Christian School Under Fire Over Girl "Crush"

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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February 14, 2021

00:03: Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:07: This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.
00:15: Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
00:20: Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
00:24: Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:26: My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
00:29: I am joined today by my friend and fellow pastor, Austin Tucker from, remind me where you are again because I just forgot.
00:37: Great point.
00:37: Summerfield.
00:38: Summerfield.
00:39: That's where I was trying.
00:39: You're down there near the, what is that area called? The villages? Yes.
00:45: The something capital of the world and it's got money.
00:48: Yes.
00:50: Well, I've had you on the program before, Austin, and I'm so thankful to have you again.
00:54: I always enjoy our conversations and I enjoy and appreciate our friendship.
00:59: So thank you for being with us.
01:01: It's good to be with you, man.
01:02: Yes, sir.
01:03: Well, today we're going to talk about something that you and I have been conversating about back and forth online, and that is the subject of an article that was posted on today.
01:13: This article is to be found at today.com if anyone is wanting to look it up.
01:18: And the title of the article is second grade girl expelled from Christian school over girl crush.
01:27: That is, mom says, that's the title of the article.
01:30: And the reason why I asked you, Austin, to come onto the program today is because you have a unique voice in this conversation.
01:38: You are not only a pastor of a church, but you are also the principal at a Christian school.
01:44: And so you had me in earlier this year, or actually last year, last year to speak at the school.
01:51: And I really enjoyed that, enjoyed your students, enjoyed getting to know you and your family better.
01:57: And it's a wonderful place to send your children for an education.
02:01: Just for anybody who happens to be in the area, if you're listening to this and you happen to be in the Summerfield area, it's a wonderful school.
02:08: The kids were great.
02:09: The instructors were great.
02:10: I really had an enjoyable time.
02:13: And I wanted to just sort of pick your brain on this situation.
02:16: Because not only is this happening at this particular school in Oklahoma, but this seems to be something that is much wider spread and much broader than any of us I think ever imagined would become.
02:30: And so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to read a little bit of the article.
02:34: And then I'm going to start picking your brain on some of the questions that come to my mind when I read this.
02:38: Because again, I'm not, I'm a homeschool parent.
02:41: So I don't have to deal with public school or even private school at this point.
02:48: That's not to say that my kids may never go to a private school, because we've actually discussed that, whether that would be beneficial for any of our children.
02:55: Because I do know that children benefit from different educational methods.
03:02: And certainly there are times where there can be a benefit of different...
03:07: It really depends on the student too.
03:09: I'm a big advocate of homeschool.
03:11: I think homeschool is a first choice.
03:16: Homeschool is a first choice.
03:18: I think Christian school is a close second right behind it.
03:22: And the reason I say it in that order is most parents do not have the means, the time or the education to educate their children, which is the reason when we established our school, we didn't need another prep school.
03:32: When my leadership board came to me 12, 13 years ago about starting our school, it was very much, if we do this, we are going to be a distinctly Christian school.
03:46: And we need distinctly Christian schools.
03:49: We also need distinctly Christian schools that partner with homeschoolers.
03:52: And that's what we're trying to actually get started here in the next year.
03:55: So good deal.
03:56: Good deal.
03:57: Well, this particular school is a private Christian school.
04:00: It doesn't say much in the article about the school itself that I saw.
04:04: Maybe it's further down.
04:05: But in the opening portion of the article, it says a private Christian school in Oklahoma allegedly expelled a second grader and cut ties with her family after she told a female classmate that she had a crush on her.
04:23: The student's mom, and it gives her name, told NBC News that she received a call January 21st from the Rejoice Christian School of Owasso, just outside Tulsa, telling her that she had to pick up her eight-year-old daughter, Chloe, after an incident on the playground.
04:42: Shelton said when she arrived at the school, Vice Principal Kelly Owens asked her how she feels about, quote, girls liking girls.
04:53: I said, this is the mother speaking, I said, well, if I'm to be honest with you, I think it's okay for girls to like girls, and I mean she looked disgusted and surprised at my answer, according to the mom.
05:07: So basically, sending her child to a school who had beliefs against the mother's own belief, and then getting upset when the Christian school stands on the biblical values that they claim to stand on.
