Our passion is training Christian parents, teachers, & grandparents to educate future generations for Christ by following God's plan to perpetuate their faith through Kingdom Education.
It
is the one business for which the earth exists.
To it all politics, all war,
all literature,
all money-making, ought to be subordinated;
and every parent
especially ought to feel, every hour of the day,
that, next to making his own
calling and election sure,
this is the end for which he is kept alive by
God
--this is his task on earth."
Quote by R. L. Dabney
Robert Lewis Dabney was a great American Christian theologian, a Southern Presbyterian pastor, and Confederate Army chaplain. He was also Chief of Staff and biographer for General Stonewall Jackson.
Dabney rightly saw God's perspective on education, which is a multi-generational vision of educating generations for Christ according to Psalm 78:4-7, Deuteronomy 6:5-7, and Matthew 28:18-20.
God has always assigned this greatest task, this most important business, to Christian parents; that is, to the family and the home, and never to the government or state. This is the primary purpose of every parent and the main reason that God gives parents the gift and stewardship of His children.
God our heavenly Father desires "godly offspring" (Malachi 2:15) and has commanded all Christian parents to "tell the generations to come the praises of the Lord" so that they should teach their children and their grandchildren "to put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments (Psalm 78:5,7)." I encourage every Christian to meditate upon Psalm 78:1-11 before the Lord day after day for twenty-one days, asking the Spirit of Truth to give you a revelation of the mind of Christ regarding how to educate your children according to Christ, how to educate your children for God.
One of my favorite passages in the whole Bible is Psalm 119. This is the longest chapter in the Bible and focuses on the incredible value of God's spoken and written Word. I encourage every parent and grandparent to meditate daily on this Psalm and to establish their educational foundation on this rich treasury.
How can we teach young men and women when they are children to stay pure and live holy and godly lives?
"How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy Word. With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your Word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You." (vs. 9-11)
Psalm 119 is broken down into 22 mini sections, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. For example, verses 1-9 are under the sub-heading for the letter "Aleph." One of the best things I've done so far with my daughter is to kneel down on the floor with her before God and then prayed one section together out loud. I encourage you to pray through this Psalm with your son or daughter, one-on-one, on your knees before YAHWAH Elohim, the LORD your God.
It's a powerful spiritual exercise and discipline that will train your child to love God and His Word, to learn the holy fear of the Lord, and to value and cherish His Word like treasure that can be stored up in their hearts.
Finally, add this prayer for yourself whenever you read, study, or meditate on God's Word and teach it to your sons and daughters:
"Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things in Your law [torah/teaching]." (vs.18)
When I talk with Christian parents about providing their children with a thoroughly Christ-centered education, one of their main objections is that they believe they should send their children to public school to be "salt and light" in the darkness. In other words, one of the most frequently heard arguments for sending Christian children into the darkness of government schools is that we should try to save the lost in those schools by sending our precious young children there as little evangelists. Does this argument sound familiar?
Here is my reply after an in-depth study of the issue using the Biblical, theological, historical, and educational evidence that is available to anyone who has ears to hear.
The "salt & light" command (and the "Great Commission") were given by Jesus to His trained and adult disciples, not to young children. This is a common misunderstanding in the church today. As an example of the fallacy of this kind of thinking, you'll never find a Christian family sending their 8-year-old son off to Africa to be a missionary to evangelize the lost. Missionaries who are sent to foreign lands are mature disciples and adults, who have been trained theologically in ministering the Gospel and fighting spiritual warfare, who have been trained in the foundations of the faith and in apologetics, etc.
Another problem is that when Christian parents send their young children into the humanist religion government schools, what actually happens is that most of them (85%) have their salt removed by the world (via teachers & peers & curriculum indoctrination) and most of them have their light extinguished. This has been documented by the Southern Baptist Convention's Council on Family Life, by Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, by George Barna's Research Group, and by many others. When the church tries to apply the "salt and light" argument to putting their children in government schools, the world ends up converting the Christian children and conforming them to the world, not the other way around. And yet God's Word says, "Do not be conformed to this world..." It simply does not work and is not only counter-productive but actually destructive to Christian children and their families. Sure, there's the admirable exception here and there, but the vast majority of these kids actually lose their faith because they are not adequately trained and grounded in their faith before being sent out into the darkness to be light.
