Pastor Joel Webbin critiques the Gospel Coalition's debate on public schooling, rejecting Jen Wilkin's argument that sending children to state schools is a moral duty. He asserts biblical morality prioritizes the immediate household, citing Titus and Galatians to claim fathers must provide a thorough Christian "paideia" before aiding others. Webbin contends public schools subject children to 15,000 hours of pagan indoctrination and woke ideology, making enrollment a failure of parental protection. Ultimately, he concludes that loving one's family is the primary obligation, urging Christians to avoid state education to faithfully raise their children in the fear of the Lord. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Monday Live Schedule00:02:43
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Hi, welcome back to another Monday live video with Right Response Ministries.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin.
We do this every Monday at 2 p.m. Central Time.
Every Monday, 2 p.m. Central Time.
If you want to keep up with all of our content, the easiest way to do that is to simply watch our three primary videos.
Everything else that you'll find on our channel is a Short form clip of one of our full length videos.
We have three that air each week.
On the Lord's Day at around 5 p.m., we have the full length sermon.
On the Lord's Day around 5 p.m. Central Time, the full length sermon from the church that I pastor, Covenant Bible Church, north of Austin, Texas, in Georgetown, Texas, Williamson County.
The next is our Monday Live every week, about an hour, hour and a half at 2 p.m. Central Time.
That's what we're doing right now.
And then lastly, we have our flagship show.
It's the interview form show that I'll host guests from all over, guys who are like minded and faithful in their doctrine and theology.
That show is called Theology Applied, and that's Tuesdays, every Tuesday at 2 p.m. Central Time.
So, Sunday, the Lord's Day full length sermon at 5 p.m. Central Time.
The Monday live video where I discuss current events and topics, as well as take questions from the audience live.
That's every Monday at 2 p.m. Central Time.
And then Theology Applied, our interview show on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. Central Time.
For today, I'm going to be taking some questions here in just a moment, but first, I want to discuss a little bit more in depth.
I've already done one video on this, I'm following up now with a second, but I want to discuss the good faith debate that the Gospel Coalition hosted with Jen Wilkin arguing the position that Christians can, that's her position, that it's permissible, they may.
Loving Global Neighbors00:05:27
Place their kids in the public school system, but there are certain points in the debate where she actually goes beyond that position and seems to suggest, if not outright say, that not every Christian is morally obligated because there's a host of different variables and factors that are unique to each family.
But all things being equal, seems to be her argument, all things being equal, if you can, a Christian not only is permissible in placing their kids in the public school system, but they actually Should for the good of the community in order to love their neighbors, because if Christians all take their kids out of the public school system, that's going to hurt the public school system as a whole,
which I would give a hearty praise God, let's destroy it.
But that's going to hurt her argument, the public system as a whole, and the community as a whole, and all the children that are left behind.
Here's a clip from that debate hosted by the Gospel Coalition, where Jen Wilkins shares some very, Foolish thoughts with us.
One of the things I would love to have entered into this conversation is that while I cannot tell you to put your children in public school and certainly never would because there are so many factors that are at play, that it is important for us to understand that our decision regarding this and even our demeanor toward this has an impact on our community.
It doesn't just impact our family.
The most common phrase I hear thrown out in these conversations is well, I just need to do what's best for my family.
And I think that's something that as Christians we have to push back on.
Philippians tells us each of you should look not just to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
And there's no such thing as a decision that's made just for our families.
In fact, even having the gift of the decision at all means that you're a person with more choices than some people.
And those who don't have a choice of where they will educate their children will be impacted by your presence, your adult parent presence, not being in the public schools because you've chosen to go somewhere else.
We can look back in not too recent history on this and see the impact of when a large number of Christian parents decide to opt out of the system and how it impacts those who are left behind.
And so I do think it's very important for us to understand that while, yes, we do what is best for our families, we don't do so in a vacuum.
We understand that what we do for our family always impacts the community around us and that we should look to the welfare of the city in which we live.
All right, here's the basic sentiment that we've heard for a number of years now from big Eva, ivory tower, sophisticated, winsome types like the Gospel Coalition, like Jen Wilkin.
The basic sentiment that we hear ad nauseum is this Love the world, hate your country.
Love your neighbors, hate your family.
Love the lost, hate your local church.
What we see, and I believe it is theologically and in terms of just basic reality in the world that God made, it is a false dichotomy.
It assumes a zero sum game that God created a world where there are limited resources that cannot be multiplied, that the pie cannot grow, that essentially, whenever you take, right, or build or grow or whatever, keep certain resources and then Disseminate those to your wife and your children, or your local church and fellow Christians,
or your countrymen as a United States citizen, or whatever country you happen to be a citizen of.
By helping some, you are hurting others.
That's the sentiment again and again and again, right?
You're called to love the globe, have a global, worldwide affection and devotion and allegiance.
But not really a devotion towards your country.
