December 12, 2023 Show with Steve Schultz on “A Call to Christian Parents to Repent from Idolatry Concerning Their Children’s Education”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 12th day of

December 2023, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning

guest, an old friend of mine, Steve Schultz, who is headmaster at Grace Christian

Academy of Long Island, which is a classical Christian school affiliated

with Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, and today we're going to be

addressing the controversial theme, A Call to Repent from Idolatry to Christian

Parents Who Cling to Idols When Making Decisions on Their Children's Education,

and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Steve Schultz.

And Steve, are you on mute?

I can't hear you.

No, I'm sorry.

I was waiting for a question or something.

Oh, that's good to have you back on the show, and tell our listeners

about Grace Christian Academy of Long Island.

Okay, Grace Christian Academy is kindergarten through 12th grade.

It is classical, and it is Christian.

We used to be the only classical Christian K -12 in all of New York City and Long Island, but

we just picked up some brethren further out in Suffolk County.

Their school is transitioning into classical, and we're excited

about that, and we need more family out here, but anyway,

I don't know, do I need to explain what classical Christian is?

I would think that would be a wise thing for the sake of our listeners who have not heard

you or Pete Hegseth on the program before, because

I believe the only times that I've discussed classical Christian education specifically was when I had

you and Pete Hegseth on the show.

So if they'd missed those shows, they probably, or should I say, they very likely may not

not know what classical Christian education is, so please explain.

Okay, I'm going to start to ramble.

You can tell me to shut up when it's time.

The term classical comes from the classical period of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the reason that we do that

is because their idea of education and their idea of what can be known was

radically different than what we hold to today in our culture.

What predominates the academic landscape in America today is progressivism, and at the heart of

that is the idea that either God doesn't exist or he doesn't function in

with man the way that we believe that he does, but the progressive

system has pretty much dispensed with any notion of God.

The ancients of Greece and Rome believed that before you can rightly discern what you detect with your

five senses, you must first have a set of virtue in place.

The progressives believe that you can only know things if they're tangible to the five senses,

and what that does is it instantly puts to death any discussion of morality,

of right and wrong, of theology, of things that we as Christians would

argue are more important and must be known first.

So again, back to the ancients of Greece and Rome, they believed that you needed a set of virtue before you can

even rightly discern what you're detecting with your five senses.

So when the Christians came along, they said, well, we know what that virtue is.

It's knowing God and knowing his word.

So the classical Christian school is going to begin with

a right presentation of God, of Christ, of God's word,

and is going to found everything on top of that.

So when we are taking into consideration what to teach, how to teach it, what

clubs to form, you know, pretty much everything that we

do here, it must fit through a scriptural screen.

And if the Bible doesn't support it, then we will not have it here.

So that's kind of the beginning point.

As a classical school, the structure that we follow is called the Trivium.

It's a three -stage approach that addresses how children receive and then retain information.

The first part of the Trivium is the Grammar School.

In the Grammar School, because the way their brains function biologically,

children of that age are capable of consuming huge amounts of data and storing.

And, you know, so kindergarten through sixth grade is the Grammar School.

It's a lot of memorization.

It's heavy focus.

It's on the concrete things of learning, the who, what, where, when,

you know, things that can be memorized.

You get to be my age, and the brain doesn't work that way anymore.

It might not even work.

But when they get to the seventh and eighth grade, their

brain is starting to biologically change, and they become much more capable of handling

the abstract.

So we then move them from our Grammar School into the School of Logic, and that is where we

train them how to think.

Not what to think, you know, to, say, pass a state math test, but how to

think, how to reason.

And that's where they take formal logic in the seventh and in the eighth grade, and we teach

them how to think rightly using the laws of logic.

And that's where they transition from the concrete who, what, where, when into the more abstract why and how.

Our instruction becomes much more Socratic at that time.

We replace a lot of telling students things with asking them

questions that elicit thought.

And then we move them on to our School of Rhetoric.

That's the third stage of the Trivium, and that is where we train them how to eloquently

articulate and intelligently defend their ideas.

And it's basically learning all the subject

matter that you would learn somewhere else that isn't hostile to scriptural truth.

You know, so they're teaching them how to take AP calculus, they're taking history, they're taking literature, they're taking

rhetoric, they're studying forensics.

But at the same time, they're learning how to effectively communicate,

how to eloquently articulate it, how to argue in the context of debate.

And really what we want to do here is provide a superior education for our kids that will earn them platforms out

in their culture by which to then engage their culture in its battle for ideas,

hopefully from a biblical worldview.

We still have 100 % graduation.

We've got 100 % college or military acceptance.

Brown, NYU, Penn State, Syracuse, UMass, Ohio State, go

Buckeyes.

Locals like Stony Brook, Hunter, Baruch, NYT, Hofstra, Christian schools like

Gordon, Liberty, Cedarville.

And most of our kids are getting in with some kind of scholarship.

So we're doing well, and we're defending the gospel, and

we're teaching our kids how to engage their culture and effectively do it.

And forgive me if you mention this,.

But the grades are K through 12?

12, yes.

K through 12.

And which grade do you insist that the students take the blood oath?

I'm only kidding.

Kindergarten.

And something that you said needs to be clarified.

I know that a motto of classical Christian education that you just cited

moments ago, and I'm doing this from memory, so I don't have it verbatim perhaps,

but we don't teach children what to know

but how to think.

