I was a Christian high school math teacher in a “previous life.” I was very disappointed with students who could perform well but could not give thoughtful accounts of their 3 R’s performances. Sometimes I would say to them, “What question am I about to ask?” They always knew that I was asking, “Why?” Students accustomed to instrumental questions thought I was torturing them when I did this! Such students don’t care about why anything happens in the discipline; they have slave mentality: they just do what they’re told, and don’t worry about why.

But in an inquiry environment, it’s easy to ask big questions that are obviously relevant to the discipline and yet have theological or philosophical overtones.

Young children can thrive in this environment. It’s not for the Mensa members alone.

I agree; we all should seek godly wisdom in all our endeavors, great, small and in between. That he “prayed about it” isn’t the issue, but rather how he used that information. It ought be done in private, and that we did not flouted before someone with whom we have disagreement, etc. It should be an unspoken agreement amongst us believers that we have done so. Otherwise, we run the risk of an abuse. This inability to appreciate private/public distinctions is what is so Evangelical. And I only implied it was a “spiritual decision” because he seemed to.

My hunch (and it is only at best that, for sure) is like yours: that she just simply fell short whatever expectations, for good or ill. She has made the whole situation quite public as well. Much as I am a subordinationist, at least Ruth was on the minority committee that spoke something resembling truth concerning third wave penetecostalism (whose report to Synod this year was flagrantly ignored “until the future”–insert more boos here from this confessionalist insider).

Steve

And I am not talking about who gets to decide where a child goes. *Clearly* that is the right and duty of the home, clearly. But I am not talking about logistics.

Steve

But Dabney isn’t disagreeing with your point here. He would agree that educational responsibility flows from the family; they may delegate this responsibility, but the duty is primarily theirs.

I suppose I essentially disagree with Dabney’s presupposition that “true education is…the nurture of the soul.” I believe that such is more generally the role of the family (and more specifically, and insofar as I am Christian, in conjunction with the Church). The word family does not appear even once in his exposition. In this way, I think he lends way too much credibility to the institutions of education. It is the home that ultimately shapes and molds and nurtures souls. (Home is another word, as well as parents, that is oddly absent anything he puts down.) This over-lending seems to be what drives so many religious zealots to change a variety of quarters in broad culture. In pop culture they want TV and movies to be cleaned up. Why? Because they mistake the dimension of influence for nurture. But no matter how much commercialization a child takes in, it is still the parents that shape him. (I am being extreme here only to make a point. A good parent monitors just how much a child might take in, knowing that these things do influence; this itself is nurture. But, again, influence is not nurture.)

Maybe I could be accused of being much too conservative in this way, but there are worse things to be and I would be happy for the accusation. True education certainly influences, even helps in the shaping of, souls; but it doesn’t nurture them the way the home does. I believe that God has ordained the family/home to affect the nurturance of souls, both young and old; even as a full grown adult I still seek my father’s guidance either presently or in looking back to my rearing—I do not much recall what any teacher may have taught me but my parents’ shaping is written all over me (for both good and ill!); it’s in the DNA of our original creation and you cannot escape it. Part of the problem anymore is the skirting of this truth on the part of parents, across the belief-board. Lending the kind of credibility Dabney appears to, parents seem to think they may farm their children out to the schools (of whatever variety) and that they will take care of what THEY have been ordained to do.

But when Mr. VanVanderVan tells me God made the world and is personally involved in directing all its phenomenon and that we are beholden to Him, it simply doesn’t mean what it does when Dad says so.

Steve

The implication you make is that it was simply a spiritual decision.
I doubt you have any grounds for that.
I think the evidence more strongly suggests that Ruth did not fit into the community and did not share enough experiences with the rest of the staff such that the “truth” the staff wanted to promote was threatened (i.e. She did not meet the post-modern definition of truth).

VD not uncommonly says things like this: “That culture and society are legitimate and under God’s rule are not in dispute, but is this-worldly culture under Christ’s redemptive order?” (DVD’s review of Lazareth).

That is, all of life is under God’s rule; we all agree with this. But for him, the LHK is not under Christ’s rule because “Christ” is intrinsically the Redeemer, yet the LHK can be under the Son’s creative/sustaining rule.

So W2K bisects the Son of God.

That’s why I think W2K is nonsense. But you haven’t interacted with VD’s and Hart’s claim.

How do we know when it opposes? When it denies the CoW, or Dordtian grace or the actual theory of the Atonement or sola fide or the real presence of Christ? I have yet to hear any PS do this; the denial or affirmation “of theology” is a churchly/sacred endeavor in the first place, not a secular one.

And what happens when so-called Christian schools oppose “our theology” and teach what is contrary to our forms? And what happens when only 15% of the representative parents actually observe the Sabbath and go to church?

And what of it when it does oppose us? Should we take our balls and go home, or do we have the right and duty to rebel, or is that more the worldly action of those citizens in a liberal democracy versus members of the Church? Maybe we could ask WWJD: well, what did He do when the powers-that-be did not bend the knee?

And what happens when our vocations as adults demand (inasmuch as our childrens’ vocations are their educations) something “opposed to our theology”? Are we to erect “Christian vocations” within the wider world? Why do children get the benefit of a Christian environment (excuse me, Christian education/vocation) and we adults have to slog through an unbelieving world, fraught with all sorts of anti-Christian dimensions? How are we preparing our children to have to enter that world as adult-Christian where there is no such benefit?

You cause me more questions than answers, Phil. Obviously.

Steve

Whatever way you want to diagnose the CRC, OK. Whatever post-modernism looms I still see the lapping waves of “broad Evangelicalism” over against any formal tendencies toward post-modernism…but then again, isn’t it all the same? For this member’s part, I am still no fan of my own denomination and seek quiet withdrawl when the opportunity arises.

BTW, the Ruth Tucker situation is interesting for various reasons. The important thing was that the seminary president “prayed about it” before he ousted her (i.e. spiritual abuse). Now if that ain’t the result of heavy imbibing on Evangelicalism, I don’t know what is!

Steve