July 21, 2017 Show with Israel Wayne on “Education: Does God Have An Opinion?”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 21st day of July 2017.

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I just came back from a wonderful reunion with my niece,

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Patrice, my niece Patrice, who is the oldest of two daughters of my oldest brother,

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John, and I have not seen Patrice since 1995, and not only did

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I see my niece Patrice for the first time since 1995, I met for the very first time ever four of her seven children, and her children that I met today for the first time are

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Gabrielle, who is 18, Elisha, who is 14, Nathaniel, who is 10, and Shiloh, who is five, and we all paid a visit to my other brother,

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Andy, my second oldest brother, over at the Forest Park nursing facility, and what a blessed time

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I had, and I am so thankful to God that quite a long time ago our

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Lord was pleased to save Patrice, and she married a wonderful Christian man, and they just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and they are raising their children in the

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Christian faith, and it does my heart a lot of joy to know that, but that is actually connected to our subject today, and that is our subject with Israel Wayne, who

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I am interviewing today for the first time. The subject is his book, Education, Does God Have an

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Opinion?, and Israel Wayne is a conference speaker. He's a regular columnist for Homeschool Digest, Homeschool Enrichment, and the

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Old Schoolhouse Magazines. He's a site editor for ChristianWorldview .net,

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an author of a number of books, including Full -Time Parenting, A Guide to Family -Based

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Discipleship, Questions God Asks, Questions Jesus Asks, and Pitching a

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Fit, Overcoming Angry and Stressed -Out Parenting, and more, and as I said, we are discussing his book,

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Education, Does God Have an Opinion?, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

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Israel Wayne. Oh, thank you, Chris. It's a blessing to be on your show. Also joining me again,

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Steve Schultz has been a guest on our program in the past, and he is going to be a guest again in the future, but today he is serving as one of two co -hosts with me as we interview

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Israel Wayne. Steve Schultz is headmaster at Grace Christian Academy of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York, and this is a classical

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Christian school, and it's affiliated with the congregation where I was formerly a member, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Steve Schultz.

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Hey, Chris, honor and blessing to be here with you. Great, and in studio with me is my more regular co -host, the

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Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, it's great to be here, and I love the subject. Great, and our email address, if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for our guest,

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Israel Wayne, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, and I could see a subject like this very easily lending itself to a private and sensitive question, so if it is about something like that, you may feel free to remain anonymous, but otherwise, please give us your first name, at least your city and state and country.

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Well, Israel, what I typically do when I interview guests for the first time is I ask them to give our listeners something of a summary of your own personal testimony of salvation, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in as a child, and what were the providential circumstances that our

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Lord used to draw you to himself and save you? Ah, great question.

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Well, my background is rather complex, I'll try to simplify it as much as I possibly could, but my upbringing is kind of dualistic,

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I guess I would say. When my parents got married, my father was a

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Christian and my mother was not a Christian, and so their marriage only lasted about six years, and then they divorced, and so I grew up in a situation where I knew the

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Scripture from the time that I was born, essentially, but when my mother remarried after my parents divorced, she married a non -Christian, and it was a very abusive situation, and I was in a very toxic, very heavily physically abusive relationship with my stepfather from the age of about six to 15, and so during that time, though, my mother homeschooled us, and I never ended up going to government school at all.

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I spent second grade and sixth grade in private Christian school because of the fact that homeschooling was illegal in those days, it was against the law to teach your children at home in the

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United States and almost every state back then, and so we were faced with some court cases a couple of times where we were given an ultimatum that my mother either had to put us into a government school or have us taken away from her by Child Protective Services, put in a foster home situation, and then we would, of course, be forcibly put into government education, and so my mother chose option

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C, which was private Christian school, so in second grade and sixth grade, I had two different private

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Christian school experiences, but never ended up being in government education at all myself.

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I had a very close relationship with the Lord from the time that I was a young child, and I think

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I first asked Christ to save me when I was three, and then

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I was baptized when I was seven, and I never abandoned the Christian faith, and some people say it's not possible for somebody to be saved that young.

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I don't know exactly where we find that in the Scripture, but... John the Baptist might have been in the womb, right?

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So I think God's had his hand on my life throughout that time, but coming out of the abusive relationship that I was in in my later teens,

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I had to ask myself, you know, am I embracing the Christian faith simply because I was taught this in church and what

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I was led to or, you know, do I embrace this because I believe it to be true?

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And my mother came to know the Lord when I was 12, and soon after that became a single parent and ended up homeschooling myself and my sisters as a single parent then in that situation, so a very interesting situation.

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My mother's conversion or experience in covenant of the Lord was pretty radical, and so God used a lot of those situations and circumstances to help sort of shape the trajectory of what

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I'm doing now. We have a ministry called Family Renewal, and it really focuses on the necessity of applying the gospel specifically to the issues that relate to the family, marriage and parenting and education and those issues, and I've seen a lot of families who

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I think feel like maybe they're too messed up or too dysfunctional and God can't really do anything with them, and my mission, my vision is to say that the grace of God is big enough to change anybody's situation.

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Great, and before I move on, I'd like to also have one of our co -hosts,

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Steve Schultz, just give a little plug in your own words for Grace Christian Academy on Long Island in Merrick, New York.

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All right, thanks, Chris. Grace Christian Academy is the only K -12 classical

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Christian school in all of New York City and Long Island. Our primary focus is on the gospel.

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Our secondary focus is on academic excellence, but on a level that supersedes most schools, we at this point still have 100 % graduation and college entry, and we don't engage in the common core in state testing or regents, and we are sending our kids off to schools like NYU and Penn State and Syracuse and Duke and Stony Brook, and we're doing quite well.

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Great, and for anybody who wants to look up information about Grace Christian Academy later on after the program, the website is gcali .com.

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G -C -A for Grace Christian Academy, L -I dot com. Well, Israel, and by the way,

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Steve, since I cannot see you, you can just butt in anytime as long as you're not entering into a sentence midstream.

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Butt in anytime that you have a question to ask of our guest Israel Wayne, because obviously

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I'm not going to be able to see you raising your hand or anything like that since you're on the phone. And obviously,

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I think a good place to start off, Israel, would be the purpose of education.

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What is it? Well, I think the purpose of education is very tied into a bigger question, which is what is the purpose of our existence?

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What is the purpose of our life? And the way I think about it is that I think of life as being like a pie, and if you can identify what kind of pie you have, if you take a pie, let's say a blueberry pie, for example,

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I live in southwest Michigan where we grow more blueberries than anywhere else in the world, so that one comes to my mind right away.

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Let's say we have a blueberry pie and we slice that pie up into eight different slices. If I take one slice of that pie and I give you a slice from that pie, you will know definitively what kind of pie you're getting.

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If you know what's true for the whole, you know that what is true for the whole is also true for the sum of all of its parts.

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And so when you think about the question of education, education is a slice of our life.

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You know, you can think of work, you can think of relationships, you know, our hobbies, all of those things may comprise different slices of who we are and how we allocate our time, but all of them should be integrated.

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They should be consistent with the main purpose of our life. I think, honestly,

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Harvard College, back in 1636 when they were founded, their original mission statement says it pretty well.

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It says that every student should be earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know

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God and Jesus Christ, John 17 3, and to lay Christ as the foundation for all sound knowledge and learning.

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So the reason that we're here on this earth is predominantly to know God, to love him, and to obey and serve him, and then we do that through practical application and loving and serving other people.

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So my family actually has a mission statement and we have a poster that's on our wall and it says in our living room and it says we exist to know, love, and serve

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God and love and serve other people. So the reason we educate our children is to prepare them to know love and serve the

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God who created everything, who made all these different academic disciplines, and then to be equipped practically to go out in the world and bless other people in the name of Christ to glorify

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God with their knowledge and with their talent. And what about government schooling, commonly called public schools, which ironically in the

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UK I believe they call private schools public schools, but there seems to be a mixture of opinion amongst those in the body of Christ in regard to sending their children to public schools.

