CDM Archive

Discipleship Ministries of the PCA

Men's Ministries

A Better Way to Handle Abuse

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By Ken Sande. Sexual abuse in the church does not have to end in broken lives, agonizing lawsuits, and divided congregations. When people follow God’s instructions, these terrible incidents can result in healing, justice, and healthier churches.When victims of abuse first come forward, I have found that most of them are seeking four reasonable responses. First, they are looking for understanding, compassion, and emotional support. Second, they want the church to admit that the abuse occurred and to acknowledge that it was wrong. Third, they want people to take steps to protect others from similar harm. And fourth, they expect compensation for the expense of needed counseling.

As national headlines reveal, many churches have unwisely ignored these legitimate needs. Instead they have blindly followed their lawyers’ and insurance adjusters’ textbook strategy to avoid legal liability. They try to cover up the offense and deny responsibility. All too often they distance themselves from the victims and their families, leaving them feeling betrayed and abandoned.

Many frustrated victims eventually run into a lawyer who tells them they could win a million-dollar damages award. Soon everyone is locked in an adversarial process that reopens wounds and generates even more pain and anger. Whatever the verdict, both sides lose, since money alone can never heal the wounds of abuse.There is a better way.
God has designed a powerful peacemaking strategy for dealing with offenses between people, including sexual abuse. When churches follow it, the cycle of abuse is broken and restoration can begin.

COMPASSION

If there is one place that victims of abuse should find understanding, compassion, and support, it is the church, which God commands to respond to suffering with tenderness and selfless love. “Be kind and compassionate to one another.” “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.” “Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others” (Ephesians 4:31; Philippians 2:3-4). Instead of pulling away from victims, churches should draw closer to them, listening to their stories, mourning with and praying for them, and bearing their burdens. Responding with love and compassion is one of the best ways to show that the church abhors abuse and is committed to serving the victim.

CONFESSION

Attorneys instinctively instruct their clients to “make no admissions.” Hundreds of churches have followed this shortsighted counsel in recent years, prolonging the agony of abuse victims, infuriating juries, and triggering multimillion-dollar punitive damages awards. In contrast, everyone benefits when people trust God’s promise, “He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy (Proverbs 28:13). A church should acknowledge its contribution to an abusive situation and encourage the abuser to confess his sin, take responsibility for his actions, and seek needed counseling. These steps can prevent a court battle and speed healing for victim and offender alike. (Since an impulsive admission could allow an insurer to cancel coverage, church leaders should consult with their insurer, lawyer, and a Christian conciliator to plan their words carefully.)

COMPENSATION FOR COUNSELING

The Bible places a strong emphasis on requiring a wrongdoer to repair any damage he has caused to another person. “Pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed” (Exodus 21:19). Therefore, churches should be earnest to do whatever they can to bring wholeness to victims of abuse. As soon as abuse is revealed, the church should immediately come to the aid of the victim and his family, holding forth the redeeming power of the Gospel and offering to provide or cover the cost of needed counseling.

CHANGE

When abuse takes place, statements of regret are not enough. Genuine repentance is demonstrated by making changes to protect others from similar harm. “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” “Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Luke 3:8; Psalm 82:4). This requires removing the abuser from his position and implementing screening and supervision procedures to prevent other abusive people from being in counseling or child-care positions. Such actions not only protect others from harm but also relieve abuse victims, who are deeply concerned that others not be treated as they were.

CONCILIATION

It may be difficult for a church to implement these steps if a victim’s family is already threatening legal action or an insurer refuses to support personal contacts. These situations can still be resolved without a legal battle, however, by submitting the matter to biblical mediation or arbitration. “If you have disputes, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church” (1 Corinthians 6:4). Christian conciliation by outside neutrals can provide a constructive forum to deal with both the spiritual and legal issues related to abuse. This legally enforceable process provides appropriate confidentiality and promotes confession and restitution, which help to bring about justice and reconciliation.

These five steps are not theoretical. I have seen many churches follow this process, usually with great success. In one case, a pastor discovered that a man had abused several children in the church, including the pastor’s daughter. In spite of his own personal anguish, the pastor prayed to respond to the situation in a way that would reflect the love of Jesus. After consulting with a Christian conciliator and the church’s insurer, the pastor and his elders ministered to everyone who had been hurt by this dreadful sin.They persuaded the abuser to confess his sin to the families of the children and to turn himself in to the police. He willingly accepted his prison sentence, and was even grateful that his destructive behavior had finally been stopped.

