Putting Christ Back in the Government Schools

I certainly agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of putting Christ or prayer or the Bible back in the government school and the practical recommendation that all Christians remove their children. I would, however, take a slightly different approach in framing the question.

The issue, as I see it, is the legitimacy of the institution itself. If the institution is legitimate, then we must reform it by calling it back to obey the law of God and fulfill its God-ordained function. We can and should participate in such organizations as salt and light in order to restore the institutional acknowledgment and worship of God.

However, if the institution is illegitimate, then we should pray for God to destroy it and labor to dismantle it from without, not within. For example, no Christian would campaign to restore the acknowledgment of Christ to their local brothel. They certainly don’t patronize it in order to be salt and light, nor do they send their children to work there for purposes of evangelization. [Admittedly not an exact analogy, but hopefully close enough to be useful.]

The real question then is: Are government schools a legitimate or an illegitimate institution? Are they a corrupt institution needing to be redeemed by the gospel or a synagogue of Satan to be dismantled? This is the antithesis with our brothers and sisters.

I'm of the opinion that since we don’t find Caesar’s image on any of our children, they don’t belong to Caesar and therefore should not be rendered to Caesar for him to have his way with them. We do, however, find God's image in our children and we find Scripture commanding us to give them to God, to teach them to fear and serve God. (Caesar's kids being the possible exception.)

For this reason coupled with the Biblical teaching concerning the function of civil government (punishment of evil doers, cf Romans 13:1-4)), state schools are not a Biblically legitimate institution.

On the other hand, some Christians view government schools as a legitimate authority. The fact that it’s free babysitting (lol) doesn’t hurt. Corrupt? Yes, but legitimate nonetheless. Showing these people how government schools lead our children in breaking God’s commandments in that they give them another god by teaching that people have made themselves, they blaspheme his name by robbing him of his glory as the Provider and Sustainer, they manipulate children to not honor their parents, they assault their chastity, they encourage them to murder their offspring, they lead them into a life of stealing by blurring the distinctions of private property, and they lead them into a life of lying by denying the existence of Truth, only gives these people more reason to work harder to restore Christ to a corrupt institution.

I believe the reason for not supporting the Restoration of Christ to the government schools lies not in how bad they are, but in how illegitimate they are, no matter how good they otherwise might be. Our mission is not simply to rewind government schools to an earlier day when the Bible was tolerated in them in the hopes that the same movie will end differently, but to discard the entire DVD.