V is for Values

Jeremy Walker (00:14):

And welcome back to another episode of Preschool Pioneers. I'm your host, Jeremy Walker. You can follow us on our parent network, CR101 Radio, on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Gab, and YouTube. And you can subscribe to this podcast on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode. Visit CR101Radio.com for these links.

(00:44):

Welcome, welcome, welcome back everybody again to Preschool Pioneers. I want to thank you for joining me again to discuss Christian education, parents, teachers, and of course the Christian values that we have, because that's what this episode is entitled. V Is For Values, the importance of teaching children what to value in life, and how to ensure that they also become people of value as well.

(01:18):

Well, in this episode we're going to be discussing a very important subject, values, and that has to do with your way of looking at life, how you teach, what kind of schools you go to, how you run your business. Pretty much everything about you comes from your foundational outlook. We would say your religious foundation, but that's where the word values comes from as well. However, I want to share a quick little story about this word, which I think is kind of setting the tone for why Christians should become teachers. Some years ago here in Florida and my wife and I and our family work with preschool children primarily. So children ages six weeks all the way up through say 11. And these children come to our school. We're a Christian school, and of course our values come from the word of God, Christian values. Some years ago we were involved with state programs.

(02:23):

One thing you have to know about state programs, state funding, anytime you get money from the federal government or from a state agency, there are going to be stipulations. There are going to be controls that are going to be placed on you as the individual, or if you are an entity like a school, certainly on you. And some years ago we were part of these programs for preschoolers to help children, and to start off, with everything was fine and dandy. You could take government vouchers, you could help parents pay for a Christian education, get reduced tuition and help the families and their economic status as well. Well, a couple years went by, and then the inspectors came in and started marking our schools off as if they were subpar. What was it that was subpar? Very simple. We were teaching young children commandments, not values, at least not humanistic values. We were teaching Christian values.

(03:31):

I had an inspector look at me when we were having a meeting and they were trying to mark us off and trying to make it look like we were not a good school and trying to give you a low grade based on this subject, which of course is religious persecution though they would not say it like that. And the inspector said, "Aren't you concerned that not all of these families will be Christian?" And I looked at the inspector and I said, "Well, we are not a government school. We do not have any parents who are forced to come to our school. They choose it. It is a private Christian school. And they pay us to come. It's not government funded to where they can just come and they don't pay anything. They are going to have to choose where they want to go and place their dollar bills where they would like their children to be educated by."

(04:25):

And so I just told them, I said, "Well, the parents can come or not come at their leisure. So to your question, these parents are choosing our schools." And I looked at the inspector and said, "Don't you think that they have the right to choose a Christian school if they want to?" And of course the inspector's face dropped at that point, because she looked at us and said, "We wouldn't have a problem. We wouldn't be giving you bad scores if you just taught values and not commandments." So in other words, you are allowed to teach that, "Johnny, it's not okay to hit your friends." But it's wrong to say, "God says, 'thou shalt not kill.'" Because on the one side, the humanistic side of values, so we're not just going to say values, humanistic values. Because the word values in of itself just says standard. The question is is whose standard do you have? Humanistic standard where it's we make up our own, or is it God's standard? So Christian values, godly values.

(05:31):

They were okay with humanistic values, where we just told Johnny that it's not okay to hit. It's not okay to steal. And we are the ones who create these values. They were perfectly content in allowing children to be taught humanistic values, because it didn't have God as the authority. Now of course, they do have an authority. It's the all powerful state. And of course they're perfectly happy with you saying that's against the law, because that is their commandments, those are their laws, those are their values. But to say that God has values and children should learn them and they should learn to live by them, well, this was just too much. So they didn't like commandments, they liked values. But it's really not values, they wanted humanistic values. So no Christianity, no God, no revelation and the word of God to tell us how to act, man deciding for himself how he's going to grow and how he's going to live.

(06:36):

So there's a little bit of a background on how this works in the real world and as why we are important as a Christian parent, Christian teachers, we are super important because there is a battle of values going on. And the war is between humanism or man and God. It's really that simple. And you really do have to teach this to your children. To the point of what is a value, I got some definitions here, and there's two different ways to look at the word for value. The first one of course is a person's principles or standards of behavior, one's judgment of what is important in life, and also what is right and wrong. And so these are your values. This is one way to look at it.

(07:26):

The other way to look at it is another definition, which is to regard something that is held that is deserved or it's important, it has worth or value, or it has some kind of usefulness to it. So it's important to you. It's something that you want. It has a value to you. And so starting from a Christian perspective, I have two different passages that I want to cover here in this opening segment of why Christians should become teachers and discussing Christian values and how we impart these into our children. Because if you don't do it, they are not going to learn Christian values. They will learn humanistic values, even if it's not someone else teaching them, because they just decide, well, I can do what I want. And there is a plague and epidemic right now of that is what's being transmitted. We aren't even going to teach the children. We're just going to let them grow to believe they can do whatever they want.