We don't teach children what to know but how to think.

But having said that, in regard to the first half of that, we don't teach children what to know.

You do teach them vital things that they should know, correct?

I mean, you just mentioned the fact that you have the standard classes of history and

mathematics and.

So on.

Right, absolutely.

And when we shy away from that, teaching them what to

think, it's not what to know, it's what to think.

And where that difference is, is yes, you need to equip the student with the basic

building blocks of knowledge.

They need to know that two plus two is four.

They need to know that they're ABCs.

Now, wait a minute.

I thought two plus two equals four was racist.

Well, if it is, then so be

it.

We even investigate issues like racism from a biblical worldview, though.

So we're teaching kids how to think from a biblical worldview

about the things that they learn.

Yes, we have to teach them the basics of math and English

and letter sounds and physics and biology

and chemistry and all those things.

But the difference between teaching them what to think and how to think,

I spent 11 years in the government schools teaching kids what to think.

Basically, in September, I start training them how to take the state math exam.

And then in May or whenever, I forget when they took it, once that thing's over,

they forget everything because in their heads, they don't need to know it.

There's no value to it other than doing well on that state test that they took.

Teaching a kid how to think is different.

You're teaching them reason.

You're teaching them why the Pythagorean theorem works the way that it works.

You're teaching them that math is not

from the pit of hell, that it is a language by which God created the universe.

And when you can start to present the subjects with that kind of awe, the

kids start to enjoy learning.

They no longer see it as a tedious chore in order to

take the state math test that they don't understand why they've got to pass that thing to begin with.

But they become interested in the universe and therefore interested in

God's creation.

And if you go back to Romans 1, it explains

how God has made himself evident through that which is created.

And if we properly handle the subjects, what we are doing is we are

magnifying and we are unfolding what that Romans 1 statement means by

teaching them and exposing them to the things that God has

made.

What is biology?

Well, it's the study of life that God has made.

What is chemistry?

It's the study of atomic particles that God has made.

What is algebra?

What is calculus?

What is physical education?

All these things, if we study them properly,

we are going to study them in alignment with Romans 1, where each one of

these things is to draw attention to the Creator and develop an awe of the Creator.

Unfortunately, in the government schools, because they've banned God,

the way they teach the subjects is they take the things that were designed to make God known

to us and they excuse it away.

And they say, no, you're really not seeing what you think you're seeing.

What you're seeing here is a cosmic accident that has no origin,

that has no divine orchestrator.

We are going to provide, you know, basically, Romans goes on to call it vain

speculation.

Once you remove the divine creator and the divine

placer of the planets and the stars and all the scientific

laws and things that govern the universe, once you remove the divine

orchestrator of all that, you then have to explain how that stuff got there

and why it works the way that it does, but you have to do it without an author.

And that leads us to vain speculation, but what it does is it takes away

what God intended from His creation, and that was to, you know, cause us to know Him,.

At least know that He's there.

Now, one of the things that is fascinating about Grace Christian Academy and

classical Christian schools in general is that they universally,

I believe, teach Latin.

And I was raised Roman Catholic.

I went to a Roman Catholic elementary school on Long Island, New York,

and I was a post -Vatican II child,

so we were not taught Latin at all, even in a Roman Catholic

school.

I was an altar boy.

We didn't use Latin.

We didn't have to learn Latin.

My older brothers did, who were from a different era,

15 and 16 years older than I.

So tell us, why is it that classical Christian education, or should I say classical Christian

educators, believe that Latin is a very important thing for

children to be taught?

Okay.

There's actually a whole slew of reasons, and I'm not going to remember all of them right now,

but, you know, the basic mechanics of language, at least in English

language, the way that we begin teaching our

kids English and reading is by the use of phonics,

where they systematically study English letters in their sounds, and

then what happens when you put those things together.

Latin is actually the next step after phonics.

It's a very logical language.

So it basically takes the basic building blocks of phonics and

sophisticates it.

Then you have to take into consideration that more than half of our English

vocabulary is made up of Latin words and roots.

So, you know, you take a word like

democracy, you've got

demos, you've got cratic, and, you know,

a kid can walk into, say, a book or an SAT

test, for example, because we do very well in those, and run across words that he's never

seen before, but he can peel it apart and knows the pieces

and can figure out from the pieces what the word's actually saying.

Other languages that we study don't give us that.

Now, we do study a lot in America.

We study Spanish, Italian, French, which are, they

come from Latin, they are the Latin languages, but even though they're kind of like the

modern version, but if you go back to the original Latin, the Latin sets you up well to learn those

languages, to learn English, to be able to read things that are above

your comfortable reading level and, you

know, basically decode it.

So, that's another reason why Latin is popular, Latin is

valued by us.

We also value it because it is the language of the ancient

Romans, and it was the Romans and the Greeks who gave us Western culture.

So, if you know Greek or you know Latin, it helps you in the other subjects.

My licensure area academically is math.

You know, we have gotten a lot from the Greeks and the And a lot of times in my

just basically teaching math, what I'm able to teach the

kids becomes enhanced if I know the words that we're talking about

or the language that we're using.

Latin is heavily used in American law and government.

It's used in logic.

It's used in theology.

You know, it is very helpful in

learning English grammar because it's foundational to it.

And it's also helpful in memory loss, I think.

Yes.

Well, actually, it's helpful in keeping memory because I don't know Latin.

