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The Miracles of Jesus and their Meaning

Dec 31, 2025 | Parents and Family, Theology

I was inspired to write this post because of an unpleasant Twitter interlocutor who claimed to know things about me from one sentence I wrote in a comment: “Jesus’ healing ministry was a metaphor for spiritual reality.” He came back in so many words with, why do you hate Jews? What? He used the word “literal” a number of times as if my statement somehow implied I didn’t believe Jesus physically, “literally” healed Jews. Not too many responses in and it was clear he was not interested in a conversation. Such is part of the downside of social media and interacting with sinful human beings, but alas I get to flesh out here what I did in fact mean, and why I think it’s important.

As a Reformed Christian I embrace the doctrines of grace, which refers to a Calvinist understanding of how God saves sinners. Man is unable to save himself because he is dead in his sin, not merely sick or crippled, but on the bottom of the pool dead. That was the metaphor I was presented the first time I was introduced to Calvinism. For my young Christian life up to that point, over six years, I believed all people had the ability to decide to believe in and follow Christ. Jesus died for everyone, and those who choose him will be saved. Instead of being at the bottom of the pool, dead, they were flailing around in the water yelling for help. Jesus was the life preserver, and anyone is free to grab it, or not. I remember thinking, Calvinism is upside down from how I had conceived the Christian faith, but it made sense logically; more importantly, it made sense biblically. I went home and reading the Bible I saw it everywhere, thinking, how could I have missed this?

You might already see where I’m going with this. If someone is blind, he can’t make himself see. Only Jesus can do that. Deaf, lame, or crippled? Only God can heal that. Not to mention literally (there’s the word) bringing someone back from the dead, which included Lazarus and Jairus’s daughter. All these healings, and almost all of them were Jews, point beyond the healings, to a much more important spiritual healing to come. First, Jesus didn’t heal people to show off his power, but as evidence of his authority to fulfill God’s covenant promise to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). Jews were expecting a different Messiah than Jesus turned out to be, which is why he could never have been made up by Jews. They were looking for a Davidic king who would finally end their oppression, the Romans only the latest of their tormentors. What Jesus the Messiah came to bring was a transformation in spiritual reality by paying the ultimate price for sin that would eventually transform this material world.

The Material Implications of Jesus’ Healing Ministry
Using the word “spiritual” in the modern church context is a problem because of Pietism. I used that word with my unpleasant interlocutor, and he went on a rant that I was against being pious, or against a personal, experiential relationship with God through Christ in devotional Bible reading, prayer, and worship. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never been as emotionally invested in my faith as I am now. What I do mean by Pietism is the 17^th century German Lutheran movement that developed in response to a dry, overly intellectual approach to the faith called scholasticism. Through the First Great Awakening, Wesley, the Second Great Awakening, Revivalism, and fundamentalism, Pietism came to dominate the modern Evangelical church.

As a result, the word “spiritual” came to mean other worldly, heavenly, non-material. The word that best describes this state of mind is dualism, an upstairs/downstairs reality. Upstairs is the important, “spiritual” stuff, Bible reading, prayer, evangelism, worship, downstairs the not so important, mundane, material stuff like work and politics and cultural pursuits. My interlocutor was stuck in his dualistic perspective on spirituality, so when I wrote “spiritual” he interpreted it as having nothing to do with downstairs, physical, “literal” reality. In fact, biblical speaking, the “spiritual” has everything to do with the “material.” There is no dualism separating them in a biblical view of the world. This is why it’s good to immerse ourselves in the Old Testament because the Hebrews, then Jews, were a deeply this material world oriented people, and they saw salvation as connected to material reality. To them, spiritual meant material, and material meant spiritual. It was the Greeks who brought us dualism, and eventually that made its way into Christianity over many centuries.

Now that we have definitions out of the way, what exactly do I mean by these “material implications”? This is a paradigm shift for most Christians, so stick with me.

We’re familiar with the story in Luke 5 about the paralyzed man who is lowered through the roof because his friends were desperate to get him healed by Jesus. When God put in Scripture He had to have Hollywood in mind, it is that dramatic. Luke tells us:

¹⁹When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

The crowd must have been enormous. Luke says that people had come from “every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem.” The news of the power Jesus had to heal had gone far and wide, and now the show was ready to begin. What does Jesus do? The unexpected, of course:

²⁰When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

What? I can imagine the people thinking, “What in the world does that have to do with healing a crippled man?” The Pharisees and teachers of the law were horrified because they rightly thought, “Only God can forgive sin.” To them Jesus was blaspheming. Then Jesus asks a question nobody could have made up, except Jesus of Nazareth:

²³Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?

This is almost funny because it’s easy to say either one. The issue is, can you pull it off, whether you have the authority and power to do these things. Here is where we see an example of the material implications of a spiritual reality. So Jesus tells them:

²⁴But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ²⁵Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. ²⁶Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

If you’ve ever seen Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, the 1977 miniseries, he portrays this episode masterfully. Nobody, most especially no Jews, could conceive of a Messiah who would have the authority to forgive sin. If he could, he would be God! Exactly. Jesus proved his authority to forgive sins by overcoming one of the consequences of the fall, disease of the human body.

Metaphorically, then, Jesus healing disease points to a powerful spiritual reality of the transformation of this fallen, sinful world, and a pushing back against the material effects of the fall. Contrary to what our Charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters might believe, Jesus and the Apostles were not telling us that supernatural healing would be the common, normal way people would be healed. Rather, it would be the result of the permeating of the good news of the gospel into the dark, fallen world. The two parables that speak most directly to this are the parables of the mustard seed and leaven in Matthew 13. Jesus prefaces the parables with, “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” The scope and extent of the spreading of gospel influence, i.e., God’s kingdom, will ultimately affect every square inch of reality like leaven or yeast through a batch of dough. The question is what this spiritual-material influence looks like.

The Christian Transformation of the World
We have to go back to the very beginning when God gave Adam and Eve the dominion mandate to rule God’s creation, to fill the earth and subdue it. When they rebelled, sin and death enter the world, and Satan took control of God’s creation. God’s plan was to take it back, and he promised the seed of the woman would strike or crush the serpent’s head. Then God in Genesis 12 promises Abram that “all peoples on earth would be blessed through” him. The word blessed is used some 65 times in Genesis because the whole point of redemptive history is for God to bless his creatures and his creation, to bestow his favor upon it, and not in dualistic “spiritual” terms, but in every way human beings interact with material reality. Look around you. Open your eyes. What do you see? Blessings!

One way I define blessing is with the idea of empowerment. When God blesses people He empowers, He enables, them to do a wide variety of things, to flourish. We easily see the blessings of “spiritual” flourishing in personal terms, in our own relationship to God, forgiven, loved unconditionally, living in harmony with others, but not so much in material terms, those we easily take for granted. Try to imagine living in a world without electricity. You can’t! Electricity empowers us to control our environment so we can live in a swamp like Florida or a desert like Arizona. Try counting the modern amenities electricity makes possible, and you would be at it for a while. Blessings! Prior to the late 19^th century people couldn’t conceive of any of them. Petroleum used to be a nuisance in the ground, and the knowledge gained from science and technology has enabled us to transform civilization with it.

We would go on, but the material flourishing we live with every day is the spiritual reality of God’s covenant promise expressing itself in materially significant ways. In other words, what God promised Abram, and then confirmed consistently throughout redemptive history, and fulfilled in Christ, we’re experiencing right now in material blessing. That is spiritual! It is the result of what Christ accomplished on the cross. The Lord through Moses in Deuteronomy 8 tells is:

¹⁸But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

One of the reasons Jewish people have been materially successful wherever they’ve lived throughout the millennia is because wealth isn’t merely a material thing to them, but a sign of God’s covenant faithfulness to them, a result of God having established a relationship with them. This mentality got into the Jewish DNA so that even secular Jews have some kind of residual blessing effect in what they accomplish.

My last post was on developing an attitude of gratitude, and in it I compare life in the modern world to what it was like in the ancient world so we get a graphic picture of the profound blessings we have all around us and live with every day. I won’t repeat all that, but in the first century before science and technology and modern medicine, and the explosion of knowledge in the last two hundred years, life was extremely hard. English philosopher Thomas Hobbs describing life in his own time more than 1500 years later as living in “continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In the ancient world even more so. Life was terribly difficult until the 20^th century, but in the ancient world it was positively brutal. Because of God’s promises to Abram and the Patriarchs it is so no longer.

What I’m trying to say is that when Jesus died on the cross, was buried, rose three days later, ascended to heaven and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, material wealth and prosperity have been one of the many blessings of his saving work. We’re so caught up in that Pietistic and dualistic mentality that we limit Christ’s saving work to our own personal salvation from sin and personal holiness, but not saving the material world from the horrible effects of sin. Jesus has enabled us, his body, by the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the dominion mandate Adam could not. I’ve often referenced and quoted Tom Holland’s book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World here and in my books, and if you haven’t read it, it’s well worth the effort. He says in the preface:

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that is has come to be hidden from view.

