One of the central confusions when it comes to education options and worldview thinking is the confusion that exists over the possibility of neutrality. But if we live in a world that is governed by God, then this concept of neutrality is clearly incoherent. For if God governs all things, that would have to include “all things.” And if that is the case, then absolutely everything stands in some sort of relationship to God, and that relationship will either be a true relationship or a false one. If we are talking about sentient beings, then they will either be in an obedient relationship to God, or a disobedient relationship to God.
I do not wish to overtax anyone here, but it seems to me that among Christians, we should want that relationship to be an obedient one. This would seem particularly to be the case if we are talking about the people we will engage to teach our children. Will they be obedient teachers? Or disobedient teachers?
This question, as stated, seems pretty straightforward. The right answer would obviously be that we should want to have obedient teachers for our children. But an obfuscation has been developed.
Luther once reportedly said it was better to be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian. Whether or not Luther said that, I quite agree. I would rather be ruled by a Turk who acted like a Christian than a Christian who acted like a Turk. But this leaves out two other logical options—the options of wise Christian and foolish Turk. In our folly and confusion, we have gotten to the point now where a bunch of Christians would rather be ruled by a foolish Turk than by a wise Christian. And that state of affairs arose from the myth of neutrality.
We have gotten to the point where a host of Christian parents would rather have their children educated by foolish Turks than by wise Christians. And the reason they have now arrived at the foolish Turk option is because they began with the wise Turk option. They did this because they quietly assumed that a wise Turk was the very apex of our possible options. And this was because they set him up over against the alternative of some Christian blockhead.
We advertised the position, and the only ones who applied were three wise Turks and twelve Christian blockheads.
Now, admittedly, there are some Christian blockheads involved all of this discussion, but I would suggest that they might actually be the ones serving on the hiring committee.
There are certain things we cannot do. We cannot make water run uphill. We cannot make bowling balls fly when dropped. We cannot make triangles four-sided. We cannot make little boys into little girls.
And we cannot make the universe that God created into a universe which acts like He didn’t create it. The universe simply will not cooperate with that.
This is another way of saying that we cannot make pagan education into Christian education—unless we do it the old school way, which is by baptizing all the teachers. That could work. But we cannot will ourselves into an authoritative delusional state, in which the objective world obeys our delusions. We can attain to the delusional state, but it is just not authoritative. Another way of putting this is by acknowledging that the material world is not obedient to hallucinations.
Can a man delude himself into the belief that he can fly? Yes, he can, and as a consequence, he may throw himself off a bridge. But the outside world, confronted with such a delusion, changes nothing, alters nothing. Because of this, the flying man crashes on the rocks below.
An educational system that denies the authority of the triune God over every brick in the school, every hair on every student’s head, every textbook on every shelf, every linoleum tile in every hallway, and every pebble on every playground, is a school that believes that it can fly. And in the grip of this frothy excitement, they have pitched themselves off a bridge.
"An educational system that denies the authority of the triune God over every brick in the school, every hair on every student’s head, every textbook on every shelf, every linoleum tile in every hallway, and every pebble on every playground, is a school that believes that it can fly. And in the grip of this frothy excitement, they have pitched themselves off a bridge."
Great stuff. Thank you for this Substack, I am a big fan.
Amen and Amen Pastor Doug! May this message be spread widely! Thank you so much!