Christians in the West are gripped in a fearful idolatry. We, like the ancient Israelites, cannot decide who we worship. Elijah asked the Israelites, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Today we could say, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions. If Christ is king, follow him, but if the state, then follow it.” Nowhere is this idolatry more obvious than in our capitulation in education. Christians give their children to the enemies of Christ in the hope that their minds will be trained. A few weeks ago we began a series on the excuses Christian parents make for avoiding the responsibility of Christian education. There we looked at perhaps the most sanctified excuse – that of wanting our children to be salt and light. Today we investigate another common excuse: socialisation.
Excuse 2: Socialisation
Many parents have noticed that children who are homeschooled, and even to a certain extent children who attend Christian schools (and I’m not talking about the Christian veneer type schools, but Christian down to the roots types), are…well different. They tend not to be as aware of or obsessed with current fashions in clothing, music and thought. It shows. And parents, because they love their children, do not want their children to have a tough time. They want them to have friends and fit in. They don’t want ‘nerdy’ children. They often want their children to be ‘cool’.
However, this ought not to be the primary goal of a Christian parent. We should seek holiness for our children. And that ought to mean they are different to the children brought up with the secular values of mainstream society. Socialisation is the process of a child internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Now if a society is secular and anti-Christ, then we ought not to want that for our children. In fact, if we want that, we cannot call ourselves Christians in any meaningful way. A Christian wants what Christ wants, and Christ wants followers who are not of the world. We want our children to be different. They ought not to fit in. They ought to be an irritation to a society that is in high rebellion to Christ because they will be constantly reminding them of their need to repent, not only by their speech but by their different values expressed in the way they live with Christ as Lord of all.
In Idols for Destruction, Herbert Sclossberg deals briefly with the concept of socialisation and a Christian response.
Society’s most important institutions serve the socializing function, making people better balance and adjusted to the way things are. And that is why they are so dangerous. All education is of necessity value-laden, and the public school is the most powerful of these instruments of conformity. Its goal is to instil society’s norms and to discredit deviant ideas. The best elements of the Christian school movement…is a determined No! by parents to the homogenization of American life, a recognition that the model to which their children are intended to be conformed has become evil.