And this transformation from ancient and brutal to modern and civilized and wealthy is not merely from the ideas of Christianity, but from Christ defeating the devil and sin and death on the cross! Salvation from sin is not merely personal or relational or just for the church but for the entire world. As Isaac Watts says in his great Christmas hymn, Joy to the World, “He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found.”

I know how counter intuitive this is to most Christians today because our conception of “spiritual” is so other worldly. But God so loved this world that he gave his only begotten son for it. One day it will be fully transformed when Christ returns and sin and death are finally destroyed, but God began the transformation at Christ’s first coming, and it’s been slowly happening ever since, and will until he has put all his enemies under Christ’s feet (I Cor. 15:25).

One of my favorite passages pointing to Christ’s transformational power accomplished in the gospel is Isaiah 65. I used to think it applied only when he returns and transforms all things ultimately. This verse seemed to confirm that:

¹⁷“See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.

How could this not be at his second coming? Now I realize given the rest of the passage, this is describing what is happening because of this first coming, his first Advent. It’s a metaphorical description of what Christ came to accomplish, and will be literal as well when he returns. Think about it. Can you even imagine a world without the gospel, without Christianity, without the multitudes of transformations, personal and societal, it brought? No! You can’t.

It’s clear from the rest of the passage this can only refer to our current fallen world where sin’s effects still exist, including death:

“Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reacha hundred
will be considered accursed.
²¹They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²²No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
²³They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
they and their descendants with them.
²⁴Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
²⁵The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

It is difficult to see how this refers to a sinless, perfected world where death and the effects of the fall are completely eradicated. Some will say the wolf and the lamb feeding together is certainly in the new heavens and earth, but it could also be a metaphorical account of harmony among us as God’s creatures, and what will happen when everything is made new again.

Also, because of my post-Covid health epiphany, I see the possibility of a hundred plus year healthy lifespan as a real possibility in the generations to come. I also love that the Lord is telling us because of “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), we will “long enjoy” the work of our hands. As Paul says, our “labor in the Lord is not in vain” (I Cor. 15:58), both now and into forever. All of this is the gospel! All of it the good news! Proclaim it from the rooftops: Our God is the Lord Almighty!

The Answer to All Our Problems Lies in the Home

Dec 17, 2025 | Parents and Family

My friend Brandon, who is the proprietor of the YouTube Channel I’m part of, Eschatology Matters, wrote a Facebook post on the centrality of the family for the maintenance of civilization. As soon as I read it I knew I had to write about it. Here is a portion of what he said:

Everyone sees how bad everything is. The chaos in Washington, the madness of the Left. There are a million books and podcasts on what’s wrong and how to fix it. What our society desperately needs is strong families. Strong homes. And that starts with strong men and women.

Twentieth century feminism taught women that their highest aim was to be like a man. It taught men to submit and be like women. It’s nearly destroyed us. Our daughters need to know change starts by valuing the home and family. It’s not getting in their way of self-fulfillment; it’s the very thing that humanity itself hinges upon.

The future belongs to those who know what’s truly valuable. By God’s grace, and His alone, the great 20th Century Lie ends now, in my home.

I responded to Brandon: “Amen! The cradle of civilization is the home; all the answers start there.” Most importantly, it starts in my home.

The spiritual war that rages on a cultural and societal level is not primarily “out there,” but in the home. If we build civilized homes that honor God and his law, we’ll build civilizations that do as well. The family is foundational to everything God has done, is doing, and will do in the advancing of his kingdom on earth. The foundational nature of the family was accepted for the entirety of Western history until the modern era when the individual became the focal point of existence. Along with that came the rise of feminism over the last two hundred years, among other societal and cultural forces, and the family became just another “lifestyle choice.” It is not.

The Family as Foundation for Civilization
The well-functioning family is required for a well-functioning society and civilization. If the family isn’t flourishing, neither will the society. Any place where familial breakdown is rampant, be it the inner city black ghetto, or white hillbilly Appalachia, societal breakdown follows as night follows day. In the 1960s and 70s, liberals basking in the faux freedom of the sexual revolution like the teenagers many of them were, thought the family was optional, and that divorce and familial breakdown wouldn’t have any negative societal consequences. Nobody believes that anymore because the evidence is overwhelming. Dysfunctional families create dysfunctional children who bring their dysfunction into their communities and the culture. Suffering follows.

In fact, healthy families are the fundamental requirement in a republican form of government like America for the exercise of liberty and self-government. A self-governing republic needs people who can actually self-govern! Which means it is the primary bulwark against all tyrannical forms of government. Our current societal collapse is what happens when this civilizational bulwark breaks down. This was a commonly accepted fact through most of American history, until the sexual revolution. I came across some quotes about the family from President Theodore Roosevelt that in our day would be considered “controversial,” but in the early 20^th century were common, this being a good example:

It is in the life of the family upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the Nation rests . . . . The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its borders—Everything in the American civilization and nation rests upon the home—The family relation is the most fundamental, the most important of all relations.

His traditional conception of the family including the roles of men and women as husbands and wives would be positively shocking to our secular cultural elites, woke or not. R.J. Rushdoony states what Roosevelt observed as axiomatic for Christian Western civilization:

The family is, sociologically and religiously, the basic institution, man’s first and truest government, school, state, and church. Man’s basic emotional and psychic needs are met in terms of the family.

This was an inarguable statement of fact until the 20th century and the rise of secularism, and with that rise, for example, the state slowly began to usurp the prerogatives of the family in education. J. Gresham Machen writing in 1925 argued it had already happened:

The most important Christian educational institution is not the pulpit or the school, as important as these institutions are; it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work. . . . . The lamentable fact is that the Christian home, as an educational institution, has largely ceased to function.

Even the great pagan philosopher, Aristotle, understood the primary importance of the family for the possibility of civilizational flourishing. In a book called, Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything, Robert R. Reilly writes of Aristotle:

For Aristotle, the irreducible core of a polity is the family. Thus, Aristotle begins his Politics not with a single individual, but with a description of a man and woman together in the family, without which the rest of society cannot exist. He says: “First of all, there must necessarily be a union or pairing of those who cannot exist without one another.” Later, he states that “husband and wife are alike essential parts of the family.” The family is the nursery of virtue, which reaches its perfection in the polity.

With only revelation in creation, Aristotle innately understood what God reveals in Genesis, that a man and woman would become one flesh, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, having dominion over every living thing. The family is the first institution upon which every other institution is built.

The biblical basis for the family is assumed from Genesis on with the family as the central unit of Hebrew and then Jewish life and civilization. Three of the Ten Commandments address families directly.

#5: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

# 7: You shall not commit adultery.

#10: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

I used the fifth commandment a lot with our kids as they were growing up. It’s helpful leverage appealing to their self-interest. You want a good life? You want the blessing of God on your life? Then do as I say! When God lays down the fundamentals of existence, of how we’re supposed to live in this world he created, the family is central. Get family life right, and everything else flows. Of course, the devil figured out if the family is so important, then that’s what he’d have to destroy.

The Rise of Feminism and the Modern Era
His attack starts with the fall. Man was created to be the leader, provider, and protector of his home (the garden), while the woman was there to help him. The Lord tells us why he created man, male and female:

¹⁸The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

A man or woman alone is “not good,” meaning it’s not the ideal state for which we were created. For whatever reason, some people end up single, and they are not second class citizens, but in God’s economy the ideal is marriage. This tells us as Christian parents we are to raise our children to aspire to marriage, that it is a good, noble, and wonderful calling, but it’s not an easy one. It is as important to teach them the latter as it is the former, which I’ll address below. We also learn something about the roles in a marriage. The woman is to the be the helper for the man, not man the helper for the woman. This drives feminists and egalitarians nuts, but it wasn’t my idea. Their beef is with God.

As for the difficulties of marriage, God also tells us why that is in Genesis 3. Among the consequences of man’s rebellion was a tension in the marriage relationship. Because of the curse of sin, the Lord says to Eve:

Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.

What makes these sinful inclinations so difficult is Satan’s fundamental temptation to Eve: “You will be like God knowing good and evil.” You now get to call the shots! What you think and feel is the most important thing, not what God reveals. That is a recipe for marital disaster.

When the marriage relationship works well, as God intended it to work if we live in obedience to Him, it is glorious, when it doesn’t, we’re all familiar with the consequences. Because of sin exacerbated by sinful culture, our fallen tendencies have gotten us to the point in marriage history where divorce and broken families are common. For the first 1800 years of Christian history patriarchy, or male rule, was the normal state of affairs, and too many men abused that. One of the understandable results was feminism. As horrible as feminism has been, one of the benefits has been to remind us of the dignity and strength of women, and how men are to treat them with respect as “the weaker vessel” (I Peter 1:7). These dynamics didn’t happen in a vacuum, and understanding the history of their development is important if we’re to address the marital challenges in our day.

