Education Update

Some of the headlines over the recent months have included; "Five-year-olds should get sex education" 1; "Girls’ sex guide ‘ends childhood innocence’" 2; "Call for sex education to offer boys gay advice" 3 In dealing with reports and headlines such as these we as Christian writers and commentators on any issue must be careful not to mislead or misrepresent those we comment on. These headlines are taken from a national newspaper which frequently takes to itself the title 'quality' newspaper.

What is worrying however, is the way in which newspapers such as these can so quickly degenerate in their reporting of important issues that concern each of us, into tabloid-scaremongering and pernicious misrepresentation of the facts to ensure they titillate their readers over Sunday lunch or morning break with the latest controversy.

A report of this kind appeared in early February.4 It was supposedly a serious account of how the Scottish Office has been approached to pay for the country’s first ‘fundamentalist Calvinist’ school. The picture heading the report was as much a misrepresentation of the truth and a work of fiction, as was the opening statement. It contained a plaque of a non-existent ‘Calvinist School of Scotland’, and ‘banned books’ from this school that only existed in the mind of the reporter, and a ‘church hall’ that was by his account the proposed site of this non-existent school.

Bearing in mind this kind of misrepresentation of the truth and reports which are geared to controversy not edification, we must therefore always proceed with godly caution and reverence for the truth, which can only be found in the Word of God and not in the cesspit of the unconverted mind that is overwhelmed with darkness. So what do we make of these headlines as Christians?

If they are indeed true and the reporting is at all accurate, then we must be concerned, we must pray and we must act. We ought to be concerned, not in a self-righteous or censorious way, but because we have a godly care and concern for the young and impressionable. We ought to be concerned when it is reported that the Family Planning Association of Scotland calls for ‘Compulsory’ sex education in our Primary and Secondary schools. We ought also to be concerned when the same organisation is reported to be targeting 12 to 16 year olds with comic-style magazine that contains drawings of naked women and discusses such topics as masturbation in detail.

We should be concerned too when a report from the sodomite lobby says that sex education should be broadened to include information for boys who may be ‘gay’ or ‘bi-sexual’. This report from the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations was allegedly compiled after interviewing 24 ‘gay’ men from Lothian Health Region. The compiler of the report was quoted as saying: "there is a need for relevant information to be provided such as contact telephone numbers for gay organisations such as Stonewall"

It is our children who are targeted here by these obscene and anti-Christian organisations. We must ask, ‘when will the Church become awake to the fact that state schools are not ‘Christian’ and neither are they at worst neutral to Christ and His standards set forth in His Word?’"He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." (Mt 12: 30).

Secondly, our concern should move us to pray. I believe we ought to pray first, not for our children, but for ourselves the parents. That God would open our eyes and our hearts and make us sensitive to the evils of this world. To remember our Lord’s prayer; "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil:" (John 17: 15).

Jesus reminds us here that we are where we are according to the providence of God. Placed in this time and our particular situations. I believe we are reminded that as mature and adult Christians we are to be at work in the world, continually labouring in the harvest-field and taking such a clear stand in it that we truly are ‘salt and light’ and like a ‘city set on a hill that cannot be hid’ (Mt 5: 14)

But Christ goes on to pray that we be protected from the evil of this world. But if our eyes view vanity; or it our hearts are set on filth that passes for entertainment on television; or if we put our children into situations that undermine what is done at home; or if our eyes are not opened to what is happening to the youth of the church; then how will Christ protect us and our children when we deliberately choose the world and not Him and His ways?

It is only when we make a stand for Christ and His holiness that we can expect protection from the evils of the world. And it is only then too, when our eyes are opened and our hearts sensitised to His holiness that we can pray effectively for our children.

Finally, after prayer we are able to act. Not because it is something we do of our volition, but because God has heard us and moved us to act for His glory and for His great mane’s sake. It would be presumptuous for the writer of this article therefore to suggest how God will move you the reader to act. But I do know and believe that at the centre of His covenant with us is our covenant responsibilities towards Him for the furtherance of His cause and that is to "teach our children". It is my earnest prayer therefore, that when we read in Christian monthly or quarterly magazines, or hear at family conferences and baptisms, about the importance of family worship or values, that we are given manna to eat from them. Not empty words that do not challenge or exhort us to holiness that extends beyond the family circle. But to hear and be exhorted to holiness in the whole education of our children that they might be protected from the ‘the evil of this world’ and not educated by it.

Footnotes:
1. Scotsman 13 January 1998;
2. Scotsman 8 December 1997;
3. Scotsman 2 December 1997;
4. Scotland on Sunday 1 Feb 1998.

[Back to Reformed Christian Pages][Back to the Education Witness]