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Some think that this is a way for their children to be salt and light in the world as Christians, if they are indeed

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Christians, and they think that that is a good way to help them develop social skills and discover what it's like to be in the midst of the world with opposing views to Christianity and so on.

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What is your view of that? Well I'll try to get to each of those.

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I think first of all I'd like to kind of identify what the purpose of an education would be from the government education model.

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Sure. And 80 to 90 percent of all Christians have chosen this approach to education for their children, so it's really the dominant viewpoint by far is that it really is a primary goal and role of the government to be involved in teaching children.

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But when you look at that form of education, you ask parents, why are you sending your children to school?

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Why are you teaching them? Why are you educating them? About 80 percent of all Christian parents will say, well

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I'm educating them so that they can get good grades and learn things and have good information so that they can go to college and get a degree.

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And I say, okay so why is it important to go to college and get a degree? They say, well if you don't have a degree it's awfully hard to get a job.

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I say, well why do you need a job? And they say, well it's important to have a job because if you don't have a job then how are you going to make money?

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I say, well what do you need money for? Why is it important to make money? They say, well man if you don't make money how are you going to pay the bills?

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I mean you have to pay bills, you have to pay taxes, you have to buy food, you have to support a family.

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I say, okay well so why do you have to do all that? And for people that I talk to and ask these questions, they basically stop there.

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They don't have a way to even think beyond that question. It just seems so self -evident.

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Like, well that's what you do. That's why we're here. That's why we're living is because we're supposed to work a job and pay bills and make a living and support our family.

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But what else is there? And what I would suggest is that that is not a worldview.

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That is a humanistic worldview. That is really the American dream as opposed to being a worldview that's informed by the gospel.

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And what I see is the teachings of Jesus and the apostles kind of turn everything on its head and say that none of those things are ends.

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All of those things are means. And I think as Christians we're very confused about the difference between ends and means.

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And we tend to look at a lot of things as ends that really are not. And so even a job, even money, those things are simply means for what ends.

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Well I would suggest going back to the purpose of life that there are means for us to know, love, and serve

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God and love and serve other people. That's why we're here. So ultimately if I can break it down this way, you really only have two models.

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You're here to know, love, and serve God and love and serve other people. Or you're here to know, love, and serve yourself. And essentially that kind of is the worldview.

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That's the mantra. That's the model that is subtly promoted through 10 to 14 ,000 hours of classroom education between K -12.

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And it's what most people come out with, even if they're Christian. You know, their worldview is basically

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I give 10 percent of my time and my money to Jesus and then the rest of all this life belongs to me.

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The gospel says that if you become a bond servant or a slave of Christ, nothing belongs to you.

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Everything belongs to Christ and you are a steward. You're a caretaker of your time, talents, and resources for a greater purpose, for a greater end.

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And could you tell us something about the state of the government schools throughout the country?

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I'm assuming that there would be some areas of the United States where the agenda has been more dominated by leftism.

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I don't even use the term much anymore, liberalism, because so much of what we see is not liberalism.

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Because liberals, at least the classic liberals of years ago, believed that conservative ideas and Christian ideas were an acceptable voice in the town square and the table of exchanging ideas and so on.

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Now you have what is more resembling of leftist totalitarianism where many, and not only your average household, but those even more dangerously in positions of authority in government, want to just remove our voice and our opinions from the town square, from public hearing, from elected office, etc.

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But if you could tell us what you know about the state schools across the nation?

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Well, I think there are pockets, obviously, geographically of the country that lean farther left in terms of their political, social, and religious ideologies than others.

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Certainly the Northeast is going to be way more liberal than the

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South, the rural South of the United States. And you're going to have pockets of conservatism where you'll have more

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Christian influence, you'll have more church -going, Bible -believing people who are involved in the school system.

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But overall, I think that there is a concept that people have, especially if they happen to live in an area that might be marked by more conservative people, there's a belief system that I hear all the time, which is, our school is different.

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If you ask people, what do you think about government education on a national basis, almost anybody anywhere will tell you it's in trouble academically, there are issues with it morally.

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Very few people will just defend it en masse. But their belief is, but our school is different.

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We live in a good area, we have a good local school district. I don't think I've ever met a

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Christian parent who sends their children to government schools that does not firmly believe that they live in a good school district, and that their school is different.

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Everyone that I talk to, that's their mantra. And it's interesting because I have a friend, for example, who is a professor at Missouri State University, and he and I did a tour throughout rural southern

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Missouri, like Springfield area and some of that area, where it gets heavy church, you know, you've got the

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Assemblies of God has their national headquarters there, and there's just churches everywhere. We went around and started speaking at churches, and this guy went into every town that we went to, he went to their local school, and he took out the required reading books, the literature books for like 5th and 6th graders in the school, and he photocopied pages, and he brought it and he showed it on PowerPoint.

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He said, I'm just going to read you this. This is required reading literature for your town's local public school.

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I got this out of your school's library. Just let me read this to you. And he would start reading from it, and the people complained to the pastors.

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We were doing this on like during the week seminars. They complained to the pastors at the church and said, these people should not be allowed to come here and speak in our church.

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They were using profanity and reading what essentially amounts to pornography in our churches, and these people should be put out.

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They should not be allowed to speak those words in our church building. And what was ironic is a lot of the people who complained the loudest to the pastors were actually teachers in those same public schools.

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So the disconnect is huge. It's this compartmentalization of Christianity that is so rampant in America.

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They have no problem with 5th and 6th graders having that as required reading in the literature in their school in which they teach, but they'll go to their pastor and say, that was obscene and profane, and it was pornography, and those words should never be spoken in the house of God.

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It just shows how completely separate people have compartmentalized

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Christianity or their faith from all the rest of life, and they just see no problem with it being in their school.

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But boy, if you read those words in a church building, all of a sudden, they've got their dander up. So point being, I think that the myth is that there are pockets where the schools have not been affected by leftist ideology, and I would contend that simply isn't true.

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I think most parents are just simply turning a blind eye to what's there, and as standardization has continued, particularly with things like Common Core, the whole movement is to standardize everything so that there's uniform material that's being taught in all the schools across the

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United States so that you don't have dissent and you don't have individualism. I was just curious if I could ask my co -host

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Steve Schultz a question about children leaving the government school systems to enter into enrollment in Grace Christian Academy.

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What kind of things have you heard from parents who are making that decision? Um, okay.

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The Common Core and the very aggressive

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LGBT movement within the public schools have been our greatest ally.

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I hate to say it that way, but it took those two things to really come out to wake up the church, and for years

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I had spoken to Christians within the church and asked them to consider a

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Christian education, and I would never hear a Christian worldview used as an analysis to make their decision.

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It was always, like Israel said, our school's doing fine. We got a good science lab.

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We got a great computer program, but never at any point was there any dialogue over Christian worldview.

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Things had to become extremely bad, you know, again through Common Core and the

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LGBT movement, in order to stimulate those families out and to make the sacrifices that they'll need to make in an alternative schooling situation.

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So that's the main thing I've heard. Yeah, I'm still, even with those things,

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I'm still disappointed that we don't think Christianly in our

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Christian community across the country. We're not making our decisions with a Christian worldview. And we're going to go to a break right now.

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If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, and we do have a number of people who have already lined up to have their questions asked and answered by you,

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Israel. But if anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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And as always, please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

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Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back with Israel Wayne in our discussion on Education, Does God Have an

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Opinion? A Biblical Apologetic for Christian Education and Homeschooling.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Sorensen. For those of you who just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with about 90 minutes to go, is

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Israel Wain. We are discussing his book, Education, Does God Have an Opinion? A biblical apologetic for Christian education and homeschooling.