I, for one, am not calling for anyone to pull up stakes and head for the hills. I am all for engaging the culture, challenging the culture, and transforming it through Christ & the Gospel of the Kingdom. We are truly called to be a city set on a hill and a light in the darkness, but the city is not a small untrained and unprepared child - it is the "called out ones" of the church who are gathered together as mature disciples of Jesus and who know how to give an answer for the hope that is within them. It is the collection of Christian families that make up the local church.
As parents, our primary purpose is to train up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to teach them the commandments of God (see Deut 6), to teach them our spiritual history and the great wonders of God, to disciple them and educate them for God, AND to protect them from the wiles of the enemy and the world that would seek to destroy them and turn them away from God. We protect them while we disciple them and while they mature in their faith and in holy character. Eventually, we they are grown up and mature, we release them as arrows that shoot into the future and God goes with them and makes them His salt and light. However, it is unwise and unBiblical and contrary to the teaching of Jesus and the apostles to send these precious little ones out into the hostile world prematurely, untrained, immature, and not prepared to overcome it by the blood of Jesus and the word of their testimony and by laying their lives down for their King.
I'm in no way "condemning" a lost world or saying that we shouldn't seek to save the lost. As grown disciples of Jesus, yes, of course we should and I do. This is one of our primary purposes. As we raise our kids "in the Lord," we can model this to our children in the safety of our family and home and church as we reach out to the lost. However, this does not mean we are to send them out into the enemy's camp as young children by putting them in government schools where their faith will be assaulted for 13 years and where they will be indoctrinated by and into a new religion - the religion of secular humanism. No, that is not God's purpose or plan for our children.
Nowhere in Scripture does he command parents to do anything so unwise. Instead, everywhere in Scripture He commands parents to teach their own children and train and raise them in the fear of the Lord, at home in the safety of their own families, with assistance from the church. Institutionalizing our children in state education is the most dangerous, unwise, and destructive thing any Christian parent can do, and it plays right into the hands of the humanists and their goal of destroying our children's faith and their parent's authority in their lives and replacing it with the new religion of secular humanism, post-modernism, moral relativism, and evolutionary Darwinism, so that they will become good submissive "dumbed down" socialized citizens who will worship the State as their "god" and look to the State to parent them and to provide them with everything they need. This leads to idolatry, Statism, and socialism, and the complete loss of freedom, independence, and educational freedom.
I pray that you would consider the points I have raised as you think through your philosophy on these things. These are not just my thoughts on the subject. I am sharing what I have learned over the past 3 years of intense research into Christian education and the history of modern education in America. There are many other Christians, including some well-known Christian pastors and leaders, who have done their own research and have come to the same convictions and conclusions. These include: Samuel Blumenfeld, Voddie Baucham, Erwin Lutzer, E. Ray Moore, R.C. Sproul, Jr., Doug Phillips, Herb Titus, Geoff Botkin, Gary North, Kevin Swanson, Stephen McDowell, Bruce Shortt, David d'Escoto, Israel Wayne, Bradley Heath, T.C. Pinkney, R.J. Rushdoony, If you are interested in the titles of a few excellent books on the subject, I would be happy to send them to you. For those who have "ears to hear," there is a vast amount of Biblical, theological, historical, and educational evidence that supports what I have shared.
Let’s begin by defining it. According to Noah Webster, the father of American Christian education, “Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties.”
Q: In light of this Scripturally-based definition,what are the 6 most important goals of Christian education?
