The over-intellectualizing of the Calvinist mind

Roger Olson discusses Christian anti-intellectualism in an article titled "Whatever Happened to the Christian Mind?" He writes:

The problem is not just one of ignorance as in "not knowing facts." That's bad enough. Too many Christians, including conservative-evangelical Christians, don't even know the Bible. How many can even find a book, chapter and verse in the Bible without being told the "page number in the pew Bible?" No, the larger problem is confusion of the Christian story with other stories. We live in a pluralistic culture and I celebrate that. But I also celebrate Christians in this pluralistic culture knowing and understanding their own story—the story of God and us told in the Bible.

He has a point. The problem with many churches is that they lack an intellectual and intelligent approach to scripture, where members of congregations are treated as if even the simplest of theological concepts are beyond their ability to grasp. I've been in churches where the sermons consist mostly of life lessons, illustrations, and humorous anecdotes, as if diving in and actively drawing out what God's word actually teaches would cause mass confusion. While Dr. Olson may not agree, I believe that anti-intellectualism is one of the trappings of Arminianism.

Then, of course, there is the opposite end of the spectrum.

The problem I have noticed in some Calvinist circles is over-intellectualizing. Let's be honest. Calvinism has a certain intellectual appeal that can sometimes cause us to focus on stimulating the brain at the expense of nurturing the soul. I confess that there have been times in my walk with Christ during which I was more drawn to theological discussions, books, web sites, and podcasts than God's word.

"Hey! Look at me! I'm learning new and wonderful things! Now let's see how many others I can convince of the doctrines of grace!"

If only more of us were just as passionate about the gospel.

This is not to disparage the desire to learn and expand our minds. After all, Christ himself commanded us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37).

Let's strive to find a healthy balance. If those books and podcasts we love so much don't cause us to develop a deeper thirst for the scriptures, then perhaps they have become little more than unhealthy distractions. Peter encouraged believers to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18), and while that doesn't mean we can't partake in a little intellectual stimulation, we must realize there is no substitute for the word of God.

Outsourcing the church's job to the state

Gary North reminds the church that we cannot beat something with nothing:

What has been Christianity's solution to the need for education? It has been to promote tax-funded education. In other words, Christianity has simply deferred to the state, and the result has been anti-Christian education. Today, pastors do not preach from the pulpit against the public schools. They know better. They would lose too many of their congregations members. There are more Baptists teaching in public schools than there are Baptists teaching in Christian schools. In the 1960s, a series of Supreme Court rulings separated Christianity from state education. This did not lead to an exodus from the public schools by Christians.

Christians do not want to write the checks. It's as simple as that.

The solution offered by modern churches to members who are in financial difficulty is to send them to some government welfare agency.

The churches have defaulted, and they have not given guidance to members who might otherwise start charitable organizations. Then the leadership of the churches wail on the sidelines of life, complaining that the world doesn't pay any attention to the church. This has been going on in Protestant circles for about 300 years. Pastors complained about the Washingtonians in the 1840's. They also complained about the Second Great Awakening in the 1840's, just as their predecessors complained about the First Great Awakening in the 1740's. They don't want competition, but they don't want to write the checks. And so it goes.

You can't beat something with nothing. If someone else is doing something positive, and the church has nothing to match it, the church's task is not to criticize whatever is being done. Its task is to get busy. This takes vision. It takes a strategy. It takes money. It takes dedication and leadership.

It is easier to point the finger and complain.

Isn't it about time we put our money where our mouth is?

Addressing Two Terrible Arguments Against Homeschooling

Even before we had kids, my wife and I were discussing homeschooling with a friend. "As Christians, we're supposed to be salt and light," our friend argued. "I almost think it's a sin not to send your kids to public school."

I don't think I've ever heard a more ignorant argument against homeschooling in my life. By that reasoning, one could say we need more Christians working at strip clubs and abortion mills. After all, those places could use a little salt and light as well.

On his blog, Matt Walsh addressed two terrible arguments against homeschooling presented in an email from a reader. The first was similar to our friend's: "If we don't help the system, the system will not work."

Walsh responded:

Is this really a priority for parents? When my wife and I make a decision for our family, should we stop first and ask, "wait, but will this help the system?"

Would you REALLY put the welfare of 'the system' over that of your own children?

I'd hope that you wouldn't, and I'd hope that this line of logic is unique to you, but I know that it isn't. I've heard it before. I've heard it so often, in fact, that I'm starting to think I'm the strange one for having absolutely no desire to make my children martyrs for some bureaucratic machine.

You know what my kids need me to be? A parent. Their dad. Not a cog in the system, not a member of the community, not a loyal townsperson in the village, not a 'team player.'

Sure, I'll tell them not to litter and I'll make sure they play nice with the other kids in the neighborhood, but when it comes to making choices about something as serious as their education, I don't frankly care how our decision effects the community. Does that make me callous? I don't know. I think it just makes me a man with priorities.

Would the school system be helped if my family 'participated' in it? Maybe, and I'm sure the circus would be helped if you went on stage and stuck your head in a lion's mouth. But you won't sacrifice your scalp to the Ringling Brothers, and I won't sacrifice my kids' brains to public school. I guess we're even.

The second argument was just as ridiculous as the first: "It's most important for kids to learn the academic fundamentals, but learning proper socialization is very important as well. Public school gives young people the chance to become well adjusted adults."

Walsh's response:

Expecting your kid to learn 'social skills' from public school, is like sending him to live with chimpanzees so that he'll learn proper table manners.

'Socialization' — in the public school context — means that your child will simply absorb behavioral cues from her peers. She learns to socialize by aping her friends, who are themselves only copying other girls. She learns to repress the parts of her that don't fit in, and put on an exterior designed to help her fade into the collective. I'm not theorizing here, this IS the social process in public school.

