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Posted December 29, 2008

Let My Children Go!

“Let My Children Go” is a modern version of the repeated cry of the children of Israel as they prepared to leave for the Promised Land on the Exodus. It has become increasingly clear to the national Christian leadership that there is an educational and spiritual crisis of gargantuan proportions in public education. But what can be one about it? Can the churches leave public education behind as the children of Israel left the dominion of Egypt long ago?

The typical Christian family in America’s Heartland has been suffering for years because the larger Church and her leaders have been committed to the proposition that the public school system, hereafter referred to as the government school system, is an acceptable alternative for the education and nurture of Christian Children. This proposition is no longer acceptable and, in fact, has never been acceptable. It has only become apparent in recent decades as the malaise and failure of government education has become so catastrophic. It is only now that the larger Christian community seems willing to take a harder look at the various Christian education options.

The “Exodus Mandate”, in its commitment to the proposition that Bible-based Christian education is the only acceptable alternative for the Christian Community, proposes the four defenses explained below. This project is also dedicated to the belief that the time has come for a coordinated commitment by the national Christian leadership, pastors, and the larger Christian community to support and effort to withdraw Christian children from the government school system and place them in existing Christian schools and Christian home-schools. In addition, current resources could be used to launch new Christian schools where they do not now exist.

1. The Exodus Mandate is in accordance with God’s providential timing.
In discussions about the Exodus Mandate, various Christian leaders often say that Christian people are not yet ready for such a drastic step and that the pastors and Christian leaders will not support this effort. It is never heard that it is not needed, should not be done, or that the government schools are a good place for Christian children. As historical justification, the original Exodus itself is a prime example. The children of Israel spent 400 years in Egypt exiled from the Promised Land. It was always to have been a temporary arrangement. While allowed in God’s providence, it was not God’s blueprint for them. While many Christian families have used government schools, which have not always been as bad as they are at present, this should be a temporary arrangement and not a substitute for God’s best for his children today.

Now is the time to consider a biblical change. The evidence is abundant that Christian children will not be able to coexist within the government school system as they have done before. Just as the conditions in Egypt have drastically changed and turned against the people of God when a Pharaoh arose “who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8), so the current government school system has radically turned against Christian children, beliefs and even teachers. This has been true for several decades, but now with the regime of GOALS 2000 type legislation, indoctrination and coercion, accelerates.

2. Warnings from the past support Exodus Mandate.
Christians have not been without warnings about the result of churches supporting and utilizing government-sponsored education. The two principal founders of government education in America were hostile to biblical Christianity. Horace Mann, the father of public education and of the Unitarian faith, exhibited an open hostility to orthodox Christianity. John Dewey, the father of progressive education and of Columbia University Teachers College, was also a committed humanist and coauthor of the Human manifesto I. Dewey was mentor to thousands of educators and professors who later staffed the various teacher colleges in America, beginning in the early 1900’s.

Does not the warning of Martin Luther now ring powerfully in our ears when he said, “I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth”. Also, Dr. Archibald Hodge, one of America’s eminent theologians, wrote some 100 years ago: “I am sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling engine for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen”.

3. That “All Education is Religious” agrees with the Exodus Mandate.
It is unwise to divorce the lordship of Christ and the superintendent of the Holy Scriptures from any area of knowledge and learning, especially in the education of our youth; yet, America has built a whole school system on the premise that there can be neutrality in education apart from religious sentiment. The government school system is the most quarantined and protected place from Christian belief in the entire nation. Christians, furthermore, have supported this system with their children, their taxes, and their endorsements.

Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University from 1795 to 1817, said about the importance of a thoroughly Christian education: “Education ought everywhere to be religious education… parents arte bound to employ no instructors who will not instruct their children religiously. To commit our children to the care of irreligious people is to commit lambs to the superintendent of wolves”.

All education, therefore, has a religious character as it is inscapably based upon views, articulated or not, related to the nature of God, man and the world. Neutrality in education is impossible.

4. The Exodus Mandate believes that education belongs to the family, supported by the church, and not the state.
Christians begin with the belief that children belong to the Lord are a stewardship to the parents, not the state. Psalms 127:1 says, “Behold, children are a gift of the Lord”. There are numerous texts to support this belief, such as Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Proverbs 22:6, and Ephesians 6:1-4. Nowhere in scriptures does a reference exist in which God delegates to the state the authority to educate children. It was the universal custom in ancient Israel and the Church for two millennia that families be responsible for the education of youth with the assistance from the synagogue or the church. There are no examples of government education for the people of God, as the ideal pattern, in the Bible.

This was also the exclusive pattern in American history in the early days when all education had a strong Christian flavor. That was steadily eroded up to the present day when the humanism of Mann-Dewey has permeated education practice. Government education, as known today, is a recent educational experiment, and a failed one as well.

Conclusion:
It is time for a new Exodus and a cry from the people of God to “let my childen go”. The church must face the reality that improvement in government education will not occur. Today’s Pharaoh is not willing to change. He is determined to make humanists out of Godly Israelite children. Like Pharaoh, the humanists have hardened hearts and God has hardened them. The churches, however, still have the children, the teachers and the facilities to organize a bona-fide, Bible-based school system. The financial resources exist as well. The great need seems to be a vision, which will be acted on in faith.

It can be done. It is not too late. The Lord will be with the Church in its endeavour today as he was with the children of Israel and their Exodus. He has commanded us to bring up our children “in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). All that remains is that today’s Christian leadership stand up and say, “Let My Children Go!”

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