In part 1 I gave a bit of background on the personal resolution that was offered to the General Assembly of the PCA asking the denomination to "encourage" its members to withdraw their kids from public schools. Today I want to begin talking about why I voted against it.
The longer I think about it the more reasons I come up with to not support it. and I'll share some of those in future posts. Today I'll talk about the whole issue of position statements and freedom of conscience.
In the PCA we've got a book full of position papers that are non-binding. We've studied such issues as freemasonry, six-day creationism, divorce and remarriage and a host of others. Most of those papers are the report of a study committee and for most of them, there is just one position. But some of them include minority reports. In those cases both reports stand and are offered more along the lines of pastoral advice. They don't have constitutional authority. So for instance, I forget which one was the majority and which one was the minority report in the freemasonry issue, but there are churches which believe a member of the masons can be ordained as an officer in the PCA and some say he can't. The position paper itself would not have binding authority in such a matter.
This resolution, encouraging parents to pull their kids out of public schools, had it been passed, would have had the same effect. It would stand as pastoral advice but really could not be used against someone if they intended to make it a disciplinary issue.
On the other hand, had such a resolution been passed it would have been different than one of those position papers that came out of a study committee. I'm no expert in ecclesiastical bureaucracy, but if such a motion had been passed it seems to me that it would have carried greater weight in terms of being an "official position" of the PCA. It would have a kind of unofficial or informal authority that would be very weighty.
In such a case, though the wording of the resolution was careful to be non-binding, it would still carry far greater weight. What was intended as mere "encouragement" or pastoral advice would become the de-facto standard by which the schooling decisions of individual parents would be measured. Hence, I can't help believing that, had such a motion passed, it would create an assumption of negligence on the part of parents who chose not to pull their kids out of public schools. There is no PCA gestapo which would go around checking on such things, but I think a new mindset would be created in the minds of some.
Parents who did not pull their kids from public school would automatically be put on the defensive, having to explain why they didn't heed the "encouragement" of the denomination. I am sure that advocates of this resolution understand and have compassion on the single mothers and low-income families and others in various positions which prevent them from pulling kids out of public schools. But I am saying it is wrong to put them in a position where they have to defend their actions.
For scriptural justification of my position I would point to the example of the Pharisees who added laws to the law, thus incurring the displeasure of Jesus. I would also point to the example of the Galatian church which incurred the censure of Paul for succumbing to pressure to conform themselves to extra-biblical commands of men. More to the point though, I would refer you to Romans 14:1-5:
Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2 One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
5 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
The question I would raise is whether or not the choice of where to educate our children is legitimately a disputable matter. In reading the text of the resolution which was offered to the General Assembly I can't help but assume that its authors conclude that this is not a disputable matter. I'll take up the specific arguments of the resolution in another post but I'll simply note for now that these arguments are similar to the arguments that could be offered for not eating meat and for regarding one day as more sacred than another. Yet, in those cases Paul commanded us not to judge others.
In our reformed confessional tradition we also place a high value on liberty of conscience. The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 20, paragraph 2 says:
God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.
Hodge, A., Hodge, C., & Hodge, A. 1996. The confession of faith : With questions for theological students and Bible classes. With an appendix on Presbyterianism by Charles Hodge. Index created by Christian Classics Foundation. (electronic ed. based on the 1992 Banner of Truth reprint.). Christian Classics Foundation: Simpsonville SC
I don't contend that this resolution is contrary to the Word of God, but it is "beside it." And our consciences are not to be bound by things that are "beside" the Word of God.
In what I am about to say I want to raise the issue of legalism and I want to offer a pre-emptive disclaimer. I do think there are a lot of legalists in this world whom we need to be on guard against, but I don't think that the movers of this resolution are necessarily legalists. "Legalist" has become one of those trump card terms that people throw into a discusssion to basically villify their opponents and end the discussion. And usually we define legalists as those who have convictions that I don't happen to like. This has the effect of rendering all but the most basic of convictions out of order.
I offer that disclaimer because of the great degree of respect I have for the movers of this resolution - I think they are men of conviction, not men of legalism. Having said that, I think a quick illustration of how legalism develops can show some of the problems with where such a resolution could go.
I may completely butcher this illustration, but I have a vague memory of a story in one of Jerry Bridges books about cars, roads and lakes. Imagine that there is a curving road that goes alongside of a lake and imagine that warning signs are posted on the road "Danger-Lake Ahead-Slow Down." Such signs are legitimate and serve a good purpose - to keep people from driving off the road into the lake and drowning themselves.
However, we all know that there are many people out there who don't pay attention to warnings, and despite these signs, people still frequently end up driving into the lake and killing themselves from time to time. So, a group of citizens get together and decide the warning signs are not enough and they build a guardrail on the road to keep cars from going over. The trouble with that is, some cars just go too fast and crash through the guardrails and go into the lake.
So, the same group of citizens gets together and says "the signs and guardrails aren't working, we need to close down the road and build another road a mile away from the lake." This way people can't even get close to the lake and are very free from danger. Trouble is, the lake is still visible in the distance and those crazy kids in their four wheel drives remember how much they used to like the lake. So they go off road from time to time and sometimes, when they aren't paying attention, they still fall into the lake.
Finally, the citizens decide that even that isn't working, so they rebuild the road, only this time it is five miles away from the lake. You can't even see the lake, it provides no temptation at all.
The good and godly desire all throughout this story has been to protect people from drowning in the lake. It is the duty of the town fathers to warn the people about the dangers of driving their cars into the lake. But beyond that, things get fuzzy. Each new step, from the guardrail to the new road five miles away assumes that the citizens are incapable of governing their own lives and so we must govern their lives for them. If I were a town father I would be all for the guardrail, that's a reasonable and prudent precaution. But I think building the road five miles away would be unnecessary at best and harmful at worst. I am not sure where in the process from guardrail to new road five miles away that I would change my opinion, but it would happen somewhere along the line. In this example, everything beyond the signs warning of danger up ahead are, in my mind, things which are "beside" it.
In my opinion, public schooling is not the lake, apostasy is. The lake we want to avoid is the peril of our kids abandoning their faith. The resolution to encourage us to pull kids out of public schools is somewhere between a guardrail and a road five miles away. The illustration breaks down a bit here because our choice of schooling is not the sole determining factor in whether or not our kids hold on to or abandon the faith, but for the sake of illustration I'll let it stand for now.
One of the things that is tough for people with strong convictions is that they can't understand why others don't share their convictions and why they don't see and react to perceived dangers the way they do. There is an implicit assumption that those who don't share their convictions just don't know enough or are unable or unwilling to govern their own lives. So, people with these convictions have to build stronger and stronger guardrails and re-route the roads to protect people from themselves.
This is legitimate when it comes to raising our kids. Kids don't know what's best for them, so the parents have to build all kinds of guardrails and re-route their kids all the time, until they get to a point where they can make wise decisions on the road. But to say that I need to guard and re-route my own children is a very different thing than saying I need to guard and re-route other parents.
So that is one reason why I think a resolution to "encourage" parents to pull their kids out of public schools is unnecessary at best and harmful at worst. Such a resolution, though only meant to encourage, will all too easily take on the force of law. It will unnecessarily create a situation of assumed negligence on the part of those who don't heed the encouragement. And it comes perilously close to binding the conscience with something that is "beside" the Word of God.
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