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Co -hosting with me is Steve Schultz, the headmaster of Grace Christian Academy of Long Island in Merrick, New York, and also in studio co -hosting is the

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Rev. Buzz Taylor. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

32:49

If you have a question for Israel Wain and perhaps even for Steve Schultz, please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

33:02

Otherwise, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. We have a question for you,

33:11

Israel, from Daniel in San Jose, California. He says,

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Hello brother, I am a father of two young boys and another child on the way. Lord willing.

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Christian education and discipleship is very important to my wife and I, who are new to homeschooling.

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We are struggling on what curriculum to use. Can you shed some light on how to choose the right curriculum and how to get the most out of homeschooling?

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Also, I live in California, and sending my sons to a public school is out of the question because of what is taught at schools today.

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Should I completely keep my kids away from what is taught in the secular schools, for example, evolution, or is it beneficial to educate them on such subjects?

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So you've got a couple of questions there, Israel. Yeah, great. Well, thank you for your question, and I'm excited to hear about your commitment to discipling your children.

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That's very refreshing. I'd like to say as far as the curriculum goes, I'm going to abstain from mentioning any particular curriculum publishers, although I have biases and preferences on those, but just to avoid promoting one over another.

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I'll just say that you want to look for a publisher that is specifically integrating a biblical worldview into every aspect of their curriculum.

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Most of the major Christian publishers who produce K -12 curriculum, I think, do this fairly effectively.

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I would recommend, I don't know where you live in California, but there is a conference you can go to that's in Sacramento, and there used to be one in San Jose.

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I've spoken at that one in the past, but there's one I'm going to speak at as keynote for 2018, and it's called

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Scope. And so if you look up Scope Homeschooling in Sacramento, you can find out about their homeschooling conference, and at that conference, you can go and actually look at the curriculum.

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You can pick it up. You can browse through it, and that'll help you in making the selection of what you actually choose.

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On the aspect of teaching evolution,

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I think it's vital for Christian young people to be taught about the theory of evolution.

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I think the problem with government schooling is, in that respect, is that it teaches that evolution is true.

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And so my children who, my wife and I homeschool, we have nine children, my children know about the theory of evolution, and we talk about it frequently and extensively, and we're not afraid to talk about the viewpoints of the other side, but we don't present that as being truth.

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And I think it's really difficult for children when they're just bombarded again with 10 ,000 to 14 ,000 hours of a narrative that says that everything that exists came out of an explosion and then slowly evolved out of the primordial soup to where we are today.

36:32

I think they're very confused when they have that narrative that's just impressed on them over and over and over, not just through school, but through television, through cartoons, through social media, everywhere.

36:45

And then they go to church for an hour, two or three a week, and their parents tell them, ah, we don't believe that stuff.

36:52

I think they feel like, okay, so these Christians just don't know anything about science, and they just shut their brains off and go believe this other thing over here.

37:03

And I think it's important for us to give scientific evidence that shows that we do live in a world that was created by a divine, infinite, intelligent creator.

37:14

In fact, Steve Schultz, as headmaster of Grace Christian Academy, I understand that classical education would be in full agreement with what

37:24

Israel just said because of the fact that you want children to be taught the truth, but at the same time, you want them to be able to think critically, think apologetically, and they are exposed to the anti -biblical, unbiblical theories out there, at least in certain classes, but they are taught not as a alternative option for truth or possible truth.

37:51

They are just taught so that your students can more intelligently communicate with people that hold those views, am

37:58

I right? Oh, by all means, and I appreciate what Israel's saying about it. Because we're classical, one of the activities that we regularly engage in is we will have our students assigned to different sides of the issue, whether they agree with it or not, and it is their responsibility to research and then argue on behalf of that position that is assigned to them, and to do so effectively.

38:29

And sometimes a child who feels very strongly against evolution is in a situation where he's arguing for it for the sake of the exercise, and then when everything's all over, we then equip the students with the reasoning necessary to evaluate the false claims of it.

38:50

And Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host in the studio, has something to say. Well, you're also teaching debate there. That's great.

38:56

But for our listeners' question, I'm very pleased to hear that you're making that decision also.

39:04

I made that decision a long time ago. When I first learned about homeschooling, I went home with my wife.

39:11

There's nothing else for us to do. We homeschooled six children. But when we started homeschooling, there weren't a lot of curriculums available.

39:19

It's developed so much over the years. Back when we started homeschooling, it went by a different name. Back then, it was called child abuse, and there really wasn't a lot of stuff written for it.

39:28

But as we went through the years, we changed curriculums a few times, because that wasn't the big issue.

39:35

The big issue was that they were getting an education, and it was not going to be an education that was going to destroy their faith.

39:43

Thank you, Buzz. And we have Joe in Slovenia who has a question.

39:49

Dear Brother Chris, thanks for filling each day with excited anticipation about the rich topic you'll address for us.

39:55

Please ask Brother Israel to address the issue of socialization for homeschoolers.

40:01

The most frequent question or objection that we receive about homeschooling our children is, how are they going to be socialized if they don't go to public school and learn to interact with other children?

40:12

I'm amazed at how this seems to be such an important value for so many people.

40:18

The same people agree that much of the socialization that kids get in public schools is negative, yet somehow they think that it is a necessary aspect of becoming a well -adjusted member of society.

40:31

Can you please dispel some of this wrongheadedness for us? Thank you so much for sharpening us today to care deeply about the proper education of our children.

40:43

Great question. One of the things that I set out to do when I wrote my book, Education, Does God Have an

40:50

Opinion?, is I wanted to completely examine and get down to foundational presuppositions, if you will, to examine, what is it that we believe fundamentally and why do we believe it?

41:05

For example, when we think about education, if I were to tell the listeners, just close your eyes and tell me what comes to your mind when

41:12

I say the word education, they'd probably say big brick building, playground, classrooms, chalkboards, school desks, teachers, all that kind of thing, textbooks.

41:26

I say, okay, that's great. Now, let's say that you and I were stranded on a deserted island and all we had was a

41:33

Bible and some free time, which we would have if you're with me because I don't know how to build a boat.

41:41

So I say, let's try to find out what does God have to say about education, and what would education look like if all we had to describe it was a

41:51

Bible? Would any of those things that you just mentioned be in the list?

41:57

They would say no, because none of those things that they think of when the word education comes up in conversation are anywhere found in Scripture.

42:06

So what I think that shows us is that the things we believe about education have been informed to us by something other than Scripture.

42:16

They've been informed to us primarily by our experience and by culture, and we have been told this is what the paradigm of education is supposed to look like.

42:27

I would say that as Bible -believing Christians, we supposedly believe that God's word is the final authority for life and morality and practice, and that that's our starting point, that's our foundation.

42:43

So as it relates to this issue of socialization, what I ask parents, is it important for children to be socialized?

42:50

Everybody says, well, of course it's important to be socialized. And what's interesting is if you go to a

42:55

Christian homeschooling conference and there's a workshop on socialization, almost inevitably you will have a speaker who spends 55 minutes trying to give you 300 different ways that you can properly socialize your children.

43:11

Because even within the Christian homeschooling community, we have accepted this premise, we've bought into this presupposition that children, in order to be properly socialized, need to spend large quantities of time around other children their own age.

43:27

Now let's just drop everything we thought we knew about education for a minute and go to Scripture.

43:33

Does Scripture reinforce that viewpoint? Where in the Bible does it say, make sure that your children spend large quantities of unsupervised time with other children their own age?

43:46

Or just even large quantities of time with other children their own age? Give me a chapter, give me a verse, any verse in the

43:52

Bible that would give us that idea. I'm going to suggest to you it's not there. I would also suggest that the

43:59

Scripture says the exact opposite of that. And one of the passages that comes to my mind is Proverbs 13 verse 20, where it says, he who walks with wise men will become wise, but a companion of fools will be destroyed.

44:16

What's interesting to me about that is that the Bible actually gives us a definition, two definitions actually, of what a fool is.