Jesus tells us: “And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the Only True God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent.” – Jn 17:3
The most important task and the primary purpose of every Christian parent is to educate their children for God. The educational role of parents can be briefly summarized in the following 6 goals:
1. to teach their children that the purpose of their lives and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, to love and serve God wholeheartedly, and to know His voice;
2. to form godly character by depositing in them moral virtue and forming godly habits, while reproving and correcting the temper;
3. to train them in the art of Christian self-government so that they are governed internally by the Spirit of God;
4. to renew their minds with the Word of God and train them in Biblical scholarship;
5. to assist them in developing a truly Christ-centered Biblical worldview;
6. to train them in wisdom, knowledge, and discernment so as to equip them to fulfill their Providential purpose in God’s Kingdom.
Our chief aim as Christian parents is to lay Jesus Christ and obedience to His commandments as the only foundation of all wisdom, knowledge, and learning. Our long-term vision is to perpetuate our faith and the covenant we have with God to our children and to teach them to pass it on from generation to generation. This is what it means to educate children for God. Have you ever wondered why God chose Abraham to be the father of faith? Genesis 18:19 tells us, “For I have chosen him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; in order that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken to him.” In other words, God chose Abraham because He knew that Abraham would be faithful to teach his children to keep the covenant with God and perpetuate their faith from generation to generation.
In Psalm 78:5-7, we find this same generational vision: “For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.” We see here that God Almighty commands fathers to teach their children His commandments and His works, so that their faith and obedience to God was passed on perpetually from generation to generation.
In my research, I’ve developed a detailed composite of Christian educational goals and objectives that I’d like to share with you so that you can have a target to aim at as you educate your children for God. These are all derived from an explicitly Christian philosophy of education and can be used by any home school parent or Christian school teacher. A combination of the Biblical principle approach, the teacher-mentor approach, and the classic approach is designed to facilitate, model, teach, and enable our students to achieve the following educational goals and objectives.
For the spiritual growth of the student,
To instruct the student in God’s Word, to teach the tenets of its doctrines and principles and leading ideas of Scripture, to edify the student towards full spiritual stature in Christ, and to equip the student for a life of Kingdom service. To impart to the student, by the power of the Spirit of Truth, the full experiential knowledge of God for a deep awareness of the glory, the justice, the holiness, the goodness, and the love of God, and of the fallen state of man, so that the student will be drawn to surrender his heart and submit his life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To train the student to hear the voice of God and follow the leading of the Spirit in his daily walk in the Spirit. To teach the student the stewardship of his most sacred possessions – his conscience and his character. To teach, model, and develop wisdom in the student, which is the ability to live a godly life skillfully in an ungodly world, and to foster and develop in the student moral discernment, discretion, and practical righteousness (right living and right relationships) before God and man in every area of life. To foster the spiritual disciplines and joys of worship, prayer, fasting, giving, Bible meditation and study, and obedience for the practice of spiritual warfare and for living an overcoming Christian life.
For the personal and social development of the student,
To encourage the student’s personal relationship with the Lord as the dynamic of all his relationships as he grows towards adult roles in marriage and the family, in the church, in the community, in the nation, and in the world. To give the student a vision for his unique purpose, for which he has been endowed with unique individuality made in the image of God, and to lead him to affirm and accept his peers and relations with the same value. To enable the student to pursue his God-given vocation and fulfill his Providential calling with passion and faithfulness. To inspire the student to set excellent standards for the development of his abilities, gifts, and talents, for accountability of personal resources of time, opportunities, health and energies, and for relationships. To inspire and equip the student to become a free and responsible Kingdom citizen who governs himself under God through the Holy Spirit within. To inspire the student to become a godly example in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity. Our teacher-mentors will lead by example, mentoring each student as they integrate wisdom, knowledge, responsibility, and service. To equip the student to share his faith effectively, to make a reasonable defense of the faith, and to inspire him to bring the light of the Gospel to all men everywhere. To enable the student to follow a Biblical model for distinctive Christian leadership that demonstrates Kingdom living as God-appointed stewards over His creation, and that seeks to influence society and transform culture with a thoroughly Biblical worldview. To prepare and train Ambassadors for Christ, courageous Kingdom Statesmen, who will lead others with an excellent spirit through the dark times that are challenging our world, by having the courage to make wise moral decisions, bring Kingdom solutions to society’s problems, and show the way of righteousness.
