Ninety nine percent of the time the discussion about civil government schools centers around whether a parent should send his child to one. That is, Should I delegate my child’s discipleship to the civil government?
When someone like me comes along and challenges that starting point, oftentimes the response has to do with justifying using one’s child as an evangelist. The parent will say, “Well, didn’t Jesus go into the synagogues and temples to preach?”
Well, it is true that Jesus went into the synagogues. In the New Testament there are dozens of examples of Jesus and/or the apostles going into the synagogues. In one such example, Jesus taught how he himself is the bread of life. This is in John 6:57: “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.”
So it is misleading to merely state that Jesus went into the synagogue in an attempt to justify children going into civil government schools. Jesus did not merely go into the synagogue; he went into the synagogue and preached the gospel. In today’s civil government school, from the teacher’s perspective, that is illegal.
The Scriptures also document how Jesus and/or his apostles went into the temples. In Matthew 21: And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a ‘den of robbers.’”
You might say that these examples of Jesus going into the synagogues and temples are more analogous to Jesus going into the modern church. I agree with that. That is not a problem for me, because my point is that Jesus, whenever he went somewhere, preached what ought to be. That is why children who merely go into civil government schools to proclaim Jesus, but fail to say there should not be a civil government school system, are falling short of what needs to be done.
I do not blame the children though for their shortfall; I blame the parent, who not only send their child into the lion’s den, but fail to tell teach them that there should not be a lion’s den called the civil government school system.
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