Everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher – Luke 6:40
I was recently sitting with my lovely bride in the food court at Eden Prairie Center. Near us sat a father and daughter engaged in lively discussion. So near, in fact, that it was impossible to not hear much of their discussion.
They were talking about school, and the daughter recognized that her father saw things differently than her teacher did, on some topic or another. She then, quite strongly, informed him that she would not listen to what he had to say on the topic, because her teacher was “an expert in their field” (her grammar, not mine). She went on to say that she felt her dad was just believing “what the media says,” while she, in listening to her teacher, was obviously more enlightened than he.
I am not going to say that the father knew more than the teacher did, because for all I know, they could have been discussing peptide formations in intracranial hemorrhages, where I presume the teacher would have the upper hand. But there was a deeper issue at play here. Her disposition toward her father this night was far from kind, let alone honoring.
There are many instances where a parent may disagree with a teacher, but none is more tragic than a parent trying to pass on a Christian worldview vying against an educational system bent on marginalizing and even destroying Christianity.
In a school where the education is anti-Christian, a child faces confusion at first and rebellion down the road from that. He will have to second guess either what the teacher or the parent says.
Jesus observed that a student becomes like his teacher. What is a student to do when he has to decide, in the midst of contention, which of his teachers is right?
Written by Board member Jed Culbertson