In fact, if you have any kind of allegiance or pride, and not pride in the sense of arrogance, but a good pride in being a citizen of a particular country, if you espouse that or think that we should have certain public policies that are America first, because that's the nation that you've been sovereignly placed in by God, that this is selfish, that this is a lack of love for your neighbors.
This is really, it's hatred towards your global neighbors for the sake of selfishly benefiting and loving to the exclusion of others, loving your national neighbors.
However, you know, one of the ironies is that it's perfectly permissible, you may have noticed, in the TGC church planting world to be in and for your city.
And nobody raises a stink about that.
The Samaritan Obligation00:09:19
Nobody says, well, if.
If you have a sign on your church that says, We're a church in and for the city of Seattle, well, then that must mean that you have a particular or even greater love for people in Seattle than you do people in other places or other cities.
And that's selfish.
That's not really loving all of your neighbors.
That's loving some neighbors at the exclusion of other neighbors.
Nobody uses that rhetoric because everybody understands the sentiment.
We understand what is meant by a Church, a local church, or an individual local Christian saying that I love my city.
I'm proud of my city.
I am uniquely committed to my city because I'm a finite creature and God in His providence has placed me here to be good to my neighbors.
But part of the neighbor love commandment, the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, it assumes proximity.
See, that's another thing that people just don't understand.
In a biblical way.
Think of the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan.
Why is it in that parable that Jesus tells, right?
There are two other men, men of status, men of esteem, religious men, that pass over.
They pass over this victim who has been beaten and robbed and left to die.
And they pass over, they go around him on their way to their personal affairs.
And they neglect and ignore his suffering and do nothing about it.
Not only are it not just two men on the other side of the world who are unwilling to go out of their way in order to help an individual, but rather this individual who needs help is right there on their path.
And it actually requires that they go out of their way to avoid helping him, to ignore him.
So it's not just the refusal to.
Inconvenience of their selves to help the individual, but they're actually willing to go out of their path in order to avoid him.
And then there's the Samaritan who is of another culture, another nationality, another tradition where there's traditionally and historically a sense of hostility and enmity between these two people groups.
And the Samaritan is the one who chooses to care for him.
And Jesus, what he's saying in this Parable is that the Samaritan rightly, he's not wrong, but he rightly recognizes that this individual is his neighbor.
And he's not his neighbor, and therefore he's morally obligated and bound to care for this man's needs.
And he's not his neighbor in the sense that they share the same ethnicity.
He's not his neighbor in the sense that they're both members of the same church or that they're united by blood, that they're kin, that they're family.
It's none of those things.
It's proximity, it's location.
It's you're there.
You're there, and therefore you have an obligation to do something.
In our culture today, it's completely reversed.
Our politicians, as an example, are more concerned about people in Ukraine than they are about people in East Palestine.
Our politicians are more concerned about the citizens of other countries than they are about their own citizens and their own country.
And that doesn't even begin to get into the ramifications of the debate that could be had in regards to an America first policy actually being best, not only for America, but for the rest of the world.
America lasts, not only does it do a disservice to Americans, but I would argue, and it can be fairly easily argued, that it actually does a disservice to the whole world and all these other countries as well.
But the point remains proximity is a major factor in determining moral obligation to our neighbors.
Now, work that within the individual Christian family or household.
A father and a mother, but a father at a Greater and ultimate degree as head of his household, he has a unique and unparalleled moral obligation to provide and protect for the members of his household.
We think of Titus.
It says, You know, if a man is not willing to provide for his family and the members of his household, he is worse than an unbeliever and has denied the faith.
Now, this text doesn't say if he's unwilling to care for everyone in his village.
Or if he's unwilling to care for the people who are suffering in the village next door, or if he's unwilling to care and provide for certain citizens in another nation across the globe that he's denied the faith and worse than an unbeliever.
No, it's starting at home, it's starting with proximity.
Who are closest to it?
Meaning he has a greater obligation to care for his own than he has to care for others.
If a man neglects to do good to all, There may be certain practical, reasonable explanations for that.
There also may be sinful explanations for that.
It may be that he's neglecting to do good to someone of some other affiliation that he's not directly connected to, and maybe he's failing.
Maybe he should do something.
But the Bible reserves its strongest indictment, its strongest rebuke for a man.
Not who doesn't care for the stranger somewhere else, but the man who doesn't care for his own household, his own family.
As Christians, that sentiment that Jen Wilkin expresses, that Christians are asking the question about what's best for their family, let me unequivocally say that is a good sentiment.
Father, mother, who's listening to this video right now, if you are earnestly seeking, Wisdom from the Word of God and praying and receiving counsel from brothers and sisters in Christ in your local church setting and counsel from your pastors that you are earnestly pursuing what is best for your family, good.
That's good.
You have nothing to apologize for.
You don't have to go to sleep at night and worry about the fact that your children are in beds instead of on the floor.
That they're warm and clothed in their little jammies and tucked in under their blankets with their heads on their pillows with full bellies because they ate dinner that night.