05:21: Yeah, yeah.
05:22: It seems right away, when the principal asked that question, obviously the question is, what are your thoughts about homosexual relationships? I mean, we're all trying to dance around the issue, but that's the question, right? What do you feel about girls liking girls? Well, certainly she doesn't mean girls having friends that are other girls, because that's not the issue.
05:43: The question is girls who are having a relationship with girls.
05:48: Yeah.
05:48: It definitely wasn't, the mom was not at all saying that she was okay with her daughter having friends that were girls.
05:59: It was very much a mom who totally was indifference of the school's biblical position.
06:08: Yes.
06:09: Yeah, I would agree with that.
06:11: And it goes on to say, she said Principal Rita Wolf asked her where Chloe learned this kind of language about the word gay, to which Shelton, that's the mom, said she responded by noting that gay couples are represented in many kids' television shows, adding, unless you completely shelter your children, it's just part of life, end quote.
06:35: I think that's a pretty telling statement about the attitude of the mother.
06:41: It's an indifference.
06:42: Yeah, indifference.
06:44: And it comes down, this whole cancel culture thing started with the cake guy, Jack Phillips.
06:52: What was that, like four years ago? Four or five years ago? Yeah, I think it was Obama administration, so it was before Trump.
07:00: It's not been longer, but it's been a snowball effect.
07:04: And so like, I got a lot of flack on my post and personal PMs, and my post was, good for this school for taking a stand.
07:14: If the mom did not want her child to be in a Christian school with Christian standards, she had a school choice, she could have gone to public school.
07:21: And this is the cake thing all over again.
07:24: So the mom didn't like the fact that the Christian school took a Christian stand, and then so she goes and finds a liberal newspaper writer or article writer to write an article blasting Christian position.
07:40: And it's just cancel culture.
07:43: And you know, I think you'll agree with this statement.
07:50: I get a lot of Christians who will say something like, it was so much better 50 years ago.
07:57: And in some instances, there's some truth to that, the fact that the sin was swept under the rug more.
08:04: But on the other hand, man has always been a wretched, horrible, evil sinner.
08:10: And we've got to remember that when the Apostle Paul wrote Romans chapter one, he was dealing with a society that was openly pro homosexual, that was okay with it.
08:21: And Christians tend to think that we are facing something new today, if we take a stand on biblical values and Christian marriage.
08:30: But we're taking a stand that our forefathers took 1000 years ago, before us 2000 years ago before us.
08:38: So, yeah, it's interesting how things come in ebbs and flows, right, they come in waves.
08:44: And I think that we're at the sweeping up point of the wave in regard to homosexuality and those things.
08:54: I think that I think with the sexual revolution that came in the 60s, followed by a homosexual revolution in the 70s and 80s, and really into the 90s.
09:03: And now it's like the perversion progresses from rampant heterosexual sin to rampant homosexual sin.
09:14: And now we're seeing transgenderism and the forced acceptance of all of these things.
09:20: But like you said, nothing's new under the sun.
09:21: It's just, we're just happened to be at the next wave.
09:25: Next wave.
09:26: And this wave is a little different.
09:28: We have not seen this in our generation.
09:31: They're looking for legal presidents to shut down Christian schools.
09:36: And this is all part of that agenda.
09:38: It's going to come.
09:39: It's going to come in my lifetime.
09:40: And I've said this to my home elder board.
09:44: They're going to come after us for having a Christian position, a Christian stand.
09:49: At this moment, we, the majority of our students don't pay a dime out of our pocket.
09:53: We receive a lot of funding, a lot of scholarships, but there's going to come a time when we're going to have to say, we don't do scholarships because it comes with too many strings attached.
10:01: That's right.
10:02: Where we're heading.
10:04: And I'm trying to get my staff prepared for that day because I think it's going to come sooner than later.
10:09: Yeah, I remember a few years ago, I think it was, I think it was Dr.
10:15: John MacArthur and I'm pretty sure he said what I'm about to say.
10:19: I don't have a recording or anything and I, so I could be misquoting.
10:22: So I'll ask the listener to forgive me if I'm a little off on this, but basically he made the point that there was, there was probably coming a day when he, they would lose their tax exempt status as a, as a school.