For the academic performance of the student,
To teach the learner, successfully respecting his unique individuality, and by realizing that teaching is not complete until learning is achieved. To equip the student to be able to think critically and independently. To instill a Biblical worldview by laying a foundation of presuppositions based on Biblical absolutes in the thinking of every student through a curriculum framed by Biblical principles and leading ideas. To equip the student with the textual hermeneutic skills that demonstrate Biblical scholarship, in order to show himself approved unto God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth, and to prepare him to be able to defend the Biblical worldview against the many pagan and secular philosophies of the world. This includes equipping him with sound scientific data regarding the origins of the universe and of mankind. To build a Biblical foundation of knowledge, wisdom, discernment, & understanding for life. To introduce the student to foundational truths and evidences that clearly demonstrate the authority, authenticity, and accuracy of the Scriptures, particularly in light of religious, scientific, and cultural norms conflicting with the Biblical worldview. To raise a generation of defenders of the truth by equipping each student with careful study skills and habits of inquiry and research, patterns of Biblical reasoning, and methods of recording and presenting ideas and understanding. In addition, to encourage students to have real encounters with the living God so that they develop a lifetime of living testimonies of what God has done in their lives as they experience the love and the power of the living God. To give students the appreciation of all areas of knowledge as God-given and experiences in every academic discipline and the arts, so that they can identify their areas of strength and interest for future choices and positions. To cultivate a love for the truth and a love for learning so that each student becomes a self-motivated and self-taught lifelong learner. To build a sense of history and its providential links and purpose so that the student recognizes both his heritage and place in “Christ - His Story,” and is ready to take responsibility for his place in his generation; to recognize the importance of historical and cultural context, and to learn to interpret history and current events through a Biblical Providential perspective. To give students the technical and communication skills needed to prepare for further education and vocation choices.
How many Christian parents and pastors would be appalled if the government marched into their churches and took complete control of all Sunday School programs of Christian education, including dictating what curriculum would be taught and who would be licensed by the state to teach Sunday School? How many would oppose such an encroachment by the federal or state government? How many would not put up with such a trampling of our religious and civil liberties and would actually do something to stop it? How many would stand up and say the government has no business at all interfering with churches and Sunday Schools? The answer, I'm guessing, is that many or most Christian parents and pastors would be appalled, would oppose such a move, would not put up with it, and would do all they could to stop it and boot the government from trying to control Sunday School, Sunday School curriculum, and Sunday School teaching and teachers.
Now, think about the logic of this type of government encroachment upon churches and their Sunday School programs. It goes against everything that the church in America stands for, especially the freedom of religion and religious expression. We simply would not stand for such a blatant encroachment by the federal or state governments into the church, into our religious lives, into our Sunday Schools, into our Christian education programs, into the indoctrination of our children by the government. And yet, we think it is perfectly fine for the government to indoctrinate our children with secular humanism, evolution, socialism, Marxism, Islam, homosexuality, statism, post-modernism, atheism, and a host of other ungodly and anti-Christian beliefs and behaviors during Monday School, and Tuesday School, etc. Why is that? Why is it not okay for the state to control our Sunday Schools, but it is okay for the government to control our Monday through Friday Schools? How does this make sense to anyone? The truth is: if it is wrong for the state to control our Sunday Schools, then it is equally wrong for the state to control Monday Schools too!
I'm calling out to all Christian parents, pastors, and leaders to somehow explain to me WHY 85% of Christian parents institutionalize their precious children (created in the image of God) and freely render them to Caesar, to the state, to indoctrinate their children five days a week, which adds up to over 16,000 seat hours in a 13 year time period. Jesus clearly said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." Are we not rendering our children to Caesar when we send them off every day for 13 years to be indoctrinated by the state into secular humanism and other forms of religion that are completely contrary to Christ, literally, are anti-Christ? Are we not guilty of "over rendering" and compartmentalizing our lives between the sacred and the secular?
