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Originally Posted by Semper Fidelis  Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie State education is sinful for the following reasons:
1. It involves giving unto Caesar what does not belong to him (i.e. covenant children who are to be educated in the fear of the Lord).
2. It involves a usurpation of the families sphere of authority.
3. Christian parents are to being up their children in a Christian worldview (Deut. 6), this cannot be done in a state school.
4. The point of state education is to indoctrinate children in a non-Christian - supposedly neutral - worldview (Dan. 1).
5. State education involves teaching children evolution, which strikes at the very heart of Christianity. | All of your reasons presume that education is completely taken over by the State. There is neither a rendering to Caesar that which is not Caeser's nor an usurpation of authority when parents delegate authority for the education of their children. It would be an usurpation of parental authority for a parent to be forced to allow the Church to educate their children as well.
3. assumes that parents must, of necessity, never teach anything outside of school.
4. assumes a homogoneous type of Public Education and ignores some regions that do not teach a neutral worldview as well as periods in history when the worldview was decidedly Christian.
5. is another culturally conditioned argument that fails at the point that some public schools do not nor do all grade levels nor have all periods in the history of public education.
All of your arguments are based on specific examples and not a transcendental, Scriptural precept. For every example one can come up with examples of publich education that do not fit the particular mold.
Look, I'm not in favor of sending my children to public schools. That is my decision as a parent, however. I am commanded to raise my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I am responsible to God for that task. What you seem to misunderstand is the manner in which that can be accomplished as well as my authority to delegate tasks to others while not losing the inherent responsibility for the results. |
Parents may delegate authority to other parents in a parentally controlled Christian school, but not to the state, as the state has no Biblical warrant for getting involved in education in the first place as this duty has never been delegated to it. So any education done by the state involves rendering unto Caesar what is not Caesars.
State education has always been a pagan idea. Why did the Babylonians have Statist schools? To make the children good Statists and servants of the Babylonian religion. I do not need a specific verse in the Bible which says "you shall not send your children to state schools". The fact that such an arrangement is not divinely authorized is enough. Parents who send their children to state schools - under any circumstances - are just like Erastians who allow the state to interfere in church discipline and the payment of ministers etc. While the intentions may be good, the thing is wrong in principle as God never commanded the civil government to do such things.
Covenant children are to be educated in the "teaching and instruction of the Lord", not the teaching and instruction of Caesar (as false Lord), or the teaching and instruction of the state, or the teaching and instruction of secular humanism - this, in and of itself, rules out Statist education. We cannot educate our children partly in the "teaching and instruction of the Lord", and then partly in the teaching and instruction of another religion (whatever that religion may Be).
It might well be argued that you can have a Christianised State Education, like we have in Northern Ireland. But as a product of such a system, I can assure everyone that it is anything but a truly Christian education. In fact, it is the height of profanity, as Christianity is compartmentalised, and the word of God is ignored in just about everything. Moroever, if a nation is truly Christian, then the state will remain within its God-appointed sphere of authority, and wont be getting involved in education which is none of its business. Not to mention the fact that the funding of state education is always the product of oppressive taxation, and let us not forget that taxation is only to be collected for the administration of public justice (Rom. 13:4), anything else is theft. State education is therefore funded by stolen goods.
As for evolution being culturally conditioned, I think this assessment fails to take into account why the state would want to teach evolution. Now let us consider why the state schools teach evolution: because if there is no sovereign creator God, with no unchanging moral absolutes, then who are the people to look to as their sovereign lawgiver? Answer: the totalitarian state.
Anyway, I have taken this as far as I believe to be profitable. We have the arguments laid out, and people can judge what is Scripturally correct.