The leaders spent many hours with the families themselves, grieving and praying with them, and making sure they received needed support and counseling. In addition, the leaders improved their screening and supervision policies to guard against similar incidents in the future.They also reached out to the abuser’s wife and children, who were so ashamed that they planned to leave the church. But the leaders understood what being a shepherd is all about. They ministered to this broken family, reassured them of God’s love, and kept them in the fold.

Instead of being dragged through an excruciating lawsuit, the victims and their families, the abuser and his family, and the entire congregation experienced the redeeming power of God. This remarkable process culminated months later during a Christmas Eve service. As the church prepared to sing “Silent Night,” two young girls came forward to light the candles. One of them had been abused. The other was the daughter of the abuser. As they finished their task and smiled at each other, the congregation saw tangible evidence of God’s love and grace.Abuse in the church does not have to end with catastrophe. When a church follows its Lord, even this great tragedy can result in healing and restoration.

Praying the Psalms

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“Whoever prays the Psalms earnestly and regularly will soon stop those other light and personal little devotional prayers and say: Ah, there is not the juice, the strength, the passion, the fire which I find in the Psalms.” Martin Luther[i]

By Archie Parrish. God blessed my wife and me with three children. From the moment of their births we talked to them. Daily we did everything we could to get them to repeat what we said. At first only Jean and I could understand the sounds they made. Day after day, we continued talking to them, and after a while they began echoing our words back to us. Single words grew into short sentences. Because we continued to talk to our children they learned to talk to us.

In a similar fashion God teaches His children the language of prayer. The Holy Spirit prays for us and helps us learn to pray. The Holy Spirit inspired the whole Bible; and He uses all Scripture to help us pray. But He especially uses the book of Psalms. As we pray the Psalms, the Holy Spirit helps us commune with the Father, conform to the Son, and combat the devil.

Only men and women set free from sin through faith in Christ can successfully fight spiritual warfare. As sons and daughters in a conscious vital relationship with our Father and with His family in a local church, we can properly serve as soldiers in Christ’s army and gain victory in battles with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Leaders in spiritual warfare need not be brilliant; they cannot be self-confident. They are to be humble servants, who are courageous because they are confident in the Lord. They lead by example and are people of prayer who multiply after their kind. Soldiers in spiritual warfare are humble followers of Jesus who maintain their morale by a steady diet of psalms and basic Christian truth, especially Scripture. They boldly engage the enemy. Spiritual warriors know their enemies and believe God is sufficient to defeat them. Spiritual warriors believe kingdom-focused prayer is their super-weapon.

The Calvinist reformers were led by a militant aristocracy and financed by wealthy bourgeoisie. They put up long and frequently successful battles. Yet the leadership and finance could not have won the day had the individual Calvinists not possessed, to quote Cromwell, “a conscience of what they were doing.” In many cases, they won their battles or retrieved those they had lost, not through generalship nor through greater economic power, but because of superior morale. In building up and maintaining this morale, the battle hymns of the Psalter played a conspicuous part.[ii]

The psalms owed their importance in this connection primarily to Calvin himself. Usually when thinking of all his influence on the resistance movements, we tend to stress his teachings, his organization, and his personality. Yet at the grass-roots level these perhaps did not have all of the impact which we usually attribute to them. The thing that really “grabbed” the common man, the ordinary Calvinistic soldier, was something much more mundane: his catechetical training[iii] and the congregational singing of the psalms.

David said, “I give myself to prayer” (Psalm 109:4). Literally the original Hebrew reads, “I prayer”, i.e. “I am prayer.” The Holy Spirit desires to help us become prayer. Here is how He is helping me. I begin every day with the book of Psalms. I divided the book into thirty almost equal portions and I spend about thirty minutes prayerfully reading aloud one portion. I use the English Standard Version because it is an accurate translation and it is easy to read.

This daily discipline has been so rewarding that I am now trying to learn all 150 Psalms by heart. It was not unusual for devout Jews in the time of Jesus and His Apostles to know by heart the “whole of David,” i.e., the entire book of Psalms. It is probable that our Lord Jesus had all the Psalms memorized. They certainly were the very fabric of His life. In His most painful moments, as He faced death on the cross, He instinctively cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46). These are David’s words recorded in Psalm 22:1.

Jesus’ last words from the cross were, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). As soon as their children began to talk, devout Jewish mothers taught them to pray, “Into Your hand I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5). Each night before going to sleep the children prayed these words. To this childhood prayer, Jesus adds the personal address, “Father.” Concerning His atoning work on the cross, Jesus declared, “It is finished” (John 19:30), then He prayed to the Father as a little child turning in for the night.