That is not sin.
In fact, the Bible says that to do otherwise is sin.
To not provide for the members of your household, to not do everything you possibly can to make sure that your children, not everyone's children, but your children first, you start there.
You start with proximity.
You start with the members of your own household, the people at home.
It is your moral obligation to ensure that they are not hungry.
That they are not naked, that they are cared for, protected, and cared for.
I want to play the clip one more time for people who are just now tuning in.
This is a clip from the debate that Jen Wilkin had with the Gospel Coalition hosting, arguing for it being permissible for Christians to send their kids to public schools.
And at this certain point of the good faith debate, she goes beyond the position of merely arguing for the permissibility of a Christian utilizing public schools for their children, but that.
In some cases, maybe not every case, but at least in some cases, it may be something that the Christian not only may do, but that the Christian should do.
Here's the clip.
One of the things I would love to have entered into this conversation is that while I cannot tell you to put your children in public school and certainly never would because there are so many factors that are at play, that it is important for us to understand that our decision regarding this and even our demeanor toward this has an impact on our community.
It doesn't just impact our family.
The most common phrase I hear thrown out in these conversations is, Well, I just need to do what's best for my family.
And I think that's something that as Christians we have to push back on.
Philippians tells us each of you should look not just to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Beyond Family Interests00:06:08
And there's no such thing as a decision.
The sentiment of, I just need to do what's good for my family.
As Christians, that's something we need to push back on.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Let me give you a few verses.
Galatians chapter 6 says, As you have opportunity, do good to all, but especially the household of faith.
Right there again, you see an order of loves, an order of commitment.
That there is one group that you are more committed to, and another group that if you have the means and ability to do so, you can reach and meet their needs, but you are less morally bound to them, to one group.
Than you are to the other.
As often as you have opportunity, do good to all, but especially the household of faith.
Now, right there, implicit in that particular text, we need to recognize that our opportunity, as often as you have opportunity, do good to all, is limited because we're finite.
People are creatures.
We're creatures.
And as creatures, we are finite.
That doesn't mean that God created a world that's a zero sum game where the pie cannot grow.
I reject Marxism and all of its tenets and Neo Marxism and all those things.
I do believe that the world that God created in the cosmos, in a larger picture, that the pie can grow, that God is the only capital C creator who creates out of nothing, ex nihilo, but that as his image bearers, even us, even human beings, since the fall, post lapsarian, since the fall, with the doctrine of total depravity being as it is, even in that case, the image of God.
In man has been tarnished, yet the vestige of this image remains intact.
Because of that, reason, rationale, moral compass, even on the unbeliever, God's law being written on their hearts, in all these ways, we are not capital C creators creating out of nothing, but lowercase c creators able to multiply the resources that God has baked into the world.
We can grow the pie by the grace of God.
And unbelievers, by common grace, can do this as well.
We can multiply resources.
This is what we've seen throughout human history, time and time again.
Lifespans have We've seen global hunger statistics go down.
We've seen basic ailments and diseases virtually eradicated, not just in first world countries, but in third world countries as well, as we've developed certain technologies, certain medicine, certain ways of growing food.
And all these things come with complications.
There's ways of growing food that's not particularly healthy and that introduces a whole host of new problems.
But the point remains.
That man is able to subdue the earth and fill it, that man is able to exercise a godlike dominion as image bearers of the living God, and we are able to meet the needs not only of ourselves but of many others.
Yet, all those things being as they are, each individual person is finite.
We are a creature nonetheless.
We are not the creator, we are a creature.
And therefore, our resources are finite.
Can we develop those resources, multiply those resources, everything that I've already stated?
Yes, but at any given moment, at any given moment when there's an immediate need, we have to determine whether or not that need is something that we personally can meet.
And determining that, one of the ways I've said this in my preaching, I think it's helpful for myself and for others, there's a slavery of sorts that comes by having zero options, of being forced to only be able to do one thing, being bound.
But there's also a slavery.
In a sense, that comes by having virtually limitless options, limitless opportunities.
One of the difficult things that every believer has to be able to determine on a day to day basis is what do I say no to?
Especially those of us living in the 21st century in first world countries and Western societies that are developed with technology that have a basic sense sure, we're throwing a lot of it away right now with rebellion and apostasy and.
Crazy leaders that we have, but still a basic sense of prosperity, at least by comparison to the rest of the world, we have many, many options.
Many options.
And one of the ways on a regular basis, daily basis, that we can determine which of these options we say no to is by first determining what we should say yes to.
You could say it like this We determine our lower no's by first determining our higher yes.
Now, the highest yes is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, with all your strength.
Then the next yes is to love your neighbor as yourself.
Now, the reality is that each of us currently have approximately 8.2 billion neighbors.
Within these 8.2 billion neighbors, is there a hierarchy of commitment?
Is there an order of moral obligation?
And the Bible clearly answers yes.
