Crosstalk: February 12, 2019

Tim Schmig is executive director of the Michigan Association of Christian Schools and the Great Lakes Regional Legislative Director for the American Association of Christian Schools. Tim also leads tours to our nation’s capital and Christian Heritage Sites, ‘Stories in Stone’.

Tim presented a powerful apologetic (defense) not only for Christian education, but by extension, the Christian faith as well. The reason for this defense centered on the renewed attack on Christian education fueled by Second Lady Karen Pence’s decision to take a part-time volunteer teaching position at a Christian school.

At issue for some is the fact that this school follows biblical teaching that doesn’t allow for homosexual or lesbian sexual activity among those employed there and applicants must attest to living a personal life of moral purity.

Tim believes that the Pence’s are living out their faith. They’re not doing or saying anything that anyone who was examining their lives didn’t know before they went to Washington.

Jim then mentioned an editorial from CNN that called the school’s position a brand of hate and deplorable for Karen Pence. Tim sees this as reckless language and that such critics who were rooting for someone else to be in the White House failed to do their due diligence. He cited one commentator on MSNBC who was aghast that there was going to be someone in the White House who believes in a literal, six-day creation. However, this was known to anyone willing to examine the facts.

Tim indicated that what bothers the critics is not the fact that as believers we believe in God, what bothers them is that we believe God. We believe in what He says about marriage and human sexuality. The critics want these things to be ‘fluid’ so that they can give them any definition they want. He described them as engaging in ‘virtue signaling’. They are the moral elite and can define what is good, right and acceptable in society and anyone who disagrees with them are the haters.

The opposition isn’t going to quit or go away. The difference between us and them is that as believers, we can afford to lose. We can walk away from a situation and say that we will live to fight another day as ultimately we take our confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ and He is in control of everything. For those on the other side, their social agenda is their religion. They can’t afford to lose because they believe with a righteous fervor and evangelistic zeal that every case like this must be won.

He then listed those institutions that lay good, moral foundations: marriage, the military, the Boy Scouts, etc. All such institutions need to be attacked and replaced which makes the opposition nihilistic in what they’re attempting.

Christian education began in the 1600’s. The New England Primer, the very first textbook in our nation, taught a moral foundation even as it taught the A-B-C’s. After that there was a catechism borrowed from the Westminster Catechism. It asked what the chief end of man is. The answer is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. In other words, the purpose of early American education was to create disciples. A child was to go home more in touch with a spiritual life whereby they walked in favor with God than if the student had missed school that day.

Those are the foundations that bother the critics and for them, they must be destroyed so that they can create a brave new world. So, in essence, they’ve replace a moral catechism with one that they’ve assigned morality to. Their catechism has to do with global warming, recycling, mother nature and other issues that they equate with morality and hence, young people think they are being a good person because they separate paper from plastic. There is no moral equivalence linked to that.

Tim believes all education is religious, it all comes down to who’s ‘thous’ and ‘thou shalt nots’ you’re going to obey.

Is there going to be a full scale attack against Christian schools across America? Get Tim’s answer and the views of listeners across America when you review this edition of Crosstalk.