I'd probably benefit if I did.

Well, thankfully, you're not the Latin teacher.

Yeah, no.

By the way, we do.

I grew up in the government schools.

I didn't learn Latin.

By the way, we do have a listener who was seeking to correct you that the

word democracy has a Greek root and not Latin, but I

have just found that it's both.

So, democratia for Latin, and it

also has a very similar Greek origin.

So, I just thought I'd correct.

There's a lot of overlap, and if you are a classical school, you are required to teach either

Greek or Latin.

And the other thing that may give evangelical Christian

parents a reason for pause because they misunderstand

why you would do this that I'm about to reveal.

The classical Christian schools typically arm the students by

explaining what the enemies of the gospel and the enemies of the

church and the enemies of Christ teach as a part of their worldview.

Like, for instance, you do teach Darwinian evolution, from what I understand, not as

truth, but you equip the students with enough information

so that they can, when they are in the public square, when they are involved in

exchange, communication with non -Christian

children, and even adults when they are in college.

They may have professors who are atheists and so on, or just liberals.

You equip them to be able to respond to claims

of the non -Christian with knowledge and authority,.

Correct?

Correct.

And so, that's one of the reasons why I said that it warranted explanation because,

you know, the moment that an evangelical Christian hears that they teach the

background and the tenets and even the worldview of

Darwinianism, they may, what?

What's going on here?

Well, you got to know why they're doing that.

Yeah.

You know, give me a Christian who knows nothing about Darwinianism teaching me about

creationism versus a Christian who knows everything there is to know about Darwinianism

and wants to teach me about creationism.

I'm going to listen to the latter guy because he understands the importance

to a much greater level.

Now, I'm not understanding, though, the connection to being classical.

Is it because people are afraid that we're teaching about Greek and Roman gods, or, you know, what is it?

Oh, that you're, when people hear, there are Christians, let's face it,

perhaps especially when you're talking about a more fundamentalist wing of

evangelicalism.

Right.

So far, fundamentalist that they don't even want to use the term evangelical, and I can't necessarily say that I

blame them in this day and age.

It's getting harder and harder to even define what that means.

But you have almost a monastic

practice of isolationism, overprotectionism,

where you don't even want children exposed to falsehoods at all.

And when you do so, you're going to wind up leaving them unable to give a

response when they're older and they are faced with the arguments of their peers

and also their teachers and anyone who's in authority over them in any sphere of life when they start to make

unbiblical worldview claims.

Right.

But we are going to go to our first break right now, and when we return, we're going to enter into our actual

theme for the day, a call to repent from idolatry to Christian parents who

cling to idols when making decisions on their children's education.

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We're now back with Steve Schultz, headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island,

located in Merrick, New York.

And the theme is very provocative that we are addressing today.

As I mentioned earlier, a call to repent from idolatry to Christian parents who cling to idols

when making decisions on their children's education.

I think we should probably give a caveat or perhaps

dispel some presuppositions, preconceived notions that are getting

some of our listeners angry already.

You are not trying to be malicious or even insensitive towards parents

who may be a whole host of reasons why they can't send their child to a classical

Christian school.

There might not even be one in existence for hundreds of miles from where these particular listeners

live.

And there could be a number of reasons why this is unlikely or impossible to them.

If you want to just comment on that before we go into the heart of the theme today.

Yeah.

First of all, let me say, I didn't come up with that title.

Oh, I did.

I just, I was like, I'm provoked.

I came up with it just from details that you said you wanted to discuss today.

No, I have great sympathy for families who just don't have the

resources, whether it be a school in their vicinity or it be the

money to do so.

I get it.

I understand.

You know, I've been, except for a stint of

teaching in the public system for 11 years, I've been a missionary outside of that ever since I

graduated from college.

So I know what it's like to not have money.

And that's not what I'm addressing.

I know that there are plenty of families who are stuck.

Um, where, where I'm having a

problem is when we elevate things of this

world above a solid,

godly, biblical thinking.

If you don't have the money to send your kid to a private school, that's got nothing

to do with your priorities.

It's got nothing to do with your reasoning.

But when I decide to basically, you know, sacrifice my

kid on the altar, because I'd rather them pursue an NFL career that

they're most likely not going to get, you know, by sending

them to a school that has a great football team, um, rather than sending them to a school that has

a great theological program, I've got problems with that.

Of course.

Yeah, I stand by that.

And I practice what I preach.

I've got my own three kids, and every one of them came through

my school.

Um, you know, was the temptation there at times to, you

know, or the desire for me to send any one of them to a school that had, you know, a better

sports program?

Absolutely.

But what we did was we improvised and we found other ways to do it.

So, you know, we met the athletic need, uh, outside the school.

But what I didn't want to do was compromise their, their, their doctrine, uh, their beliefs,

their walk with the Lord, um, or even before they were saved.

I didn't want to compromise what I was teaching them or having them taught.

Right.

And so I'm sorry, you could finish what you were saying.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

I was going to say that one of the first idols that comes to my mind

is children themselves.

Parents turn very often their children into idols and they

bow to the whims and wishes and even demands, depending upon how spoiled

the child is, uh, in order to appease them, to keep them happy, even if

temporarily at the expense of what is actually,

uh, not only best for them, but also most honoring and glorifying and obedient

to Christ.

Uh, and it transcends the subject that we are discussing today, education.

