Taking It To The Streets (7 of 8) – The Myth of Neutrality and Christian Education

[00:00] A bear is charging, shoots him once, and the bear doesn’t fall immediately. He says, oh, I guess I need a different weapon. No, you shoot the bear again, don’t you? And then again. And the same way with the unbeliever. The fact that he doesn’t give up when you use that argument the first time doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. It just means you’ve got to do the argument again. Shoot again. Shoot again.

[00:25] Let me use a little different analogy that my friend Gary DeMar came up with and I really like. Gary talks about someone going out to their car one night. Maybe you’re out at the local mall and it’s dark and you’re heading out for your car and someone jumps out from some dark place and has a knife and says, your money or your life? Well, you happen to be prepared on that particular evening. and you reach in and you pull out a gun. And you say, no, I don’t think so.

[01:00] And then the person who wishes to attack you holding this knife while you’re holding the gun says, well, I don’t believe in guns. Are you going to then put your gun down? Well, if you don’t believe in guns, then I guess, okay. What can I say? I can’t shoot you if you don’t believe that you’re being shot, right? That’d be absurd. As Gary says, make him a believer.

[01:27] The same way, when you use this gun, this defense of the faith that I’ve been trying to outline for you this weekend, you may have somebody who gives you that kind of answer. Well, I don’t believe that. Well, don’t put your gun down just because he doesn’t believe it. Shoot him again. Stick to your gun. Because even though the unbeliever might not cry uncle immediately, you’ve got arguments that he cannot answer. You have an ability to show that he has no ground to stand on in attacking the Christian faith and that only Christianity provides the preconditions of intelligibility. So in order to argue at all, he has to be a Christian to make sense of his argument. In which case, you cannot really argue against Christianity since you’re always assuming it in order to present the argument against it.

[02:23] Dr. Van Til used to speak of a man on a train who was holding his child on his lap, and the child would reach up and slap the father’s face, playfully, I trust. And Dr. Van Til said, the unbeliever is very much like that. He’s sitting on his father’s lap, he’s only able to reason, only able to do science, only able to engage in moral discussion because he’s relying upon God, and yet he wants to reach up and slap God in the face.

[02:53] Now what I have been teaching you is that the unbeliever knows God, could not engage in rational discussion, science, could not engage in ethics, deal with human dignity or human freedom without believing in God, and yet this very unbeliever wants to slap God’s face and argue against God. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to show that the preconditions of intelligibility are such that this unbeliever couldn’t make sense out of anything in life, could not even make sense of his argument if what Christianity says about the world were not true.

[03:29] Now, this is an interesting application or a corollary, I think, when it comes to education. And I know that you all connected with the Church of Christian Liberty and the Christian Liberty Academy are very into and dedicated to Christian education. So I want to take a few moments in this last lecture before our question period and talk to you about Christian education and apologetics. And in particular, what I’d like you to realize all the more, I think you probably believe this coming in, but all the more realize that the idea of neutrality in education is a myth. And it necessarily is a myth.

[04:08] It’s unavoidable when you’re going to educate people that you are taking a religious stand on the nature of reality, the nature of how we know what we know, and how we should live our lives. Two decades or more have passed since the Supreme Court prohibited prayer and Bible reading in the public schools, and I hold no illusions that we’re going to go back to a time when the public schools will allow that. As a matter of fact, I don’t want the public schools to go back to that. I want them to move right ahead into non-existence. And judging from what I see in California, and then just recently, this last week, hearing about school districts closing their schools early because they’ve run out of funds, you know, the public schools may just be finally up against hard economic reality, and maybe that they are going to go out of existence. But anyway, there was a time when in the public schools, there was a mildly Christian prejudice, if you will. And I say mildly Christian, it’s not really the full-orbed Christianity of God’s grace and biblical Christianity that I’m interested in, but nevertheless, in a mild sense, the public schools were committed to a Christian outlook.

[05:26] Support for the shift in public education from that mildly Christian to a more secular context for education has been sustained, I believe, mainly by the assumption that it’s remarkably widespread, usually not questioned by people, that the removal of religion from the school will produce a neutral arena that is equally fair to children of all religious backgrounds. So let’s ask whether the secular public school in fact achieves that goal of neutrality.

