How many Christian parents would send their kids to a two-week Jehovah’s Witness summer camp? (Note…this is hypothetical, as I don’t even know whether the JW’s have a summer camp.) Most would probably answer: “no, of course not, the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach misleading false doctrine, and I wouldn’t submit my kids to that”. Good answer…but how many of the same folks, who would not
consider this two-week camp (run by people, by the way, who believe in creation, not evolution, and hold up biblical Christian morality) send their kids to public school (run by people who have outlawed the teaching of creationism and biblical traditional morality) for 39 weeks? Imagine their reasoning applied to the JW camp as they apply it to government schools…”my kids know the difference between sound doctrine and that taught by the JW’s, so I’ll send them to the camp”…or, “I’m sending them to the Watchtower camp to be a testimony”.
During the last half of the 20th century, Christians sacrificed time and treasure to build Christian schools. They never were and still are not perfect, but they worked to the glory of God to give a Christian education to the next generation, and to stand as a testimony against the idolatrous public school system…glory to God, not the state. Today we see the Christian school movement struggling to stay alive, while millions of Christians send their children to the public schools.
For those who are considering public education, or who have already chosen it, consider a few things. First, your kids have less chance of changing the public school system than they would have changing the Jehovah’s Witness summer camp. Second, the 14 days of indoctrination that you would avoid like the plague in a JW camp is nothing compared to the subtle, humanistic undermining of Christianity in every subject for 180 days in a public school. Third, while you support a public school with your kids attendance, the decreasing level of support for Christian schools is leading to the death of the Christian school movement. It is astounding to see parents send their kids to the government schools, and then expect a church “youth group” to unwind 30 hours of weekly indoctrination with a two hour program…and then blame the church or the Pastor when things go wrong.
The heavy lifting of the Christian school movement was done years ago…all we need to do now is support and improvement. If we are to impact our culture and our nation for Christ, it MUST begin with Christian education. Without it, we fail, period. Don’t let it die!
~ Jim Mogel