(08:25):

And that's why children as young as two and three are being expelled from preschools. That's right, two and three years old, the epidemic of it. Children without restraint, never learned authority. They believe they could do whatever they want. Their values are me, mine, and no to everyone else. And that does not work in the real world. And I even had people talk, when they call us on the phone like, "We really need a place to help because my child doesn't know how to interact socially." In other words, they cannot be around anyone else because they just don't care about anybody else. And that's the main problem with parenting today. And it is also what our school systems and our preschools are teaching.

(09:13):

If you are not teaching Christian values right now, then you're not going to teach authority. You're not going to teach restraint, and you're going to have wild children who cannot even make it through preschool. And that is exactly what we're seeing today. But to start with Proverbs 22 verse 1, this is a great passage I've given to my children and to students, and it's really important about their perspective on life. What is it that I want for myself? And it says this, "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold." Now this is a great proverb because it talks about a good name, your reputation, and this is extraordinarily important, to have a good reputation. As I mentioned before, teaching humanistic values is a surefire way to not have a good name. This will destroy your reputation.

(10:17):

Just like the little children who can't stay in any school, they're going jump from one person to the next. Even their relatives don't want to take care of the children because the children are out of control. And then of course the parents become frustrated. It's everybody's fault except for theirs. They don't blame themselves. See us as parents, we have to blame ourselves. Christian parent, if your child is not being restrained, it's because you're not doing your job. If the school, if you run a school like I do, and you're working with students, if you're a teacher, and your entire classroom is ran amok, then you lack Christian values. You don't have a system in place of restraint, of a necessary restraint upon character and conduct. But how do you get a good name? How do you get that? What are the Christian values that we need in order to get that good name? Because it's so much more important than trying to get silver or gold or money, but a good name. Your reputation is more important.

(11:17):

See, and it's not just with men, but it's your reputation with God, your good works. That is really, really, really important. You are standing before God and we need to teach that to our children. And you don't get that from humanistic values, who don't teach God, who don't teach that there is going to be a reckoning, and we will give an account for what we did. And if you did not do the good things, you cannot get rewarded. You only can suffer loss. But let's jump to Proverbs 3, 1 through 7, and let's answer that question about how to get a good name with people and primarily with God.

(12:04):

"My son, forget not my law, but let thine heart keep my commandments, for length of days and long life and peace shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee. Bind them about thy neck. Write them upon the table of thine heart. So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes, fear the Lord, and depart from evil."

(12:52):

This right here is how to set up a child for success in life, how to give them a good reputation primarily with God, and secondarily with other people. If you give your child, a Christian parent, a Christian teacher, if you give these children, your students, the understanding that God undergirds all of life, so do his commandments. And so if they want to succeed in life, they are going to have to obey God's commandments.

(13:25):

And as they do that, they will earn reward and reputation. Not only will God bless and promote your children, your students, but so will other people. These are the children who study the hardest. These are the ones who help other people. These are the ones who not only get good grades in school, but also get good grades in life, because they have every tool that they need to succeed in the real world. And when you give them instead a life viewpoint where it's divorced from God, divorced from authority, divorced from God's commandments, you raise a barbarian instead, not somebody who's going to continue to grow better and better and succeed in life, but somebody who continue to fail, and not understand that it's them who's at fault. For them, it's always someone else. It's not them. And because they refuse to change, because they refuse to keep God's commandments, they will never be blessed, and they won't even understand why.

(14:37):

So we get to get there first. Parent and teacher, we are super important as Christians to help our children and our students succeed in life, giving them proper values, Christian values founded on God and his commandments, and that is going to give them a bright future. Otherwise, we set them up entirely for failure.

(15:03):

I want to go ahead and not just kind of talk about these things. Also our schools, we also have other materials that are out there for people to help them as well. We promote the concept of homeschooling. We promote the concept of starting another school, because controlling your child's education is not really an option. You have to do that as a Christian, and you also need to help others. It's twofold. So if you would like more help in helping others, we have some materials on our website at CR101Radio.com. And you can find the materials linked there.

(15:41):

We have a couple books. One is How to Start a Christian School by Pastor Ellsworth McIntyre. And then another book about how to run a family business that is also evangelical, and is based on education and helping others like a Christian preschool. And that book is entitled A Full Reward: Reformation Through Family-Run Christian Schools. And lastly, we do have our Preschool In a Box, which is what we actually run our preschools on. We have seven preschools here in southwest Florida. It's called Preschool In a Box, and it's everything we operate and utilize to run successful child care facilities, Christian schools here in southwest Florida. And you can look up information on there as well about if you were wanting those materials or wanting possibly to be inspired or understand why you'd want to start a school and to help others.

(16:36):

And so I'd like to jump now and discussing kind of what's going on in the world. I like to start Preschool Pioneers talking about kind of the theological groundwork, why Christians are important as parents and specifically as teachers in the world. And now I want to show some of the things that pop up in the news that shows us where we're at the current state of education, if you will. First one I want to touch on this is a growing epidemic and I'd like to explain a little bit why it's a growing epidemic. And people are acting shocked. In the New York Post, there was an article, it says, "Teacher admits having sex with a 16-year-old boy, leaving claw marks on his back as the other children that were there served as lookouts." So this is basically in a classroom of some sorts or at least with other students where multiple students know age 16 around here that this is going. A teacher is having sexual relations with a child at the school.

