Secular Education

Martin asks listeners to remember their third-grade teacher who never lectured on philosophy yet whose entire framework breathed it — every fact taught carried an unspoken metaphysical assumption.

when I sat in your third grade class back there in local school number such and such and such and such a time, what was your philosophy of life? What was your worldview? Now, they might look at you and scratch the head and say, you've gotten much smarter than I am. I never had one.

8:39 - 8:55 Read in full sermon

Martin pictures a child raising his hand asking 'why are the mountains where they are?' and the teacher answering 'because that's the way it is' — chance dressed up as science.

The young person is brought to look at the world as it is, and when he asks the teacher, he lifts his little lily white hand and says, Teacher, why are the mountains where they are and the seas where they are? And the teacher says, why, things are the way they are because they are.

13:03 - 13:19 Read in full sermon

Much of what you absorbed in school came not from explicit lessons but from the climate of authority and assumption surrounding every fact — like soaking in a dye, you came out tinted whether you noticed or not.

One of the things that's impressed me in the pastoral ministry is that much of what you learn, you learn not so much, or I shouldn't say not so much, but not only by specific precepts that are spoken and articulated, but by a very mood and climate in which those things are being communicated. I've had some of you come to me and say, Pastor, you know after six years it's beginning to get across to me. That if God says it, that's the end of all controversy. See?

17:10 - 17:40 Read in full sermon

Psalm 104 says lions seek their food from God, not from a chance ecosystem — Martin contrasts the biblical reflex with our culturally trained 'isn't nature interesting' response.

The young lions, sorry, Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey. They seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, and they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.

28:46 - 29:08 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray daily that God would purge your mind of secularism — name it as garbage rather than treating it as a neutral education.

When the stomach is poisoned, only a purgative will cure you; the mind soaked in secularism needs God to purge it before truth can grow.

Sometimes when you've got a sick tummy and the only thing that will cure you is a good purgative. It's interesting in Pilgrim's progress how this is dealt with very bluntly with one of the children of Christianity. And he been eating some apples he shouldn eat and he got a domiator And so the advice is given that he got to have a strong purging And so he goes into some detail as to the administration of this purgative, which of course is made up of the blood of Christ and I believe the tears of repentance, and I forgot what's in there, but it's all full of good gospel truth. But beloved, this ...

36:59 - 37:47 Read in full sermon

The point: Implement Deuteronomy 6 in your home — speak God's precepts in every setting (rising, walking, lying down) so children look out windows painted by Scripture.

Train your child to look out at every discipline — biology, sociology, ethics — through a window painted with the precepts of God, so the framing itself shapes the view.

He's saying you must do all within your power to saturate your own mind and heart with the precepts of God, so that in every area of life you look at that area of life through the eyes of God. His will, His pronouncement about that area of life. But not only that for yourself. You must bring your children up in a context where they do not look out any window for truth.

44:17 - 44:42 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize the church's mandate: prayerfully and seriously consider the cost of Christian education for your children rather than defaulting to public school.

Martin admits that as a mature pastor he doubts he could keep his head above water if reenrolled in his local high school — yet we send pliable children there for thirteen years.

From the rather indirect influences of secular education, I wonder if I could stand up if I were to go back and enroll in the local high school. Honestly, brother, I think it's well nigh to cruel. You would think me a cruel parent, a tyrant, to set my little bet down in the middle of 8th Avenue and 44th Street and say, now fend for yourself. You'd think that something had snapped in my mind.

47:16 - 47:40 Read in full sermon