Uh, it even involves, and I've experienced this many times,

where people who share my Reformed theology, my Reformed faith,

they will join a church that might even be

heretical in its theology, or at best, extremely shallow and

weak on their theology, because that church,

typically, which is a larger church, more numerically large, uh, they have so many

things that keep the kids occupied, entertained, and happy, so many programs,

uh, and they have a musical program that might rival Broadway.

Uh, they have all kinds of—they have an enormous gym.

Uh, you know, we could go on and on and on with the things that appeal to

parents, uh, that they put on a much higher level of

importance than what is actually being preached, teached, proclaimed, and taught in that church,

and I'm sure you've experienced that.

Absolutely.

Um, I don't even know where to start with that.

Uh, I mean, the first thing I've got to start with, though, is I don't want to get on

a high horse and pretend like I haven't made mistakes in this arena.

Uh, a lot of what I know and a lot of what I'm convicted about is because I'm,

you know, through trial and error and through making bad decisions, uh, I've made them.

Um, I think in the end, God has really blessed me and, uh,

has enabled me to bring all three of my kids through—strictly through Christian schooling, and, uh,

that's, you know, I have a lot of things that I regret.

That's not one of them.

Um, but, yeah, we've—a

few years ago, when the pandemic hit, uh, I saw

Christians, and I think

I, at times, was tempted to do so myself until I saw how foolish it looked.

Many of us were running around with the pandemic going, I—I need

the president to save us.

I need the medicine to save us.

I need, you know, the inoculations to save us.

I need money to save us.

And I'm going, you know, we owe the—the ancient Israelites who

went through this in Egypt a huge apology, um, because we—we tend to come

down on them because they—they escaped from Egypt.

You know, the—the plagues were assigned to take out systematically each one of the Egyptian gods

one by one.

And I believe that God did that to convince the Israelites, these

gods are not reliable, and once I get you out of here and I stick you in the desert and things start getting

tough, I don't want you turning back to them.

You need to see that they're worthless.

And I think what the pandemic did was it pointed out to us

that all those things that we put our trust in were worthless.

We still had the pandemic.

Well, what we've got to do is learn how to trust

God, and we don't do that.

And we think, um, you know, basically, I like to refer to it as

the—the American pantheon.

We've got our own pantheon.

We've got our own series of gods that we worship.

We don't call them gods because they don't come in the form of, you know, stone or wood,

but we give them our time, our talent, and our treasures, and we're willing

to, you know, sell our souls to them very quickly.

And, you know, because I want my kid, uh, to have,

you know, an education that's going to get him into Harvard or Yale or Brown or whatever,

um, you know, I've become convinced by my culture that I have to send him to

this multimillion -dollar tuition school, or I've got to send him to the local public school that's got this huge,

you know, computer lab.

Those are all lies, by the way, um, and I personally don't want any of my

kids going to Harvard or Yale because the ideology, the worldview that they teach there is directly

oppositional to sound biblical theology.

Why would I want to send my kids there?

Well, the argument is made that if they go there, they then have all the connections that they

need.

They then have the degree that they need.

They'll be able to write their ticket anywhere they want to go.

Not if God takes a back seat

and the God who shares his glory with no one says, I don't care what degree you've got,

this isn't going to help you.

On the other hand, you know, you take my kids, they're, they're going through respectable

colleges.

Um, we haven't compromised and, uh, doors just keep opening.

And it really comes back to, it's not the degree, it's not

the name on the diploma.

It's not the program that you got involved with.

It comes back to what does God want?

And if I'm trusting God, he will get me my kids where he wants them to

go.

Um, but we're so afraid to trust God with that.

And we start to manipulate the system and we, we start to worship these

false gods.

And, um, you know, we, we have this fear that if we apply a biblical worldview to education, it

may cost us something more than we're willing to pay.

Uh, and not just financially, um, you know, it'll cost me money.

Uh, yeah.

Uh, it'll cost me that seat in Harvard.

Maybe, maybe not.

Uh, you know, my, my daughter applied to 21 colleges and was accepted

to 20 of them.

Wow.

Um, it'll cost me a future in STEM.

My, my son was scholarshiped into Stony Brook for mechanical engineering.

Uh, talk about a STEM field.

Um, he's finishing off his master's right now.

Um, you know, it'll deprive my child of glorious athletic achievements.

Um, Hey, I have trouble walking now because of my glorious athletic

achievements.

Um, you know, and I don't have an NFL salary.

You know, it'll deprive my child of extensive social opportunities.

Um, I've heard that one a lot.

You know, I, I, I want my kids in a bigger school where they will have more friends and, um,

okay.

Think about that.

Who do you want socializing your kid?

Right.

You know, I, I would even speak in support of homeschool on that one.

Um, you know, a lot of people go against homeschooling, uh, for that very reason.

And I'm going, I would rather have parents socialize their kids than have,

you know, some kid who doesn't know his head from a doorknob socialized my kid.

It's just insane.

The reasoning that we use.

So we've got to let go of those idols and we've got to ask God, God, what is the

best?

Yes.

As for, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

We will worship the Lord.

We will be Christianly educated.

Um, as my kids are learning calculus, as they're learning forensics, as they're learning physics, they will

also be learning theology and they will be learning solid doctrine.

And, uh, they will be learning, uh, they, they will be not just learning those things with their heads,

but they will also be in a, in an environment where discipleship takes

place and they actually live it out and they learn compassion for people.