We know from Titus that a man is uniquely, he is uniquely responsible for protecting and providing for the members of his household in a way that he is not as uniquely required to provide for others.
We also know from Galatians chapter 6 that a Christian is uniquely morally obligated to providing for the household of faith at a higher degree than providing for all.
Rooted Sin and Poverty00:10:44
Do good to all as often as you have opportunity, but especially, that is, prioritize.
The household of faith.
The very existence and presence of the stipulations and qualifications for the list of widows that the Apostle Paul gives to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 makes the point.
Right?
That Paul, why have a list of requirements for which widows receive help from the church?
Why not just say, help them all?
And why stop with widows for that matter?
Why not just say, hey, Anybody who's hurting, anybody who's hungry, anybody who needs shelter or housing or whatever it might be, let's just, you know, if somebody has a lack, the church meets that lack.
That's not what the Apostle Paul says.
Rather, what he says is that there are very specific criteria and stipulations that need to be considered by the leaders of the church when determining which individuals we help.
The first is just the particular mention of widows.
So it doesn't just say the church should help the poor.
But the first stipulation is that the church should help the helpless poor.
Not just the poor, but the helpless poor.
A widow.
And what kind of widow?
A true widow.
Someone who is actually a widow.
A widow indeed, right?
There's an age requirement.
She must be of 65 years of age.
And she's not an effective widow, an essential widow.
She's an actual widow.
She's not a widow because she's had, you know, seven different husbands.
And she's been adulterous and had affairs and been caught in adultery and been divorced by men for reasonable cause.
They were right to divorce her and these kinds of things.
And now she finds herself in her old age having no one committed to her because she's burned every bridge over the course of her life, but she's still a widow.
No, that's not what 1 Timothy 5 says.
She has to be of a certain age, she has to be someone who was married previously and her husband has died.
Beyond that, does she have any sons?
Or a brother, or another member of her family outside of her husband that can meet her needs.
If so, then let her family do it so that the church would not be financially burdened.
That's what the text says.
So, first, it establishes the physical requirements and the practical category.
Is this person truly helpless?
Not just are they poor, but are they poor with good cause?
Are they poor and it's not due to any fault of their own?
They're poor and helplessly poor.
Practical criteria is established first.
Then Paul goes even further and begins to establish a spiritual criteria.
Is she faithful?
So, one, is this poor individual helpless, practically speaking?
Second, is she faithful, spiritually speaking?
Has she washed the feet of the saints?
Has she raised up children?
Or is she all alone because she's, you know, A blue haired feminist who, you know, recorded TikTok videos when she was in her 40s about how awesome it was to have no children.
Well, then she starves.
And not because we're mean and not in a vindictive sense from the church, but she starves because Christ, who is God, is infinite and he is head of the church, his body, but his body here on earth, the church militant, the hands and feet of Christ, although Christ, the head of the church, is infinite, the church is finite, practically speaking.
And the church has an obligation of priority.
Of whose needs it should meet first.
So that if the church has resources and it's able to do so, great.
But often it will not.
At least often enough, to where Paul felt that it was prudent to write to Timothy a list of criteria and qualifications so that he and the leaders of the local church could prioritize and discern who to help and who not to help.
All of this insinuates and implies that the church was limited, there were more poor people than the church had resources to help.
This is right in line with what Jesus says.
You will always have the poor with you.
So, to take this back to the debate about public school, you're always going to have the poor with you.
You're also always going to have bad policies with you in varying degrees and in varying ways, but you're always going to have poverty.
You're always going to have injustice in some measure.
You're always going to have bad schools.
School districts or bad education options, you're always going to have this, you're always going to have that.
Why?
Well, because you're always going to have until Christ returns, until his final return, his final physical return at the end of the gospel age, you're always going to have sin.
Poverty is rooted in sin.
And it's not always directly rooted in sin.
It doesn't mean that each individual poor person is poor because of their direct.
Sin, their individual sin.
There are people who are poor in North Korea who didn't necessarily do anything wrong, but it's still always tied to sin.
It's either your sin or perhaps somebody else's sin, oppressing you and causing you to be poor.
But either way, poverty can be rooted to sin.
Bad education can be rooted to sin.
Wokeness and CRT is rooted in sin.
It all stems from sin.
And so long as we have a presence of sin, we're going to have a presence.
Of suffering in the world, and the Christian's obligation is to push back against that suffering first and foremost with the preaching of the gospel and the making of disciples.
But in making disciples, fulfilling the Great Commission, we also teach them to obey all of Christ's commands.
Christ's commands have practical daily life implications, like loving your neighbor in all these different ways.
But even then, with loving our neighbor, there is an order of priority, and I believe that at first it begins with.
Multiple factors, but a major one is the argument of proximity.
Loving your neighbor starts at home.
You cannot love the children of your community at the expense of loving your own children.
So go all the way back now to the argument that Jen Wilkin is making.
She's saying that if you pull your children out of the public school district, then you're going to hurt other children in the community.
