Satan’s Churches
January 30, 2008
Laura in UT sent this to me. It is such a great article! Please read it and leave your comments.
The Difference Between The Holy Spirit
by Dr. Richard A. Jones
01/30/08
Last week I implored Dr. James Dobson to “take a risk” for greatness by encouraging his listeners to remove their children from “Satan’s churches,” the public schools. He has the Bible and even his own previously stated conviction as obedience benchmarks. Eighty-five percent of those who responded to the article agreed with me, but there was resistance from some of the “salt and light” folks and from two public school teachers. Here’s one of the emails:
“I disagree that parents should remove their children from public schools. Whatever happened to Christians being salt and light in this world? All of my kids survived public schools in addition to being witnesses for Christ while enrolled. Christians in society are becoming more and more isolationist and it’s not the answer. Homeschool parents are too much on the ‘high road,’ and don’t want their kids rubbing shoulders with ungodly kids. They’ll pay for this when their kids develop intolerant attitudes. Instead of asking Christian parents to remove their kids, why not encourage them to roll up their sleeves and prepare their kids for battle in a real world? Escapism is not the answer.”
Dear “Bill.”
Thanks for writing. For the sake of efficiency I’ll use bullet points to answer your objections:
- Would you please call American Vision and order the 2-DVD set, “The Children of Caesar?” Dr. Voddie Baucham is featured. Also, Homeschooling from a Biblical Worldview by Israel Wayne. You’ll be inspired by and benefit from both of them. Or, at the AV web site go to “Shop Categories” and “All Products.” Type in each title. And please re-read my articles from January 9 and 16, 2008. “Leave a Lasting Legacy” and “Germ Warfare.”
- Your email made me think that you personally may not know more than one or two homeschool families. If so, they are aberrant examples. Countrywide, homeschooling families are particularly famous for not being in escape mode; not squirreling their kids away from the community at large and not shielding them from the moral squalor “laboratory” found in every community. In fact a key reason to homeschool is to enable kids, once they’re well-trained, to reverse societal decay as Christian adult-leaders.
- Here are two great homeschooling analogies: Just as you start your tomato plants inside in January and don’t transplant them outdoors until May, the same is true in preparing kids. And you wouldn’t train combat troops by exposing them to the front lines of battle on day one. It’s at home and at combat boot camp where valuable lessons are learned and where mistakes made will be reversible. Once children are 18 (it comes soon enough!), they’ll be living the rest of their lives on the front lines of this “real world” you’re concerned about. (And you’re right; the RW is a very nasty place.) The secret is to get them ready with controlled exposure in an overseeing environment. As adults they’ll be far better prepared than the so-called “street smart,” public school humanists whose lives you don’t want your kids to emulate. By controlling the environment you will have molded them to be happy citizens and, hopefully, respected leaders as is the rule for 90% of homeschooled young adults. As for socialization and “street smarts,” if you pour mud on a white cloth it’s soon brown. Put the same clean cloth into a dish of mud and there’s no whitening effect on the mud. Since school is a place of social (and academic) sludge and mud, your kids need to learn about the sludge factor from mom- and dad-guided learning at home via conversations, books, videos as well as neighborhood contacts and, yes, even at church. And in any case, life’s way too short to think you can learn all the lessons you need via one-on-one, in-your-face, personal experiences. But this is a notion the public schools love to perpetuate for obvious reasons.
- Many adults, on behalf of innocent and often poorly behaved little kids, tell them they need to go to school to be “salt and light.” Last week I wrote that Southern Seminary’s Rev. Albert Mohler is advocating an “exit strategy” from the schools. Apparently he sees no measurable evidence to validate well-intentioned “salt and light theories.” Nor does the Bible tell kids to evangelize other kids or teachers. They have other skills to hone while young. After 18 they can take up that challenge and evangelize for the next 60 years to all the little kids all they want. A truly nice pastor who kept his now-grown sons in the public schools claims they had had a “positive influence” on their peers. That might well be true in his case, but Barna pollsters say that 85% of Christian kids graduating from public schools fall away from the faith, many permanently, after leaving home. So how does this pastor justify using one family’s lone story to ask all Christians to copy what he did? He can’t and he shouldn’t. Even if it’s 100% true that their time in school was “positive,” he was still disobedient. His kids belonged at home to get them ready psychologically, academically, “shrewd-ness-ly,” logically, rhetorically, mentally, epistemologically and apologetically. That’s what home’s for.
- Bill, you say your kids “survived” public schools. I’m sorry, but there’s no way in the world anyone can ever make that claim about a recent public school or college graduate. There are simply too many proof-of-the-pudding developments still lurking in the future. In truth, you won’t know for sure if your children “survived” until your not-yet-born grandchildren are, at a minimum, teenagers.
- Too many parents try to wiggle out of the public school “obedience predicament” with the yarn that “The Holy Spirit led me to keep my kids there.” But the Holy Spirit card is something too readily and erroneously played by both seasoned and rookie Christians. Only Scripture, not feelings or fuzzy shivers, can be used to validate so-called Holy Spirit influenced moments. Justification for public school attendance isn’t in the Bible. God, per Deuteronomy 6:1–9 and many other passages, wants His kids trained up at home. If someone believes the Holy Spirit is telling him to (disobey Scripture and) send his kids away, it’s a spirit at work alright, but it’s a different one than the Holy Spirit.
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January 30th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Wonderful article!! How can you argue with that? I’m still amazed that Christians send their kids to ps. I just don’t get it.