And, um, you know, and, and they learn biblically what's wrong with

racism, as we talked about a little bit ago.

Um, and, uh, I mean, the list goes on.

What they learn is a biblical worldview.

And, uh, when you mentioned Harvard, uh, just moments ago, one of the idols that

many parents may have in their aspirations for where their child will

be educated, ultimately, uh, hoping and praying that they get accepted into an Ivy League

school with such a, uh, reputation that, uh, Harvard,

uh, had, uh, it reminded me immediately of your friend, Pete

Hegseth, who is a graduate of Harvard.

And I admire him for his -.

Princeton.

Are you sure it wasn't?

Well, let me -.

I think it's both.

He's got degrees from both.

Yes, because he actually returned his diploma to Harvard

and crossed out the word Harvard and wrote over it, critical theory, and then wrote

return to center across the central body of the diploma and

sent it back to Harvard.

Uh, so that just gives you, uh, an example of, of what that

means today, that that institution that was founded by Christians has become an enemy

of Christ.

Uh, but we have to go to our midway break right now, and I just would ask of our listeners to please be

patient with us because, uh, the midway break is longer than the other breaks

because, uh, Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in

the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to air their public service

announcements and other things that localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida.

Please use this time wisely and respond to as many of our advertisers as you can.

Please write down the information they provide to contact them because we depend on our advertisers

to exist.

Also send in your questions to Steve Schultz, to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail

.com.

We'll be right back.

After these messages, so please do not go away.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens.

Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show

he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe

Moorcraft.

If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,

Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr. Joe

Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism.

Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant

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grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone.

Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch

.com, that's heritage presbyterianchurch .com, or call 678 -954

-7831, that's 678 -954 -7831.

If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener from Attoye in County Kildare,

Ireland, sends you.

Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small

group study?

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smaller settings, well, let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the Word of God and is

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study the Bible.

Hi there, my name is Jordan Tew, and I am the executive director of the Baptist Publishing House.

Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study

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May God bless you.

This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron

Sharpens Iron radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives

to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work

of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes,

or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will

join us some Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior.

Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and

always.

When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American

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It gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience have been

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Getting a driver's license.

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Do you know what they all have in common?

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But do you know what requires no training at all?

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Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions,

coffee shops, and local hangouts, Long Island Youth for Christ, staff and volunteers meet with young

people who need Jesus.

We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.

Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong

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Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959.

We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need

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Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.

For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is

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Charles Hedden Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading.

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Don't forget to mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We will return to our conversation with Steve Schultz,

headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island in Merrick, New York momentarily, but I just have a couple of

very important announcements to make.

If you love this show and you do not want it to disappear, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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If you want to advertise with us, whether it's your church, parachurch, ministry, business,

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Never do that.

In other words, never give your own church less money than you normally give them in order to bless us.

Also if you're really struggling to survive financially, wait until you are back on your feet and more stable

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Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful, Christ -honoring,

theologically accurate, and doctrinally solid church like Grace

Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, which is the church that

operates a Grace Christian Academy of Long Island.

Well, I have extensive lists spanning the globe, including many churches that are

biblically faithful.

In fact, all the churches that I have on my lists are faithful.

So wherever you live, if you are without a church home that's biblically faithful, send me an email to chrisorenson at

gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address that you can use to send in a question to our

guest Steve Schultz, headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island.

That's chrisorenson at gmail .com, chrisorenson at gmail .com.

And before I forget, I want to make sure that I mention, especially for those who

live on or near Long Island, that Grace Christian Academy is

having their next fundraising gala on Long Island, New York.

That will be March 15, 2024.

And believe it or not, I am once again going to be their master of ceremonies.

So you have to call into question their discernment and their

ability to properly teach anyone anything.

But anyway, well, tell us more about this gala, Steve.

Our keynote speaker is going to be Dr. Ernie Zara.

Author of 15 books on education.

Yeah, just a slouch.

No, it was actually through you that I was introduced to him.

You asked me to review a manuscript for a book that he was writing.

And the book that he was writing, I found to be brilliant and thought

it should be in the hands of every parent and every teacher because it addresses

the, you know, cultural sludge that is creeping its way, has crept

its into the academic system.

And it really, in my eyes, functions as an encyclopedia so that we can identify these

things and identify what's so wrong with them.

But he will be our keynote speaker.

I will give a brief presentation.

We'll have a parent testimony, an alumni testimony, some

demonstrations by our kids as to how classical Christian education manifests itself,

and a great opportunity to fellowship with other believers and eat some good food.

And that's going to be out at the Coral House in Baldwin.

In fact, it's going to be in the very room that my wife and I had our wedding reception in.

So.

It'll be a reunion for us.

I wonder if it's also the same room where I began what

eventually turned out to be over a decade -long series of debates on Long Island, known as the Great

Debates, where Dr. James R. White debated Roman Catholic apologists.

The very first few of those debates, until we outgrew the

facility, were held at the Coral House.

And I can still remember calling the debate in memory of

some of Muhammad Ali's boxing matches that had

hilarious nicknames to them, like the Thrilla in Manila.

I called at least one of the debates at the Coral House the Quarrel at the Coral.

But I'm looking forward to being your Master of Ceremonies again.

I hope I don't let anybody down.

And if anybody wants to learn more about this, you can go to Grace Christian

Academy's website, which is gcali .com.