[06:02] I would suggest that both philosophy, which we have been studying this weekend, the philosophy we’ve been looking at, and just hard human experience argues that you do not gain a neutral arena for education by trying to remove religion from the public schools. On the contrary, the secular school simply raises the religious question in a different and more acute form.

[06:28] It doesn’t dismiss the religious question, it raises it in a different manner. And if you stop and think about what I’ve taught you regarding the preconditions of intelligibility, my guess is you can beat me to the punchline here. You can see what is coming. The religious question must be raised, even in the public schools, because we have to have a worldview in terms of which our education makes sense. Education is inherently religious. In a Yale Review essay, F.K. Davis rightly concluded, and I quote, since education is also a metaphysical expression, you’ve heard that word already. Metaphysics is the philosophical study of the nature of reality. He says, since education is also a metaphysical expression, a good deal of educational thought and practice is therefore religious in character. It has always been so, and there is no prospect, that a secular society could be constructed in which this would not be so. Admittedly, secularism does not have a prescribed creed, like we say the Apostles’ Creed in some of our churches. Admittedly, secularism does not have a defined membership, nor does it have places of worship, unless, of course, you consider the public school its places of worship. But religion, in its most important facets, is manifested not by external forms, but rather by the questions that are addressed and the implicit value judgments and affirmations that are made about reality in general. No school can teach children without raising issues about what is real. What’s the world in which we live? What’s man’s place in the universe? And how should he live his life? And because education inherently raises questions about the nature of reality and how we should live our lives, as well as how we know any of these things, schools are inherently religious.

[08:33] It’s especially, of course, literature and history and social studies that suggest to people that you can’t get away from religion when you’re trying to educate children. But if you will think long and hard with me, I hope you’ll see that what I have taught about the preconditions of intelligibility tells us it’s not just literature and history and social studies that betrays the religious character of education. It’s everything that is taught that betrays the religious character of education.

[09:03] And for that reason, I don’t think it’s just rhetoric and propaganda to say that a religion of secular humanism is clearly established in the public school. And it’s established because it is required of public school teachers that they exclude God from what they are teaching. It’s required that any interpretation or explanation that is offered for events in human life or history is to be naturalistic in its character. It’s established in the public schools because all values are relativized and no contrary worldview is allowed to be presented when it comes to matters of reality and ethics.

[09:50] Such a school may affirm that honesty is the best policy, but if the school forbids hanging the Ten Commandments on the wall of the classroom, what then will it offer as an alternative for why honesty is the best policy? Even the attempt to create good little citizens who are honest and show integrity and don’t resort to violence when they have a disagreement with their neighbor, even that attempt in the public school arena must be secularized and naturalized. There can be no appeal to the religious character of man or to the creator or to his holy character as an explanation for why honesty is the best policy, etc.

[10:34] And so the public school, by its strictures upon looking at the nature of man or what lies behind the absolutes of morality, The public school implicitly teaches that man must be the measure of all things. The public school might commend democracy, it might laud liberty as important values, but it cannot do what Thomas Jefferson did and present those values as endowed by the creator.

[11:06] And thus, Justice Brennan, ruling against Bible reading, could contrast public secular education with its uniquely democratic values and sectarian education, which offers values of its own. Let me read that again. You should be horrified by this contrast. just as Brennan contrasts public secular education with its uniquely democratic values and sectarian education, which offers values of its own.

[11:38] But it’s not that way at all, is it? The public school cannot teach democratic values. It’s only those sectarian, religious, fundamentalist, Bible-thumping Christian schools that can give a foundation for democracy. The public school says man is the measure of all things. Well, if man is the measure of all things, and Idi Amin is the biggest stick, then Idi Amin is going to determine what’s right and wrong in your culture. And what’s the public school going to say to that? Except we don’t like that conclusion. Even when the public school teaches about God, in some general sense, or reads the Bible as literature, man still remains the measure of what is taught in the public school.

[12:21] The transition of the religious context of public education from Christianity, even a mild and wimpy Christianity, to secularism was not, however, the result of a diabolical plot. The Supreme Court, which painted the schools into this particular corner, was apparently guided more by a process of elimination and the prevailing spirit of the time than by a desire to give establishment status to a specific worldview and value system. Now, I fully realize when I come into a conservative audience like this one and make that kind of remark that some of you will say, well, Dr. Bahnsen, are you compromising now?