Making this even more difficult than it already is, is one of the downsides of living in the “information age,” historical ignorance. Add to that the rise of “progressive education” over the last hundred years that devalued history as it fetishized progress. Average Americans have no clue that what they think and believe, how they see the world, is largely determined by all the people and events that happened before they were even born. This ignorance can be blamed on the family because, as Machen implied, parents are responsible for the education of their children, not schools. If children do go to schools (i.e., are not home schooled), then the parents ought to determine which schools and what they are allowed to learn. I know, easier said than done, but the responsibility is still ours as parents.

Part of this historical ignorance is that most Christians have no idea that the modern world became modern largely as the result of rise of Christianity. Much bad, however, came out of the good. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries Western intellectuals decided that human reason without divine revelation in Scripture, called rationalism, was how we would find all the answers to the mysteries of life, and the long slide downhill into the disaster of modern secularism was on its way. The rise of feminism began not too long after this in the early 1800s as the industrial revolution was beginning to expand throughout the West. The historical dynamics in which feminism developed are complicated and complex, but in addition to the fall and the rise of secularism, another one worth addressing is economics.

The material reason for feminism’s rise was the industrial revolution. British journalist Mary Harrington in her book Feminism Against Progress, explains how the economic changes that transformed an agrarian society created the forces in which feminism rose. She grew up completely accepting every lie feminism told, and as she grew older slowly began to realize they were in fact lies. What ultimately opened her eyes was finally getting married and pregnant later in her 30s or into her 40s. She writes:

I concluded that what’s usually narrated as a story of progress towards feminist freedom and equality can be better understood as a story of economic transition: in particular, of the transition into industrial society, and the transformative effect that shifts had on every aspect of how men and women live—whether apart or together—including how we organize family life.

So, these three factors, the fall, the Enlightenment, and economic reality, make marriage and relationships between men and women, and family life, complicated. And statistics prove that as secularism came to dominant American culture, and the further away America moved from Christ and Christianity, the worse the results for marriage and family life. Since the sexual revolution and no fault divorce exploded in the 60s and 70s, the American home has suffered, and with it multitudes of people living lives of struggle and pain. The statistics of suicide, widespread depression and anxiety, and broken families are sobering, be we have the answer! No, it’s not an easy answer because none of these forces cease to exist just because we embrace Christ and commit to his word as the guide for our lives, but he makes flourishing families possible.

Familial Flourishing in Christ
Having been married for thirty-eight years and four months, I marvel that marriages can survive without Christ at their center. It so happened that my wife and I met at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, and that our premarital counselor was Tim Keller. I’ll never forget the first thing he told us in our first session: “The only sinner bigger than the one you’re marrying is you.” I was nonplussed (surprised). I thought that was kind of blunt! But oh how true it is. Unless you are completely blind, deaf, and dumb, it becomes obvious not too long into a marriage what a horrible human being you are. None of us are mass murder horrible, but you begin to see what a self-centered often petty and juvenile creature you can be. You realize your three favorite pronouns are I, me, and mine. George Harrison wrote a song called exactly that!

These realizations of our natural sinful tendencies lead to another benefit of marriage, sanctification. Keller also told us after we’d done a personality test that we are so different we will either destroy one another or sanctify each other. Wow, Tim, you really know how to make a couple feel good about themselves. But knowing marriage is hard because it’s two sinners living intimately together is foundational for a successful marriage. And because we are sinful sinners who sin, having at the center of our marriage a Savior who died for us on a Roman cross for our sins is crucial. It’s so much easier to apologize and say I’m a jerk or a moron because, well, I am! And here’s the golden key. Because Jesus died for us, and forgave us, when we were his enemies (Rom. 5:8-10), we are obligated for forgive others, not least our spouse. Jesus made is possible for us to truly love others because we daily take up our cross and follow him. I grew up in a home of constant bickering and tension, and I despised it. I swore that would never be my house, and because of Jesus it isn’t.

All of this has a profound spillover effect on our children. When mom and dad truly love one another, even as imperfect as they are, the children see what real life is about from a Jesus perspective. They see how two sinners can offend and hurt one another, and still love and respect each other. The reason early Christianity grew among women the quickest is because Jesus and Christianity transformed the male and female relationship. Women instead of property with no rights and little respect, were now co-equal heirs of eternal life in Christ. It was literally world-transforming. When Paul wrote this in Galatians, pagans and Jews would have thought him certifiably insane:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Because of Christ and the full testimony of Scripture, we know men as patriarchs are the leaders, providers, and protectors of their families, having their wives alongside to enable them to fulfill their roles successfully. Men won’t be tempted to “pull rank” because there is no need. Biblically, men lead, women submit. Men are the ultimate authority in the home, but with ultimate authority comes ultimate responsibility. Women have the responsibility of the home, and men to “bring home the bacon.” However, there are no ideal versions of a home; it’s messy, and has to be negotiated given modern realities. As Brandon said,

Twentieth century feminism taught women that their highest aim was to be like a man. It taught men to submit and be like women.

The thing I’ve seen destroy most marriages, and children if the marriages survive, is weak husbands and strong wives. This largely has to do with personalities, but the real problem is when men won’t lead, and women think they can. Or women who want their men to lead, but since the men won’t they have to. Again, this is messy and every relationship is different. No ideal exists. What does, is being obedient to God’s design for marriage and family. Biblically it is clear what that is. Though we fail and struggle, we go to the cross as men and women and daily repent. Then we get back up the next day and pray that God will use us to build a home to His glory for the good of our families, and the advance of his kingdom on earth.

Christian Children Are Not Strangers to the Covenant

Nov 19, 2025 | Parents and Family, Theology

In this life the debate between Baptists and paedobaptists, or baptizing babies, will never end, and this post doesn’t seek to do the impossible. My powers of persuasion are not that great, nor is my knowledge. It is written, rather, for those who are open to trying to understand why we baptize our children, and our grandchildren. And I won’t lie; I always welcome Baptists becoming Presbyterians. The latter in case you don’t know is a baby baptizing denomination. So full disclosure: as I try to explain, I also try to persuade. So be warned all yee Baptists!

If Baptism comes down to water and a handful of examples in the New Testament, then the Baptists have a slam dunk case, no pun intended. But if Baptism is about the entire context of redemptive history, the examples are not the point. For the average Christian the handful of examples in Acts are dispositive, they decide the case, end of story. But the examples also point in the other direction, the paedobaptist direction, as we’ll see.

The critical issue is where you start. Most Evangelicals are Baptists, so they start and likely end with the examples in Acts. They would also wonder why we Presbyterians are always talking about covenant as it relates to baptism, but Christianity didn’t start when Jesus was born. Jesus was the fulfillment of thousands of years of redemptive history. We can go back to the fall and God’s promise to Adam and Eve that the seed will strike or crush the serpent’s head, but the specific start of the covenant of grace started with God’s promise to Abram (Gen 12). Remember, he called one man out of all the people on earth at the time, and promised that through him all the peoples on earth would be blessed. Unless you start your study of baptism there, you’re missing the entire context of why baptism exists in the first place. The discussion of baptism must start with the doctrine of the covenant. I became a paedobaptist because of it.

My Journey to Paedobaptism
I’d become an Evangelical Christian at 18 having been born and raised a nominal Catholic. Of course I rejected infant baptism as a new Protestant, and got myself dunked and re-baptized. Then when I was 24, I was introduced to Reformed theology, and instantly embraced it. TULIP was a no brainer for me, but infant baptism? No way! That’s Catholic! And I was virulently against all things Catholic at the time. Then one Sunday I attended at Reformed Baptist church, and it so happens they had a baby dedication that morning. For some reason, and I don’t know where the idea came from, I thought to myself, they are treating their children as strangers to the covenant, and it annoyed me. I instantly became a paedobaptist. I knew intuitively that God’s covenant promises were not just for me individualistically, but as Peter says in Acts 2, for me and my children.

What I started learning that day, is that my understanding of Baptism didn’t start and end with a handful of passages in the book of Acts. Rather, I learned that to understand the true profundity and import of baptism, I needed to look at all the passages in Scripture that address parents, children, generations, descendants, promises, circumcision, Gentiles, Jews, olive trees, among other issues, in addition to covenant. In fact, if you looked at every passage in the Old Testament referencing child or children, that would take you a while because there are over 400 of them. Not to mention passages that reference seed or offspring or descendants. If I had the time and space and could cite every passage in the Old Testament indicating the generational nature of our faith it would be overwhelming. One of my favorites is Deuteronomy 7:9:

⁹Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.

