Why Christian Education?

Since the Fall, God appointed education (what Scripture calls discipleship) to be a means of liberating slaves. From the Latin educere, to educate means to bring out or lead forth. The word is picturesque of Moses bringing Israel out of their slavery in Egypt, or of Joshua leading them forth into the promised land. That is what Christian education produces: freedom (John 8:31-32). This is why the serpent’s strategy has always been to take over the education of the youth. What was the first thing Nebuchadnezzar did when he took Judah captive? He took their most promising children and put them through a Babylonian re-education program including: Babylonian literature, language and philosophy (Daniel 1:4); a Babylonian diet contrary to God’s commands (Daniel 1:5); and new Babylonian names in order to erase their Jewish identity (Daniel 1:7).  All of these measures were aimed at making these Jewish captives thoroughly Babylonian. By taking authority over their education, Nebuchadnezzar understood one vital principle:  whoever controls the schools rules the world.  (See Notes & Sources below.)

One of the greatest myths of the last century is that education is a neutral task–that all subjects can be taught without reference to religion.  Education is “neutral” they say. Neutral (neuter) means “neither one nor the other.”  As Dr. Joseph Boot points out, “A neutered man is called a eunuch because in the full sense of the term, he is no longer male, yet not female. The term has since come to mean an unbiased position, or an unwillingness to take sides.” To have an unbiased position in education is both impossible and unbiblical for the following reasons.  

1. Jesus rejects it. He said in Matthew 12:30 “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” 
2. Scripture commands us to provide an education that is thoroughly God-centered (Deuteronomy 6:4-7).  
3. The Great Commission is a mandate to educate all the nations and make them students of King Jesus (Matthew 28:18-20).  
4. To teach subjects in a purely ‘neutral’ manner is idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:31). If we teach math facts with no reference to God, He is being robbed of His due worship and it is being given to something else.  
5. Our opponents do not teach the subjects in a ‘neutral’ manner. The Communists interpret the sin and suffering in history through the lens of Marxism. The Darwinians interpret our origins in science through the lens of naturalism. The Social Justice Warriors interpret the certainty in math through the lens of racism. Whenever the state takes over education, it is not to make it ‘neutral.’ It is aimed at disestablishing Christianity and setting up a new religious order.  

In 1890, the great Princetonian A.A. Hodge prophesied what would become of our nation if Christians bought into the lie of a ‘neutral’ education: “I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social, nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”   (See Notes & Sources below.)

Colossians 1:17 says that “He [Christ] is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Not only does Christ hold together atoms and galaxies, He is the cement of every human institution. Whether it be the family, the Church, or the State, no human institution can endure (unless it turns to tyranny) without Christ. Christ is the sun by which every planet is regulated in its proper orbit. He is the nucleus of the cell, the foundation of the house, the heart of the body. Remove Christ and the atom becomes radioactive, the house falls, and the body returns to dust. Likewise any school that separates Christ from their curriculum will always end up teaching statism, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, racism, and every evil under the sun. One only has to look at Princeton, Harvard, Yale–all of which started out as fortresses of Christianity. Once Christ was removed from the center, they all became institutions (dungeons) of death. Those are the only two choices in education: Christ as center or chaos.  

Princeton, Harvard, and Yale were fortresses of Christianity, but Christ, now removed, has made these bastions of death.  (See Notes & Sources below.)