January 30th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Great response!! I’ve been reading you and your wife’s blogs for sometime. You guys are right on. It’s amzing to me that some Christians want to send their children to PS to be salt and light. There is not one example in the Bible of the Lord sending children to witness . I thank God every day for the freedom we have to keep our children home!!
January 30th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Hi! I just started reading your blog and I enjoy it. I’m a high schooler that goes to public school. I live in a suburb in Connecticut and the schools are great here. I understand all of your reasons for home schooling. I was wondering if you home school your children to give them a better education or to make them better Christians? Also, you mention public school, do you have the same feelings about sending a child to private school? A Christian private school? I can say with certainty that I am receiving an education of equal or higher quality than that I would receive if I were home schooled or if I attended certain private schools. I have learned a lot from all of my teachers and think it is great to get different perspectives as you change teachers, all of my teachers have been good influences (I read your post about the wacky teacher-I would never want him to teach anyone). There are no violence problems in my school. There are some bad influences around me, but they do not have an influence on me, except to learn what not to be like. My parents may not school me but they still teach me and I do not feel that my future as a Christian is in jeopardy because they don’t home school me. As for why my parents don’t home school me - my dad works and my mom suffers from terrible migraines and probably often wouldn’t be physically able to on some days. I’m not saying public school is right for everyone, but it works for us. Sorry this is so long! (Oh, and I don’t know what it means to be “salt and light” I guess my public school education is failing me!)
January 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
“Salt and light” won’t be learned in the public school, Anne. It’s from the Bible. (Matt 5: 13-14) If you are truly receiving a higher quality education than homeschool can provide, then I am genuinely impressed. Statistics don’t support your statement at all. Congrats! You’re in the one public school that beat all the stats!
January 30th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I’m glad you are having a good high school experience Anne. I hope that does not change for you before you graduate. My children until last year went to a private school and I can say that I would not send them back there either. I love having my children at home and they have really excelled since being at home and being allowed to pursue what interests them and at their own pace. I definitely have them at home to get them a quality education and as Ginger suggests, statistically homeschool children score higher in every category on standardized tests than public school children. I do remind my children, however, that being homeschooled in a priviledge that not every child gets the opportunity to do. So, I am glad that you are having a great year this year in high school.
BTW, I also suffer with migraines, but it really doesn’t affect our schooling as we can pick and choose our days off according to whatever meets our needs. I realize this wouldn’t have any bearing necessarily on your particular situation, but I wanted anyone else to know to not let that stop them from homechooling if that is their desire!
January 31st, 2008 at 2:07 am
Dh and I together work as missionaries to secular Universities. Currently we are on a campus that is considered a “teacher’s school” Just this week alone we had the privilege of meeting three aspiring teachers who were atheist, bisexual and to top it off very out spoken on their beliefs. I also had the privilege of being invited into a sorority on campus. Again girls aspiring to teach little ones. I cannot even begin to tell you what I saw in that home because it would cause too much offense. It was sickening! I shutter to think these young men and women are going to be teaching our future elementary children. After meeting with these students I was grieving something terribly for the souls of our kids and our college students being sucked into such sinful philosophies.Not only do they live out these horrendous acts but they are very forth right in mocking anything that is of Christ. I was so sick physically from the spiritual warfare we had to go through while witnessing to these students that I was up almost all night in constant prayer. Literally, I felt as if I had been physically punched, kicked and beaten up. I knew enough that it was not my war but God’s to win and I was simply the tool to shed His light wherever I could that night. However, I cannot imagine putting that immense pressure on my children to be salt and light at such vulnerable ages!
I have seen with my own eyes what is coming in the near future, nevermind what is already out there as Jeff is showing, and let me tell you it is CREEPY! If you are having a bad HS’ing day go take a walk on a secular University campus and just look around you. I can promise you that it will cure your bad day as you even think about your kids being taught by these upcoming teachers. Salt and Light will be the furthest from your mind when it comes to your little ones! Keep those kiddos home, train them up right and then they will be able to stand firm as they are mature in Christ.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:08 am
Excellent points. As a homeschool graduate, I’ve found that myself, as well as other homeschooled friends, seem to be more willing to “roll up [our] sleeves” and face the world head on, than many friends who were sent to be “salt and light” to the public schools.
Those friends end up more confused about right and wrong, and have accepted the “If it works for you, then it’s okay” mentality that they have heard touted for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 13 years of their lives.
Escapists? Not quite. Sheltered, quite possibly. But think of it like this. Bankers are taught to spot counterfeit currency, not by seeing counterfiets, but by studying, and handling, real currency.
Christian children, being exposed to Truth, day in and day out, “speaking of them (God’s commands) when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. ” (Dueteronomy 11:19), are more likely to spot, and speak out against, the false doctrines of the world, because of their steady exposure to Truth, they can more easily detect the lies of the world.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:18 am
Amen and Amen!
What are Christian people really thinking when they say “it is not that dark out there”?
Either they are walking around with their eyes closed or they are just plain lying to themselves so they don’t feel the guilt of what they are sending their kids into or they have been immersed in the darkness for so long that they don’t even recognize it when they see it.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:15 am
Corin, I LOVE what you said here “Christian children, being exposed to Truth, day in and day out, “speaking of them (God’s commands) when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. ” (Dueteronomy 11:19), are more likely to spot, and speak out against, the false doctrines of the world, because of their steady exposure to Truth, they can more easily detect the lies of the world.” I had been trying how to word that very thought and you did a fabulous job.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:53 am
Thank you for these posts, I have been having a bad day and was fleetingly thinking of letting my 1st grader go back to ps, but thanks to you all , I’m back on board-Tracy