[13:02] I want to convince you that I am not compromising. I don’t believe the Supreme Court had a diabolical plot in mind that they maliciously were trying to put down Christianity when they did this. I don’t happen to like all the Supreme Court justices who made these decisions and so forth, but as a general rule, this is really the spirit of our times. It doesn’t take a conspiracy to do this.

[13:28] The spirit of our times tells us we’re perfectly able to understand much of life without reference to God. You can certainly do math without God. You can study history without being a Christian. The facts of history are the same for Buddhists and for atheists and for Christians. You can study literature and art and all the rest without becoming religious and going someplace and singing hymns and opening your Bible. That’s what most people think.

[13:56] And what that means is religion is always the extra added attraction. Religion is always the icing on the cake. What we do in the public schools is we present the cake. Now, some of you, when your children go home, want to put religious icing on the cake. So be it. You’re free to do that. But education itself doesn’t have to make reference to God. You see what I’m getting at?

[14:20] The Supreme Court need not have been malicious in trying to put Christianity down. It simply had this general idea that so many of your neighbors have that religion is irrelevant. That academically you can do science, you can do math, you can do philosophy, literature, history, and all the rest without religion. Religion is the bonus item, and so we’ll just let the bonus item be handled in private.

[14:47] Nevertheless, whatever the court’s intentions were, the inevitable consequence of its actions I think was rightly perceived in Justice Stewart’s dissent in the famous case of Abington v. Schempp when he wrote, A refusal to permit religious exercises thus is seen not as the realization of a state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism or at the least of government support of the beliefs of those who think that religious exercises should be conducted only in private.

[15:23] What I have offered you this weekend in terms of how to defend the Christian faith is a powerful weapon not only for answering the objections of unbelievers but also for demonstrating that education is not value-free and neutral. It’s valuable because you can show that religion is not simply a matter of the private icing that you put on the cake, that the very making of the cake or the baking of the cake, that the attempt to educate children is a religious exercise because it calls on you to ask what is the nature of reality, what is this world in which we live, what’s man’s place in this world, how do we know these things and how should we live our lives?

[16:06] and so the effect of the supreme court’s decision even though it may not have been a malicious intention the effect of the supreme court’s decision was to give a monopoly to one kind of philosophy of life and you know what i’m talking about it’s that philosophy of life that says we don’t need to bring god into mathematics we don’t need to bring god into history or into literature we don’t need to bring god into science but you see that’s a religious commitment, isn’t it? That in itself is a particular worldview, and it stands over against the teaching of other religions, not just Christianity, by the way. In a formal way, Muslims don’t think that’s true either, and I’m not trying to appeal to them for help, but what I’m saying is the Supreme Court should have been able to see that when they put religion out of the classroom, what they called religion, what they were actually doing is establishing a different kind of religion in the classroom, and that necessarily. A monopoly given to one system representing one set of values and one kind of educational structure not only violates constitutional rights, I believe, but also stultifies the very educational process itself.

[17:25] Now, if public education could truly be made neutral, it would no longer be educational. Let me say that again. If public education could truly be made neutral, it would no longer be educational. The moral relativism of an educational system that excludes the power and the sanctions of a divinely appointed moral order may in time be stultifying in other ways as well.

[17:56] Let me remind you of the words of C.S. Lewis in his book, The Abolition of Man. Lewis writes, Such is the tragicomedy of our situation. We continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. we make men without chest and demand of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. He ends by saying we castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful. I don’t agree with everything Lewis had to say but those words were right on the mark. The public school because it protests a religious neutrality castrates its students and then bids them to be fruitful intellectually and morally. But it is impossible to do so.

[18:54] If you do not know the nature of reality, if you do not know what human nature is all about or man’s place in the universe, if you don’t know how man is to live his life and how he knows whatever he knows, then you’ve made it impossible for anyone to be educated. Now, am I surprised that the public schools put out such terrible test scores? Am I surprised that public schools graduate people who cannot think for themselves, who do not know anything about reasoning, that are just, you know, meek little sheep that follow what their instructors have to say?

[19:28] Or am I surprised that they refuse to listen to their instructors and they’re nothing but hellions in the classroom? What can an educational system that is religiously neutral do about that? How can it assist that people learn to be rational, to think for themselves, to exercise their freedom responsibly. A public school that does that, that really is religiously neutral, has castrated and then asked the students to be fruitful. And it’s impossible.

