It’s Volatile Out Here

[Image from Gage Skidmore]

It feels volatile out here. It’s understandable why. Iryna Zarutska’s look of horror before her death is haunting and her murder is revealing some significant rot in our justice system. And now yesterday a 31 year-old husband and father was assassinated because of his Christian faith and political views. The murder of Charlie Kirk is clear evidence of the rot of ungodliness in our culture.

What does God’s Word tell us about how God’s people are to process and respond to the rot of sin? At least three principles to remember:

Remember to be angry and do not sin.

It’s right to be angry with sin. By all accounts Charlie Kirk was a genuine and devoted follower of Christ. He was a husband. He was a father. He was a young man. He devoted his life to engaging people with ideas that would lead to human flourishing. He regularly shared the good news about salvation in Jesus Christ. He took the moral stances of Scripture seriously and tried to convince others to do the same. He was murdered. Be angry.

But do not sin. (Eph. 4:26) We should pray for the authorities to catch the assassin and to punish him to the fullest extent of the law (Rom. 13:3-4) but we should not seek vengeance (Rom. 12:19). We should feel and express the pain of injustice but we should not return evil for evil (Rom. 12:17). We should be clear-headed and straight-forward in our condemnation of evil but continue to walk in the Spirit and bear the fruit of the Spirit. 

Remember it’s worse than we know.

Isolated evil events are symptoms of the greater disease. When viewed through the lens of Scripture we should remember that this is not merely about political discourse, radicalization, mental health, or any other of the presenting symptoms. This is about sin. This is about the radical corruption of human nature. This is about creatures rebelling against their Creator. 

Isolated evil events are also flashpoints in a great cosmic war. The apostle Paul writes, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Satan is at work to diminish the glory of God. He wants to stop the spread of the gospel. He wants to silence God’s Word. He wants to make sure the salt doesn’t reach the rot and the light doesn’t reach the darkness. He wants God’s image-bearers to suffer and dishonor their Creator.

This is bigger than we often imagine. These are flashpoints in a war between heaven and hell. In light of this the Christian’s most powerful and productive course of action is to share the gospel. To Attack the gates of hell with good news that Jesus Christ can restore rebels to a right relationship with their Creator. The preaching of the gospel will deplete the ranks of Satan and bring glory to God.

Remember to pray.

Pray for the Kirk family. Pray for Charlie Kirk’s church. Pray for Turning Point USA. Pray for justice. Pray for righteous leadership. Pray for the fear of God for our country. Pray for peace. Pray for the return of Jesus.

Just pray? That’s all. If you are a follower of Christ, there may be much that you are called to in response to the rot. We are, after all, to be salt and light (Matt. 5:13-16). Our responses will vary depending on our vocations, spheres of influence, personalities, and spiritual gifts. But we are all called to pray and then respond in obedience to God.

If we are dismissive of prayer in situations like these, it may be that we truly don’t realize just how bad it is out here. It may be that we don’t see the evil of sin. We should work toward righteousness, just laws, a moral society, but we should pray and pray fervently for Jesus to return and bring the peace and justice that only he can (1 Cor. 16:22). Pray his promises and live with the assurance that he who promised is faithful.

It feels volatile out here. But “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

(Ihor Zhakunets ("Magister Z") teaches Greek in the Grammar School.)

CHILD SOLDIERS

Every so often a new documentary is released reminding us of the atrocities happening around our world. A particularly heinous act that has drawn much attention is the recruitment of children as soldiers in third world countries. Fierce war lords capture children, train them, and exploit them for their nefarious purposes. Generally, people are dismayed by these kinds of atrocities. Even if we understand that war is sometimes inevitable in a broken world, we instinctively want to protect the vulnerable. Children should not be fighting wars. Instead children need nurture, care, and guidance as they grow into adulthood. Only when they are thoroughly trained, only when they have reached this stage of adulthood can they be considered prepared for war.

As far as I am aware of, there are only two groups of people that consider sending children into war, a good idea, dangerous warlords and oblivious Evangelicals. We often hear well intentioned Christian parents make the argument that sending children into the public schools is a good idea because they want their children to be a light in the darkness. Although the intentions may be noble, the strategy is foolish. A developing child is exceptionally malleable and therefore will be naturally influenced when placed under the authority of an institution. This is particularly dangerous if the institution not only refuses to espouse the Christian worldview, but at its core hates this worldview.