The faithfulness of God to his covenant promises is what baptism points to, not us! And this verse directs us to the New Covenant which would make generational faith a reality, something Israel and the Old Mosaic covenant never could. This is why in those Acts examples, baptism always includes the household, not just the individual. Baptism, like circumcision, was a corporate, familial covenant act, as all Jewish Christians in the first century would have expected it to be. Yet, we’re to believe according to the Baptists that the New, and better, Covenant, suddenly became individualistic. The Apostle Peter says it doesn’t because, as I mentioned, in the first Christian sermon in history he tells us our faith is still familial and corporate, or covenantal in nature. The people Peter was preaching to were cut to the quick, and they ask, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

³⁸Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

Peter is telling them, and us, the natural Jewish understanding of generational faith is informed by God’s covenant promises to families. Baptism and the promise associated with it were not just for the people who were repenting and being baptized; it was for them and their children. If we ignore that, we are in effect ignoring everything BC and the nature of our generational faith handed down to us by Christ and the Apostles, and assuming only AD counts.

The New Covenant is Better Because it is Generational: Household Baptism
The examples of baptisms in Acts do tell us something about the nature of baptism, but not quite what the Baptists think. Let’s look at each instant in Acts, and then one reference of Paul in I Corinthians. In every example, except one, the person who repented and was baptized also had their household baptized. That’s kids, including babies, slaves, cousins, grandma, grandpa, anyone living in the household, and extended households in first century Israel were common. So “you and all your household” could mean 5, 10 or more would have been baptized. When the head of the household embraced the faith, so did everyone in the household. Did everyone in the household make a profession of faith? It didn’t matter because nobody saw it as a personal, individualized decision. It just didn’t work that way, and to think it did is reading our modern assumptions back into the text. We ought not do that.

As far as I know there is only one clear example of a person professing faith and not having a household baptized as well, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Household salvation starts in Acts 10 with Cornelius, a Roman centurion, as God displayed salvation and the Holy Spirit coming to the Gentiles too. This passage doesn’t explicitly say household, but when Peter entered the house “he found a large gathering of people.” It could have been friends and neighbors, but as a Roman centurion, a good number of the gathering would have been his household. After the Holy Spirit came on them, Peter ordered that they all be baptized. How we read this passage depends on our assumptions, which should be informed by the following examples, not to mention the entirety of redemptive history prior to this.

Luke continues the story in Acts 11 as Peter tells Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who couldn’t believe that the Holy Spirit would be given to Gentiles too. Cornelius was told by an angel about Peter:

¹⁴He will bring you a message through which you and all your household will be saved.’

Salvation, “repentance that leads to life,” and thus baptism as we see in chapter 10, came to the entire household, not just Cornelius.

The next example in Acts 16 is of Lydia’s conversion, the first Christian convert in Europe.

¹⁵When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Luke tells us, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” And naturally, “When she and the members of her household were baptized,” she invited them to her home.

Also in chapter 16 is the famous example of the Philippian jailer. Paul proclaims the gospel to him, and the result is the same as with Lydia:

³³At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. ³⁴The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household.

Another example is in chapter 18 where Paul is in Corinth preaching to both Jews and Gentiles, and Luke tells us:

⁸Crispus, the synagogue leader, and his entire household believed in the Lord; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul believed and were baptized.

The final example is from I Corinthians 1, where Paul tells us about his own baptizing:

Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.”

We will tie the bow on this household box with Acts 2. The adults Peter was speaking to believed on the Lord Jesus, and he told them they needed to be baptized. He immediately added that the promise reflected in baptism and the story of redemption he’d just told them was for them AND their children. Of course it was—They were Jews! When they embraced the faith, everyone in their household would embrace that faith as well. As we see in Acts 21, Jewish Christians insisted their boy infants still receive the sign of inclusion in the covenant community, circumcision. Both Paul and James agreed with this. So it makes sense that Jewish Christians would also include their children in the sign of inclusion into the New Covenant community, baptism.

Baptists will tell us this is an argument from silence, but it’s a silence that speaks loudly and boldly, which we ignore only because of the baptistic assumptions we hold. If we don’t have those assumptions, and our theology is informed by the entirety of Redemptive history, as were the Jews in days of the Apostles, of course babies and children will be given the sign and seal of God’s covenant faithfulness in Christ.

And lastly, Doug Wilson points out in his book, To A Thousand Generations, that we also don’t have an example of a child growing up in a Christian household who was not baptized, and then making a profession of faith to receive baptism. It just doesn’t exist, so what does that tell us? Nothing. Examples are not the final word on baptism, but only one puzzle piece of a large, glorious redemptive puzzle God has developed into a beautiful picture.

The New Covenant and Children: Jeremiah 31 & 32
The pivotal passage for Baptists is found in Jeremiah 31 when God reveals that a new and better covenant is coming:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
³²It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband tothem,”
declares the Lord.
³³“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

The Lords contrasts the new with the old, Mosaic covenant, and from this Baptists insist the New Covenant community can only include professing, regenerate Christians. They believe that in Christianity, in contrast to Old Covenant Judaism, a transformed
heart is what includes someone in the community of God’s people.

Baptists assume what makes the New Covenant new, is that now God is transforming hearts as a requirement for inclusion in the covenant, and that baptism is a sign of that. The passage doesn’t say this, but this is the inference they take. Therefore, children are no longer included. This inference also assumes Old Covenant saints did not have God’s law in their minds and written on their hearts, which is not true. Some clearly did. But the point I want to make is that children, including infants, are still included in the New Covenant community because this community doesn’t only include regenerate Christians. We’ll discuss that in the next section on olive trees and branches, but God references this new covenant in the very next chapter, and He includes children. We read in Jeremiah 32:

³⁸They will be my people, and I will be their God. ³⁹I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. ⁴⁰I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.

If we’ve read the story of God’s people up to this period of the Babylonian exile of Judah (around 580s BC), the inclusion of Children in the New Covenant promises of Yahweh to His people won’t surprise us. It has always been so, and will always be thus. What seals the deal, though, is olive trees.

The Covenant and the Olive Tree
The metaphor of the olive tree for God’s people, His covenant community, is used several times in Scripture, and most relevant for our discussion in Romans 11. Paul speaks of Isarael as an olive tree into which a wild olive shoot, the Gentiles, have been grafted in. The Jews were broken off because of unbelief so we could be grafted in. Then Paul says something that has vexed Christians ever since.

¹⁹You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” ²⁰Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. ²¹For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

It seems Paul is saying that those who were once part of the olive tree, the covenant community, Christians, can be cut off, and thus lose their salvation. On baptistic assumptions that is the only conclusion one can come to. Many Christians wonder if we can “lose our salvation.” If they are Arminian, meaning they believe our choice is what makes us a Christian, then we can un-choose Christ. If we’re Calvinists who believe our salvation is God’s choosing, then we can’t be unchosen by Him. So from a Calvinistic perspective, how do we explain being grafted in but able to be cut off, taken out of the olive tree and from God’s covenant community?

The fundamental assumption of the Baptist is that every baptized professing Christian who has been baptized is a regenerate Christian, and thus part of the New Covenant community. You profess faith in Christ, get baptized, and you are grafted in. In Christian terms, your profession of faith means you are one of God’s elect. The theology of election is a challenging topic for Christians, but clearly a Biblical fact. The term is used six times by Paul and three by Peter, and clearly means God chooses whom he will save. So, if you are a Calvinist and you are grafted into the olive tree, you are in for good. You are one of God’s elect, and that can never change. How then to explain those God cuts off, like we read in Hebrews 6:

⁴It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age ⁶and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.

John helps explain it (I John 2:19):

¹⁹They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

As does Jesus in John 15:

⁵“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

A person can be part of the covenant community, appear to be a Christian on the outside, but if they do not remain in Jesus, if they go out from among us, they will be broken off of the olive tree like the unbelieving Jews. For example, everyone including Judas thought he was a “believer,” but he proved by his actions not to be. Until then he was a Jew and part of the Old Covenant community. So, we have our children baptized because they are part of the New Covenant community, and they received the benefits of being part of the calling of God’s people. Because we’re not Lutherans or Catholics, we don’t believe baptism saves them, but we raise them as Christians and teach them to proclaim Jesus as their Lord and Savior because he is.

Mass Shooters: It’s All About Parents

Oct 22, 2025 | Parents and Family

I wrote this post before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, but the principles apply there as well.

It seems my title has sadly turned into a pun. Death has once again, as we all know by now, come in another shooting at a school by a mentally ill person targeting kids. Our cultural elites have come to call people like this transgendered, a man who pretends he’s a woman, or a woman who pretends she’s a man. This specifically mentally deranged individual who targeted children at a Catholic Mass was allowed to “transition” by his parents when he was a teenager. It seems his mother has hired a powerful lawyer. Where dad is, I have no idea. In addition to such parents lacking wisdom and being morally obtuse, they have been indoctrinated by the secular leftist cultural machine and ended up destroying their son, and now devastating two families of dead children.