10:36: And this is Greg talking about a master's, you know, a seminary.
10:41: And his point was when that happens, they're, if they have to start paying taxes like a regular business and doing that, they would probably not be able to continue as a school because the land that they own and the property taxes would be so massive and outrageous that, that it would, it would, so, so basically it's sort of like what you just said, as they, as they, as, as they don't come in and say, here's what you can say.
11:05: They come in and say, here's what you can say if you want to keep getting these tax, tax exemptions, or if you want to keep getting scholarships or whatever, here's what you can say.
11:16: And you can't say.
11:17: There has been, there has been some very good Supreme Court cases in this last year.
11:24: One was concerning a church's right to discriminate in hiring, even if that church has some kind of outreach or whatever that might use some kind of public funding.
11:34: And we won that.
11:36: That even if you're using some kind of public fund for like a homeless shelter or what else, whatever it may be, that a church still has its legal right to discriminate in its hiring process.
11:47: And so that would mean homosexuals or whatever biblical principle that would apply.
11:51: Of course, for us, it's, you know, marriage between a man and a woman is the only legitimate thing we recognize.
11:58: And that's the only legitimate thing God recognizes.
12:00: And then there was the other court case with the nuns.
12:03: And I think that's still ongoing, isn't it? Yeah.
12:06: I don't think the Little Sisters of the Poor, I don't think that one's finished yet.
12:09: Yeah.
12:09: That one's still, that's still going, but all the commentators are saying it's looking good as far as how it's going to pull out.
12:17: So I mean, we do have a conservative court, but I don't know how much longer we will have this conservative court.
12:27: Yeah.
12:28: It's, they're going to come after us.
12:30: And honestly, should we be surprised? No, not at all.
12:36: This is par for the course.
12:38: This is exactly what Satan does is he uses every method he can to silence the voice of those who are calling out for his demise, who are calling out for the gospel, who are essentially the ones who the Bible says God's going to crush them under our feet.
12:55: He doesn't want to see, he doesn't want to see those feet coming.
12:59: So he tries everything he can to keep us planted where we are and not being able to move forward.
13:08: So getting back to the question of the little girl situation, what would you say, and this is just off a thought, your response as a pastor, as a principal, what would you say if somebody said, this is completely innocent? There's no reason why you should tell a second grader that, you know, she can't like another girl.
13:30: That's, you know, she can't have a crush on another girl.
13:32: This is, this is, this is just Christians being their normal, judgmental, hateful selves.
13:40: And there's, there's, there's not going to be any hanky-panky.
13:45: It's just a couple of second grade girls being cute.
13:48: This is, there's nothing, and understand, this is not my argument.
13:52: I'm, I'm actually regurgitating something I've seen said.
13:56: It's innocent.
13:58: Why even make a big deal about it? First of all, we can't make light of sin as a school.
14:09: And the thing is, is when you teach, you, good teaching is not do as I say, not as I do.
14:18: There is a connection in which wisdom is knowledge applied.
14:23: If we're going to teach the Bible, we're going to believe the Bible, we're going to stand on the Bible.
14:27: So, you know, there's nothing wrong with a dad teaching his boy to play with trucks over Barbie dolls.
14:33: You know, we all understand that these children are developing sex, sexually, they're, they're, the way they, they think about the sex is the way they perceive it.
14:42: And it starts early.
14:44: And so that's, that's a general part of education.
14:47: We, they, they've got to learn where they fit in as a boy and where they fit in as a girl in society.
14:53: And, and quite frankly, what was it? One famous preacher not too long ago said, bring a, make sexism, make sexism popular again.
15:05: I don't agree with how he said it, but I got a kick out of it.
15:07: I know.
15:08: Was it Doug? Was it Doug? Doug Wilson.
15:10: Yeah.
15:11: Okay.
15:11: Make sex, make sexism popular again.
15:14: And it's, there's some truth to that.
15:18: To teach our boys that they're distinctly made in the image of God to fulfill a purpose, to be men who seek after justice, to lift up the poor, to be men, to be godly men, to teach the women what it means to be meek and what it means to be godly and motherly.
15:36: And it's, it goes back to those very foundations.