G -C -A -L -I .com.

And G -C for Grace Christian, A for Academy, L -I for longisland .com.

G -C -A -L -I .com.

If you want to find out more about the keynote speaker, Dr. Ernie Zara, prolific writer

about the collapse of the American education system, go to DrErnieZara

.com.

And Dr is abbreviated.

D -R -ErnieZara .com.

Well, we do have a listener question.

We have actually a number of them, but I'll go to one before you continue anything you'd like to

say.

We have Ted in Moundville, Alabama, who says, Chris

mentioned your school's practice of teaching the scientific arguments in favor of evolutionary theories

so that your students can be more effective to refute it, or so that your students can more effectively

refute it.

Does your school have a particular position on the controversy between young earth creationism and old

earth creationism?

If so, do you similarly teach the students the arguments from both sides

of that controversy?

As a former educator who specialized in argumentation, I applaud you on your practice with regards to

evolutionary arguments.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, the position that we hold, because it's the position that the Bible holds, is we are sixth -day

creationists.

We are young earthers.

But we do present, we want our kids to understand

Darwinism.

We want them to understand all the sub -theories that shot out of that.

We even want our kids to understand different versions

of theological evolution, which we do not agree with, but we

want them to understand it so that they know how to debate with it.

And it also forces them to consider facets of the

biblical account of creationism so that they understand what they believe even more

deeply.

So I don't know if that answers the question.

No, I think it did.

And thanks.

For the question, Ted.

Yeah.

And let's see.

We have Mallory in Watermill,

Long Island, New York.

And Mallory asks, I know that some Christian schools have more of a

missionary approach where they will permit students to be accepted

who are from families where there is no evangelical Christian present.

Some will insist on two Christian parents.

Some will insist on at least one.

What is the practice of Grace Christian Academy?

Okay.

Basically, what you're referring to is the difference between a school that is

evangelistic and the school that is covenantal.

And GCA is covenantal.

The requirement that we have is that at least one parent has to be a member in good standing in a Bible -believing church.

And, you know, I applaud the schools who take a more

evangelical approach.

That's not us.

There has to be the, you know, missional schools.

There has to be the covenantal schools, just like there has to be evangelists and there has to be

disciplers.

We would put ourselves more in the discipleship category.

And I'm assuming that you do not require that the parents

be theologically reformed and in that much agreement with the doctrines

that are adhered to confessionally by Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island or GCA.

Correct.

Yeah, so you permit children who have Arminian parents and perhaps even

a somewhat broader scope of theological understanding within the framework of

evangelicalism.

Certainly.

Great.

Well, thanks a lot.

And it was a great question.

We'll continue on with some of the idols before I go to any more listener questions.

Some of the idols that there might be parents listening who are oblivious to the fact

that something they are clinging to that is preventing their children to be

properly educated with a biblical worldview.

They might not even recognize it as an idol.

Perhaps go through some more of those things that you would consider to be idols that are perhaps even quite

prevalent, even amongst Christian parents.

Right.

Well, let me start broadly.

And first of all, just discuss what I mean

by an idol before we start to point any of them out.

And regardless of whether it applies to education or any other, you know, field of interest,

the Lord is worthy of demands and should

receive our time, our talents, and our treasures.

And when there is a healthy level of time, treasure, or talent

that should be devoted to the Lord, and I divert that to a different

receiver, that receiver has been elevated to status of idol.

You know, Sunday morning, first day of the week

has been designated by the Lord, according to the scriptures, is the day that the believers are to come together and to

meet and fellowship and bring their spiritual gifts to bless each other.

And when I would rather sit home and watch a football game or,

you know, this one always killed me, is that

I wanted my son to play football, but the local football league in our town

only met on Sundays.

And immediately I was met with this decision, you know, do we during football season

just not go to church or go to church online or, you know,

not meet with the saints?

Not the New Orleans saints.

No, no.

Not at all.

Certainly not the New Orleans saints.

But, you know, really what made making the decision easy wasn't my

emotions, but it was I had already determined to operate with a biblical worldview.

So before I could even give in to what my flesh was saying,

I knew, my wife knew, we knew together we are going to think biblically and biblically we

cannot do this.

And what we're going to have to do is either completely forego, you know, this

luxury in his life or meet it some other way.

But, you know, we will not compromise our church membership and our

commitment, our covenant thing with the saints in our church.

So, you know,

the idols that we have again, once I start

to give to anything, something that should be given to God, I have now

elevated that thing above God and it is now an idol by biblical definition.

And now, how does that relate to education?

What we've got to do is think through why is it that I'm so okay

with sending my child off to learn from Caesar?

Because Caesar hates my God.

Caesar is not teaching a neutral body of

academics, right?

Caesar is teaching my child things that are antithetical to God in his

word and will not be happy until my child exhibits his success

in my child's life.

And what I can't get over is why we're so okay with that.

And I've thought through why is it that we're okay with that?

And, you know, one, this is the one where we already talked about this.

I really sympathize with the families who struggle with this financially, but I do think that there's even

an answer there.

And I certainly don't want to lay it on the financially struggling family as a guilt

trip at all.

I think this comes back to the churches and what the churches need to do is join together.

You know, Philippians 2, Paul says, if there's any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love,

any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same

mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Imagine if the churches, regardless of their doctrinal

particulars, I'm talking about those who are orthodox in their primary

issues, if they all got together and said, we are going to,

first of all, steal our kids back away from Caesar, and

we're going to work together to provide for them an education that is Christ -centered, that

they will still learn their other subjects and they'll learn them excellently.

