For the egocentric person, the easiest answer is the pluralistic one, because the pluralistic arrangement guarantees the existence of all forms of schools, and because the selfish person is not concerned about the rightness or wrongness of other people’s choices, he smiles tolerantly upon relativity. The ultimate rightness or wrongness of other persons’ choices is of no concern to him. Permitting others the right to be wrong seems to be his highest creed. A Christ-centered and Biblically loving concern for the rightness of fellow American’s decisions seems an exotic irrelevancy.Whoever persists in thinking of education as a secular and neutral activity will not be disturbed by our pluralistic system. Alarm over the inadequacy of the pluralistic answer can only come when the believer accepts the religious nature of all education. Correctly understanding education as allegiance or disobedience to the Sovereign God, the sincere Christian cannot ignore the Christ-rejecting iniquity of those who persist in denying God’s relevance to the schooling process. When education is understood as a means of sanctification and the process of inculcating religious beliefs, the state’s role as educator becomes not only very tenuous but also extremely dangerous. With the state in its educational program indoctrinating students in the concepts of neutrality and secularism, and with the church preaching the sovereignty of God in every sphere, the child is coerced to believeopposing philosophies. Over against the church, then, the state is not really neutral.
Normon DeJong, Education in the Truth