15:41: So if we are going to take a biblical position on us being made in God's image, being made for a purpose in God's image, that would include how we approach sexuality.
15:52: It includes every area of life.
15:54: It pours over, which would go back to saying, it's not okay to encourage this or not discourage it.
16:03: In fact, very much, we have to be active in our biblical role and what we believe God has intended.
16:10: We've got to realize that this sin that they are promoting, that they're acting as innocent is not just a sin with like many other natures, it's a sin against their own body.
16:22: It's a sin against the image of God, which are made in, it's a sin against the creator's order.
16:27: It's very grievous and it's something that the church needs to not take lightly.
16:33: And quite frankly, that little tiny, I don't know if it's tiny or not, that little school in Oklahoma who took a stand has more gumption than many pulpits in America.
16:46: Amen.
16:47: Amen.
16:47: I respect them for that.
16:49: It's so funny that you mentioned about teaching boys to be boys and girls, you know, teaching the distinctions and manliness and everything.
16:58: We have a homeschool group that meets at our church on Friday and today one of the teenage boys brought a, it was a sword, but it wasn't a real sword.
17:07: It was a sort of a, do you know what LARPing is? Live action role play.
17:13: It's like, it feels like LARPing.
17:15: Oh yeah, LARPing.
17:15: Yeah.
17:16: Okay.
17:16: They have the foam swords.
17:17: Huh? Yeah.
17:18: Well, this looks like a real one, but it just was heavy, but it's not sharp.
17:24: It just looks like a sword and he was holding it and showing it to everybody.
17:28: And I said, let me hold that.
17:29: And I took it and I showed him a swordsman technique for using the sword.
17:36: And it was so funny because one of the moms was like, you know, I was wondering about my son bringing his sword today and I didn't realize the pastor would show him how to use it.
17:45: And I was like, hey, that's what I do, you know.
17:48: And that's the thing is we want, I want my kids to understand manliness is much more than being in the guns and swords.
17:55: Sure.
17:55: Much deeper than that.
17:58: But there is a sense in which they are trying to feminize the men of our generation.
18:03: Man, me and you are three years apart in age.
18:05: So you know what I'm saying? How radically things have changed.
18:09: I remember being in fifth grade public school, fifth grade, showing up and showing the guys my new pocket knife.
18:16: I was like, hey guys, I got a new pocket knife, public school.
18:19: And the teacher came over, Mr.
18:20: Tucker, what do you have there? My new pocket knife.
18:23: Give it to me right now.
18:24: Handed it to the teacher.
18:25: You're not supposed to have this in class.
18:27: She sticks in her pocket.
18:29: 30 seconds before I get on the bus to go home, she hands it back to me and says, keep it in your pocket until you get home.
18:34: And that was the end of it.
18:36: You know, I had friends who would hide their shotguns in the woods getting off the school bus to go hunt until the sun went down.
18:45: Nowadays, if you were hiding a shotgun at a bus stop, a whole nother.
18:51: But the thing is, I don't want to identify manliness as that.
18:57: It is partly that, but it's much more than that.
19:02: And it's about building men of courage and men of character and women who are meek and women who are honest.
19:10: You know, it's boys and girls have different battles and I see it all the time.
19:15: My office is graced by the presence of children coming in with different fights.
19:20: It's the guys, a fistfight broke out on the playground and they're in my office and they're shaking hands.
19:26: The girls, it's so-and-so's talking about me behind their back.
19:29: They have different personalities, different needs.
19:31: They have to be corrected differently, dealt with differently because ultimately the outcome is for them to be what God has called them to be.
19:40: And like I said, you cannot get away from this.
19:45: You can't get away.
19:45: And we have to remember that the whole battle of the sexes was a part of the fall.
19:51: You know, she would be desirous of her husband.
19:53: The battle of the sexes happened in the fall.
19:56: And now that battle has gone into full corruption where they're trying to corrupt the nature.
20:01: And that was the warning of Romans.
20:03: That's the outcome of sin.
20:06: And that's the example given in Romans 1.
20:08: The outcome of sin having its way is men leaving the natural use of woman.
20:15: This is all a snowball effect.
20:18: And we got to go back to, I would have taken the school's position simply for the fact because we want to teach these girls what it means to be a woman.