In biblical religion, a person can be guilty of their own sin while at the same time the parents be guilty of enabling their child’s sin. We’re all accountable for the responsibilities God has given each one of us. But this isn’t just about parents who enable their kids to become monsters, but about all of us, all those God has given the privilege and responsibility of becoming parents. For Christian parents this is built into the entire history of our faith. From the very beginning, literally the first chapter of our book from God, the story starts with the command for man and woman to be “fruitful and multiply.” When the story is interrupted by the little hiccup we call the fall, God tells us our salvation will come through the woman’s seed or offspring. In other words, the plan of God’s rescuing his creatures will be inextricably bound up in children and families. All the promises of this salvation to come include children and descendants of generations to come. In fact the morning I write these words I read Isaiah’s words written over 700 years before Christ was born (Is. 59):

²¹“As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,” says the Lord.

Once the Lord has achieved salvation for us, it will be passed down to our descendants from generation to generation, even as we’re told in Deuteronomy 7:9, “to a thousand generations.”

Parenting is being part of God’s plan of bringing the blessings of generational salvation to the earth. We get to be intimately involved in living out what God promised to us and accomplished for us. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as Jesus taught us to pray, largely comes through raising our children in the Lord. This puts a bit of a new spin on it, doesn’t it. That means we expect our faith to be generational, that our kids will carry on the faith we impart to them, the way of life that seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, knowing everything else will follow. Unfortunately, as we know, that doesn’t always happen.

The Rise of the Nones
In 2014 and 15 we began to see a lot of stories in the media about something called “Nones,” not to be mistaken for Catholic nuns. These are young people who grow up in Christian homes, go off to college or life and abandon the faith. The term came from the wording on surveys where people are asked for their religious preference, and a growing number were picking, “None of the above.” The secular media was positively giddy about it, as anyone might predict, but in Christian circles there was only lament. Prodigals were leaving and nobody was sure if they’d ever come back. It does so happen that long term surveys discover that, as these kids become adults with families, having children often brings them back to the church. That is small comfort, however, for parents whose prodigal children are in a distant country.

Providentially in May of 2015 one of these nones would change the direction of my life. I read a piece online (sadly, the website is no longer available) about a young lady who grew up in strong Christian home, went off to college and promptly abandoned her faith. Here’s how this newly minted “None” starts her story:

I’m Lyndsay, and I’m an agnostic. I say this as if I have stepped into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because my transition from “believer” to “non‑believer” feels somewhat pathologic. The purpose of my story is not proselytism; I simply wish to articulate how difficult and consuming this transformation was for me, and in doing so, hopefully feel less alone.

At school, her doubts about Christianity mounted, but they had nothing to do with whether Christianity was true or not. Rather, she felt that everyone in high school had “put her in a box,” and she simply didn’t like being “stuffed in a box that could not contain” her. She felt liberated by the freedom she found at college:

Once I was given the opportunity to breathe a breath of fresh, secular air, I could more easily acknowledge that Christianity is a way of life, not the way of life. I desperately wanted a different way of life, but coming to terms with that flagrant fact was the hardest thing I have ever endured.

I do not mean to sound so dramatic, but the changes rousing inside of me truly shook me to my core. I was a Christian. This label was all‑encompassing—it felt completely impervious to change. If I abandoned God, I would be stuck starting from scratch, discarding my entire identity along with my Maker. More than just a loss of sense of self, I would be stripped of security, hope, and companionship. But I could not will myself to believe any longer

When I first read this it ticked me off. I thought to myself, how could this happen? I was convinced, and still am, that this would never happen to my children. They are now adults, 23, 30, and 33, and I’m blessed to report they are still followers of Jesus. I never once wondered if their faith would endure because that is exactly how we raised them, and me as their father most intentionally. Now I read this and it fascinates me. How could she miss the entire point of Christianity? That it is true! Not once in the article does it seem to occur to her that whether it is true or not is the issue, and that everything else is secondary.

Christianity is also not “a way of life,” as if all Christians fit into a mold and come out looking and acting the same way. There are no Stepford Christians, as in the movie when the wives of Stepford change from free-thinking, intelligent women into compliant wives dedicated solely to homemaking, basically robots. There is no such thing as robot Christianity, each of us being as unique as our fingerprints, and each of our children should feel free to be their own fingerprint. But for her Christianity was constricting, the exact opposite of what it in fact is. Sadly, it appears she didn’t feel like she could talk to her parents or any other Christian adult in her life. Did she feel like she couldn’t ask questions or express her doubts? Our teen years are complicated, so who knows, but all I will say is that this doesn’t have to happen. If we can’t sell our kids on Christianity being the truth, and nothing else is, something is wrong. My job was to persuade our children that the only explanation for reality giving our lives ultimate meaning, hope, and purpose is in Christ. It’s actually not difficult because secularism as an explanation for reality offers them nothing. It is bankrupt, poverty stricken, and the evidence is all around us. Ex-atheist C.S. Lewis, as usual, put it perfectly:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The Persuasive Christian Parent
I mentioned how this young lady changed direction of my life. I was going to respond to her article with a blog post, but I decided I would write a book, something I’d never done before. God used her to turn me into an author! I’d always had a thought in the back of my mind that it would be cool to be an author, given I love reading books so much, but I never felt compelled to do so; now I did. I had no idea what I was doing, nor how hard it would be. I just started writing. I’ve always loved writing and words and ideas, and started my first official blog in 2004, but this was a whole different ballgame. It took me five years to get a publishable version, and it was a painful process, but a learning one. It’s a little rough, but not bad for a rookie effort. Now I’m in the process of finishing number five. So, thank you, Lindsay! I found my calling later in life because of her, and if I can bless and help a few people along the way, praise God. I pray she comes back to Christ.

When I started writing I decided I would title the first chapter, “It’s All About Truth,” because for whatever reason, Lindsay didn’t realize that’s really all that matters. Is Christianity true or not? If it’s true, then you don’t abandon it, and if it’s not, then you do. It’s very simple. C.S. Lewis, an ex-atheist, put it in his own brilliant way:

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

It’s a binary choice, one or the other, true or not. What I realized as I was writing the book is that as Christian parents we need to raise our kids differently in a secular age. Thinking we can just take them to church and read the Bible and pray with them isn’t enough. Secularism assaults them every day, from every screen, in every place, and in every way. What is secularism? It’s life lived with God as persona non grata, an unwelcome presence. Whether He’s there or not, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he’s not relevant to this life. Watch any movie or TV show and God is for the most part invisible, and Jesus mostly some kind of expletive. Our children pick up the alternative secular faith more from such entertainment than any agnostic or atheistic teacher at school. Life without God begins to seem like a plausible alternative to Christianity, as it did to Lindsay.

This desensitizing us to God, and disenchanting of life, as if matter really is all that exists, is the unseen cultural force against which we do battle. I say unseen because the enemies of God, the secularists, aren’t even thinking about God or what they are doing. A God-less universe is just how they see reality, and it is out of this worldview that they write and produce products that seduce our children away from their Christian faith.

One of the sections (two chapters per section) is called, “It’s All About Culture.” (I decided that each topic I covered was as important as the next, thus each as “All About.”). Christian parents tend to live in fear of the culture, as if it had some kind of power to drag their kids away from the faith like a demon in a horrible nightmare. On the contrary, I subtitled this section on culture, “Your Children’s Best Friend.” What do I mean by that?

The culture is a massive, ubiquitous, all present, messaging system. It works 24/7, never sleeps, never rests. The greatest dereliction of parental duty in our age is allowing the secular cultural messaging carte blanche, free rein into our children’s imagination and thinking. What happens is that slowly over time what is plausible to them, what makes sense, seems real, changes. I guarantee you this is what happened to Lindsay. She didn’t logically go through the evidence to see whether Christianity is true or not. After she got to college her “plausibility structure” was changed by the environment, and Christianity no longer seemed true to her, seemed like the way the world was supposed to be. Agnosticism became a better fit.

If we don’t want this to happen to our children, then we need to teach them to interrogate the culture, treat it as a prosecuting attorney treats a witness for the defense in a trial. No message gets by without a question, and as we do this with them consistently, they will develop the habit of doing it themselves. Thinking about the culture critically will become a habit.

In our house, TV shows and movies were a tool I used all the time with our kids. I still do it with my longsuffering wife. I am the master of the clicker in our house (i.e., remote control), and no show could run without me stopping it numerous times for questions or comments. Every one of them in some way highlighted the poverty of the secular worldview compared to the Christian worldview. This “strategy” of mine went far beyond critiquing the culture’s entertainment, the goal always being to argue for the truth of Christianity in contrast to the lies of secularism, or any kind of God-less or non-Christian view of reality.

“Daddy’s Always Teaching”
The Great Commission starts with children, if we have them, and only then to others. I’ve never been particularly “intentional” about discipling our kids as we traditionally think of it. I was never good about Bible reading and prayer with them, family devotionals and so on. I tried from time to time, but I let life get in the way. But what I was good at was teaching them that Christianity is true. That is the only reason I became a Christian, and the only reason I stay one. It was second nature to me that when we had children I would teach them the same thing. Not too many years ago I was telling my daughter how bummed out I was that I was a terrible “spiritual” leader in our home, and she said, “Well, at least you taught us Christianity is the truth.” Well, there is that, and if one has to choose, and of course one doesn’t, then truth is the more important in our age, by far. We can’t assume our children actually believe Christianity is true, and every other religion and worldview is a lie. We have to teach them that, all the time.