It's also competitive; your social status depends on your ability to cut your peers down, until your can easily step on them and elevate yourself.

Expressing your ideas, showing vulnerability, communicating your deepest thoughts and feelings — these are all fervently discouraged. Kids are tasked with expressing not their own thoughts, but sufficiently imitating the thoughts and views of the peer collective. Children who can't keep up, or who have no desire to keep up, will either have to be the most self-assured human beings on the planet (which is unlikely, since they haven't been given the tools to develop that self-assurance), or they'll become bitter, self-conscious, and depressed.

There is nothing positive about any of this. Nobody is better for it. Nobody benefits. The psychological damage can be lasting, maybe even permanent. Again, this is not my theory. This is just the way it works. How could you be so oblivious, Dan?

Now, homeschool socialization is different. Here, a child learns his social skills from his parents. He is oriented by adults, not other children. He matures, and grows, and is provided a safe environment to, as the phrase goes, be himself. Despite common perception, I don't think most homeschool kids are locked in a tower like Rapunzel, and forbidden from human contact. They have friends, they play sports, they emerge into society and interact with people.

The only difference is how they learn to interact. The public school kid learns to interact based on how his peers carry on in the hallways and at the lunch table, whereas the homeschool kids learns to interact based on the guidance of his parents.

Who has a better foundation for becoming a well adjusted adult?

Anyone with an interest in homeschooling, either for or against, will want to read the entire post.

Reason #4,273 Why We Homeschool

This is one of the many reasons why my wife and I decided not to send our children to a government school:


The only surprising thing is that the father in the video was so shocked this was going on. As a father of three, I'm glad I didn't have to learn my lesson the hard way.

Just Say No to Drugging Kids

According to a recent article in The New York Times, 11% of school age children, and nearly one in five boys of high school age, have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder:

These rates reflect a marked rise over the last decade and could fuel growing concern among many doctors that the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and its medication are overused in American children.

The figures showed that an estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 through 17 had received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis at some point in their lives, a 16 percent increase since 2007 and a 41 percent rise in the past decade. About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis.

"Those are astronomical numbers. I'm floored," said Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He added, "Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy."

Don't worry. The American Psychiatric Association is planning on changing the definition of A.D.H.D. so that even more kids will be diagnosed in order to receive proper "treatment." Call it an economic stimulus for the pharmaceutical industry.

As a father of three, I am thankful that we are able to homeschool our kids. I'm sure many of you parents will know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that there is a strong likelihood that each one of my children would fall under some government school definition of A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. But have you ever met one kid who didn't have trouble sitting still or focusing, especially when they had little or no interest in the subject being taught?

Gary North has a simpler, drug-free solution:

If your kid is squirming in public school, a solution is to pull him out of public school. Kids who are not in public schools usually stop squirming.

There are two main solutions: homeschooling or doing chores around the house. Teenage kids facing this choice usually stop squirming.

Homeschooling works. But when it's either prescribing drugs or chores, I recommend chores. It's cheaper. Also, parents avoid extra chores.

So simple, and yet so difficult for today's two-income families to manage.

The Government Schools' Trans-Agenda

Reason number 5,327 to get your kids out of government schools (from Fox News):

Parents across Massachusetts are upset over new rules that would not only allow transgender students to use their restrooms of their choice – but would also punish students who refuse to affirm or support their transgender classmates.

Last week the Massachusetts Department of Education issued directives for handling transgender students – including allowing them to use the bathrooms of their choice or to play on sports teams that correspond to the gender with which they identify.

The 11-page directive also urged schools to eliminate gender-based clothing and gender-based activities – like having boys and girls line up separately to leave the classroom.

Schools will now be required to accept a student’s gender identity on face value.

Really, is any further comment necessary?

Machen on the Necessity of Christian Schools

In a 1933 lecture entitled "The Necessity of the Christian School," Dr. J. Gresham Machen summed up the evils of a secular, tax-funded, government-controlled education:

Thoughtful people, even many who are not Christians, have become impressed with the shortcomings of our secularized schools. We have provided technical education, which may make the youth of our country better able to make use of the advances of natural science; but natural science, with its command over the physical world, is not all that there is in human life. There are also the moral interests of mankind; and without cultivation of these moral interests a technically trained man is only given more power to do harm. By this purely secular, non-moral and non-religious, training we produce not a real human being but a horrible Frankenstein, and we are beginning to shrink back from the product of our own hands.

Throwing in a little Bible teaching here and there won't cut it. Christian schools are necessary because our faith envelopes everything we do, say, and think:

It is this profound Christian permeation of every human activity, no matter how secular the world may regard it as being, which is brought about by the Christian school and the Christian school alone. I do not want to be guilty of exaggerations at this point. A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned. But while truth is truth however learned, the bearings of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part, but all, of the curriculum of the school. True learning and true piety go hand in hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life -- those are great central convictions that underlie the Christian school.

I believe that the Christian school deserves to have a good report from those who are without; I believe that even those of our fellow citizens who are not Christians may, if they really love human freedom and the noble traditions of our people, be induced to defend the Christian school against the assaults of its adversaries and to cherish it as a true bulwark of the State. But for Christian people its appeal is far deeper. I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of the earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism. If, indeed, the Christian school were in any sort of competition with the Christian family, if it were trying to do what the home ought to do, then I could never favor it. But one of its marked characteristics, in sharp distinction from the secular education of today, is that it exalts the family as a blessed divine institution and treats the scholars in its classes as children of the covenant to be brought up above all things in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.