Christians and Public School

As Voddie Baucham (one of my favorite speakers/authors/pastors) says in the clip below, this is a “sore” subject. I know that. And it’s not that fact that causes me to bring it up again on this blog. It is because my heart is so heavy over this topic that I post about it. I see failure in the Christian home over and over, and while there are many reasons for it, I can’t help believing that sending our children to public schools is a major factor. There…I said it. It’s time we pay attention to this issue. It’s time for Christians to wake up and take their children back.

I believe Scripture is not silent on the issue. How do we approach finding God’s will on a subject that is not explicitly written in the Bible? We read what is written there, and we carefully discern and apply it to the topic in question. The Bible doesn’t specifically address pornographic magazines, but we clearly understand its implications about them.

This post will likely take several days to cover. I would like to start with what I believe are just a few Scriptures that make it clear to me that government school is not an appropriate place for the children of believers. Of course, to see how these Scriptures could imply what I’m suggesting, one must first have a clear understanding of what is going on in the state’s school system, both underneath and on top of the surface. They must understand that education is not neutral, and the doctrines of humanism, socialism and many other scary “isms” are being taught to our children.

Those who are either in denial of what is going on or simply don’t want to answer it, will argue that “there’s nothing wrong with the public school system”.

I can emphatically say that such a stance is ridiculous. For the very proponents of “the system” admit their intent:

“Faith in the prayer-hearing God is an unproved and outmoded faith. There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes.” (John Dewey. 1859-1952)

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith…The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new – the rotting corpse of Christianity together with all its adjacent evils and misery and the new faith of humanism resplendent in its promise of a work in which the never-realized Christian ideal of ‘love thy neighbor’ will finally be achieved.” (John Dunphy. The Humanist . Jan.-Feb. 1983.)

So, compared with the above statements, let us consider what Scripture has to say about our obligations:

“Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”

If this is true of “the man”, how much more of “the man’s children”?

“And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that acceptable and perfect will of God.”


“Whatever things are true, whatever honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.”


“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Do you understand the clear picture the Lord gives in this chapter about how parents are to teach their children? It communicates “saturation”…all day, every day, our children are to be fed God’s law. Is that what they’re being fed in public school, which is where they spend the majority of their time?

More on this touchy subject next post…