20:26: And you cannot conflate or mix the sexes in that way.
20:31: Yeah.
20:34: I want to, I'm going to go to one more point in the article because this is often where the conversation goes.
20:42: It gets very emotional.
20:45: And you and I know parents come in.
20:47: I mean, I've taught karate for years.
20:50: I've had youth programs and everything.
20:52: I've had parents come to my office many times.
20:54: I'm not a principal, but I've been in that conversation where the parent comes in and they're upset about something that happened either in the classroom.
21:02: Yeah.
21:02: Yeah, exactly.
21:03: And this is something that the lady, she says this regarding her daughter.
21:08: This is the mother again in the article, quote, she was crying and just asking me if God still loved her.
21:15: And you know, if she was wrong for feeling the way that she does.
21:20: And she said it was heartbreaking for her.
21:22: And she assured Chloe that God loves her and always will.
21:28: And goes on to say, you know, a school that's supposed to be teaching specifically God's love and grace and forgiveness, and no matter what, to make an eight-year-old question if God loves her is not okay.
21:41: So theology matters.
21:44: Yeah.
21:45: And that's what it comes down to.
21:47: Does God love everybody? Okay.
21:53: This is Coffee with a Calvinist.
21:54: Everybody knows my answer is going to be, yeah, that's, that's the thing is, is, is the Bible.
22:02: I mean, Jacob, have I loved Esau, have I hated? God had placed his affection on Jacob and not Esau.
22:09: Okay.
22:10: So, and we could get into theology of it all about common grace and stuff, but we can't conflate God's love and common grace.
22:17: We just can't do it.
22:18: And people mistakenly do that all the time.
22:21: So the question, first of all, was meant to incite an emotional reaction, not to actually deal with the salvatic work of Jesus Christ.
22:32: Okay.
22:33: Christians, how to be gracious? Yes.
22:36: But let's be honest.
22:37: We cease being gracious the second we stop saying, thus saith the Lord.
22:43: Yeah.
22:44: And that's something that, and that's, that's what I got online.
22:48: A lot of Christians online, all this church, I mean, it's a young girl, like you said it's just words that don't mean anything.
22:58: The thing is, if the mother had the same position as the school and agreed with the school and the school was able to teach this young lady and lovingly control her in the right direction, the outcome would have been radically different.
23:15: This girl was not dismissed because of her actions and feelings for another girl.
23:19: This girl was dismissed because the mom was basically indifference towards the school position and it was the parent's action that got this girl dismissed.
23:30: Okay.
23:31: Yeah.
23:31: In fact, in fact, the article says that it says that the family's beliefs did not align with that of the school.
23:37: Therefore they were going to be ending their relationship with her.
23:39: So it's, it's not the girl's action of saying that she had a crush on another girl, but it was the mother affirming that rather than affirming the school's position that such a crush would be in an opposition to what the school teaches in opposition to nature and opposition to God.
23:56: And so the, the school is simply saying what we are teaching is not being affirmed in the home.
24:02: Yeah.
24:03: And therefore the relationship, this teaching relationship doesn't, can't continue because it's not being affirmed in the home.
24:14: Yeah.
24:15: And that's, that's the thing is honestly, um, you, you, they could vote with their wallet if they don't agree with the school, they shouldn't have been there.
24:25: But going back to, uh, placing the blame on the school, uh, for making this little girl think God don't love her.
24:34: Um, we don't know, the article don't tell us what the school said to this little girl.
24:39: We don't know the school well enough to know whether they're a gospel preaching school, whether that little girl gets the gospel daily.
24:46: From what I can read, I would venture to guess they probably are, but we don't know for sure.
24:52: We don't know any of these people here.
24:54: What we do know is that the mother is not gospel affirming.
24:58: And that's by the testimony of how she feels about the situation.
25:03: So how can a mother who's not gospel affirming even have room to cry, oh, they made my little girl think God don't love them.
25:11: It's, I know, I know how the world would answer that question, but I mean, from, from a Christian that actually reads their Bible perspective, it's, it's obvious, um, that this is very much just a ploy at emotions.
