapping up a false religion. If Christian children have to attend government school it is my prayer that they will do really really poorly.
Joshua writes,
Your analysis of schools is misguided if you compare children of highly dedicated homeschooling parents with children of parents who don’t care. A large majority of students in schools have parents who don’t care. Every teacher I’ve talked to says that the number one factor in academic success is parental involvement.
Bret responds,
I don’t want government schooled children to have academic success. I want them to do poorly. I don’t want them to learn to think like pagans.
I am awash in a culture filled with professional people, including “Christians” who did well in government schools. I try to avoid them as much as I can.
Do exceptions exist? Absolutely! But I don’t gamble when I know the house is overwhelmingly against me.
Now, you have repeatedly accused me of being Anabaptist. I can only plead with you to cease being pagan in your thinking.
By the way I have read Dabney on education, as well as the counterarguments of the men he debated. The phrase “secularized education” comes from him. Also read two biographies of him. Hardly anyone more stimulating to read than Dabney.
But he was a fierce opponent of Christian Nationalism. His whole argument against government schools is based on the fact that America has separated church and state. He revels in the “superiority” of Church/State relations as compared to Protestant Europe. He and his colleagues shelved Thornwell’s proposal that the Confederacy officially designate itself as a Christian nation – the year after Thornwell’s death.
His essays on education are brilliant but tragic, since he predicts the wreckage of his own anti-Christian government stance. “The State, in our land, may not favour any religion. It will therefore demand that no religion be taught in the schools. But secular education is godless. National government education means national godlessness.”
Sure, universities in the 1800s were much better than now. But their foundational principles were the same – determined non-commitment to Christianity, which means they were officially against Christ. For Dabney, that was permissible at the university level. Though inconsistent he recognized, with Calvin, that Christians can learn a lot from non-Christians, who know a lot about the book of nature through the common operations of the Spirit.
Considering Dabney’s anti-Christian nationalism, it’s strange to find echoes of his rhetoric against government schools all throughout the Christian Nationalist movement.
American writers like Dabney get off track because they are reactive – always reacting to problems resulting largely from the unwillingness of American Protestants to commit fully to their heritage. In reacting they fix some errors, but in the process make other deviations from their Reformed heritage.
Joshua writes,
But Dabney was a fierce opponent of Christian Nationalism. His whole argument against government schools is based on the fact that America has separated church and state. He revels in the “superiority” of Church/State relations as compared to Protestant Europe. He and his colleagues shelved Thornwell’s proposal that the Confederacy officially designate itself as a Christian nation – the year after Thornwell’s death.
Bret responds,
I likewise have read tons of Dabney. When I read I like to note where men were wrong. Dabney was wrong here just as he was in error in touting his Scottish Common Sense realism. All men err. Even me.
On this matter Thornwell was correct.
Joshua writes,
His essays on education are brilliant but tragic, since he predicts the wreckage of his own anti-Christian government stance. “The State, in our land, may not favour any religion. It will therefore demand that no religion be taught in the schools. But secular education is godless. National government education means national godlessness.”
Bret responds,
LOL … and you want to send Christian children to be educated in godlessness.
Dabney’s mistake above is that he thought it was possible for the State to favor “no religion,” and that it was possible for the state to not teach religion. He was wrong on both counts. Education is always taught concomitant with religion. No exceptions. Dabney was still operating in a Classical Liberal worldview and that was errant.
Joshua writes,
Sure, universities in the 1800s were much better than now. But their foundational principles were the same – determined non-commitment to Christianity, which means they were officially against Christ. For Dabney, that was permissible at the university level. Though inconsistent he recognized, with Calvin, that Christians can learn a lot from non-Christians, who know a lot about the book of nature through the common operations of the Spirit.
Bret responds,
The foundational principles are not the same. Since Dabney’s time we have moved from the foundational educational principle of Deism-Rationalism to Romanticism, to Darwinism, to Nihilism/Existentialism to Post-modernism and post Post-modernism. So, you err on this point.
We have worked out with greater intensity the logic of the anti-thesis so that the Christ hating principles which were mild w/ Dabney’s Education are now in a full-throated belch from Hell.
And we already covered previously your appeal to “the book of nature.” The book of nature is only as good as the presuppositions one begins with in reading the “book of nature.” You keep appealing to Thomistic natural law paradigm. I am adamantly opposed to that paradigm.
If biblically minded and trained Christian adults want to learn from the book of nature from the pagans, I have no problem w/ that since such people have the ability to sift. Children do not have that ability.
Joshua writes,
Considering Dabney’s anti-Christian nationalism, it’s strange to find echoes of his rhetoric against government schools all throughout the Christian Nationalist movement.
Bret responds,
It’s odd to find people improving on Dabney?
Joshua writes,
American writers like Dabney get off track because they are reactive – always reacting to problems resulting largely from the unwillingness of American Protestants to commit fully to their heritage. In reacting they fix some errors, but in the process make other deviations from their Reformed heritage.
Bret responds,
Why would I value your analysis here?