But they will also learn it in a context in which it was designed, and that is to bring glory to the Lord.

If the churches did that, it would drive down the expense.

It would drive down the cost of Christian education.

It would enable the church to pursue Christ -centered education.

But we're so independent of each other in our thinking in this area

that we just won't do it.

Now, use this as a model if you want.

I'm one of the pastors in my church at Levittown Baptist, and the two other

pastors, the three of us have been talking about how we can

direct some of the money that we've got in order to help families pursue a Christ -centered

education.

And we're taking a lot of that, well, at least some of that burden on ourselves as church leadership.

So for the families who are financially struggling to do that and can't do it because of finances,

you have my complete sympathy.

I'm working to fix that problem in my setting.

Everybody else, we've got some things to worry about.

What is more important to me that my kid

pursue a field of study that is admirable or that I predict will give them

a greater chance, a better shot at a certain college or at a certain level of paycheck?

Nowhere in that thinking am I thinking biblically,

right?

Nowhere am I going, okay, what would God have me do?

What would God want for my child to do?

Do we want Christians in Harvard?

Do we want them in Princeton?

Do we want them in Yale?

Absolutely.

We want Christians in every area that we can get them to function as missionaries

with a biblical worldview.

Unfortunately, that's not what we're doing.

We're sending them in there so that they can get an impressive

diploma and make us look good and get a bigger income, and

maybe they will.

But my Bible says, what has a man gained if he

gains the world but loses his soul?

As for me and my kids, we're going to educate Christianly.

But then what we've got to do, see, here's the other thing.

There are those in your audience right now who, I

mean, as I did, heard the title that you gave our meeting today.

Wait a minute, them spitting words.

And they cannot afford it.

I understand that, again, total sympathy right there.

But then there are those who go, wait a minute, I

need to find some way to shoot this argument down because I don't want them touching my idols.

Now, nobody's saying that, but I think what each one of us, and I include myself in this,

we need to stop for a moment and think through, is there an idol here

that this call to educating my child Christianly

encroaches upon?

Will this keep my kid from being on the basketball team in my

local public school where there are state champions?

Will this keep my kid from socializing with 1 ,000

kids rather than just 140?

The

list goes on.

My child wants to be on the swim team.

Well, we don't have a pool.

We don't have anywhere to put a pool.

But the local, I shouldn't say

local, a closer school that has absolutely no gospel does have a pool.

Okay, so now there's a decision being made.

What's more important to me, that my child be raised with sound doctrine or that my child

get his desires met with swimming?

Well, I mean, if they're mutually exclusive, and it's one

or the other, it's better that a man, you know, not lose his soul

rather than gain the world.

Amen.

Do you think a part of the problem is that Christian parents

all too often have an overabundant confidence,

and perhaps are even wrongly 100 convinced

that their children are regenerate just because they were raised in

a Christian home and have been parroting the beliefs that have been

proclaimed and taught in that household and in the church where the parents are members.

And therefore, the parents have no fear

of where their children are going to go to church.

Hey, my kids have been baptized.

Hey, my kids are Christian.

I don't have to worry about them.

I don't believe you can lose your salvation.

So therefore, I have nothing to fear.

And perhaps these kids will even be missionaries wherever they go.

How do you respond to that kind of thinking, which I know is prevalent?

It's very prevalent, and sadly to say, I think

that's the way that we as Christian parents tend to coddle ourselves.

You know, if my child tells me that he has studied

electrical engineering and knows everything there is to know about

the flow of electricity and safety and everything else, and he says, I'm going out

to climb the pole in the front yard and fix the wire that just blew,

I'm not going to let him do that.

There's too much at stake.

You understand what I mean?

Yes.

And it is epidemic proportions that children

raised in Christian households go off to secular colleges and come back

agnostic, atheist, or heretics.

Yeah.

And as Votie Baucom said, and I'm paraphrasing,

if you send your children to Caesar's schools, don't

be shocked when they return home little.

Romans.

Absolutely.

I went off to college.

I was a brand new believer, so I was in the cage stage.

I was really fired up, and I was meeting kids who came out of Christian

homes.

They've been Christians, allegedly, most of their life, and

I can't tell you how many times I would run into them on the weekends, and they're smashed, and they're sleeping around in the

fraternity houses, and they've completely reneged

their belief system.

That terrifies me because I bond with my

students here, and I know I've got to graduate them, and it terrifies me that

they're going to and I didn't or we didn't effectively

do our job in building into them a resistance to that.

So that's why we're pretty aggressive with that.

We're teaching our students about false teachers.

We're teaching them about false teachings, and what makes those things false,

and why they're and why people hold to them, and how to combat them.

We teach them a lot of apologetics, but

I've got my own biological kids.

I've got more GCA kids, and

I kind of feel like a dad to all of them, and it scares me to death when I got send them off, but I'm hoping that we've

equipped them.

Amen.

We have, let's see here,.

Percy in Newcastle, New York, and Percy says,

you mentioned earlier that you accept children into the student body

who are from households where there is at least one Christian parent, and that parent does

not necessarily have to agree to the Reformed faith.

However, I was curious if the Reformed faith and the teachings of the doctrines of sovereign grace

are specifically.