And somehow, what she's At least by way of implication, is that that's a moral failure, at least for some families.
She gives the caveat and the disclaimer that this isn't a universal application across the board.
There are multiple factors, but she's at least implying that for some families, some Christian families, in their case, to not have their kids in the public school system would be to morally fail in meeting the needs and loving their neighbors of other children in the community at large.
That's not a biblical argument.
That's simply not a biblical argument.
Because what we're discussing here is not, again, it's not, I have the ability to thoroughly and perfectly love my own children according to the law of God and what He commands and how God defines love.
And in God's generosity, He has bestowed upon me sovereignly enough resources, enough talents, and time, and energy, and wisdom, and treasure, and all these things that I can thoroughly love my children as the Lord would have me.
And have something left over to love other children in the community as well, and yet I'm just choosing not to.
See, that's kind of the framework that she's building.
That's just the very premise is false and absurd.
That's not what we're talking about.
We're not talking about the ability to meet all the requirements that God has for fathers and mothers for their children, and then just simply willfully refusing.
To meet the needs of other children as well, that would cost your children nothing.
Now, in this particular scenario, what we're discussing is actually willfully doing something with your own children that would be to their detriment in order to seemingly, and the case isn't even proven, but just for the sake of argument, humoring Wilkin for a moment, seemingly benefiting someone else's children.
I'm going to willfully.
Make a decision for my own children that will be to their detriment for the sake of benefiting someone else's children.
That even this, benefiting someone else's children, is not definitive, but really just a hope, maybe, possibility.
So I'm going to make this decision that will certainly harm my children to possibly benefit someone else's children.
My question would be chapter and verse.
I need the Bible for that.
What Bible verse, Jen, are you going to use to make that argument to Christian parents that they have a moral obligation in the category of the second commandment to love your neighbor as yourself to willfully make a decision to the detriment of their own children if it might possibly benefit someone else's?
Children.
Bullying Definitions Explained00:04:18
Essentially, that is the argument that's being made.
And it's a fallacious and absurd argument.
Let me show you just a few pictures of these public schools that Jen Wilkin would have you put your children in.
These are pictures that were taken this week.
And I want you to see this is not two or three pictures.
This is picture after picture after picture.
He said that the school, every square inch, in the true Kyperian way, except from the devil himself instead of Christ, but every square inch of the school was saturated in LGBT affirming rhetoric and emblems and flags and symbols,
Black Lives Matter, be curious, not judgmental, the sexual agenda, all these things.
Let's go through the pictures one more time, just a little bit slower.
I want to.
Point out a couple things.
Right here, you see Black Lives Matter, multiple, you know, equality, you know, all these things.
Inquires, it's hard for me to read some of the handwriting here.
I'm trying to be creative, but you see the flag there that has the gay rainbow and transgenderism and non binary and all, you know, the ugliest flag that's ever been invented by man.
You see the coexist symbol there, right?
You see the cross and all these other symbols from other false world religions.
There you go.
Let's move on to the next one.
There you go.
Rainbow flags, trans flag, all these things.
Let's move to the next one.
That's in the library, of course.
Here you go.
AISD Pride, right?
I think that's the school district, but basically saying that the school district is formally in support of gay pride.
That's clearly what this rainbow sticker is conveying.
Let's move on.
There you go.
Another rainbow flag.
You have the American flag, which is kind of really just the backdrop for the Flag that really matters that supports our new pseudo constitution that we've been following for quite some time now, which is the homo jihad right there, front and center.
Let's move on to the next.
There you go, Austin Independent School District.
There's your rainbow flag.
Let's move on.
Pride, Black Lives Matter.
Let's move on.
Be curious, not judgmental.
What do you think that's referring to?
The scientific method?
I don't think so.
I don't think it's saying, hey, you know what?
Let's be innovative and let's invent new things in the realm of mathematics and science.
No.
It's just more indoctrination about a moral ethic, primarily in regards to sexuality, that is antithetical to what the Bible teaches about a sexual ethic.
Let's move on.
BLM is every month.
I don't know what the rest says.
There you go.
Pan out with that picture.
It's a black girl.
There's a school bus in the background, basically implying a Rosa Parks situation.
Okay, yeah.
Where is that?
My question Where is that happening in 2023?
Where is a young black girl being told that she has to sit on the back of the school bus on the way to school?
That therefore morally mandates the necessity for this picture being drawn and hung up.
In a public school, let's go.
Next one.
Um, here you go.
More rainbow flags on top of the door right there by the classroom.
I assume that a you know teacher put that there, and I think that's probably it.
Maybe there's some more.
Here we go.
Call out sexism, call out homophobia, call out bullying.
Let me just say something about that for a second.
Call out bullying, sure, but we know that bullying is being defined by the first two statements, sexism and homophobia.
So, what is a bully in this context?
A bully is somebody who's homophobic.
A bully is someone who's sexist.