25:25: Um, we don't know if this school is faithfully shared the gospel of this young girl or not, but we do know that if the school is going to be faithful to God's word, they have to stand on the principles of marriage and they have to stand on the principles spelled out in God's word.
25:38: Yep.
25:38: And, uh, and that's what they've done.
25:40: And the most loving thing they can do is take a position of, you know, sin is lawlessness, taking that position.
25:48: Um, so yeah, and again, going back to the whole God doesn't, you know, I, I'm almost certain that nobody at the school told that little girl, God doesn't love you because of this.
26:02: Yeah.
26:02: I mean the, the, the, the, the statement of the mother is, you know, even if the little girl asked, you know, well, does God not love me because of this, that, that the, the whole, the whole thing is, can we not, can we not correct anyone anymore? Can there not be any correction anymore without somebody stepping away and saying, God doesn't love me? We've redefined love.
26:25: Love now means that you are, have to be fully accepting and fully affirming.
26:30: Okay.
26:30: Um, and the thing is, is anybody who's actually been a parent and has successfully parented a child realizes that love is not being affirming.
26:42: Okay.
26:42: There are things my kids do that I do not affirm.
26:46: Okay.
26:46: You don't have to affirm them to love them.
26:49: You can disagree with somebody and still be loving.
26:51: And that's, and that's the thing is this article is doing that same old change of dialect, change of definition.
26:59: Uh, affirmation is love and without affirmation, there is no love.
27:03: And I praise God that Jesus don't work with me that way.
27:07: You know, there's, believe me, I have plenty of sin in my life.
27:11: Um, but the difference is because I have the Holy Spirit, I'm always repenting of that sin.
27:16: Um, and he, you don't have to affirm somebody's wrong in order to love them.
27:22: Yeah.
27:23: And, uh, in fact, the most unloving thing you can do, you know? Yeah.
27:28: I have a, uh, somebody sent me a picture and they weren't, they weren't affirming the picture, but it was a, uh, it was, they were saying, can you believe somebody posted this? And it was a picture of a, of, of, it was supposed, it was a drawing of Jesus speaking to a crowd.
27:42: And he said, um, you all think that the Bible tells you what love means, but really love tells you what the Bible means.
27:54: And I looked at that and I ended up posting it somewhere else, but I ended up thinking, you know, I was kind of with a big question mark on it.
28:01: What, what does this even mean? And so love is supposed to be the, the grid through which we interpret everything.
28:08: That's the point, right? Is you interpret everything through love.
28:10: The problem is without scripture, we don't know what love is.
28:14: Scripture defines love for us.
28:16: Scripture defines God's love.
28:19: It defines the love that we're supposed to have as brothers in Christ.
28:23: It defines the love I'm supposed to have for my wife.
28:25: It defines all of these things and it defines what is not love.
28:29: It defines that things that are ungodly, they are opposed to nature.
28:36: They are opposed to the way God created us.
28:37: These are not loving.
28:39: And um, you know, this, this whole situation boils down to a, a mother who sent her child to a Christian school for whatever reason.
28:49: Maybe it's because the school has a tremendous academic program.
28:53: Maybe it's because the school has a true, has a much better discipline set up than does the public school system or whatever caused her to go to a private school.
29:01: And there's a, there's a myriad of reasons why people go to public school or private schools.
29:05: Um, the public schools really are, you know, there's a lot of bad there and they, they're looking for a better option.
29:11: And yet what they're trying to do is they're trying to say, but you can't be Christian.
29:17: Yeah.
29:18: And, and you know, I, I'm going to speak very candidly and I probably shouldn't be saying this over the air, but go ahead and broadcast it anyway.
29:24: Um, we've had students in our school who come from backgrounds such as this little girl.
29:31: Okay.
29:32: Um, and when those parents come and they want their kids to have Christian value because some of them were raised in Christian homes, even though then they themselves have rejected that lifestyle.
29:43: And when they come into our school, we have our confession of faith.
29:46: They have to, uh, read it.
29:49: They have a document that signs and it openly states our position on marriage and they have to get it notarized.
29:53: And I tell them up front, we are a Christian school.
29:57: We are a Baptist school.
29:59: We are unapologetically Bible and Christo centric.