Taught nonetheless at GCA.

Okay, good question.

Let me answer it this way.

The students, the parents, they know very clearly where we stand on those issues,

so as we teach, much of our

teaching, because it's Socratic, because it's classical,

our objective is to engage in dialogue.

It's not for us to stand up there and tell them

everything that they learn here.

It's not because we've told it to them.

It's because we've had dialogues, and it's through those dialogues that it becomes very clear where we

stand.

It's very clear where I stand.

Interestingly enough, you're asking that question.

I just had a a student come into my office, a

great kid, and he's really starting to deal with a lot of this stuff, and he's

thinking through.

I was really proud of him because he said, what I'm learning to do is go right back to the Bible and

evaluate what everybody tells me, and I said, man, you're dead on.

You need to do that with everything I say.

You need to do that with everything anybody says.

He says, well, in doing that, what I've realized is that there are holes in what I'm being taught in my church,

and my pastor said, go to GCA, learn your math and

your English, get your academics right, but don't listen to what they have to say doctrinally.

But I think we've trained him well enough.

We've discipled him well enough that he's doing it on his own.

He's now looking into the Word, and he's concluding on his own that there's some problems with

some of these things that he's been taught.

Well, we have to go to.

Our final break.

If anybody wants to get in line and ask a question of Steve Schultz

on classical Christian education, please do so now, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Chris Arnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Don't.

Go away.

We'll be right back.

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We are now back with our guest, Steve Schultz, and we do have a listener

in Crystal, North Dakota, and this is Darlene,

and Darlene in Crystal, North Dakota, says, how do you respond to the

objection of many Christians who think that it is wrong and perhaps even sinful

to send a child to an Ivy League school such as Princeton, which

although has a rich history in Christian theology and even Reformed theology, today

is an absolutely Antichrist, abhorrent institution that even has

the, as a professor, Peter Singer, who advocates

the murder of children even up to 28 days after the child is born?

Okay, that was a long question.

Let me back that one up a little bit.

First of all, what I would strongly advocate for is Christian schooling K

-12.

Once we start to get into college, we are now dealing more with

independent young adults.

They are adults, they're young, but they're adults.

And what we are doing, everything that we can to do is prepare them to enter

into what is often a very hostile environment.

Now, when it comes to sending my children off to

a university, the thinking that we went through, because out of

my three, two of them are college age, we thought through, okay,

do they have what we observe to be sound

doctrine?

Do they have conviction behind that doctrine?

Are they able to go into their environment with at least a degree

of mission -mindedness?

Because if they're not ready to go into a secular environment in college, they're not ready to go into a

secular environment anywhere.

But I think what makes them ready, if anything is ready, is they're going

into it mission -minded.

I'm going to this university, to change it.

When it comes to sending you off to college, I think that's a discussion that the

parents and the student have to have together.

The parents do certainly need to use their judgment and give their input.

They're the ones paying for it.

So they, in my opinion, should have the final say.

But where my expertise is more so is in the K -12.

I would say I would not, if it's at

all possible, not send my child off to a government school.

I would not send them off to any school that is teaching hostility towards the gospel.

It could be a religious school.

I'm not going to send them off to even a Christian school that

poorly portrays what a Christian is.

We have adopted such easy believism in our Christian community in America

that I think sometimes it's even more detrimental for a child to walk

into that because it's harder to identify the enemy.

Well, we have time for one more question.

We have Irving from Midnight, Mississippi.

I love the name of that city.

And Irving asks, are there any classical Christian schools that you are aware of

that should be avoided by Christians?

Oh boy.

Okay.

First of all, no.

That just means you're not aware of them.

That means I'm not aware of them.

I'm going to be very discerning wherever I send my kids.

That is a responsibility that the parent has, and they need to take that seriously.

I'm very proactive in the kids I send my

kids off with, what home I'm sending them into, what group I'm sending them off with.

I watch my kids like a hawk because I know that in the end,

I'm going to answer for that.

And they're going to answer for that.

And I don't want them to answer for my mistakes.

Now, as far as being discerning,

my school belongs to the Association of Classical Christian Schools, ACCS.

And anybody who's interested in learning more about classicism and classical Christian

schools, I would highly recommend that you go there first, because one of the

things that's great about ACCS is that they're very involved with the schools that are

members.

And there's very little that I can do to drive our school

away from what ACCS would consider acceptable

before they would intervene.

And that's one of the reasons we became a member of ACCS.

Number one is I'm a man.

I can go astray.

I don't trust me.

I trust the Lord.

And I know that accountability is a necessity.

And ACCS gives my school that accountability.

It also supplies us with an endless array of resources and

encouragement.

And we've got a big family all over the country that is ACCS.

So I'd go there.

If you run across a classical Christian school, I'd type it in there and see if it belongs to ACCS.

If it doesn't and it's independent, they may be outstanding.

They may not be.

You'll have to find some other way to evaluate them.

But I don't know of any.

All right.

We're out of time.

I want to.

Make sure I give the website again.

This is for Grace Christian Academy.

G -C -A for Grace Christian Academy.

L -I for longisland .com.

G -C -A -L -I .com.

I also want to plug Levittown Baptist Church, where my guest serves as one of the pastors on Long Island.

Levittownbaptist .com.

Levittownbaptist .com.

I want to thank Brother Steve, Pastor Steve as well, for being

such a the rest of your lives, that Jesus

Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.