God's Commandments Not Burdensome00:10:36
Well, I would say, as Doug Wilson and others have profoundly said before, let's recover, let's seek to recover the lost virtue of sexism.
I don't want to avoid sexism.
I want to make sexism great again.
Yeah, there are two sexes and they are different.
And there are things inherent to males and things inherent to females.
And we should treat one another not the same, not androgyny.
We should treat one another distinctly with distinctions in our way of life and our interactions with a male versus our interactions with a female because a woman is different than a man and a man is different than a woman.
He has made us, male and female, distinct, different, and we should treat one another in different ways.
There is one way in which I am raising my daughters, there is another way in which I plan to raise my son.
It's not the same.
Some things are universal to humanity.
Others are distinct between the two sexes.
So, you know, call out sexism.
No, thank you.
No.
Call out homophobia.
Well, we know that that's going to be loosely and subjectively and unjustly interpreted as what is homophobia.
Simply saying that homosexuality is a sin would be defined by most today as homophobia, although I don't think that that's homophobic.
I think that that's simply what the Bible teaches.
I'm not afraid of those who are sodomites.
I'm not afraid of those who are transgender.
I don't have any fear associated, but I do hate that sin because it's an abomination to the Lord.
It's perverse, it's wicked, it's gross.
It has not only an effect on individuals who choose to sin against their own bodies in that way and commit indecent and unnatural acts with one another, but it also has a harmful and eroding effect at a general level for societies.
As a whole.
And so, in that sense, I absolutely hate the sin.
And I'm not afraid of it, but I do have, I wouldn't say fear, but I would say that I believe there's a proper reaction of disgust.
If a Christian is in a movie theater, for instance, and sees two men in the row in front of him and they kiss one another, and your first reaction, your first instinct is, gross, I think that that's a proper reaction.
I don't think that that's a sin that needs to be repented of.
I don't think that that's harmful, derogatory, unnecessarily mean or rude.
I think you should exercise self control.
You don't necessarily have to express that out loud.
You don't need to be unnecessarily offensive.
You don't need to try to get a rise out of these two individual men.
You don't need to cause a scene in this public space.
But for you to have this private reaction of disgust to a public display.
Of homosexual, same sex affection, and to say, yeah, my first instinct is that, ugh, that's gross.
That's unnatural.
That's not homophobia.
And that's not even non Christian.
I think that that actually, ironically, is a very Christian reaction.
And then hopefully, by the grace of God, that instinct is quickly followed up with perhaps a prayer God, would you grant them repentance that they would turn from their sin, that they would turn in personal faith to the Lord Jesus Christ and receive?
Salvation by grace and seek to put this sin to death, and that they would pursue that which is holy and righteous according to your immutable standard found in your wonderful law.
Because this is gross and wrong.
Sin is gross.
Sin is gross.
All sin is gross, but there are degrees.
There are degrees.
All sin is gross, but there are some sins, per Romans 1, that are particularly unnatural, that are grosser than other sins.
This is not homophobia.
This is the Christian sexual ethic.
So, all these things being said, there's a little picture of the public school that Jen Wilkins says.
Hey, I would never say that every family, every Christian family, you know, giving her the benefit of the doubt, using her words, she did say that.
She made this disclaimer.
She said, I would never say that every Christian family should put their kids in public school, but I think maybe some should.
You know, because the question that a lot of Christians, you know, are asking is, you know, what's best for my family?
But that's not really the way that we should think as Christians.
We shouldn't think in exclusive terms of what's best for our family.
The last thing that I want to say is this I just reject the basic notion and concept that what is best for your individual household is going to be somehow contradicting or pitted against what's best for society as a whole.
See, that's the beauty of God's law, is that it's not all subjective, that it's not guesswork.
It's not, Jesus says, All who are weary and heavy laden, come to me and I will give you rest.
For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
Elsewhere in the scripture, it says that the commandments of God are not burdensome.
It's not just that there's a rest and relief.
In the triune God, because of his mercy and because of the gospel of free grace.
That is most certainly true.
But the Bible also says that even the law of God, there is a sense in which the law of God is not only the morally right thing, but it's also that which is beneficial and good.
David delights in the law of God.
He doesn't just acknowledge it and begrudgingly, you know, pull himself up by his bootstraps and submit to it because it's morally right, but he delights in it.
In the law of God, he sees it as good, holy, and right.
Not just holy and right, but also good.
That which brings prosperity and flourishing, that which is beneficial for individual image bearers of the living God and societies as a whole.
The law of God, not just the gospel of God, but the law of God is a breath of fresh air.
God's commandments are not burdensome.
I believe it was G.K. Chesterton who said that if we will not have 10 commandments, we will have 10,000.
Commandments.
I mean, think of just all the different rules and guidelines over the last three years that we've experienced in virtually every single country on the planet in regards to the branch covidians.
And we come to find out in hindsight that many of these were arbitrary.
Why six feet apart and not five or not 15?
Do masks actually work?
Well, okay, maybe only one type of mask.