[19:57] The problem with the public school system is not simply that it’s teaching evolution and not allowing the other point of view to be heard. That is true, and that is an indictment of its alleged neutrality. But you see, even if our school systems did a better job of putting on a front of not being antagonistic to religion, they would still not be neutral as long as the principles of mathematics are taught apart from a Christian framework for reality. Think about that. How can you teach math to students and expect them to believe that the principles or laws of mathematics are universal in application unless you first teach them there is a God who made this universe and whose thinking is reflected in the laws of mathematics.

[20:45] How can anyone think that Christians, much less any other religion, that Christians could be satisfied with the teaching of history or the teaching of literature or the teaching of science about the world around us that doesn’t bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the one that created all things and governs all things according to his sovereign will? You see, the choice to teach with religion out of the picture is itself the endorsement of a different kind of religion. And that’s why education is inherently, inherently religious. Education is inherently committed to some kind of worldview.

[21:28] Now, I told you, as part of our apologetic seminar, that unbelievers are walking worldviews. Everybody’s got a philosophy of life. Everybody’s got a worldview. Now, if that is true, how then could anybody teach in the classroom and not have a worldview that is the context in terms of which he or she does the teaching? Education cannot be free of philosophies of life. And because philosophies of life are religious, education is always going to be religious in character.

[21:59] Let’s just ask five real quick questions that everyone who is a teacher has got to answer, or everyone who’s involved in a school board has got to answer and then look at the nature of these questions and see if we can avoid being religious. First of all, in order to educate, you have to ask yourself, what is man? The teacher walks into the classroom and there are these humanoids sitting in these seats in front of him or her. What’s he dealing with? What’s he dealing with? What is man?

[22:29] Are these just the forward push of the chance blob of evolution? Are these just little white rats that act in some behavioristic way? Or are these people that are made in the image of God and that have dignity and are to be treated with respect and who have minds that are able to be developed to glorify God and therefore to be skilled to work in his world? Don’t you think it makes a difference whether you see man as a white rat or a child of God? That’s going to make all the difference in the world and how you treat people in the classroom and how you educate them.

[23:04] how do you educate white rats? If man is nothing more than a white rat, then of course our educational techniques could descend to, and I’m using this as an absurd illustration, but why not? Why don’t we just apply electrical stimuli, you know, to condition and response these children so that they are going to do the things they should do as good little citizens? It all depends on what you think man is. Secondly, what is knowledge? We’re going to educate children, we have to know what knowledge is. Is knowledge thinking God’s thoughts after him, learning everything we can in the context of knowing God and the world that he’s created and where he’s put us to love him and to glorify him? Well, if it isn’t, what is knowledge? How do we know things?

[23:50] Don’t you think a teacher should know what knowledge is before he or she tries to impart knowledge to the students? I mean, it only stands to reason. Yet how many teachers do you know the public school system that could give you an adequate answer about what is it to know anything. You don’t know what it is to know things, you don’t know what it is to learn things either.

[24:09] Thirdly, what is man’s goal and purpose? If we’re going to be educating people, imparting knowledge to them, we have to know what knowledge is, we have to know what man is, but we also have to know what man’s purpose is. I mean, why do we have students? Are students here simply that they might become good citizens in the state? Is that the purpose of education? Is that the highest goal in life? Are students here so that they might serve the interest of whoever happens to be in control of society? Are they here to serve one another? Are they here to please themselves? Or are students here to learn to develop skills that glorify God? Now, we could go on and on, but you see, the way in which you educate is going to be different depending on which of those options you choose.

[24:56] Fourthly, why should we educate? Not just what is the purpose of education, that is, what are we trying to accomplish in the life of the student, but why should we be involved in the educational process at all? You know, if you believe that man is nothing more but the process of evolution, I want to suggest to you, you lose a great deal of motivation for educating. What you’re dealing with are just animals out there.

[25:23] okay and for you education may be the training of the animals so that they get along well i’m being harsh here but you get my point why do you train the animals if that’s your view what’s there’s another alternative rather than giving your life to helping the animals get along why don’t you just go somewhere where you don’t have to live with the animals isn’t that what we do here in chicago we don’t live out there in the jungles we don’t want to filthy animal, so we live here in Chicago instead. Yeah, some of you at the back can’t see. The tongue is in the cheek here. Okay. Fifthly, how do you educate? What kind of discipline do you use?

