Darryl,
“The question about whether parents sending children to state schools may not prove a whole lot. But since you endorse the idea that state schools are a defacto state church that is guilty of godlessness, and since sessions regularly remove people from rolls of churches for going to churches that practice idolatry, it is not at all unreasonable to think that sessions should discipline members who are engaged in idolatrous practices. (And for what it’s worth, I would advocate a session taking action against someone who breaks the Sabbath.) Could it be your bark is worse than its bite?”
Would Darryl recommend Buddhist adult converts remove their children from Buddhist Schools? If he say’s “yes” he has answered his own question. If he say’s “no” it would be an example of counter intuitive covenantal thinking.
I would say that before Sessions start disciplining people for having their children in idolatrous schools several things must first happen.
1.) There must be a long period of time tilling the ground explaining precisely and exactly why it is that this practice is so noxious.
2.) There must be some attempt on the Church’s part to help parents who decide that their children should no longer attend government schools. In the Church I serve I have for years provided classes on any number of subjects for those covenant children who desire to take advantage of it.
3.) There must be a willingness to realize that as we didn’t get in this situation overnight we will not get out of this situation overnight. The problems we are facing here are not limited to government schools. The problems we face here are
a.) the long practice of habit
b.) the perceived necessity of most families to have two incomes
If families must have two incomes what is to be done with the children during
the workday? School has been the easy answer.
c.) the peer pressure that is felt by adults to involve their children in government
schools.
d.) the reality that for many communities the government school has become the hub
around which the community revolves.
Finally on this question we must realize the dynamics of sphere sovereignty. The family is its own sphere of authority. The Church should be cautious to a fault before practicing the doctrine of interposition upon the family. God has given to the family the authority to raise children. He has not given that authority to the Church. Because of this the Churches primary role on this issue is to counsel and proclaim.
“Darryl,
Could it also be that going to state schools is not as bad as worshiping false gods? Daniel, after all, seemed to excel state schools that were hardly neutral, and yet God blessed him. Also, Paul taught that eating meat offered to idols was not inherently sinful. So perhaps the idolatry threshold applies more to real places of worship and not indirect ones where believers have more discretion, and there the elder police don’t need to issue warrants.
Daniel is constantly appealed to without recognizing that Daniel wasn’t five years old when he went to the schools of Babylon. Indeed, everything in the book of Daniel indicates that Daniel interpreted Babylonian education through a biblical grid. Having been taught the ways of the covenant Daniel remained true to the God of the covenant. This is the same thing we pray for our own children. The example of Paul has already been dealt with in the previous post dealing with Jeff Cagle.
The idolatry threshold is clearly broken by sending God’s covenant children to pagan schools where they will be taught to think in terms of pagan covenants.
Darryl,
“One last thought, could it be that parents who send their children to state schools, may also extend a level of care and Christian nurture that is strong enough to shepherd children through the troubled waters of public schools? I think it is possible, though very difficult. At the same time, I don’t believe that any system of educating covenant youth is air tight. Home schooled kids go off the ranch. Christian schooled kids abandon the faith. Public schooled kids have problems. So since experience doesn’t prove what’s right, the theoretical question is one where parents make the call on how to educate their young. I am very cautious about a pastor, session or other Christian parents telling other parents how to rear their children. It’s sort of like France telling us how to deal with our immigration problem.”
First, I have consistently said in other writings that parents who send their children to government schools who debrief their children thoroughly everyday on what they learned that wasn’t true could end up with children who were rocks of faith. But, we must ask, how many parents do that? The work it would take to accomplish such a task would be ten fold the work it would take to home school the children.
Second, the fact that failure is found everywhere doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do the right thing. Many children who attend church grow up abandoning the faith just as many children who don’t attend church grow up embracing the faith. Does that mean we should make sure our children don’t attend Church?
In the end we obey not because experience proves obedience right. We obey because we are told to obey.