30:04: And you have to understand if you put your child here, this will be the position we go with this.
30:10: And if you don't agree with that, you need to pull your child.
30:13: And I have them get that signed and notarized every parent that comes in because we are heading towards a day and age where even people who claim to be a Christian know nothing of the gospel or what the biblical definition of actual love is.
30:26: Um, they, they, they've all taken the world's definition of love to heart and, uh, and, and that's exactly the, the, the unsaved world is now judging Christians and churches and Christian schools based on their own definition of love, which is not love at all.
30:45: And the great irony is the only Bible verse many of them know is judge not lest you be judged.
30:51: And then they become the harshest judges saying, uh, as a Christian, you can't do that.
30:58: Yeah.
30:59: Not only that, but they judge wrongly apart from God's word.
31:02: Yeah, absolutely.
31:03: Absolutely.
31:04: This is, this is honestly, I do not, I would not want to be in the shoes of the principal at that school in Oklahoma.
31:13: Okay.
31:13: Amen.
31:13: It's tough.
31:14: That was not an easy thing.
31:15: And, and it's funny cause I just want to say this because I know people probably going to listen to this and think, well, that mean principal, that mean pastor, there's not a kid who comes through our doors in this school at grace point that we do not seek to love biblically.
31:33: Amen.
31:34: Loving them biblically means giving them the truth.
31:37: It means calling them out when they're doing wrong.
31:40: It means talking about what sin is and being candid and honest, pointing them to Jesus Christ for the gospel, letting them know what the law of God says concerning things and, and how God feels about sins and, and, and the fact that they do stand in grace.
31:55: But the thing is, is without guilt, there's no room for grace.
31:59: I mean, I know me and you might have a little bit of a different view on that, but nonetheless, the outcome's the same.
32:05: Um, the thing is, you got to get lost before you can get saved.
32:09: I think, I think.
32:10: Yeah.
32:10: There's, there's, and, and this, this school took a biblical stand.
32:18: They did not get rid of this little girl because she was confused.
32:22: They got rid of this little girl because mom was indifferent and was okaying and going against the school.
32:27: They can't work against each other.
32:29: That's right.
32:30: We, we as a school are already doing what the parents are supposed to be doing.
32:34: Amen.
32:35: We have to be working together in the same direction.
32:37: And like I said, we have some parents with kids in our school who aren't necessarily Christians.
32:43: Um, they make a minority of our school cause we're very, we're very protective of the culture of our school.
32:49: Uh, they make up a minority, but nonetheless, uh, they understand when they come in.
32:54: I've had a few parents who've come for one year and left halfway through the year because they didn't realize that was serious when I said, we're going to be Christocentric on things.
33:04: Um, and, uh, that's okay.
33:07: They have the right to go to the public school.
33:09: They don't have to come here, you know? And that's another thing.
33:12: Christian schools exist for different purposes.
33:16: Um, I, I openly expressed my position on homeschooling at the beginning.
33:20: I believe it is parental responsibility to educate their children, to teach about them, about the Lord.
33:24: When they rise up, when they lie down, when they stand up by the way, you know, the Deuteronomy command, uh, we are commanded to raise up our children, the nurture and admonition Lord Ephesians.
33:32: We're, we're, uh, we're supposed to be fathers that don't provoke them in wrath that bring them to God.
33:39: Um, you got to understand that it is the household's first duty.
33:43: And so schools exist for two different purposes.
33:45: Some Christian schools exist for the purpose of evangelism.
33:48: That is they take everybody and they give them the gospel and they try to give them the Christian message and the worldview.
33:55: Other Christian schools exist for the purpose of a haven for raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
34:02: Not as a place of evangelism, but as a safe place for the children of the church family to be educated and study.
34:11: Most Christian schools exist in this category.
34:14: I don't think Oklahoma does.
34:16: School in question does not exist in this category.
34:19: This category has to put up with a lot more.
34:21: Um, and you know, honestly, I thank God for, cause I've known some people who've gotten saved through the Christian schools.
34:26: Um, uh, one of the college, the college I went to, one of the college I went to my undergrad, their Christian school was that philosophy, uh, grace point.
34:36: We exist for the purpose of the nurture and admonition of our children, of the church.