Works, but how come I can wear a different cloth mask and that suffices in terms of the legislation, the requirements for entering this building or these premises?
And then you come to find out that it's statistically proven that this type of mask actually does nothing.
Right?
Well, you need to do this.
You need to do that.
You need to stay in your home.
You need to stay in your house two weeks to slow the spread.
You need to shut down schools, shut down this, shut down that.
If man will not have 10 commandments, he will have 10,000 commandments.
The law of God is, in its first use, it condemns because it reveals to us the holiness of God and, by way of contrast, our sinfulness and therefore our need for a Savior.
First use of the law of God is that it drives us to Christ.
Charles Spurgeon said, A man cannot appreciate the beauty of Christ unless he first comes to see the necessity for Christ.
The law of God shows us our necessity for Christ.
So, in the first use, this is the reformed traditional view the first use of God's law is that it does show us that we're crushed, that each of us is a transgressor, that each of us is underneath the just condemnation of God, children of his wrath, and that we are without hope in the world, that we need a savior, we need a substitute.
And so the law of God leaves us crushed, but it drives us to Christ, who's the balm, the healing balm, who mends our wounds.
But that's not the only use of the law of God.
The law of God does not exclusively have, it has, in the first sense, first and foremost, a crushing effect.
But the third use of God's law is that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
It functions not just as a mirror revealing our sinfulness and that we're under the wrath of God apart from.
Saving faith in Christ, but in the third use of God's law, it's a compass, it's a guide, it's a tutor, it directs us in the way in which we should live, not just the way in which we should live that is pleasing to God, because none of us will be progressively righteous enough to ever merit God's saving favor, but it shows us the way in which we should live that is pleasing to God, not saving.
We're only saved by Christ's perfect law keeping, not our own.
But it shows us what is pleasing to God and by obedience to the law of God, it not only Honors God or brings glory to God, but it does good to man.
That which is bringing glory to God, obedience to the law of God, also is that which is good for man.
All that being said, what is God's law as it pertains to fathers, chiefly, mothers as well, but fathers predominantly in their moral obligation to their children?
Ephesians chapter 6 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but raise them up.
In the knowledge and instruction of the Lord.
Education Is Never Neutral00:11:03
Train them up in the paideia of the Lord, the Christian worldview, the Christian curriculum.
Raise them up in the paideia of the Lord, the knowledge and instruction, the fear of the Lord.
And the point is this God makes it really easy on us.
We don't have to get out a whiteboard and have, you know, 67 different sub points and, you know, drawing a pie graph and all these different things.
Things.
We don't have to be masters of trigonometry and quantum physics in order to be able to figure out what the will of God is.
We know the will of God.
The will of God for fathers and mothers is that we would instill in our children.
Our job is to indoctrinate our children in the things of God.
Indoctrination, it's not whether, but which.
It's which curriculum are our children going to be indoctrinated in?
They're going to be indoctrinated.
They're going to be shaped.
They're going to be forged.
They're going to be.
Immersed in instruction.
Someone will instruct them, and they will instruct them with one curriculum or another.
And what the Bible clearly tells us is that Christian fathers and Christian mothers have an obligation underneath the law of God to instill in their children a distinctly Christian education.
That nothing is neutral.
We have learned over the past three years that politics is not neutral, culture is not neutral.
We've learned that art is not neutral.
We must also come to realize that education is not neutral.
It is either a curriculum that affirms and delights in the universal truth of the triune God, or it is a curriculum and instruction that is antithetical to the Christian worldview, that is God hating on its face.
The public school doctrine is not enough just to say, well, there are Christians in the public school system, not just Christian children, but there are.
Christian teachers and Christian faculty and Christian administrators.
Yeah, but what curriculum are they required by the state, by law, to instill in your children?
I don't want a Christian teaching my children a non Christian curriculum.
There is no neutrality.
Our children will either be raised to fear the Lord, they'll either be raised in Christian doctrine and not just Bible class for 35 minutes as their first subject, as they then move on to the neutral realm of education.
No, nothing is neutral.
It is a Christian Bible class, Christian chapel, Christian psalm singing, Christian liturgy, but then it's also Christian math and Christian science and Christian literature and Christian arts.
Or the other way that you could say it is math, science, literature, and arts, because that's the only kind that there really is.
Anything that is Not Christian is not good art.
It progressively becomes ugly.
Anything that is not Christian math becomes not math.
It becomes 2 plus 2, in some cases, may equal 5, because mathematics and algebra, as we've come to know them, is really just a symptom of white oppression.
Do you see?
Your worldview, morality is baked into everything, nothing is neutral.
And so it's not just that we want to avoid all the gay flags in the public school system.
We do want to avoid that.
We do not want to subject our children to that context for 15,000 hours, 40 hours a week from the age of 5 to 18.
We don't want to do that.
But it's not just what we're commanded by God to protect our children from, but what we're commanded by God to provide for our children.
