In past installments of the “Jesus” Problem, we have worked our way through some of the issues confronting education in general and Christian education specially. We have seen how “Jesus” has actually become a dividing line in education and in educational funding—He is becoming even more of a stumbling block in this arena. Recently, corporations (the larger the corporation the more likely they are to bow to the pressure) have begun carefully avoiding giving to causes linked to Jesus—mainly because of pressure from the political left and a general concern that the attention this brings is bad for business. We have noted how the political wisely and unhesitatingly funnels money into schools that have to leave Jesus out of curricular discussion and have to diminish His role and His teaching at their schools (whether Christian parents or teachers at that school want Him there or not). We have seen how those on the political right tend to try to compete with the political left to fund education even though the schools are increasingly teaching (again whether Christian parents and teachers like it or not) with a worldview that is against Christianity. We have seen how the American public is torn. They are increasingly feeling the pinch of higher taxes to support schools that seem to have an insatiable appetite for funds and have failed (sometimes egregiously) to give kids a very basic level of cultural or technical education. Finally, today we examine the church.

The reaction of the church to this shift in education is discouraging on a number of different levels. To get a sense of the depth of the problem it is crucial to think through the reactions that the church could have to the present crisis. We know that this could happen because at points in history (some very recent) it has happened. Faced with a “public school” system that claimed neutrality but was in actuality Protestant, American Catholics banded together to build an alternate school system for their children. The church backed that system and still does. While the Catholic system has flaws and while I fear that it is being pulled in the direction of mediocrity (most don’t teach Latin anymore!), it has produced good students against exceptional odds and consistent discrimination. Protestant churches could do the same thing. There are no rules against it. Also, ministers could band together and preach vigorously to the culture and to their congregants. They could remind them of passages like Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6. They could tell their congregants that they need to provide a Christian education for their children. They could even (maybe not now but if they would have been prescient enough) have demanded that public education be turned over fully to the control of parents so that at least the local consensus concerning religious and moral teaching could hold sway in each school (this would be much better than the increasingly militant secularism that students face entering public schools now). We could have fought when the fight would have been an easy win…but we did not. We could charge into inner cities and pour money into founding educational institutions that would serve as beacons of hope in places that are now despairing. We could have, but we did not.

What instead has been the reaction of Protestant churches to the “Jesus” problem?

1. We have refused to take a side. We portray educational choices, and rightly so, as a parental prerogative (like choosing a car). We are not honest with parents, however, about the cost of the choices that they are making both for their family and for the culture in general. Do we imagine that Jesus would not take a side? Do we imagine that He would remain neutral?
2. We have refused to speak to the obvious, terrifying social consequences of the removal of Jesus from the classroom. Presently, public schools tell our children this story: You are an accident. You learn in order to accumulate wealth, comfort, and power (there might be more than this but we cannot mention it). Then you die and go into nothing. Our school is going to give you an adequate education for your life. Jesus is unnecessary for that education. We wonder why (with the vast majority of our kids being raised in this system) that some poles have forecast roughly 4% of our children will follow in our faith in the next generation. Warning bells are sounding and we are ignoring them.
3. We have refused to fund educational alternatives for Christian families. The politicians on the left are smart—smarter than us. They knew and know that the control of the schools is crucial. They fund these schools well and do it with forced taxation of supporters and non-participators. (Some in the schools pull against the wishes of the political left, but Christian teachers and parents have failed to pull back or even slow the trajectory of the public schools.) We could rally our forces and our dollars and provide a lower cost (massively), better quality (exceptionally) alternative that calls students to love and serve Christ. We have not. This is not on our list of priorities.
4. We have refused to speak in favor of those alternatives. This is hard to believe. We have not even been able to muster the courage to simply say, “Hey, this is not working.” We have not been able to see or speak clearly and cogently. Usually, this fear is driven by a desire to avoid offending Christians working in (and sometimes leading) the public schools. First, we must remember that Christian can work and sometimes should work with a clear conscience in public schools forestalling, as best they can, the damage being done by bad philosophy. We need to say hard words about the system without condemning the good people in it. But we have to say those words and we have to tell people that with the public schools teaching what they are teaching and refusing to teach what they omit, it is not an environment for children being raised in the faith. We cannot or have not been able to summon the gumption to say even this.
5. We have turned a blind eye to the educational apocalypse happening in our inner cities. This might be the saddest reaction of the church. We simply have not seen the needs of the poor. Is it any wonder that our culture will not hear the gospel when we preach it. What gospel, what liberty, what life have we left for the child of the immigrant in the inner city? What future do they have? Would we let any of our children be educated this way? Of course not! Why do we tolerate it for the needy? We either don’t care or (closer to the truth I believe) we are so tied up in our own personal concerns that we have lost the ability to consider the needs of others. If our brother in the inner city, have no hope, no Jubilee, no prospects for Psalm 128’s benediction, then our work is not done.
6. We have refused to say hard words when they are merited. We have stopped speaking to any part of the culture except the political culture—and we only speak there to Washington. We should be fomenting resistance to bad ideas on a local level. This might offend someone or it might hurt someone feelings. So when the local high school starts teaching the kids in our community that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle instead of opposing them vigilantly locally and calling for Christian parents to walk away from these lies, we fling stones at political airplanes (Washington D.C.) that are too far away to hear us or take notice and then we go to bed contented that we have done our part fighting evil today.
7. We have decried the culture direction and its destructive forces, but we have failed to connect obvious causes and effects. This is really infantile. We would tell a drunk that the first step to sobriety is to stop drinking the bottle of gin that he presently has in his hand. When it comes to education and cultural calamity, however, we seem befuddled. The ancient Stoic philosophy Diogenes was not so foolish. The proverb goes something like this: Diogenes seeing an reckless youth found his tutor and struck him saying, “Who has made him thus?” Education has consequences. We presently get all bent out of shape concerning the next morose example of our cultural disintegration (if you do not believe me watch the yelling on some parts of Fox News for angst concerning the culture disaster de jour). We are not able, however, to place two with two and make four. What has made us so? The public school’s philosophy does NOT account for all of it, but teaching and training pull immense weight in our culture. We are fools if we do not see this bad philosophy that leaves the very center of wisdom and knowledge (Jesus), that omits the very Lord of Heaven and earth (Jesus), that refuses to teach kids the claims that their Creator and their Lord has on their lives (Jesus, again). To fail to see this and to fail to speak and act merits great condemnation. The chains of our slavery have been fitted and fashioned. We hear the faint clanging now. We deserve what is coming. Lord have mercy!

Why have we failed so miserably. There are many reasons. Here are a few really important ones.

1. We are so divided that we don’t talk to each other or work together. This is most true of Protestants. We do not even work well with those in our denomination. We ignore everyone else. Some of us profess that we believe in the Nicene teaching on the church “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”, but it is a good thing that there are not lie detectors at worship.
2. We care mainly about ourselves not others. We have become the opposite of the reflection of the Trinitarian love of God. He keeps reaching out in love. We stick our hands in our pockets.
3. We are so addicted to our comforts that we cannot and will not help each other. We would rather have upgraded cable and an extra car rather than caring for the needs of the poor.

All our idols, however, will crumble. They seem to be trembling a bit now. I plead with you as you consider these words to remember that hope is not lost for Christ is not in the grave. His life is more powerful than death and Hell. His grace can give life to dead. He will conquer all and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. No philosophy, no wrong thinking court, no badly informed politician, no cowardly clergy man or congregant, no force in heaven or on earth can stop this. The sun is rising. Lux venit. This dark night will give way to eternal, unchanging day.

Jesus is not the problem. He is the solution!