I guarantee you that if the Reformed chaps who comprised the Reformed heritage were alive today they would be look like a drunk driver in all the deviations that they would be making.
I’m middle-aged, not a teacher, homeschool some children and send others to government schools. Spent all my life in the homeschooling/Christian schooling camp.
Calvin encouraged learning from Aristotle, Seneca, and other pagan thinkers. He denied that doing so will turn you into a pagan. You can and must learn to evaluate their knowledge of the book of nature using the light of Scripture. You have to teach children to do that, and you can’t wait until they’re 18. In the information age, children are getting knowledge flung at them by pagans no matter where they go to school.
One rule of hermeneutics is that God does not work miracles needlessly. Daniel and his friends were wiser than all the other Babylonians. It wasn’t a miracle. They had Biblical eyeglasses on, and could make much more progress in studying the book of nature than their pagan classmates.
I understand your viewpoint. It was the viewpoint of my parents’ generation, who lived through the chaos of desegregation, etc. But it’s never been so easy to find schools that match your demographic, or match the neighborhood you choose to live in, and has the kids you let your children play with.
That’s important. Children from Christian homes do not find teachers and educational content the main problem. The main problem is the classmates, particularly the children of parents who don’t care.
Christian parents forget that. They pull them out because of the fear of indoctrination, try to homeschool, find their kids losing motivation, find them running with children of parents that don’t care. So they send them to work somewhere – with children from government schools. Sometimes the jobs end up being worse than public schools, because no adults are around, and their daughter is working alone with her 27 year old manager.
Joshua writes,
Calvin encouraged learning from Aristotle, Seneca, and other pagan thinkers. He denied that doing so will turn you into a pagan. You can and must learn to evaluate their knowledge of the book of nature using the light of Scripture. You have to teach children to do that, and you can’t wait until they’re 18. In the information age, children are getting knowledge flung at them by pagans no matter where they go to school.
Bret responds,
When you find a secondary government school teaching Cicero and Aristotle let me know. Apart from remarkable providence Calvin was just wrong if he thought sending 5 year olds to be taught by pagans would no tnormally lead to those students becoming pagan. Garbage in… garbage out.
Hey Joshua… how much reading have you done on the subject of worldview thinking?
Joshua writes,
One rule of hermeneutics is that God does not work miracles needlessly. Daniel and his friends were wiser than all the other Babylonians. It wasn’t a miracle. They had Biblical eyeglasses on, and could make much more progress in studying the book of nature than their pagan classmates.
Bret responds,
Right… God does not work miracles needlessly therefore we should not expect Him to work the miracle of giving our children a Christian worldview when we insist on sending His covenant seed to pagan houses of learning. That is putting God to the test. Scripture forbids that.
Daniel and his friends were not 5 years old when they went to Babylon.
Joshua writes,
I understand your viewpoint. It was the viewpoint of my parents’ generation, who lived through the chaos of desegregation, etc. But it’s never been so easy to find schools that match your demographic, or match the neighborhood you choose to live in, and has the kids you let your children play with.
Bret responds,
As Christians can’t find schools to match their demographic or neighborhood is just another reason to NOT send children to government schools.
OH… and the chaos your parents lived through … it’s still that chaotic and worse. Your parents were right.
Joshua writes,
That’s important. Children from Christian homes do not find teachers and educational content the main problem. The main problem is the classmates, particularly the children of parents who don’t care.
Bret responds,
Who cares what the “main problem” is? Either one of those problems is reason enough to not send God’s covenant seed to Government schools.
Second, Christian children should NOT spend a large amount of time with their peers as happens in government schools and that is true even if the other students were Christians. We never wanted our children to identify primarily with other children from other families. We wanted them to grow up to aspire to be like the adults in their extended family.
Joshua writes,
Christian parents forget that. They pull them out because of the fear of indoctrination, try to homeschool, find their kids losing motivation, find them running with children of parents that don’t care. So they send them to work somewhere – with children from government schools. Sometimes the jobs end up being worse than public schools, because no adults are around, and their daughter is working alone with her 27 year old manager.
Bret responds,
Yes… having been a parent myself I know that there are all kinds of ways for parents to mess up.
We just have very different worldviews Joshua.
Sounds like Van Til. Another brilliant man, but deviating from the Westminster Divines re the light of nature. A younger generation of pastors are already dealing with the practical effects of his views.
“I don’t trust doctors and scientists…they’re all blind fools, their presuppositions are wrong so they can’t interpret the book of nature correctly. I will be my own doctor.” Then they go on YouTube and get hooked by a new age alternative medicine “expert” who dabbles in the occult.
LOL … you mean like the Scientists and Doctors who told us that we needed to take the vaccine and who told us we needed to mask up? You means Scientists like Trofim Lysenko? You mean Doctors like Joseph Mengele?
And Van Til would have insisted that he was perfectly aligned with the WCF. As he was never disciplined for not being aligned with the WCF I’d have to say you’re all wet regarding CVT.