[26:02] Do you educate with the idea that the parent has been extended into the classroom and is represented now by the teacher? The teacher is the extension of parental authority? Or do you educate with the idea that parents have nothing to do with this, and that’s why they turn their children over to the state or to the school, whatever it may be. How do you educate? Do you discipline children when they’ve been disruptive in the classroom? Do you expel people? Do you think it’s all right that Johnny puts razor blades in the children’s apples and say, well, but he still has the right to an education and so on? How does all of this get integrated? What is man? What is knowledge? What is man’s goal or purpose? Why do we educate? How do we educate?

[26:44] questions like those are essential to engaging in education and yet every one of those questions calls for a commitment to a particular philosophy of life a particular worldview every one of those questions the way in which they are answered will betray what a person thinks about the nature of reality how we know what we know and how we should live our lives and therefore education cannot be value-free. It cannot be religion-free. Education cannot be neutral. Now, of course, if we paid attention to the Bible, we would have known this already, wouldn’t we? You might look in your Bibles at John the 17th chapter, verse 17. Here our Savior, who claims to be the way, the truth, and the life, prays for his people before he goes to the cross to die for their sins.

[27:42] and in his prayer he says sanctify them by the truth thy word is truth I dare say that if Jesus the Savior prayed this for his people on the eve of his crucifixion you can be very sure this is crucial as he sees it to what Christianity is all about and Jesus prays that his father would consecrate those who belong to Jesus he says those who are Christians Those who follow me, set them apart, sanctify them. The word means to make holy or to make separate. Set them apart, consecrate them. And how are they supposed to be consecrated according to Jesus? By the truth.

[28:28] Jesus wants his people to be set apart from the world that’s lost in unbelief, holding all these false convictions. Jesus wants his people to be set apart, to be unique, to be holy according to the truth. And where is that truth to be found? In some generalized region of academic study of science, some generalized region of academic study of literature or of mathematics. No, he says, and thy word is true. Jesus says, set them apart by your word. Make them a different, a unique, a distinctive people. Help them to think your thoughts after you. Make your word crucial in their lives.

[29:14] In John the 8th chapter, Jesus had already said that if we abide in his word, then we are genuinely his disciples and we will know the truth that sets us free. I think it’s amazing that many people can read that passage and try to generalize and abstract the point Jesus was making so that he’s left out of the picture. Jesus is talking about being followers of him. If you would be my disciples, you must abide in my word. And if you do so, he says, and if you do so, you shall know the truth. And this truth will set you free.

[29:53] I already told you I did my graduate work at the University of Southern California. One of the most distinctive buildings on campus is the philosophy building, The Mudd Hall of philosophy has a very distinctive style, architectural style. And one of the things that they have around the entire building and the parapets and so forth, and even around the fountain out in front, they have brickwork that has sayings of the philosophers, the famous philosophers engraved in this brickwork. And Jesus got invited to the party. Isn’t that wonderful? A saying of Jesus is there too. And what we read is, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

[30:32] Anybody notice the missing word? The verse begins, and, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Jesus was not saying truth in abstract sets people free. He was saying the truth about me, the truth of my word sets people free. When Jesus was praying in the garden, he was praying that we would know that truth that makes us distinctive, disciples of his, that would set us apart from the world, that sets us free.

[31:08] Now, when schools tell us, no, we can’t bring Jesus into the picture, when we can’t have a distinctively Christian approach to math, a distinctively Christian approach to literature, a distinctively Christian approach to science, to history, or to anything else, what the world is saying is, Jesus is wrong. Now, that’s a religious perspective, isn’t it?

[31:28] Not a real good one, doesn’t lead to a great lifestyle, but it is taking a stand religiously. It’s a stand against Jesus. How can we as Christians then believe that education could ever be neutral? If we are to know the truth because it’s tied to the word of God, then the truth is always a religious expression. Knowing it and following it is a matter of your religious commitment. Because of what I’ve taught you about the nature of apologetics, I hope now you can see this corollary point, that education cannot ever be neutral, and those who claim that it is are following a myth. You can’t teach anything, you cannot engage in any kind of educational project without being guided by your philosophy of life, which is to say, by your religion. Now when we come back after a break, I hope that you have written down questions that you might have for me, and I’ll do my best to get to as many of them as I can and help you some more on how to defend the faith and present the Christian worldview to an unbelieving world. Thanks so much for your attention.

[32:37] Thank you.