(17:43):

Now, this person of course was arrested, and of course they called it rape, raping this young 16-year-old boy. Now, why is it that there's so many females, female teachers who are doing this again and again and again. Pops up in the news constantly, they make a big deal whenever a man pops up and he has done something like this, which of course is always horrible, but there is probably a 20 to one ratio where women, the teachers, the female teachers, they're having relations with these older students. Not yet quite 18, and they're making a big deal about it, which they should. But here's the point, first and foremost, these young women went through their entire lives with, we learned about it, humanistic values where she got to do whatever she wanted, right? Then she went off to college to go get her maybe teaching degree, where there she continued to practice her humanistic values where she slept around in high school, slept around in middle school, and then she slept her way through college as well.

(18:49):

She graduates, she finally gets her first classroom, and now she's in a middle school or high school setting with young boys who of course are going to be coming on to a young female teacher. Now her whole life, she has been attracting the men to her. This is her mode of operations. So whenever she then continues to act the same way she has her entire life, and people are shocked, people are stunned. They shouldn't be. This is exactly the results that you get when you give up Christian values for humanistic values instead. And you will continue to have an epidemic of this until we stop. The children themselves, these young boys know exactly what they're doing. It is illegal, it is evil of course, in two years, however, it'll be perfectly legal. And what is it that really makes this so terrible? From a humanistic standpoint, not a Christian one, what makes a older female having sexual relations with a 16 or 17-year-old so horrible from their perspective? Only the fact that the state did not permit it. That's it.

(20:02):

If the state changed the law down to say 15, then all of a sudden, this conduct would not only be okay, but praised as an option. And this is the problem between humanism and its values, and Christian values. That's right. She made the cardinal mistake of breaking the Almighty Government's regulations on the age that they're allowed to then do whatever they want. See, this right here is what we should see going on in the world, and know why Christians are needed, because this is a really good humanistic teacher right here. And you can see what she's doing. And she is a horrible, horrible teacher from a Christian perspective, and from a humanistic perspective, she might just be a couple years before they change the laws and then she'd be just fine.

(20:55):

But you have one option. It's either humanism or Christianity. And there's got to be where you answer that question, which one am I going to embrace? And this woman clearly embraced humanism and learned her lesson well, not only that, but so did the young boys. These boys are 16, 17 years old, and they learned their lessons as well. If they didn't pick the teacher to do this with, and it was with another 16-year-old, nobody would even blink an eye or care. Welcome to humanism, it's evil, and with Christianity, we can put a stop to this kind of perversity.

(21:33):

Let's move on to another topic, kind of show what's out there in the world. There was a post talking about Sweden. Not quite sure how true this is, but this was something that came up. It was a question that said, does homeschooling exist or is it popular in Sweden? And the answer came back homeschooling is largely illegal in Sweden, and most people support it being so. Education is a right in Sweden, and people do not believe parents can provide adequate and neutral education that can fulfill this right.

(22:08):

Interesting terminology, isn't it? The parents can't provide an adequate and neutral education. How neutral, if you're listening to this podcast episode, how neutral is any of this stuff? It's not neutral. The teacher that ended up having sex with her students, the students who had sex with their teacher, that's not a neutral education. They both thought what they were doing was perfectly okay. The only thing they forgot to do was ask the state for permission to change it from 18 to 16 before they did so. But otherwise, it'd be perfectly okay. No education is neutral. It all has a value system. The question is, whose values?

(22:51):

Now, here in this question, Mark, if it is true that Sweden is like this, that means that they don't want Christian values. Like here in America today, that's definitely the case. They do not want Christian values taught to people. Thankfully, homeschooling is a large option here in the United States. The vast majority of people don't see the need for it, because they think education is neutral. Sad to say, but with all the new stuff coming up, all the craziness in the public school systems, the sexual perversity that's been out there where people don't even know if they're a man or a woman or even how to define it, people are still borderline thinking that it's okay. But more and more people are starting to have their eyes opened up. Sometimes they have to be forced open apparently, with all the craziness. But they're seeing that it's not neutral, that there are standards. And when they're bringing in pornographic books to show children how to do perverse sex acts, this is not a neutral education.

(23:56):

And what happens whenever you do bring in all these sexual perversitys? You get 16 year olds who thinks it's okay not only to do everything under the sun with other people their age, but why should I be limited to that? After all, isn't it all about consent? Well, it's not, because according to God, you can't consent to having sexual relations with anybody that is not your spouse. End of story. And that's what it should really be about. But that would take a Christian education to give the proper foundation to children to see the world as it really is, or as it should be. Well, this is Jeremy Walker. Thank you again for joining me and discussing why Christians should become teachers. Thank you again, and God bless.