44:25

The one is where it says that the fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

44:31

So that's one category or one definition of a fool, the person who does not acknowledge God and dismisses

44:37

God from the equation. That would be one example of a fool. The other would be found in Proverbs 22 15, and that's where we're told that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.

44:52

So we know that a place that we can go to expect to find foolishness would be in a child, because it's not just there, it's bound up there.

45:03

So when we think about a social context where we want our children to be, when it says that a companion of fools will be destroyed, then you shouldn't have your children spending large quantities of time around A, other children, or B, people who say there is no

45:21

God. I think you can infer that from that text. So what's interesting is when you think about someone who's wise, and you say, well, what does that look like?

45:30

Well, a wise person typically would be someone older, someone who has some life experience, someone certainly who acknowledges

45:38

God. That would be a wise person, and the Scripture tells us that that is who we want our children to hang around.

45:44

We want them to be around those kinds of people. So that wouldn't look like a classroom with 30 students all the same age.

45:52

There's another verse in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul says something very similar. It's in 1

45:58

Corinthians 15 33, and Paul says, do not be deceived, or do not be misled.

46:06

Bad company corrupts good character. And this really ties in with that salt and light argument, because people say, well, you need to have your children in a public school so they can be salt and light.

46:19

And the Apostle Paul, I think, dismantles that argument by saying that rather than your

46:26

Christian child going in there and converting this whole class of non -Christian students, the tendency, the rule, is that your good child who has good character is going to be influenced negatively by the social context of the classroom.

46:45

And I say there's three different teachers in every school. There's the person who stands up in front and says, good morning class,

46:52

I'm your teacher. There's the textbooks, which is also a teacher. And then there is the teacher who actually influences your child and has the most influence of all in the classroom, and that is the peer group.

47:05

And the peer group is the most dominant force in the school. And so that social context of the child being with other young people who have a tendency, a trajectory towards foolishness, is very harmful for the child.

47:23

So the Scripture tells us that we should have them be with wise people, those who fear the

47:28

Lord, those who are older and more mature. The analogy with salt and light that I think is important to consider is, the argument is sort of like this.

47:41

Your child is like an apple, and people are saying there's this barrel of bad apples over here in the school, and you have a good apple.

47:50

You need to take your good apple and throw your good apple over into that barrel so that your good apple can make all those bad apples turn good.

47:59

And the Apostle Paul says, do not be deceived, do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character.

48:07

So there's really nothing in Scripture that would support the idea that children spending large quantities of time hanging out together is beneficial for them.

48:17

I think it is important for children to spend time with people of all ages, but they should do that in a context where there's oversight and where there's guidance, particularly by their parents, where their parents are there, where the parents are involved.

48:32

And this is a little bit of a rabbit trail with this, but that whole concept of age segregation, it was actually created by John Dewey, who was a signer of the first Humanist Manifesto.

48:45

He was an atheist and a socialist, the father of the progressive education movement in the 1920s and 30s in the

48:52

United States. He created the 30 to 40 student classroom specifically because he wanted to break the allegiance of children from their parents.

49:02

And he said, in order to do that, we have to shift the children's allegiance away from their parents, the child's allegiance, to something else.

49:11

And the easiest way to do that is to create a herd, to create a peer group. So he said, if you take 30 to 40 students all the same age, and you set them in a classroom for one year, in one year's time, most of those students will become peer dependent.

49:27

And once they're peer dependent, and you've created a herd, then you as a teacher can infiltrate that herd.

49:33

And if you do it smart, you can lead that herd anywhere you want to take them.

49:39

And in the Communist Manifesto, Carl Mark said, he said, you accuse us of wanting to destroy the most hallowed of relations between parent and child.

49:50

He says, to this crime, we plead guilty. He said, the communists want to replace home education with social.

50:00

And it's interesting, he uses the word social. The whole theory, if you study the history of the concept of age segregated socialization, it comes from Marxists, socialists, and social engineers who wanted to break children away from their parents, and they wanted to use a peer group to do it.

50:23

Now to really segue away, but still tied in, we took that Deweyan Marxist concept of lumping children all the same age together in one classroom, creating a herd of children, which, you know, creates dependency to where students are afraid to go against the opinions of their peers, and they're afraid to stand out from the group.

50:49

We've taken that model that was very intentionally created to destroy family unity, we've imported it into the church wholesale.

50:58

We've basically taken what the government education system has done with their school system, we've imported it into the church and never thought twice about why we were doing it.

51:07

We just thought, this works so well in the school system, we should bring it into the church and duplicate the same model here in the church, even though we don't find anything in scripture that ever says we should be sectioning off children by age or by grade into little subcategories within the church.

51:25

The New Testament church certainly never practiced that, but where did we get it? Well again, if we're on a deserted island and all we know about church is what we find in the

51:32

Bible, we didn't get that idea from the Bible, we actually imported it from John Dewey, Karl Marx, and others.

51:39

So it's interesting, there's way more history to that than what I have time to share, but there's a great video out there, if you go to indoctrinationmovie .com,

51:48

it's a 90 -minute documentary on the history of government education. I'm on the video, Ken Ham's on there,

51:53

Dr. Erwin Luther from Moody Church, Dr. Al Mohler, a lot of other Christian leaders are on this documentary.

51:59

If you want to know the history of government education, check out that video, it'll be very eye -opening for you.

52:07

Indoctrinationthemovie .com? I think it's just indoctrinationmovie .com. Oh, indoctrinationmovie .com.

52:15

Great. Yeah, you search indoctrination movie education, if you Google search that, it'll come up. Another excellent resource to look for on YouTube is the lecture that Dr.

52:26

Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, he is the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

52:34

He gave a lecture to a group of pastors out here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at my most recent

52:40

Iron Sharpens Iron radio pastors luncheon. And his lecture was on the subject of the effects of cultural

52:48

Marxism on American society or North American society since he's from Canada. And I think that you will be blessed and edified and have an eye -opening experience by that lecture.

53:00

So just look up Tony Costa, C -O -S as in Sam, T as in Thomas, Dr. Tony Costa, cultural

53:08

Marxism lecture. Look that up on YouTube and you'll be able to see the whole thing. We're going to a break right now and the

53:14

Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. So please don't forget what you were going to say, Buzz, and we'll have you chime in when we return from the break.

53:22

And Seth from Greensboro, North Carolina says, tell Joe in Slovenia, great minds think alike.

53:29

I was going to ask the same question. So think of another question,

53:34

Seth, and you will ask that on the air as well. So don't go away.

53:39

We are going to be right back, God willing, with Israel Wayne right after these messages. Are you a

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?

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Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

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Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect

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Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

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That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

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We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

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If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

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You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750.

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Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled,

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and click support at the top of the page but most importantly keep iron sharpens iron radio in your prayers we hope that iron sharpens iron radio blesses you for many years to come linbrook baptist church on 225 earl avenue in linbrook long island is teaching god's timeless truths in the 21st century our church is far more than a sunday worship service it's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant it's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement it's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people in healing we're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our lord jesus christ in fellowship play and together hi i'm pastor bob waldeman and i invite you to come and join us here at linbrook baptist church and see all that a church can be call in brook baptist at 516 -599 -9402 that's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org

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that's chef exclusive .com hi i'm pastor bill shishko inviting you to tune into a visit to the pastor's every saturday from 12 noon to 1 pm eastern time on wlie radio www .wlie540am

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.com we bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions our time will be lively useful and i assure you never dull join us this saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor welcome back this is chris arns and if you just tuned us in our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is israel wayne we are discussing his book education does god have an opinion a biblical apologetic for christian education and homeschooling if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for israel regarding this topic our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com

01:02:57

chris a r n z e n at gmail .com and we also have two co -hosts today steve schultz headmaster at grace christian academy of long island located in merrick new york and the reverend buzz taylor who is in studio with me before i return to our guest and our discussion i have some important announcements to make from sponsors of iron sharpens iron radio the word of church is pleased to announce that the word of truth bible institute will be offering two free classes this summer old testament survey and the book of romans the old testament survey will meet tonight from 7 to 9 p .m

