December 7, 2024
This summer Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Education issued a new directive that all public schools in Oklahoma are required to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments.
Walter’s pronouncement stirred up the progressive educators and politicians and set off screaming alarm bells from coast to coast in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Rachel Laser, President and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and other critics of Walter’s decision charged that it was a clear violation not only of parental rights but of the Constitution. Some indicated that it is a step toward “Christian nationalism”.
Chris Line from Freedom from Religious Freedom, stated, “We should be able to send our kids to school and know that they’re going to get along and that there’s not going to be divisive rhetoric and favoritism for certain religions and things like that.”
In the Abington School District v. Schempp decision in 1963 the judicial branch of government held that while academic lessons on the Bible are permissible, devotional readings in public schools violate the establishment clause in the First Amendment, which protects Americans' free exercise of religious beliefs. So, the Bible has not been ousted from our schools by the Supreme Court, but in fact, it has been permitted with very clear restrictions.
In Georgia, the issue has been settled and should be embraced with reason and understanding. In 2006, it became the first state to pass a law mandating that public schools offer elective courses on the Bible. Georgia's law created two optional, nondevotional classes on the history and literature of the Old and New Testaments.
While we have many good and godly teachers in our public school system, some parents may be justifiably concerned about the Bible being taught as a devotional book or a treatise on theology in our public schools because there are some teachers who do not know the book’s author and would not be qualified to “rightly divide the Word of Truth.”
The Bible says, “But the natural (unredeemed) man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (I Corinthians 2:14). I don’t think we want unregenerate teachers attempting to instruct our children spiritual truths.
Others may oppose the idea of God’s Word being taught in our public school system because they fear the truth and realize that the redeeming and transforming power of heaven’s blessed book will inevitably expose the permeating syncretism, the vain philosophies, the false ideologies, and Machiavellian indoctrination being taught in many schools. Their opposition could well inspire my endorsement of the concept, but God has a better plan.
In April 2023 President Joe Biden addressed the Council of Chief State School Officers and stated, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child. No such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.”
I respectfully disagree with the President. God’s plan is that parents have the primary responsibility of training and teaching their children. Parents should not depend upon the public school system or even the church to be the primary educators of their children. That is a role specifically placed upon fathers and mothers in the home.
Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 6:4-7: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Children are a treasure of inestimable worth. The Psalmist declared, “Behold, children are a heritage of from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward” (Psalm 127:3). They are to take our place when we go away and bear the responsibility to carry on and advance the noble and useful efforts we have begun for the cause of Christ.
Satan has launched a cleverly designed, but diabolically ruinous attack to capture the lives of our children. Satan targets children because he knows their potential for good or evil. He wants to capture their minds. Today children are being inundated with the junk food of this world through a multiplicity of technological devices, indoctrinated with vain ideologies in many of our educational institutions, and sometimes beleaguered by their dysfunctional families.
Churches can be partners to parents in helping to teach their children Biblical values and spiritual truths. However, the parents have the primary responsibility of bringing up their children in nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Parents who abdicate this responsibility will have to give an account before God for their failure to properly teach their children the precious, life-giving truth of Holy Scripture
The reality is this: if we don’t teach our children to follow Christ, the world will teach them not to.
However, there is something the public schools can do to supplement and enhance the character and moral well-being of our children. I am convinced that the Ten Commandments should be visible in every public school classroom, because they represent universal justice and ethics. These moral laws have been called “the bedrock of Western Civilization.” While the Decalogue is primarily embraced by Judaism and Christianity, it provides the foundation for many secular legal systems and codes and is comparable to the laws of many other religions.
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J. Gerald Harris is a retired pastor and journalist who served as editor of The Christian Index for nearly two decades. You can reach him at gharris@loveliftedmehigher.org.
