Are schools going to put children in unhealthy masks again? Categorize people into unescapable castes with Critical Race Theory? Pretend gender is defined by feeling rather than biology? No wonder parents are upset.
Yet what parents are rightfully seeking will never happen in state-controlled education. Between teacher unions, state mandates, federal subsidies, and fear of expensive lawsuits, school boards have almost no influence.
This force-and-intimidation education model is very much a consequence of putting education under the state, whose only tool is force. As dominant ideas deviate further from truth, ever more force is required—and that is what we are seeing. Even good teachers are unable to question wrong ideas. Lies advance when truth is silenced.
The Bible presents a very different education model, with no state role, but where the training of children is primarily the role of parents. The local church, being commissioned to disciple the nations (Matthew 28:19), also has a significant biblical role.
Whereas education by force creates subjects who follow out of fear, education by love creates disciples who follow by free choice. God created mankind to be free.
If you want your children to be taught true ideas that will shape them into confident adults, don’t waste your time trying to make the state do what it cannot.
With surveys indicating that over 80% of churchgoing parents send their children to public schools, one has to wonder: Where are the shepherds warning of the dangers of false teaching?
So while the public schools have huge problems, the reality is that most churches today have a much bigger problem because education is discipleship—and discipleship in exactly the wrong direction at present.
When God’s people humble themselves and turn away from the sin of disregarding the calling of the church toward “the least of these,” then and only then can we rightfully ask God’s blessing on our nation. (See many resources at www.christedu.org.)
Mark Shepard, formerly a state senator in Vermont, now resides in rural Virginia with his wife Rebecca and their four sons. Contact: markshepard610@protonmail.com