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at the word of truth church 10 55 portion road in farmingville long island new york registration is required by calling pastor bruce bennett at 631 -806 -0614 631 -806 -0614 and even though the romans class and the old testament survey have already started new students are still welcome the church website is wot church .com

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01:04:15

coming up in august in just a matter of a couple of weeks august 3rd through the 5th fellowship conference new england is being held at reverend buzz taylor's old stomping grounds in maine at the deering center community church in portland maine and the speakers include pastor don curran who is the eastern european coordinator with heart cry missionary society the organization founded by paul washer my friend pastor mac tomlinson who is an author and a pastor at providence chapel in denton texas and pastor jesse barrington who's been on this program as well a pastor of grace life church in dallas texas the sister church of grace life church in lake city florida who has a radio station that airs iron trupp and zion radio every day in a pre -recorded form and also pastor nate pickowitz who has been on this program he is the author of reviving new england and also the new book why we're protestant he is also a pastor of harvest bible church in gilminton ironworks new hampshire if you'd like to register for this conference go to fellowship conference new england .com

01:05:28

fellowship conference new england .com and then in november from the 17th through the 18th the alliance of confessing evangelicals is hosting their quaker town conference on reformed theology at the grace bible fellowship church in quaker town pennsylvania the theme is for still our ancient foe a line from the classic reformational hymn by martin luther a mighty fortress and obviously our ancient foe being a reference to satan the speakers at this conference include kent hughes peter jones tom nettles dennis cahill and scott oliphant if you would like to register the website is alliancenet .org

01:06:11

alliancenet .org click on events and then click on quaker town conference on reform theology and coming up in january from the 17th through the 20th the g3 conference returns to atlanta georgia on the theme knowing god a biblical understanding of discipleship january 17th is exclusively a spanish -speaking edition of the conference and january 18th through the 20th is exclusively an english -speaking version of the conference featuring stephen lawson vody baucom phil johnson keith getty hb charles jr tim challis josh bice my dear friend dr james r white of alpha and omega ministries tom askell anthony methenia michael kruger david miller paul tripp todd friel derrick thomas and martha peace if you'd like to register for the g3 conference go to g3 conference .com

01:07:05

g3 conference .com and now finally it is that uncomfortable moment that i uh feel compelled to participate in even though i don't really enjoy doing it that's uh grubbing money from you at the urging of the advertisers that are already keeping iron sharpens iron radio afloat and on the air i've been urged by them to make public appeals for donations even though for years i have never made a single public appeal months ago uh they urged me to begin doing so due to our great financial need in order to keep iron sharpens iron broadcasting if you love this program if it's a part of your regular habit if you find it edifying and you are blessed by it please consider donating to us by going to iron sharpens iron radio dot com clicking on support and then mailing a check made out to iron sharpens iron radio to the address that you will find when you click support only do that if you are fully capable of continuing to provide for your church as you always have been doing and providing for your family those two things are commands of god supporting my radio program is not a command of god but if you are blessed above and beyond your ability to fulfill those obligations providing for your church and family then please by all means send us a check for any amount you feel comfortable sending and uh again go to iron sharpens iron radio dot com and click on support for the address if you would like to advertise with us whether it is your church your parachurch ministry your business your corporation your professional practice whether you're a doctor a lawyer a chiropractor a dentist or whether you're having a special event that you want to promote as long as whatever it is you offer or whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with the theology expressed on iron sharpens iron radio then by all means we would love to see if we can help you out in launching an advertising campaign with us just send me an email to chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:09:14

c h r i s a r n z e n at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line that's also the email address where you could send questions right now for israel wayne our guest today on the subject of education does god have an opinion chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:09:31

chris arnzen at gmail .com and by the way i forgot to mention to both uh joe in slovenia and daniel in san jose california i forgot to mention to you two something very important you've both won a free copy of education does god have an opinion a biblical apologetic for christian education and homeschooling by our guest israel wayne compliments of our friends at masters books and new leaf publishing and also uh it will be shipped to you compliments of our friends at crumlin valley bible book service cv bbs .com

01:10:06

that's cv for crumlin valley bbs for bible book service .com so keep your eye open in the mail for a package with a return address that says cv bbs .com

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please give us your full mailing address so that todd and patty jennings of cv bbs .com can have that shipped out to you as soon as possible now i know that the reverend buzz taylor had something to say that we could did not have time to have him say before the break so reverend buzz yes i'll tell you if today's discussion is any indication i think that's a book that should be in many people's hands so i'm glad that our listeners are getting them and everybody else if you've got children should buy one anyway but um i remember years ago hearing d james kennedy you know we're talking about we were talking about the socialization issue and the witness issue of children in the schools and i remember him saying it and it just made so much sense when he said he said you don't pit your nine -year -old kid against a trained humanist because the kid's going to lose that and you know why not you know that made so much sense but talking about socialization i have heard about the the stratification being a leftist technique and all and um but you can just do a little experiment on this go to a christian camp or go to maybe even your own church and uh you'll notice a number of people a number of young people cloister into their little groups and then others will actually engage in conversation with you if they engage in conversation with you ask them if they're home -schooled and i think you'll be surprised most of the time the answer is going to be yes because those are the ones that really do develop the socialization and as far as negative socialization you know we of course didn't want that either when we kept our children out of the public schools but then uh the unfortunate thing is we started seeing some of the influence coming in and we're like where's this coming from and it turns out it was from the public school children in the sunday school do you have any comments israel let me just give a quote from the puritan writer richard baxter uh he lived from 1615 to 1691 wrote a lot of excellent books this is what he said about socialization i quote keep your children as much as may be from ill company especially of ungodly play fellows it is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world especially when they are sent to common schools for there is scarce any of those schools so good but have many rude and ungodly ill -taught children in it wow powerful words scripture does not have yeah the scripture does not affirm this concept of pure segregated pure you know uh separated socialization and really the reformers did not and most of the christian leaders throughout uh society did not if you go back to read the writings of charles hodge and a hodge of princeton uh or jay gresham or some of these other great writers uh they warned against the harmful influence of government education but unfortunately uh the convenience of just being able to drop your children off into a school classroom that you don't have to pay for uh has really won the day with most christians there is a uh survey that was done by an organization i'm going to leave unnamed uh but a very large christian organization sent out an email survey and it asked this question it said if if you could give your children a christian education either through homeschooling or at a christian school uh and cost was no consideration you didn't have to pay for it in any way would you choose christian education over government education or public schooling as they and then they never published the results so i had a friend who works in the organization and so i called and said uh are you going to publish the results and they said no they decided not to public wanted it for just wanted it for internal use and i said uh okay well you know like can you tell me well i'll just tell you you know i'll just tell you this the composite answer was 77 percent of our evangelical uh respondents said they would choose some form of christian education as long as they didn't have to pay for it and that tells me a lot and what i believe is that when you hear these arguments about oh well we want our kids to be in the public schools to be salt and lighter we have a great public school and all that i'm thinking if 77 say we would opt out if we didn't have to pay for it the real rub here is the money and that for most parents is that's the issue that they just don't want to or in some cases financially cannot at the present time make the sacrifices to put their children into a christian school uh or or to homeschool uh but but for many of them i think a lot of these other arguments are smoke and mirrors it's their way of of justifying to themselves that the decision that they feel is an inferior decision is it's going to work out okay somehow steve schultz do you have anything to add you seem to be in hearty agreement with israel you heard my amen yes it is um yeah again i dialogue with parents in the church and i asked them why why not and um you know like like israel just indicated you get a radically different uh answer from people once money's no longer an issue well uh we have uh gordy in mechanicsburg pennsylvania who says my wife and i homeschool our seven children and we were wondering what you see as the biggest challenge for homeschoolers in the coming five to ten years uh israel i really don't even have to think about that i know exactly what it is in my mind um when we were fighting those fights for homeschool freedom 25 years ago you know the biggest uh objective was to stay out of jail i mean it was it was the fear of will my kids turn out okay will they be able to be academically successful will they fit into the real world will they grow up and be good citizens you know all those kinds of things like will they grow up and have a good relationship with me and and uh all the evidence uh has is in now and all of the those questions are answered with a resounding yes affirmatively uh homeschooling is successful on every level that you can think of in terms of of an outcome that would be desirable um but but i think moving forward the greatest enemy of the christian homeschooling movement is not some kind of federal power grab it's not some sort of threat from without i think the christian homeschooling movement is its own worst enemy right now i think we are very likely not going to have our freedoms stolen from us i think we're going to voluntarily give away our freedom and the reason i think we will do that is because increasingly now uh the government has figured out that the way to fight homeschooling and combat homeschooling is not to oppose it outright because they get a big pushback every time they do that the way to fight it and oppose it now is to uh offer homeschoolers free money and if you give them free money they will take that bait hook line and sinker and and they then can be controlled by it i'll just tell you something that happened a couple of months ago i was speaking in alberta canada at the conference homeschool conference there and what just happened in alberta is that the government just mandated that all schools that includes government schools private schools and homeschools all schools in alberta have to teach an lgbt gender neutral what do you call gender fluid uh curriculum or else they'll lose their government funding and what's interesting is there are no christian schools and there are no homeschoolers in alberta who don't take government funding i found that shocking but for 20 years now all the christian schools in alberta and all of the homeschoolers are taking government funds and and in alberta you the only way you can homeschool legally is to homeschool through the private schools so just quickly what the state's done there is they with government's province is they have given christian schools fifty five hundred dollars per child per year uh...