Paul urged earlyChristiansto “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). Praying the Psalms built the early Christians into an army of kingdom intercessors. New Testament writers quote more verses from the Psalms than any other Old Testament book.[iv] Praying the Psalter shaped the life of early Christianity into a militant kingdom focus.

Martin Luther relied on the Psalms to become a man of prayer. Said Luther:”When I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer), I take my little Psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.”[v]

The Secret that unlocks the Psalter is the fact that it is the prayer book of Jesus, the Messiah and Mediator. He is the Head; the Church is His Body. And Head and Body are one; so the Body should join in the prayers of the Head. With this perspective we can pray all the Psalms, even when the writer protests his innocence or invokes God’s judgment, or goes through infinite depths of suffering. Jesus Christ Himself is praying here and in the whole Psalter.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer observes:”This insight the New Testament and the Church have always recognized and declared. The Man Jesus Christ, to whom no affliction, no ill, no suffering is alien and who yet was the wholly innocent and righteous one, is praying in the Psalter through the mouth of His Church. The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. The Psalter is the vicarious prayer of Christ for His Church. This prayer belongs not to the individual member, but to the whole Body of Christ. In the Psalter we learn to pray on the basis of Christ’s prayer.”[vi]Ask the Father to show you the praying Christ in the Psalms and teach you how to use the Psalms in your prayer life.

A Significant Question

One question that often is asked concerning praying the Psalms is: How can I pray a Psalm when it does not express exactly what I feel in my heart at the moment? Anyone who is truly honest will admit the need to pray against our own heart in order to pray rightly. After all is said and done, it is not what we want to pray that is important, but that for which God wants us to pray. Jeremiah warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) If we only follow our hearts, we would probably only pray for “our daily bread,” God wants us to pray that His will be done, not our will. As you pray the Psalms, begin by praying, “Father, enable me to pray not from the poverty of my heart, but from the richness of Your word.”

Making the Psalms yours

Let me close this plea to pray the Psalms by sharing with you a few practical suggestions. Below is a thirty-day schedule for praying through the Psalms. Each section requires about fifteen minutes, depending on how much meditation I do.

Before reading pray: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law…. Give me understanding, that I may keep Your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:18, 34). “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23, 24).

  • While reading turn the words of the Psalms into prayer.

  • Read aloud, in a normal voice if possible but at least in a whisper. (This helps concentration and avoids distraction.)

  • Read on your knees, when possible.

  • Read daily-I usually do this when the Lord awakens me early in the morning.

  • Read frequently during the day–Carry the Psalter with you and refer to the day’s portion frequently.

Let us join Luther in the following prayer:”Our dear Lord, who has given to us and taught us to pray the Psalter and the Lord’s Prayer, grant us also the spirit of prayer and grace so that we pray with enthusiasm and earnest faith, properly and without ceasing, for we need to do this; he has asked us for it and therefore wants to have it from us. To him be praise, honor, and thanksgiving. Amen.”[vii]

[i] Foreword to the Neuburg edition of the Psalms, 1545.

[ii] W. Stanford Reid, The Battle Hymns of the Lord-Calvinist Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century, p. 36.

[iii] The use of question and answer instruction used in Catechisms was part of the Passover celebration. See Exodus 12:25-27: “When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'”

[iv] Nestl

Do I Know You?

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Most everybody talks about relational ministry. Yet relationships are so easy to miss because our agendas call for more important things.I’m embarrassed that I don’t know the names of some of the people in our little church. That creates an awkwardness that inhibits any attempt to go further. Think of the people in your congregation, your Sunday school class, people you see regularly, whose names you don’t know. It’s one reason why the church can seem so impersonal.

Consider the visitor-or is she a regular attendee you’ve simply never met? Do you introduce yourself? I never will forget the time I introduced myself to a woman at church. I asked if she was visiting and she informed me that she was a charter member. That sort of response can be a big inhibitor to saying, “Hi, my name is _____.” But if you don’t the visitor might leave saying, “I attended that church and no one spoke to me.” And knowing a person’s name is just the beginning.

A Session or Deacon’s meeting might start with a conversation about what’s happening in everyone’s life and a time of prayer for each other. It could take a half hour or more, and it could be the most important thing you do. It will help everyone come together for the business at hand. It could surface some significant information, and it will add a little more glue to the bond that solidifies each one’s commitment to the others.

