There's an interesting section of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 6. The apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthian Christians, all of whom seem to be having a rough go of it. There's division, superiority complexes, sexual immorality, and selfishness running rampant in the churches. Paul gets to chapter 6 and shames the Corinthians: in their selfishness, the Corinthian believers were suing each other, taking one another to court before the secular judges. "Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?" (1 Cor 6:1)
The problem isn't just that the saints are taking each other to court before the ungodly, thus making Jesus look bad in the eyes of the world, but they are also forgetting who they are in Christ. "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" (1 Cor 6:2-3) Jesus Christ is King of kings, and His saints are ruling and reigning with Him from heaven. Christ, through His Spirit, has equipped believers with wisdom beyond any worldly judge. For the Corinthians to go to court before unbelievers is to effectively say that there is more wisdom among the ungodly than among the saints of Christ, as if there were more wisdom in the secular books of law than in God's own word the Bible.
Paul further clarifies where the problem comes from: the selfishness and unruliness of the Corinthians. "Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated? No, you yourselves wrong and cheat, and you do these things to your brethren!" (1 Cor 6:7-8) The Corinthians are ruled by their own sins and selfishness. They are not ruling over their own lives in Spirit-led self-control, but are directed by their own lusts, living like they were still slaves of sin. And because they won't rule themselves in wisdom, they will be ruled by anything else.
Now, all that considered, you might wonder at the title of this post. What does any of this stuff have to do with getting Christian children out of the government school system? The reality is that for generations American Christians have entrusted the education of their kids to the public school system. We viewed the school system as a neutral place, somewhere our kids could get a decent, generic education, which we could supplement with church attendance, Bible reading, and youth group. Increasingly it has become obvious that this is not the case. It doesn't work that way. We cannot hand our children over to an increasingly ungodly, anti-Christian state education system and then be shocked when they come home from college rejecting the faith we taught them. As pastor Paul Washer once said, "Your children will go to public school and they will be trained for somewhere around 15,000 hours in ungodly secular thought. And then they'll go to Sunday School and they'll color a picture of Noah's ark. And you think that's going to stand against the lies that they are being told?"
If we want to see a change in our children's future we have to start by taking responsibility for them again. We cannot continue to hand them over to the state for education 40 hours a week. The church of Jesus needs to make use of all our resources, doing everything we can to ensure a true Christian education for our children. We need to take charge of our children's future. If we do not, someone else surely will, but our kids will be all the worse for it. And through His Spirit, God has equipped us for it! Paul didn't want the Corinthians taking each other to court before unbelievers because there should be enough wisdom among the churches to judge their own issues. A faithful Christian mom, equipped with a Bible, a willingness to learn, and a desire to truly teach her kids, is a more competent teacher than any ungodly person with every letter imaginable behind their name. At least, if your goal is to raise children who love Jesus, love learning, and are actually prepared to be competent adults. If you really want your kids to be able to name all 700 genders, feel guilty for a host of imaginary sins they've never actually committed, or apologize to the house plants for their carbon footprint, then yeah, keep sending them to the government school.
A few closing clarifying points:
1. This is not a condemnation of faithful men and women who teach in the government school system. If you are in that position and able to use the wisdom God has given to you to truly teach and help kids in that environment, then God speed! Your position may very quickly become a missional position, bringing the light of God's love to the spiritually dark places of our society. But there is a world of difference between sending an equipped, maturing Christian into that environment, and sending an impressionable, immature child. There's a reason the First Crusade was a general success and the Children's Crusade ended in tragedy and loss. You don't send untrained children to do a mature believer's work!
2. The fact is that, even if Christians faithfully pursue this good work, there will be many kids in our communities left behind for a time. This is the sad state of our reality. Remember that a parent's first responsibility is for their children, not their neighborhood (1 Tim 5:8). A church's first responsibility is for their covenant children, not the children in their community (Gal 6:10). The fact that we can't yet give every child a quality Christian education shouldn't prevent us from starting by giving our kids a quality Christian education.
3. This is not an endorsement of any one method of education over another. Homeschooling is great. Private Christian schools are great. Classical Christian schools are great. The point is to get started in the right direction, which starts by taking responsibility for our kids and not giving them up to the state.
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