01:19:24

if if they register with the state and the homeschoolers are all homeschooling through private schools they don't have like a separate homeschool exemption they just are considered private school students and so um so the homeschoolers then get a voucher for twenty seven hundred and fifty dollars they get about half of that uh...

01:19:47

if they um you know if they're part of this school just being part of the school they they automatically get this voucher money so i spoke at the homeschool conference and they go if you have four children you're going to the homeschool curriculum fair with a check for ten thousand dollars a voucher and you have to spend it to get it you know so if you don't spend it then they don't reimburse you if you basically bring in your receipt they reimburse you anyway all this to say they've been doing this for twenty years the homeschoolers have never fought for a separate category uh...

01:20:20

legally other than private school because they think well if we did that we wouldn't get our government money anymore we wouldn't get to go with thousands of dollars to go buy all our christian curriculum you can buy christian curriculum with it uh...

01:20:31

we can't go by christian curriculum with our government bucks and so uh two of the main christian schools in alberta said okay we're not going to teach this uh you can have your government money and they said no that's not good enough we're actually going to shut you down and so they've actually shut down the two of the largest christian schools in alberta and all the homeschoolers who are under that umbrella covering are now homeschooling illegally because they don't have a separate exemption now i know that canada is not the united states but we just have a thing here in michigan uh...

01:21:06

and almost every state is going to move toward this uh... where homeschoolers are getting money uh...

01:21:12

in partnerships with the public school system or you get special classes and so on and uh...

01:21:18

i'm seeing this happen all over the united states and the trump administration betsy devos has talked about how they want to help homeschoolers by giving them federal money so it's not only are they going to have access to state money they're going to have access to federal money and the christian homeschool community just thinks this is the best thing since sliced bread uh...

01:21:36

they're just champing at the bit can't wait to get it you know eat out of the government trough and what they don't realize is that whoever pays for the child's education controls it and so they're basically going to turn over their freedom and their ability to teach whatever they want to because the government already has their hooks in it since they're funding it so that's the biggest threat homeschooling faces in the next five to ten years by the way uh...

01:21:59

i don't know if while you government money i could repeat the last thing you said because i was uh talking over you didn't realize you were still speaking what was the last thing you said brother the very last few words faces homeschoolers yeah the faces homeschoolers in the next five to ten years is uh homeschoolers taking government funds okay uh...

01:22:19

by the way i don't know if you met while you were out there in calgary alberta canada if you if you met uh...

01:22:26

my favorite new preacher when i say new preacher he's new to me um armin tamasian uh...

01:22:34

if you haven't met him you've got to meet him the next time you're in alberta canada he is the pastor of the calgary free presbyterian church of alberta canada and he is absolutely phenomenal he's a young man and listening to him preach puts me into a time machine back to the days of the puritans and it's just phenomenal to listen to this gifted young man uh...

01:22:58

present the proclaim the gospel of jesus christ and its purity and i just want to give a plug to my new friend pastor armin tamasian his website for the calgary free presbyterian church in alberta canada is calgaryfpc .ca

01:23:18

that's c a l g a r y f p c for free presbyterian church dot c a calgary fpc dot c a uh by the way thank you uh gordy in mechanicsburg pennsylvania for the great question and since you live so close to cumberland valley bible book service you're only about 10 minutes away being in mechanicsburg pennsylvania why don't you swing by there uh...

01:23:42

tomorrow and pick up your free copy maybe monday oh yeah that's right monday i'm sorry they're closed saturday uh...

01:23:50

swing by monday and pick up your copy of education does god have an opinion a biblical apologetic for christian education and homeschooling by our guest israel wayne compliments of our friends at master books and new leaf publications and also compliments of cumberland valley bible book service so thank you so much for contributing an excellent question to our guests today and man time is flying by we are going to our final break right now and if you would like to join our other listeners who have asked questions if you want a question of your own asked please do so now before we run out of time our email address is chris arnson at gmail .com

01:24:35

chris arnson at gmail .com and please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the usa and uh...

01:24:47

by the way i i'm gonna read a question israel for you and you can have time to mull it over during the break and uh...

01:24:54

you can as well steve schultz uh... and then you can answer when we return we have a listener from lyndon hearst long island new york cj who's who says i know that we are always to put god first and doctrinal biblical purity before any of our other activities in life but i think it is a very serious issue when a child that demonstrates gifts in athletics may be deprived from pursuing these skills and even perhaps making a career out of them and these are things that are very rarely found available in christian schools and of course the homeschoolers have their own problems with this can you please give a christian response to this question and uh...

01:25:48

thank you cj from lyndon hearst long island new york and we'll have our guests answer that question god willing when we return from the break don't go away god willing we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors hi i'm pastor bill shishko inviting you to tune into a visit to the pastor's study every saturday from twelve noon to one pm eastern time on w l i e radio w w w dot w l i e 540 am dot com we bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions our time will be lively useful and i assure you never dull join us this saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor one sure way all iron sharpens iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers i know you all use batteries every day so i'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use battery depot dot com for all your battery needs at battery depot dot com they're changing the status quo they're flipping the script they're sticking it to the man in other words they'd like to change the battery industry for good by providing an extensive inventory of top -of -the -line batteries that are uniformly new dependable and affordable ordering from battery depot dot com ensures you'll always get fresh out -of -the -box batteries you can count on to work properly at competitive prices whether you need batteries for cordless phones cell phones radios pcs laptops tablets baby monitors hearing aids smoke detectors credit card readers digital cameras electronic cigarettes gps's mp3 players watches or nearly anything else you own that needs batteries go to battery depot dot com next day shipping available all products protected by 30 day guarantees and six -month warranties call 866 -403 -3768 that's 866 -403 -3768 or go to batterydepot .com

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01:31:21

hc bible .org call 609 -494 -5689 609 -494 -5689 harvey cedars where christ finds people and changes lives welcome back this is chris arnzen if you just tuned us in our guest for the last 90 minutes and for the next half hour has been and will continue to be israel wayne and we have been discussing his book education does god have an opinion a biblical apologetic for christian education and homeschooling and also we have had two co -hosts steve schultz who is the headmaster of grace christian academy of long island located in merrick new york and in studio with me my co -host the reverend buzz taylor if you'd like to join us on the air with a question our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com