Which brings me back to my daughter, our oldest, and one of the great moments of my life. In saying that I do not exaggerate. One Sunday on our way home from church, I was doing my typical lecturing on various and sundry topics. Our youngest, a son, maybe seven or eight at the time, said something with not a little annoyance like, “Why do you always have to lecture us, Dad?” I was nonplussed, surprised, taken aback, when our daughter came to the rescue: “Because, Dominic, daddy is always teaching.” My heart melted—truly one of the great compliments of my life. After all, this is one of the primary reasons I exist: the profound responsibility to raise our children before God.

Remember, it is not enough to know what we believe, we must know why. I get the impression most Christian parents are better at teaching the what, while the why is too often assumed. Maybe they assume the truth, the realness of their Faith, is self‑evident to their children. Or they believe it, and take their children to church assuming they’ll believe it too. But we must understand that we live in a time where our Faith is called into question in countless ways, and therefore, it must be defended to and for our kids in the face of those questions.

Lastly, when I was looking to publish my book I got pushback from some people who thought I was claiming I could guarantee that our children would never abandon the faith. So as not to be misunderstood, we cannot guarantee anything, and are in control of nothing (which is why we are enjoined throughout Scripture to trust the Lord and pray). However there is much we can do, which you can find out by reading the book. But it does not follow that just because we are not ultimately responsible for the results we can’t have confidence that we can build into our children a lifelong and enduring faith. Ultimately, thankfully, our confidence is not in our performance as parents, but in God’s provision. We learn an important principle in spiritual growth and sanctification from the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 3:

⁶I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. ⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

What happens with the seeds we plant in our children’s lives is up to God, but because of his covenant promises to us and our covenant children, our confidence is fully justified. However, He can’t do it without us. That’s the way farming works; no farmer, no farm, just weeds. But without God nothing grows.

Having said this, I understand the insecurity many Christian parents feel living in a dominant secular Western culture hostile to our Faith. But the conclusion I came to at the end of writing the book, is the conviction I started with at the beginning: Christianity is so powerfully credible that my kids should never want to leave it, or even be tempted to do so. God has revealed himself in so many compelling ways, and has provided us an over‑abundance of resources, that it is inconceivable that a secular Western culture would be more appealing to our children than Christianity.

Make Patriarchy Great Again

Jan 22, 2025 | Parents and Family, Western Civilization

I recently read Masculine Christianity by Zachary M. Garris, and in many ways it’s an eye opener, but in many other ways it’s stuff I’ve accepted all my life. Growing up in a traditional Italian family, masculinity was not a problem, but men abusing their masculinity sometimes was. My family, and extended family on both sides, was for the most part nominally Catholic, so the Christianity part never seemed to make much of a difference. I also met my wife to be at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, and we could not have been more on the same page in terms of masculine and feminine, and how that plays out in a marriage and family setting. So patriarchy was never something I felt the need to think about; it was invisible because I am a pretty patriarchal guy. Prior to getting married and having to live out patriarchy, I’d been a politically and culturally engaged conservatives for six or seven years, so my radar was up on the evils of feminism, but that obviously wasn’t an issue for my wife and I. Looking back over 37 years, however, I can see how feminism, like the secularism that birthed it, has influenced how we see things. I just didn’t realize how much.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the term complementarianism started showing up in Christian circles, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Clearly, God created men and women to complement one another, but was this how we were to counter feminism? I’m not sure why their arguments didn’t impress me, but it was more confusing than anything. Ok, men and women complement one another. So what. What difference exactly does that make in a relationship? Who calls the shots? It seemed like complementarians didn’t want to deal with such an uncomfortable question in the modern world. When Paul commanded wives to submit to their husbands, what exactly does that mean? I’ve never really had to pull rank on my wife, so does this command have any real practical application unless I have to do that? And does this submission apply anywhere outside of the home? Like in the church? In society? And what does this all say about the nature of men and women, and how feminism has had an impact about how Christians think about and live lives as men and women? Garris answers these questions, and many more, in exhaustive detail.

So after we were married I went on my merry way not thinking about Patriarchy, and I can’t remember in over four decades as a Christian every hearing a sermon in church about it. Then when I embraced postmillennialism in August 2022, I discovered patriarchy was a big deal with this crowd. As in, if we’re going to re-Christianize America and Western culture in general, then patriarchy will be a critical component for that to happen. So in the now overused phraseology thanks to President Trump, we will need to Make Patriarchy Great Again. The question, though, is what exactly that means. There is of course a lot of disagreement among Christians about that, and if we can’t even agree on what it means, how are we to change cultural perceptions on the matter? This is really a question about living in a world that is a result of several hundred years of the Enlightenment and secularism, and what exactly that will all look like. Making it Christian again will not somehow turn the 21^st century into the 16^th century, any more than we can go back to the world before the industrial revolution. Yet I get the feeling from some of the patriarchy bros that it is exactly what they expect and are convinced needs to happen.

Before I move on, what exactly does patriarchy mean? Pater means father, and patriarchy father rule. Over time it came to mean male rule in general because in Christianity the family is the fundamental relationship in society.

Patriarchy and the Bible
One of the reasons I know Patriarchy is crucial for the re-Christianizing of America and the West is because the destruction of the family was one of the top priorities of Karl Marx; it needed to be abolished in the pursuit of a communist Utopia. What better way to do that than making men and women indistinguishable by destroying sex roles as created by God. Thankfully, the Marxist demons got carried away in the last ten years trying to turn men into women, and boys into girls, and vice versa; for normal people that was a bridge to far. Reality can only be distorted to a certain degree until it slaps the distorters back in the face. Feminism has distorted reality as well, albeit to a lesser and slower degree than wokeness, but the consequences are more widespread, long lasting, and horrific. I’ve known feminism was an enemy for decades, but Garris marshals the practical and biblical evidence like the lawyer he is. Something he does especially well is to allow his opposition to make the best case possible in their own words and arguments, so you won’t find any straw men in this book. It’s also a great reference work to have on your shelf. If you want to know his take on a certain issue or passage it’s in there.

The created nature of man, male and female God created them, is the fundamental issue at stake. Everything in this debate goes back to Genesis 1-3. Let’s see how Garris defines feminism:

Feminism minimizes sex distinctions, with an emphasis on pushing women away from the home and children and into careers just like men. Feminism is the belief that men and women are fundamentally the same and thus interchangeable. The feminist movements have been so successful over the years that Westerners live in a post-feminist society meaning most people today are feminists without the label.

That last point is an indisputable fact, and the salient question is, is this necessarily a bad thing? If you are a Christian committed to Scripture as God’s infallible revelation to man, then yes, it most definitely is a bad thing. That’s before we get to the evidence of the last two hundred years, which shows us without a doubt it is a bad, terrible, horrible thing. Unfortunately, the idea of equality is so rooted in the Western mind as an unqualified good, itself rooted in Christianity’s influence, that any hint men and women are not absolutely equal in every way is tantamount to heresy.

The Origins and Nature of Feminism
Most conservatives and Christians think of the first feminists as benign, what is called “first wave feminism.” These women were supposedly seeking to bring some balance to the distortions and abuse of the patriarchy at the time, but that is not the case. Garris titles his first chapter, “The Rise of Feminism and the Erosion of Masculinity.” The intention of the early feminists may not have been this specifically, but masculinity was the casualty. The two most popular of these early feminists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), were egalitarians who were driven by the growing secular progressivism of the 19^th century. All of the Reform movements of that era were influenced to some degree by the Christian culture of the time, but they were in fact revolutionary and anti-biblical. Once Descartes and rationalism come to dominate Western intellectual history in the 18^th century, secularism and it’s offshoot, feminism were inevitable. Once the Bible was discredited and no longer the center of Western civilization, the jig was up, and the dance really took off in the 19^th century with the feminists leading the way.

To understand the pernicious nature of feminism, starting with the “first wave,” it is important to understand why egalitarianism is not only un-biblical, but anti-biblical. The Bible is clearly hierarchical, even if Christians disagree as to the extent. There are conservative Christian egalitarians, but they are a tiny minority. Liberal Christians in the late 19^th and early 20^th century no longer believed in the supernatural, but instead of just burning the Bible and moving on, decided to turn Christianity into something it is not, and feminism was part of that turning. Fundamental to the vision of feminism is ridding the family of male authority in the home. Take women’s suffrage, which took until 1920 to become law in the passage of the 19^th amendment. Garris quotes B. B. Warfield who points out that giving women the right to vote changes the basic unit of society from the family to the individual. In Scripture, the individual is never the basic unit, least of all in the family. The federal headship of Adam representing the entire human race is central to God’s plan of redemption in Christ, and the husband and father representing his family is evident throughout redemptive history. The assumption of early feminists was that women could and should be independent of men, and at the time the Christian assumptions of society limited that; in due course all limits would be gone.

