Replies

True missionaries go to where souls needing to be saved are, be it in a godless school, any other godless place of employment, a godless neighborhood, a godless nation. Think about any workplace. Is it permissible for most Christians on the job-site to openly witness and share Christ with their co-workers? If they don’t are they betraying their Lord and Savior with a lukewarm testimony where their silence (which brings them job security) is more important to them than their Lord who loved them and gave Himself for them? Where do you work? Is it with your boss’s approval that you openly preach the gospel to your co-workers? If you are attempting to witness to others without your boss’s permission to do so, are you not “stealing” [time] from him/her? Are you not being disobedient to authorities if you are doing this behind your boss’s back? If you are not witnessing to your co-workers, are you not willingly helping to establish, and thus, support a godless workplace? No. What the Christian employee is to do is to work, and work in such a way so as to satisfy the demands of the job set forth by the employer and do all things as unto the Lord. You sound as if you are saying that a) the school system is somehow different from society at large (it is not—it is a reflection of society at large) and b) that parents are not the primary educators in the life of children (they are). We live in a fallen world. The schools in that world are part of a fallen system. Many of the people who fill these public schools are still in their sin. But this is true of every work place in America. The Christian educator, the Christian student is in the world, but not of the world. They can’t lose their salvation, but they can serve as salt and light to those who stand outside of the salvation found in Christ. No Christian I know is willingly trying to create spiritual wastelands. How can they if they have the Spirit of God in them! They create spiritual oases in a world that is already a spiritual wasteland. I don’t spiritually starve children. I give what, for some of them, might be the only spiritual food they will eat on any given day. It is not my job to save them, that’s God’s area of expertise. It is my job to sow seed.

Your anger and venom is misdirected. You are accusing the Christians who teach of perpetuating a godless, secular school system, of enabling “weak” Christian parents into believing that public schools are somehow doing a fine job (when all the evidence is clear for anyone to see that our schools are suffering terribly on account of the nation’s turn away from God). You have a misguided view of these teachers, who are trying to work within the system of the god of this age in an area where souls need saving or need to see an example of a Godly Christian testimony to buttress their faiths. They are not responsible for the mess of public schools any more than the foreign missionary is responsible for the chaos s/he finds on the mission field. They go to the field. They work within its bounds, establishing relations with the people and as opportunities arise, they minister Christ. I’d say that’s a pretty fair description of my work day. You also have a very weak opinion of these parents, who, doing what they can with the realities that they may be dealing with (Satan uses the economic realities to capitalism to squeeze even Christians into situations they might not otherwise choose) find they need to avail themselves of the feeble education offered in the local public school. They don’t need your condemnation, they need your prayer. Some of them might be “weak” (lacking discernment?) when it comes to spiritual matters, others might be attending a church meeting where error abounds...I don’t know. But if they are Christian, assume they realize the responsibility before God they have in the “training up” of their children, that they are the primary means of spiritual teaching for their children and that they, understanding the world in which they live, realize the need to “send [them] forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: [that they are to be] therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”

All that being said, I home-school my children. I would encourage Christian parents to do likewise, if at all possible. I would love to see Christ-centered places of learning spring up all over this land. And, all that being said, I would probably still choose to teach in the public school. There are many, many kids that I’ve met and am meeting, whom I’ve gotten to know, whom I’ve grown to like who are heading toward a lost eternity because they don’t have a life-saving relationship with Christ Jesus.