01:32:19

chris arnzen at gmail .com and uh both israel and then steve if you could chime in on the question that we had from our listener cj from lindenhurst long island new york is fearful of gifted children children who are gifted athletically specifically that may be deprived of pursuing those interests and even pursuing a career in those fields because of the fact that either private christian schools or homeschooling sometimes can be a roadblock to those kind of pursuits if you could answer that very uh i think very good question uh from cj i'm going to answer it in two different ways the first answer i'm actually going to allow the apostle paul to answer it he spoke to this issue in first timothy 4 -8 and from the new american standard bible he said this her bodily discipline is only of little profit but godliness is profitable for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come so the apostle paul when he's considering the option of physical exercise over against godly instruction and equipping someone to really know love and serve god he says you're the weight of the decision is really not equal you need to pursue godliness and character and eternity above the pursuit of a physical sport or physical exercise the other thing i would say is he doesn't completely dismiss the concept of sports in that he uses that as an analogy in some of his other messages where he talks about if a runner is running how they seek a prize and those kinds of things he uses some sports analogies so i don't think the apostle paul condemns all sports out of hand but he uh he i think makes sure that we keep our priorities in order now here's what i would say on the issue of public school i think that mentality that we have where we say well i have to put my kid in public school so that he can play football he can play basketball baseball whatever it is a track or something and he'll just never have an opportunity for a career to be an olympian or something if we don't go down that track i think it's that kind of thinking that keeps progress from happening in the private sector you know what if 30 let's say 40 years ago what if uh christian school administrators had said well you know i'm afraid that if we don't put our kids in public school uh they'll never be able to get a job somewhere well that's that's more important than playing a sport isn't it um but they didn't say so let's just keep sending our child to public school they started christian schools and lo and behold but guess what uh students did really well and they they got jobs or what if somebody said you know well i i think we shouldn't homeschool because you know what if our children won't be able to succeed in life and whatever today there are homeschool basketball teams there's actually a national basketball conference that happens down in uh...

01:35:46

missouri every year there's a homeschool uh homeschool baseball world series um there are lots of christian schools particularly in the southern states have very large football programs there is a bias against christian educated students on the part of the establishment uh but i think that would go away if people stopped going to the default of we have to choose a government solution to our problem i don't know if that makes sense what i'm saying is the default that christians have is we have to find a government solution to our problem because you'll never be able the private sector will never be able to compete will never be able to be a successful socialistic options are always better that's the christian mantra of today i don't believe that i don't think that's true so i would say that if we close the door on that kind of thinking and say how do we solve this problem i think you'd see the like the person who created this homeschool basketball league or who started these christian school football teams you would find solutions being provided within the christian community and i think the students coming out of there would excel i think they'd be the date daniels and the and the shattered meshack and abednigos who would excel to the point that they would be recognized uh in the in whatever field of endeavor they go into they would be the cream that rises to the surface they'd be noticed and i think that you'd find nba and major league baseball i think you'd find them getting drafted and recruited right out of christian schools if people didn't just bail out on that idea and say well we have to go to the government because they're the only ones who are who have the potential of being successful so i'll kick that back over to steve and see what you have and of course there's always the option for the christian schools to have bare knuckle boxing in the parking lot i'm just kidding but by the way uh i hope that these christian uh avenues for athletics are not having kids participate in these activities on the lord's day because i'm amazed uh how many christian parents i have met and who have said to me oh we haven't been to uh worship service in a month or so because we've been taking our kids to soccer and it's just amazing how sunday has become the the official day of athletic activity and it's such a tragedy but anyway steve schultz if you could comment on that as well and also uh i understand you have a couple of your own questions for israel i do i'll hold off on my questions for a minute um i want to echo first of all everything israel just said um i agree uh my starting point with this is um no matter what you do you're never going to get everything that you want and what that leaves you with is you have to uh you know really make a decision as to what are you going after and that should be in my opinion and i believe god's opinion driven by a biblical worldview and uh israel very eloquently articulated that that our first priority should be the development of character um and specifically biblical christ -like character um now at the same time uh i feel for cj um in all the athletic actually in all the um outreach type activities i've been involved with the ones that have been the most effective have been athletic uh it provides an environment in which everything is tested in the character uh it gives us great opportunities to witness and to disciple um and i wish in my school we had a bigger gym i wish we had a bigger field i wish we had more facilities um but that kind of takes us back to uh one of the things israel touched on and that is uh when the christian community prioritizes things that are not intrinsically christian they're not necessarily unchristian but when they prioritize those things that draw them out of the christian community they take their resources with them and it leaves the homeschool community it leaves the the christian school community without resources necessary to develop uh reputation to develop uh facilities to develop resources um now again i wish we had a tremendous amount of uh resources to put into our athletic program the problem is we just don't we live in nassau county nassau county to my understanding is less than three percent evangelical so the community is really small um we are on the flip side of that i think the most expensive county in in the country um so we just don't have resources we make do with what we've got um you know we're not going to be able to provide uh the athletic program that the public schools do um on the other hand uh you know by the time you leave our school you will have heard the gospel you will have uh been discipled in one way shape or form um and encouraged to live out the christian life and equipped to do it um now one of the solutions that we use and this is kind of my final point here is we turn to community athletics i'll use my situation as an example uh my son uh growing up was pretty good at soccer we don't have the facilities at my school to satisfy that we don't have the space um so we just went to our own town and uh enrolled him in soccer there um you know we've done that with gymnastics with my daughters and uh things like that um i think one of the things that we need to consider is i mean it we don't want to say that one is doomed to not develop their athletic abilities if they don't go to a public school that's not true and i think uh for that you know just look at tim tebow i mean here's here's a guy who is homeschooled and is a phenomenal athlete um so i think he kind of presents a challenge to that idea great you had a couple of questions church basketball team yeah as a homeschool student i played on a basketball team there was a church basketball teams we didn't have homeschool groups back then but you know churches used to have teams softball leagues and things like that there's a lot of opportunity if the point is just for physical exercise and sport then i think there's uh a lot of community opportunity churches could could do this kind of thing homeschool groups uh homeschool groups could come together with christian schools work together uh you know there's a lot of things let me just throw this in real quickly i'll try to be short with this but on this funding side i think this is something just creative to think outside the box because we kind of come back a lot of times too um that we don't get to do everything we feel we should do because we don't have enough money i was in a church in a state i won't name but uh this was a dutch reformed church and they had a commitment that every student in their church would have an opportunity to have a christian education if they chose it so they weren't going to force you but they just didn't want anybody to not receive a christian education if that was possible so what they did was they said before we send a nickel to foreign missions we're going to look at our own children in our own church as the priority kind of like jesus said about you know the great commission starting in jerusalem and then judea and samaria and the uttermost parts of the world this is this is our jerusalem our own children really our first field and so we're not going to give any money until every child in our church is subsidized to receive a full christian education if they choose and i thought you know what that is so incredibly bold and creative and i just think if we thought more that way and prioritize christian schools then you wouldn't have christian schools who were financially deficient all the time couldn't do things so they didn't have finances you wouldn't have people who say well we can't homeschool or whatever you know how you work all that out i'm sure the challenge i just throw that out there to say i think if we made christian education a priority you'd start finding solutions like that rather than saying why don't you send to public school which is what everybody does they just go oh why don't you send to public school socialism is always better and so i'm going to say i think we need to start thinking first and primarily the christian children need christian education and steve if you have your questions okay um all right israel i was reading a blogger this morning who was uh addressing something that you had stated and it kind of got my blood boiling and i just wanted to give you an opportunity to publicly respond to this um i won't mention the guy's name uh he's got his own website and he criticizes your call to keep the gospel central in education by stating that indoctrination is when education and i quote him when education is used to pass on an ossified set of ideologies which he calls a closed system as opposed to being an embraced process whereby all children freely enthusiastically and wisely discover life on their own terms and at their own pace and he calls that an open system i wanted to hear your response to this and your criticism of what he is calling an open system well i would say this it's impossible for a school not to indoctrinate a child the question is are they giving them the correct doctrine correct and so so my view is of course children will be indoctrinated into some kind of doctrine question is is it a true doctrine or is it a false doctrine i was on uh npr uh a state uh npr station one time and the guy asked me the question he said don't you think that homeschoolers you know have this small provincial monolithic one -size -fits -all world view that they're presented because they only get one perspective from their parents they don't really you'll get to see all the different views and all the different perspectives like they do in public school i said like they do in public school you mean like evolution he said exactly okay so in public school can you teach uh intelligent design and he said no i said in public school can you teach young earth creationism i said no i said can you teach any other theory besides macroevolution in public school he said no i said so basically what you're telling me is they get a one -size -fits -all monolithic provincial education in government education and hopefully we don't we study all different viewpoints all different sides but we have a thesis that we think is true just like you have a thesis you think is true so i would say that it's impossible to have an educational system that does not promote values because that really is the the goal is to try to transmit not just information but to teach a child what do you do with this information and you can't teach values unless you have a moral law and you can't have moral law unless you have a moral law giver but that looks an awful lot like god and you can't have him in a government school system so all you can ever do is is teach knowledge in a vacuum which i would posit just equip somebody to become a more educated uh heathen and we don't need more of those what we need is we need information in the context of ethics all right steve did you have another question yeah if i may yes um okay i'm going to do my best to articulate this so it makes sense if it doesn't it's my fault um if if we could say draw an analogy between the public school system and an oak tree uh the oak tree begins with a very elaborate and detailed set of principles designed to produce a very intentional outcome or product and this is all contained in the acorn or the oak seed if you will what would you point to as the most foundational set of principles or to use that vernacular public school seed if you will yeah if i'm understanding the question correctly it's humanism absolutely without a shadow of a doubt it's humanism and that is what the founders of government education said that they were trying to do is they were trying to create a system that would be exclusively promoting humanism um horseman the guy who was the founder of compulsory attendance laws in massachusetts he said this we who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause i mean he was very clear that he had a uh a set of principles of a worldview that he wanted to indoctrinate these children into and uh it was the religion of humanism and uh you know charles potter the humanist uh john dewey uh lots of these guys have just been going through a number of their quotes this last week working on a new book uh for next year and uh they were they were just outright forthright about the fact that they wanted to uh promote the doctrines of humanism that man is the center man is the measure of all things do you have a list anywhere of uh quotes like that i do privately i haven't published them but yeah i've got a i've got a few probably a few thousand quotes right now and uh i'm looking on uh incorporating them into the next couple of books that i write i'm going to do one that's uh this this book um education does god have an opinion is really just trying to help people to establish what a biblical philosophy of education looks like and then how a biblical philosophy can be taught in every academic discipline so i teach that um you know mathematics is not religiously neutral physics is not religiously neutral geography phonics there's no subject that's religiously neutral people say oh math is math jesus doesn't have anything to do with math i contend that emphatically in my book and i say you will either teach the lordship of jesus christ as it relates to math or you will teach a humanistic version of math there is no middle ground so this book is going to radically tweak the way people look at education but i've got a couple more in the pike i've got one in the back of my mind on the history of of government education and then i've got a kind of bullet point uh q and a style of apologetic book to help people to defend their decision to choose christian education and homeschooling it's scheduled for next year great uh any follow -up steve can i just yeah just real quick the reason i asked that question is because i um out of all the things that i present to families uh to encourage them to educate their children christianly and i do encourage them to educate them not just at our school but uh you know through other means as well like homeschooling because i think that uh the christ -centeredness is the key there nothing is more effective than when they start to see the underpinnings of the public school system that they're not quite frightened enough by until they start to learn of the foundational ideologies of it yeah and quite frankly i think they're in a lot of denial until they see hardcore evidence and i i wish there was some way that we could just disseminate that yeah exactly well that video that i mentioned earlier indoctrination every christian who's considering this issue of education needs to to look at the full title that is is indoctrination christianity or sorry public schools and the decline of christianity in america that's the subtitle uh post schools and the decline of christianity in america uh that video in 90 minutes lays it out as clearly as i've ever seen anybody lay it out but there are some other resources that you can get uh if you go into that video two experts that are mentioned in there samuel blumenfeld who just passed away this last year in his 80s uh one of the best educator history uh educators and uh and historians of education was that blumenfeld or blumenfall it's blumenfeld okay samuel blumenfeld and then also john taylor gatto g -a -t -t -o he was a new york state and new york city teacher of the year this guy is an insider's insider and in 1991 at his acceptance speech for his award for teacher of the year uh for new york state and new york city uh he stood up and said we were doing the greatest disservice we could possibly do these children by having them in government education best thing we could do just shut down the whole thing uh and so anyway he wrote a book called uh the underground history of american education uh dumbing us down and a bunch of other books john taylor gatto g -a -t -t -o those two guys are both on that indoctrination video he's also i think in his 80s now uh but that video is a springboard into other resources but those two guys are the two leading historians they just you know they just put hundreds and hundreds of pages of information that's still out there just most people don't know about them in fact i could confirm that you are correct as far as the website it's indoctrination movie .com