Which brings us to second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution. In this iteration women not only wanted to be independent of men, but to act like men, and technology in the form of a little pill would accommodate that desire. Now instead of being a servant of their God-given biology, women could now like men have consequence free sex, or so they thought. Sex, whether it results in a child or not, is never consequence free, and few people today would deny that, especially for women. Then a decade or so after the pill went mainstream in the early 60s, the Supreme Court decided women murdering their child in the womb was a “constitutional right.” If the pill didn’t work, just dismember the baby, suck it out, and get rid of it. “Problem” solved, but it isn’t. Women who get abortions are emotionally scarred for life, unless they find the mercy and grace of Jesus. But the sexual revolution was a means to the feminists’ real end of getting women out of the home so they would be more like men. Garris writes:

Feminism is the twisted idea that a woman is free when serving an employer but a slave when serving her family.

This was the basic idea of one of the seminal books of this wave of feminism, Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique. To Friedan, women stuck in the home in American middle class suburbia was exactly another form slavery, and women would only be emancipated when they were emancipated from the home. There are further waves of feminism, but the damage had already been done. Feminism had done the bidding of Marx, and while not abolished, the family has been decimated with all its deleterious effects I don’t need to delineate here.

The Inadequate Complementarianism Response
At some point Christians were going to need to respond, and from the beginning they did, but not in any organized fashion. Since feminism had come to dominate liberal mainline denominations in the 20^th century, and started making inroads into Evangelical churches, Christian leaders in the 1980s, among them John Piper and Wayne Grudem, felt compelled to respond. Complementarianism was the result. One of the most valuable contributions in the book for me, among many, is Garris’s chapter on this topic, which he titles, “Complementarianism’s Compromise.” That says it all.

I never quite got why I was always uncomfortable with the term, but the word compromise nails it. As a response to the growing influence of feminism not just in the culture, but in the church, it was actually weak. Why? The first problem is the word itself. All those syllables are unnecessary when what they are trying to defend describes the issue at stake, patriarchy. That compromise alone meant they lost the game before it started. Of course men and women are complimentary; even feminists believe that to one degree or another. That’s irrelevant to the real issue at stake: male authority. They emphasized two points: Husbands have the leadership role in the home, and only men can be pastors and elders. But that leaves a whole host of questions unanswered about where male authority begins and ends, which is exactly the issue: does it end? To complementarians it most definitely does, and there the battle is enjoined.

Feminists and egalitarians believe there is no such thing as male authority, in or outside the home, while complementarians believe male authority is reserved just for the home and the church, which some have called “narrow complementarianism.” Unfortunately, even at that they are uncomfortable with the idea of speaking specifically of male rule or authority in the home, preferring to use the word leadership. It’s less offensive. The problem with trying not to be offensive to modern sensibilities is that it’s counter productive. Those you’re trying not to offend won’t be satisfied anyway unless you completely agree with them. You may as well go all the way and proclaim you are defending patriarchy and male authority. At least you’ll get the respect of not being wishy washy or looking for a mollifying “third way,” which doesn’t exist anyway. The problem with this, Garris says, is that it “creates a dichotomy between the church and society at large.” Inside the home and church men and women are who God made them to be, outside they are something different. That’s the conclusion one has to come to.

The entire chapter is necessary reading for those struggling with these issues, but the bottom line is what God made man and woman to be. In other words, what is the nature of man and woman, and does that affect the gender roles they engage in, both inside the home and church, and in society? If the nature of man and woman are fundamentally different which affects their roles, how is limiting these differences to just the home and church not arbitrary? That’s the question I asked.

Rooting Gender Roles in Nature
I often utilize my old buddy Aristotle when discussing things like this because of his genius in discussing the concept of telos, which means purpose in Greek. He came up with four reasons for why things exist, which he called four causes. We can better understand why the nature of man and woman is important if we understand Aristotle’s four causes. In layman’s terms as I understand them:

Formal Cause-The concept of the thing in the mind, say a table.
Material Cause-The stuff out of which the table is made.
Efficient Cause-The person making the table.
Final Cause-The purpose, or telos, for which the table was made, e.g., to put things on.

In Genesis 1 we learn that God made each thing “according to their kind.” We use the phrase of comparison apples and oranges because those are two different kind of things, so it makes no sense to compare something if they are fundamentally different as if they were not. That is the issue biblically with men and women, they are of two fundamentally different kind of man, male and female. This means the nature of the differences are built into their being, so they are ontological differences. This is the rub, and something we can’t explain away if we’re Christians and we believe God made human beings with a final cause, a specific purpose consistent with their natures. As Garris puts it:

God’s laws regarding men and women reflect their natures, as He did not give divine commands detached from His design to their entire being. A man is to exercise authority because God wired him to exercise authority, and a woman is to submit because God wired her to submit.

For feminists and egalitarians them’s fightin’ words, while for complementarians them’s embarrassing words. They do generally believe this, albeit narrowly, but they aren’t up for the fight so they message with words like “leadership” in place of authority.

Given this is the case, it doesn’t surprise us that they limit the natures of men and women to family and church. Outside of that I guess their natures don’t apply. This I now realize is why I’ve always been uncomfortable or confused by complementarianism. Reality as God made it is hierarchical, and men were created and designed to exercise authority and rule, and women were not. If we are Christians and take the Bible seriously as God’s revelation, I don’t see how we come to any other conclusion. As I said above, though, we are not going back to the 16^th century. The secular feminist cat has been let out of the bag for 200 years, and what this looks like going forward in a modern context is hard to predict. We obviously have to start with our own homes and churches, and these truths must be proclaimed and taught with boldness from pulpits throughout the land. God only blesses the nation when the four causes line up with his will, and right now the American family needs it desperately.

Should We Send Our Kids to Public Schools?

Dec 26, 2024 | Parents and Family

It has taken a while for Christians to see public schools in America as an existential threat to their children’s Christian faith. I saw one comment about this topic on Twitter which was the inspiration for this post. The guy said sending your kids to a public school is like playing Russian roulette with the school system. In other words, you’ll be lucky if your kids make it out as Christians. If there is a bullet in the chamber, they on their way to become heathens. I sympathize with this perspective, and agree the public schools are an indoctrination machine into secularism. I will further argue the idea of “public” schools is unbiblical because education is the responsibility of the parents and not the state. The latter idea goes back to something I call the conservative progressivism of the 19^th century, which was progressive ideas promoting conservative ends. The Marxists would take over the progressive movement in the latter half of the 20^th century, and in the 21^st century bring to public education the reality of the Marxification of education, in the title of a book by James Lindsey.

Our children went to public schools because we didn’t know any better. Our youngest was able to start going to a classical Christian school in the 5^th grade, which was an educational red pill experience for me. At the same time our daughter was attending Hillsdale College and fell in love with classical education, minoring in it and making it her career. But never when our kids where in public schools would I have for a minute considered it Russian roulette. The reason is because my wife and I saw their education as completely our responsibility. Never did I think it was the school’s responsibility to educate my children. Yes, the schools would teach them the “three Rs,” but it was up to my wife and I to inculcate that knowledge into a Christian worldview. Interrogating them about what they were learning at school, and exploring the hidden assumptions, was a common practice in our home. What they learned there was continually critiqued from the perspective of our Christian faith. They were raised from their earliest days learning that Christianity is ultimate truth about the nature of reality, and everything else is not. I wrote a book showing how I did that called, The Persuasive Christian Parent: Building an Enduring Faith in You and Your Children. Each of our children as adults are committed Christians. That was the plan all along, regardless of where they went to school

Our job as Christian parents is to teach them not only what we believe, but why we believe it. The latter is apologetics, or defending the veracity of the faith, and that is how we need to raise our children in a secular age. This is why I was always lecturing, teaching, and persuading them about why Christianity is true and why it is the only worldview that makes sense of all of reality. In my favorite quote from the ever quotable C.S. Lewis:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

It is only the biggest of big pictures, God in Christ in Scripture, that makes sense of anything and everything. Every particular has meaning because of the universal, the puzzle pieces of life now fit because God is the author of the picture of life.

I say this to declare that a public school has no power over our children if we as parents do our job. That being said, a public school is the last place on earth you want to send you children! The rest of this piece explains why.

The Primacy of the Family in Education
I came across some quotes about the family from President Theodore Roosevelt that in our day would be considered “controversial,” but in the early twentieth century were common:

It is in the life of the family upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the Nation rests . . . . The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its borders—Everything in the American civilization and nation rests upon the home—The family relation is the most fundamental, the most important of all relations.

The family is, sociologically and religiously, the basic institution, man’s first and truest government, school, state, and church. Man’s basic emotional and psychic needs are met in terms of the family.