Too many pastors and Christian parents believe the myth that we can separate religion from education and they are guilty of compartmentalizing their lives into the secular and into the religious. They think that they can teach religion at home and in Sunday School, but during the rest of the day and week it's okay for the government to teach their children all other subjects. This is a dangerous myth that must be exposed as a lie. The truth is that all education is inescapably religious because all education conveys a worldview that shapes and determines the character, life, beliefs, behavior, and future of children. The problem is not that state schools exist; the real problem is that Christian parents are using public schools to train their children, to "educate" their children, to disciple their children, to indoctrinate their children in humanism, atheism, evolution, post-modernism, moral relevance, new age eastern mysticism, etc. The vast majority of Christian parents and pastors are encouraging, participating in, and helping pass on to their children a worldview that is man-centered rather than God-centered. They have abdicated their responsibility to educate their children according to Christ and God's Word. They have simultaneously put their children in harm's way by voluntarily institutionalizing them in public schools which have effectively become "pagan seminaries" and "schools of humanism" that are nurturing their children in alien creeds and infusing them with false and destructive values that are killing our children spiritually, morally, and intellectually.
If you don't believe me, and if you don't believe that public schools are really all that bad for Christian children, then please listen to the words of those who designed the school system to achieve their goals. Charles F. Potter, Signer of the Humanist Manifesto, stated: "Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday School, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teachings?" John D. Dunphy, from the Humanist magazine, declared: "I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith....The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new - the rotting corpse of Christianity...and the new faith of humanism." Joe R. Burnett, editor of the Humanist magazine, clarified: "Public education is the parochial education for scientific humanism."
In conclusion, there is a very obvious reason that the evangelical church is losing up to 88% of their children to the world within two years of graduating from public high school. There is a reason that the vast majority of Christian kids who go through 13+ years of government school indoctrination end up with a worldview that has been proven to be secular humanist and socialist/Marxist. If you care at all about your precious children that God has entrusted you with, then you must take them out of Pharoah's school system and set them free. You must join me and many other Christian parents in repenting for over-rendering our children to Caesar and start rendering them to God. To “repent” means to completely change your thinking about an issue, to change your mind, and to then change your direction. It's time to remove our children from the public schools and to truly and faithfully educate them God's way, according to Christ, according to the Word of God, according to the commandments of Jesus, and according to the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy. When Jesus commanded his disciples to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, He meant for that discipleship and education to begin with their very own children and families, and then, from there, to disciple outwards towards the nations. Humanists and socialists and statists have always understood this principle and applied it, and that is why they are the ones in complete control of the education system in America and in most of the world. It's now time for Christians to take back control of educating their own children, either through homeschooling or through Christ-centered private schools.
This is not a call to try to reform the public school system. No! That is simply not possible and is unbiblical. Jesus warned us about false prophets and false teachers who would try to lead us astray. He didn't say to try to reform them and their schools, but rather to beware of them and stay clear of them. He told us not to follow blind teachers trying to lead the blind. He told us to examine the fruit of the tree, and if the fruit was bad, to recognize that the roots of the tree are bad, which causes the whole tree to be bad, and the only appropriate action was to cut down the whole tree and throw it into the fire (not to try to reform the tree). Study Matthew 7:13-18 and Matthew 15:13-14, where Jesus concludes: "Every plant that My heavenly Father did not plant shall be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit." Remember, God is committed to reforming and reviving only those institutions that He started such as the family, marriage, and the church. However, God never instituted state education or government schools; on the contrary, He warned us about them and how they would end up destroying our children, families, and lives.
For help in removing your children from government schools or for assistance in learning more about homeschooling or finding a high-quality Christian school in your area, please contact: Josiah Friberg, through my blog at www.alleducationisreligious.blogspot.com God bless you in your repentance and obedience which will remove the curse of Malachi 4:5-6 and release the blessing of "restoring the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers."