01:54:34

indoctrination movie .com i'm looking at it right now well uh israel i'd like you to summarize what you most want to have etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners before we run out of time today i think the fact that there's almost nothing that is going to shape the future of a child's life more than how they are educated and that parents are the ones in scripture who are really the only agency that god has ever commanded to teach children god didn't command the church to teach children he didn't command the civil government to teach children he commanded parents and then in two bible verses grandparents where he said teach your sons and your sons sons god puts the the burden and the weight of responsibility for education on parents and he tells them it has to be done in the fear of the lord it has to acknowledge the lord jesus christ and and so i'm going to suggest to you that you get a copy of education does god have an opinion i think it'll be a game changer for you i think you'll never look at education the same way great and uh you can get that book from cumberland valley bible book service dot com i'm sorry cvbbs .com

01:55:47

is the website which stands for cumberland valley bible book service cumberland valley bible book service cvbbs .com

01:55:54

and i know that israel wayne's website is israelwayne .com israelwayne .com

01:56:01

and also familyrenewal .org familyrenewal .org israel do you have any other contact information that you could or share you can also look me up on facebook i'm at forward slash israel wayne author also israel .wayne

01:56:17

and also forward slash family renewal i'm on twitter at israel wayne and we also have a podcast if you listen to podcasts on itunes or google play look up family renewal you can find our podcast but i would love to keep in touch with you that way people want to subscribe to our email list go to familyrenewal .org

01:56:35

forward slash subscribe we can send them our once a month email update if you're interested in having me speak at your church or a conference i would love to come and speak to your group my email would be family renewal events at gmail .com

01:56:51

we're going to be doing a trip out east in october so maybe we can piggyback something while we're out there and speak to your church or group so we'd love to hear from you great and of course the publisher of this book can be found at masterbooks .com

01:57:03

masterbooks .com and steve schultz please say a few words before we run out of time about grace christian academy okay uh there are two main ways to find us on the internet one is through our main website which is gcali .com

01:57:19

um uh the side no that needs to be updated a little bit uh we're also on facebook grace christian academy long island um and that's where you'll find a lot of pictures and get an idea of the activities that we're engaged in uh but i just want to um highlight uh everything that israel said i'm right with them on this i think we're both in the same trench and um but i also see some good things coming our way i think families are waking up and i really think that the horrible things that have been taking place in academia around our country is doing just that it's waking people up great well i would love to have you both back on the program again in the near future in fact i know steve we already have uh an interview with you uh sometime in the future do you have the calendar in front of you or i don't recall when we have you scheduled uh we're shooting for around october 12th i think okay great well uh everybody you can mark your calendars for that october 12th 4 to 6 p .m