This was an inarguable statement of fact until the twentieth century and the rise of secularism, and with that rise the state slowly began to usurp the prerogatives of the family in education. J. Gresham Machen writing in 1925 argued it had already happened:

The most important Christian educational institution is not the pulpit or the school, as important as these institutions are; it is the Christian family. And that institution has to a very large extent ceased to do its work. . . . . The lamentable fact is that the Christian home, as an educational institution, has largely ceased to function.

Wherever as Christians we come down on the nature of education in America on which there will be disagreement, we must all agree with Machen, the education of children is the primary responsibility of the family. But Christian classical education was not yet on my radar.

Then in 2012 while my wife was working at the elementary school our youngest son attended, she was growing increasingly dismayed with what she was witnessing in public education. She insisted that he not attend our local public middle school; unfortunately, a private school was a pipe dream as far as I was concerned. There was no way we could afford it financially, and our other kids survived the public schools, faith intact, and so would he. It’s pathetic when surviving is the criteria by which I judged an education for our children, but we had no choice, I thought. Thankfully, my mother-in-law decided she would cover the tuition, and our son entered Covenant Classical School in Naperville, Illinois for the fifth grade. To say I was blown away by the education we encountered at this Christian classical school would be a massive understatement. But even with our son at a Christian classical school, in my mind the ideal along with home schooling, his education was still our responsibility.

Government and Education Need to Get a Divorce
America’s founders believed deeply in the importance of education, and to that end the Continental Congress in July 1787 passed The Northwest Ordinance in which they stated:

Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Religion to the Founders meant Christianity, and its morality and knowledge was necessary to good government and a happy populace. In other words, civilization depended on education. It didn’t follow, though, that encouragement meant government control of education given the Founders’ deep suspicion of human nature and government power. Yet, over time “public” education came to mean government education subsidized by taxpayers controlled by the government. In this sense, public education is an oxymoron. Machen put this presciently in 1934:

Every lover of human freedom ought to oppose with all his might the giving of federal aid to the schools of this country; for federal aid in the long run inevitably means federal control, and federal control means control by a centralized and irresponsible bureaucracy, and control by such a bureaucracy means the death of everything that might make this country great.

Who can argue with this after 90 years of hindsight. Rushdoony further makes our point, writing in 1961:

The public school is now unmistakably a state school, and its concept of education is inevitably statist. This is apparent in various ways. First of all, education has ceased to be a responsibility of the home and has become a responsibility of the state. . . . the state still claims sole right to determine the nature, extent, and time of education. Thus, a basic family right has been destroyed and the state’s control over the child asserted.

It cannot be both state and family, only either/or. And this is not just an argument for liberty over against government tyranny, but a fundamentally religious question. Secular neutrality is a myth, and American public schools are the establishment of a secular religion in the guise of religious neutrality. Joe Boot explains:

We can clearly see . . . that neither the structure within which we educate, nor the purpose for which we educate, nor the content by which we educate, can be neutral.

Doug Wilson states why this an indisputable fact:

Education is fundamentally religious. Consequently, there is no question about whether a morality will be imposed in that education, but rather which morality will be imposed. Christians and assorted traditionalists who want a secular school system to instill anything other than secular ethics are wanting something that has never happened and can never happen.

He further asserts that public or “common schools were going to be the means by which the entire progressive agenda was ushered in.” Progressive in the twenty-first century is nothing like the early progressives imagined, but in hindsight it’s easy to see how secular progressive education paved the way for a takeover of education by cultural Marxists.

Does this mean that what we know as public education needs to be “abolished,” to borrow from Marx? Yes! School choice may be a good stopgap measure to take away some of the monopoly power of the government, but it is only temporary. It follows from the biblical imperative of the familial responsibility of the educating children, that it must be completely private and divorced from government at any level. Government money always brings with it government influence. Education is a worldview enterprise, and in America parents should be free to decide in what worldview they want their children educated.

What that looks like and how we get there I don’t know. I only know this should be the objective of any Christian who understands the incompatibility of Christianity with any other worldview in the educating of children. In the meantime as we work toward this, I believe that charter classical schools are a critical means to challenging the secular progressive monopoly on education.

The Rise of Progressive Education in America
Having made the case for the complete familial responsibility of the education of children, let’s look at how modern education came to be so horribly modernly horrible.

Conservatives have been complaining about public education for a long time. In fact, a popular book called Why Johnny Can’t Read—And What You Can Do About It came out in 1955. Some people think the 1950s was the golden age of conservatism. It wasn’t. That decade continued the consequences of secular progressivism in American culture, even if the effects were masked by leftover conservative Christian cultural influence. Education was a fundamental part of the progressive vision of transforming America into a “modern” democracy based on “scientific” principles among other things, and progressives paved the way for what has become the Marxification of education in the 21^st century.

Progressive education goes back well before there was a progressive movement in America to the influence of Horace Mann (1796-1859), considered the father of American public schools. As a reformer, he convinced Americans they should pay for public, or “common,” schools, and established the Massachusetts State Board of Education. According to Britannica, Mann “believed that, in a democratic society, education should be free and universal, nonsectarian, democratic in method, and reliant on well-trained professional teachers.” We can see immediately from a Christian perspective this is a non-starter, yet not only did it start, but in due course this perspective took over education in America. Nonsectarian eventually became in practice the progressive secular religion.

To reiterate, there can be no such thing as a “nonsectarian” education because education is fundamentally religious and always inculcates a worldview in the children being educated. Also, there is no such thing as free education. In practice, free always means someone else pays. There is no constitutional right in America to insist that other Americans pay for my children’s education, or that I pay for theirs. Yet by the twentieth century this became an unquestioned dogma, and if challenged, charges from the left erupted like a volcano, hot and fast.

Doug Wilson tells how these reformers were uniformly hostile to orthodox Christianity. Many were Unitarians, the number one Christian heresy of the day. As he points out, the local government schools were mostly run by Christians who had no idea the true intent of the reformers above them. If the communities were Evangelical, so were the schools, but the secular progressive die was cast. He writes of one nineteenth century Cassandra, R.L. Dabney (1820-1898), whose prophecies of the inevitable consequences proved true. Dabney wrote:

We have seen that their [the schools’] complete secularization is logically inevitable. Christians must prepare themselves then, for the following results: All prayer, catechisms, and Bibles will ultimately be driven out of the schools.

At the behest of radical atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the Supreme Court in 1962 basically outlawed prayer in public schools—nonsectarian indeed.

Arguably, the Olympic champion of progressive education was John Dewey (1859-1952) who was passionate about “democracy,” and education as the way to achieve it. Cultural transformation starts with education, and the torrent of secular, progressive ideas like a rushing river had a momentum by the late nineteenth century that would not be stopped. The basic outline of Dewey’s influence is found in the word progressive itself; it had to be different than whatever came before, and unfortunately it was. Prior to the progressive era, education in America was basically classical. Progressives believed “classical” was against “progress,” so it had to go. Here is a smattering of Dewey’s ideas:

Education should promote the practical over the abstract.
Experience was the great teacher, and the scientific method the primary source of knowledge.
The idea of “public” should replace the “individual.”
Traditional religion, i.e., Christianity, is an obstacle to true education and progress.
Human nature is not fixed but can be changed via education.
Traditional classrooms stifle a child’s curiosity, creativity, and excitement for learning.
Discipline or correction is not a teacher’s duty, but rather to understand and follow a student’s interest and impulses.
The utility of ideas is what makes them important.
Education is not primarily about academics or morality, but societal change.
Goals and standards are harmful to a child’s motivation.
Pedagogy must be a discipline apart from subject matter and methodology over content.

Henry T. Edmondson summarizes Dewey’s influence well:

Thanks in no small part to Dewey, much of what characterizes contemporary education is a revolt against various expressions of authority: a revolt against a canon of learning, a revolt against tradition, a revolt against religious values, a revolt against moral standards, a revolt against logic—even a revolt against grammar and spelling.

And a mighty successful revolt it has been! But now there is a counter revolt happening as the poverty of progressive education and its Marxist progeny becomes impossible to ignore. I mentioned James Lindsey and his book, The Marxification of Education above. If you want to see how Marxism in the guise of woke infiltrated K-12 public schools, and many private schools as well, I would highly suggest reading his book.

As with the Enlightenment and it’s offshoot, secularism in the form of progressive education and now Marxification, i.e. woke, took a long time, hundreds of years, to get us here. It will take a long time to turn around, but it’s starting and gaining momentum. When I was growing up, home schooling and classical education didn’t exist, now it’s everywhere. Christians are waking up to the realization that we can’t entrust our kids to the secular, woke indoctrination factories of so called public education. It will be hard for many Christian families to break out of “free” public schools, but the church needs to take seriously the need for that to happen. I trust that will become a more prevalent topic of conversation in the years to come.

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The Miracles of Jesus and their Meaning

The Answer to All Our Problems Lies in the Home

Christian Children Are Not Strangers to the Covenant

Mass Shooters: It’s All About Parents

Make Patriarchy Great Again

Should We Send Our Kids to Public Schools?

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