The chief role of a father could be summed up in those two categories to protect.
And provide.
So there is this satanic, God averse, God hating curriculum and context, and sadly, even people that we want to protect our children from.
But then there's also the paideia of the Lord, Christian education, that we're called to provide for our children.
And I submit to you, brother or sister in Christ, that you cannot sufficiently, as God would have you, thoroughly and effectively provide a Christian education for your children.
15 minutes a day on the back end, sometime in the evening in your family worship, on the back end of the 40 hour a week satanic indoctrination that you've subjected them to in the public school.
So, all that being said, not only are you called to protect your children from lies and false doctrine and perversion, but you're also called to provide for your children a thorough Christian instruction.
Which will not be accomplished in 15 minutes a day.
The public school system knows that.
No kid goes to public school for 15 minutes a day.
What do they require?
Eight hours a day.
Because they recognize, they're right about this.
They recognize that if we're truly to thoroughly instruct a child and shape them in their formation as they're becoming an adult, if we're going to do that, it's going to require copious amounts of time.
It's going to require 15,000 hours from the age of five to 18.
That's what it takes.
And I would submit to you again, Christian father, Christian mother, that's what it takes to provide for your children a Christian education.
If they're in public school, it's not just that you failed to protect, but you also, by way of just practical consequence, you have also failed to provide.
A child being placed by their Christian parents in a public school, those Christian parents are failing to protect their children from wickedness.
And by subjecting their child, committing to 15,000 hours of pagan indoctrination, they have just eaten up the bulk of time available to provide a Christian education.
So they're failing to protect, and they've decided effectively to fail in their provision.
They're failing to provide righteousness, and they are failing to protect from wickedness.
So the answer is abundantly clear.
It's quite clear in regards to what is best for our children.
And that's the beauty that the higher yeses answer for us.
They dictate, in many cases, for us all of our lower no's.
So, how much commitment should I have towards my neighbor's children?
In what way should I be concerned about them?
What do I need to be doing?
Well, start at home.
What does God command me to do with my children, with my household, my family, my wife and kids?
What am I called to protect them from and to provide for them?
I need to protect them from a certain set of things and provide for them a certain set of things.
Okay, now, if I'm committed to that first as an order of priority, which you should be, if I'm committed to that first, then what can I do in addition to that without neglecting the former?
What can I do over here that won't come at the expense of the first thing that I've been called to?
Well, if you're called to protect your children from pagan indoctrination and to give your children a 15,000 hour Christian Instruction and paideia curriculum, then one thing that immediately is answered as a no is well, we literally can't put them in public school.
And that's where I would make the argument again.
I don't believe that the Lord is pitting our love for our children against our love for other people's children.
I believe that if Christians do what is best for their children and that they don't determine what's best for their children subjectively or emotionally, but biblically, And there is an answer.
People don't like it.
It's not complex, it's just not popular.
The answer that Christians should not send their kids to public school is not an answer that Christians are hesitant to come to because it's complicated.
It's simply because it's hard.
Obedience to Christ is not complicated.
It's not complicated.
It's like chopping wood.
Chopping wood isn't complicated.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to chop wood, but you're probably going to sweat a little bit.
Something can be simple and hard.
It can be simple, not complicated, but still hard, not easy.
The answer to whether or not a Christian can put their kids in public school is a simple answer no, you cannot.
No, you cannot.
And all the ways in which we want to love other children in the community, outside of our immediate household, will be determined by first determining okay, this is what I must do with my kids.
And if I'm faithful to do what I must do with my kids, then there's a certain set of things that I may do in regards to others.
And the way that we work out, again, this proximity argument, this order of loves, our priority of commitment, you start at home, love your wife, love your children.
Beyond that, love your church, not just the universal and invisible global church of Christ throughout all ages, but start with your local church, the one that you're a member in.
Start loving your church as often as you have an opportunity to do good to all, but especially prioritize.
Start with the household of faith.
So, love your family, love your church, and then see what ways, what resources, what time, what talent, what treasure do I have left over to love others?
What opportunity do I have for the all now that I've first sufficiently and obediently loved the people that God has first commanded me to love?
And as I seek to love over here, It cannot come as a contradiction or at the expense of loving the people right here on my living room couch.
Supporting the Ministry During Recession00:01:38
Can't be doing that.
Can I be frank with you for just a second, right here at the end?
Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry, and from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you.
I cannot thank you enough.
However, some of you, you just, you can't afford it.
In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it.
Let's be honest.
I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's Ridiculous economy.
Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID.
We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.
It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession.
We are living in a recession right now, regardless.
Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.
You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you.
But you could still help us tremendously.
I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one minute of your time.
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform iTunes, Spotify, whatever that might be.
This is the way the system works.
We want to be innocent as doves, but shrewd as vipers.
We need to be strategic.
You leave us a five star review, and our podcast shows up for more people.
And the Word of God, And courageous theology applied in practical ways to every realm of life gets out there.