As parents we often forget that our greatest enemy is not physical but spiritual (Ephesians 6:12). We send our children to some of the darkest spiritual places in our society with a desire for them to be the light, while they are being indoctrinated by wickedness. The long held rationale of sending children as warriors to a spiritually dark

battlefield must be abandoned by Evangelicals.

Although there may still be several outlying reasons as to why it would be acceptable for Christians to send their children to public schools, these reasons are becoming few and far between. Why not choose a school that shares your family's values? Why not choose a school that stands firmly on the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why not choose a school that is committed to Christian excellence in academics? Why not choose a school where your children will feel safe and cared for? Why not choose a school that will teach your children to pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful? Why not choose a Classical Christian School?

GRADE INFLATION

In a recent article titled To Mark Your Child’s Progress, Look Beyond the Grades, CNN contributor Athena Jones writes, “According to the report by Gallup in partnership with the nonprofit Learning Heroes, almost 9 out of 10 US parents think their children are on grade level in math and reading, despite dismal national standardized test scores.” In the article Jones shares a story about a mother whose daughter was getting mostly A’s and B’s in her elementary school. She quotes the mother, “I thought the child was on Honor Roll…Her lowest grade – a C – was in art.” But when the child went to a new school and took a standardized assessment it was revealed that her reading level was 3 grades behind. The author of the article admits that grade inflation is a significant problem throughout schools in America. Now just think about this for a moment, the “A” letter grade traditionally represented a student’s mastery over the academic material, while a “B” represented a student being slightly above average, and a “C” represented an average student. If a child, three grade levels behind in reading, is maintaining a mastery level it begs the question, “What kind of standards are being taught in our schools?” 

The foundational reason as to why grade inflation exists, I think, lies in the identity crisis in our culture. God created humans for a purpose and therefore human beings instinctively long for meaning. The problem is that we look for it in all the wrong places, mainly we look for it within ourselves. This is why the self-esteem movement is so ingrained in our culture. Every athlete deserves a trophy, even if their team loses, every artist deserves a ribbon, even if they just scribbled on a piece of paper, and every student deserves an A, even if they don’t know how to read. For this reason, grade inflation must not exist in Christian schools. We teach our children that their value must not be bound up with a false sense of accomplishment but genuine accomplishments. And of course, even beyond a temporal value, we teach them that their ultimate value is bound up with something outside of themselves. For a human being it is bound up in being created in the image of God, and for the believer it is bound up in the full restoration of that image in Christ. 

This is why at a classical Christian school parents must learn to reorient how we think about grades. Not every child will get an A in reading because not every child excels in reading, and that’s ok. On top of this parents must understand that the curriculum we use is significantly above the national standards. To put this in perspective, an average child reading at grade level  should be scoring in the 50th percentile on standardized tests and theoretically  getting a “C” in school. What we have, instead, is children reading three grade levels behind the “standard” and getting A’s. If a child three grade levels behind is showing mastery over the material, presumably the material being taught would be in the lower 10th percentile when compared with national standards. At most classical schools the exact opposite is true. The material we teach does not correspond to the lower end of the spectrum but the higher end. So, if the national average is a student scoring in the 50th percentile, the average student in a classical school would score in the 70th percentile. Do you see the gulf this creates? In schools across the country a child scoring in the 10th percentile can be bringing home A’s on the report card, while at a classical school a child can be scoring in the 70th percentile and be bringing home C’s on the report card. Now, the action step is not to recalibrate our standards but to reorient how we think of grades. The reason for this, friends, is that our responsibility is never to lower our standards to meet those of a degenerating society but to elevate standards in order to cultivate students to distinguish the true, the good, and the beautiful for the glory of Christ. 

The epidemic of grade inflation clearly displays the importance of the vision at Providence Academy. At Providence we honor Christ through excellence in education. If the trend is that students in the lower 10th percentile are receiving A’s and B’s, what is happening to the students in the 90th percentile? The answer is that they become bored and disinterested in school. For this reason, the curriculum at Providence Academy is difficult, it is intended for students scoring on the higher end of the spectrum. And it is for this reason that to be accepted into Providence students must score above the 50th percentile on standardized assessments. This doesn’t mean that as a school we believe that higher achieving students are more valuable than lower achieving ones, it simply means that as a school we took note that higher achieving students are significantly underserved in the Christian school community. As a school, Providence Academy desires to be faithful in meeting that need, so that as Christians we have an outlet to educate our future leaders that this society desperately needs.