34:41: That is our focus.
34:43: We are a haven for God's people to have their children educated with a Christian worldview.
34:49: And um, and honestly, my guess is Oklahoma was probably wired that way too, or they went and dismissed her so quickly and both schools have their place.
35:00: So, yep.
35:01: And like you just said, you, you, the word you used at the end there was worldview.
35:06: It's it, that's really the heart of this is there, there are two worldviews in view.
35:12: There's the worldview of the school.
35:13: There's the worldview of the mom and the worldview of the mom is the worldview of the majority of people, unfortunately, which is that, um, that the Christian position on this is just wrong.
35:28: The, the Christian position of this is, is, is not following what Jesus would have really done.
35:35: He would have.
35:36: Yeah.
35:36: And, um, I just happened to be, just happened to pull up, you know, as, as, as we were talking, I just happened to have the article over here on my right side.
35:44: And it does say, uh, they haven't pursued legal action yet, but the possibility is still on the table.
35:51: Don't you, don't you think that possibility is, is certainly rolling around in their minds? What, what, uh, you know, what can we do to ensure that nobody else has to suffer like this, like this family has suffered and we're going to be seeing more of this.
36:07: And honestly, brother Keith, it goes back to the pulpits, bad theology for the last 100.
36:16: Well, it hadn't probably been a quite a hundred years, but I know it's been bad theology most of my life and a weak willed, fluffy pulpits producing fluffy Christians who have no idea who the God they serve is.
36:29: They have no idea what the definition of love is.
36:32: It's just whatever the world has to find love has, that is what God should be.
36:37: And they've created a God in their own image and they get mad when a church stands up or a school stands up and says no.
36:44: Absolutely.
36:45: Absolutely.
36:46: Well, I think that's a good point to end on there.
36:48: That was a good thought.
36:49: And, uh, again, Austin, I want to thank you for coming on the program today and sharing the thoughts about this very, very difficult issue.
36:57: So thank you for coming to this serious meeting compared to last time when we were talking about conspiracy theories.
37:02: Yeah.
37:03: Well, I'm going to have you on again soon and we'll do something fun where we can laugh.
37:06: We didn't get to laugh as much today as I'd like to.
37:09: You and I both, just in case the listener has never heard either of us before, we're both a couple of really jovial gentlemen and we love to laugh.
37:16: But today was a pretty serious topic.
37:18: So, but again, I appreciate you being forthright with us and sharing your particular perspective.
37:25: Again, you're in a different position than most people.
37:29: Certainly one that is able to give us an opinion on the situation that's much more right on.
37:36: You know, you, you, you, like you said, you wouldn't want to be in that principal position, but you, you probably understand better what they're dealing with.
37:44: So I appreciate you coming on the program today.
37:48: Absolutely.
37:48: Well, one, before I let you go, one last thing I want to ask you is if you would share with everyone your, your website.
37:54: That way, if there are people in your area, they can come and visit your church or maybe they have a child that they want to put in a solidly Christian school.
38:03: And we'd like for them to know where you are.
38:06: Well, you can find the church and school online at grace.grace.tv as in Tango Victor.
38:17: And if you don't like what I said and I offended you in some way, you can find me at Sovereign Grace in Jacksonville.
38:26: Okay.
38:27: Yes.
38:27: And that would be sgfcjax.org.
38:31: Yeah, you can, or, or you can just send your hate mail or email, or you can encourage us at calvinispodcasts at gmail.com.
38:40: It reminds me of Tim Allen back when the home, the home improvements, every time Tim would say something like sexist, Al would hold up that sign.
38:48: Yeah, Tim Allen.
38:50: Yeah, yes.
38:52: This is Tim, Tim Taylor, courtesy of, yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:56: So absolutely.
38:58: Well, brother, again, thank you for coming and thank you listener for listening.
39:02: I appreciate you being with us every day.
39:03: This program goes live every morning at 630 AM.
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39:24: So again, thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
39:26: My name is Keith Foskey.
39:28: And I've been your Calvinist.
39:29: May God bless you.
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39:47: As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
39:54: All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
40:00: He is the way, the truth and the life.
40:03: And no one comes to the Father except through Him.
40:06: May God be with you.