Take back the rod. God gave it to you, not to the government. Take back your kids. God gave them to you, not to the government. This will be for God’s glory. And, I would suggest, this would be the first, and most significant step, to taking back our country.

One of the most fundamental and oft-forgotten truths about education in the modern era is this: God gives children to parents, not the government.

In his recent entry on the biblical worldview of school choice, Freedom Center scholar Dr. Tim Yonts explained why this is so important. He writes:

“The basic biblical position is that children, ultimately, belong to the Lord who has given parents the right and responsibility to raise them and teach them.

The biblical view, however, is at odds with modern secularism, which typically adopts a collectivist approach — ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ or ‘Children belong to all of society.’ This view contains a seriously flawed understanding of human nature and the nuclear family, and it has made the battle over education a spiritual one for the minds and hearts of the next generation.”

Yonts is correct to point out how this core Christian commitment places us at odds with “modern secularism.” For decades now, many leading “educational experts” in America (operating out of a secular worldview) pursued an educational philosophy that aims to pull children away from their parents’ authority. Progressive education reformers like John Dewey unapologetically argued that the goal of public education was to “separate children from the prejudices of their parents.”

What did he mean by this? Dr. Albert Mohler explains,

“John Dewey meant first and foremost the religious prejudices of parents. [He] wanted to free children from that context of the local home, as where they would learn citizenship in the common culture, and instead put them under the control and under the influence of a regime of experts. And these experts would help to separate children from the backward worldviews of their parents.”

This goes directly against God’s good commands to parents to raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). God makes it very clear that he holds parents, and not public schools, primarily responsible for the content and quality of their children’s education.

So when we approach the subject of education from a biblical worldview, we must first reject the modern secular view that raising and educating children is somehow a “group” project that the government should be leading and financing.

Therefore, it’s necessary for Christian parents to understand what their rights and responsibilities are when it comes to educating their children. As I mentioned, their “rights” are nothing less than the sole and total ownership of their children contra the state. That is, of course, provided that parents are loving their children well and caring for them rightly.

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