A Sunday school class ought to be about more than increased understanding of a biblical text. To be effective it must rub that passage against our lives. One way to do that is to help people talk to each other about ways they think the Spirit might want them to respond. A class could break into groups of three to five for exercises that help them get to know each other better, know the Bible better, and listen to God apply the Word to their hearts. Variations on this theme work in almost any age group. For instance, take an egg timer to a children’s class and let everyone have one minute. While the sand falls each one in turn can talk about the most fun he ever had, his favorite toy or best friend, or describe his mother or father. As the teacher, don’t forget to take your turn, too.

Many of us live in metropolitan areas where most everybody is from some place else. Often relatives live a considerable distance away, and neighbors seldom know each other. Houses are empty during the day and closed up during the evening. Many times I’ve heard neighbors say, “People will be out when it’s warmer.” But summer comes and, “People will be out when it gets cooler.” The reality is people don’t come out much at all. Relationships in the neighborhood, at the office, or at school are important. But if they don’t extend beyond the confines of that environment they have limited value. And the same is true of relationships at church. Hopefully, the believer will have friendships with some that extend beyond the confines of a church program.These relationships are necessary for us to not simply survive, but thrive in this Christian pilgrimage.

The Cost of Love

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Sigmund Freud argued that each individual has a limited quantity of love. Consequently, the more a person loves someone else, the less love he has for himself.Rollo May took issue with that position. He observed that when a person falls in love he feels more valuable and treats himself with more care. He further suggested that this inner sense of worth comes whether or not the love is reciprocated. He agreed with those who say that we are able to love others to the extent that we are able to love ourselves.

For some time I have maintained that love is elicited. The more we are loved, the greater our potential for love. If such is the case Freud has given us a half-truth. We do have a limited capacity for love.And May has given us a half-truth. To love someone who loves us in return is scary (we are giving without any assurance that we will receive), but it is invigorating nonetheless. It renews us, giving us an even greater capacity for love. But to love someone who does not return our love can drain us.

Love is commanded in the Scripture. I’ve often been asked how that command squares with my position. Usually behind the question is the assumption that since love is commanded it must be controlled by the will.Not necessarily. I may be able to will to treat you in a loving way. But love is always greater than the sum of its parts. The difference between doing loving things for you and feeling love for you may be subtle but it is there. And at times that difference can register in a profound way. For instance, parents may determine to treat all their children alike, yet love one more than another. Teachers may consciously try to not allow favoritism even though they are attracted to some students and possibly even repelled by others. In each case I suggest that the individuals involved are able to see the difference between loving acts and love itself.

Some might maintain that we never express love to another person without meeting some need of our own. But if there is a love that approximates the love of Jesus, it must be possible to love someone who either cannot or will not acknowledge our love. And to love such a person is costly. Because our resource of love is not restored in the process.

Are we able to pay the price? We are if we are receiving love. The Christian experiences regularly the love of Jesus through friends, worship, instruction from His book, prayer and reflection on what He has told us and done for us, especially during the tough times.

Are we willing to pay the price? That is a question that must be answered within the context of specific relationships. Can I love the son who has broken my heart? Can I love the student who I can’t seem to reach? Can I love the church member who seems to have so little to give to me? Or the neighbor who irritates me?

We know God’s answer. He loved us while we were his enemies. And we know God’s desire. He tells us to love each other the way he loves us.Suppose that we belong to Jesus and we are willing to try to love someone we haven’t been able to love. If love is more than doing loving things, how do we go about it?

I suggest first, that we try to get to know the person. That knowledge might put our feelings in a different perspective. If we still have “problems” with the person try to think about why we consider those things to be problems. That also could give us a different perspective. Risk talking about our feelings with the person. That must be done with great care remembering that our objective is not alienation but to break through the barriers that keep us from loving. Ask for God’s wisdom as well as the ability to love that person.As we love we are renewing and enlarging the ability of others to love. And as representatives of Jesus Christ our love enables others to feel His love.

Not a Village, but a Church with a School

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By Robert Rogland. Can you think of a greater heartbreak for believing parents than to see their children grow up without a living faith in Christ? Too many godly fathers and mothers live with that heartbreak. Some have seen their children grow up more interested in the world than in Christ; others have seen a son or daughter actually reject Him. What can be done to ensure that our covenant children will grow up to trust and love and serve our Savior?

The Bible charges parents to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). But other Christians also have a measure of responsibility: When the Lord commanded his church to teach all nations, surely that included covenant children as well (Matt. 28:18-20). Our Directory of Worship, a part of the Book of Church Order, reminds us that “Believers’ children within the visible Church, and especially those dedicated to God in Baptism, are non-communing members under the care of the church” (DW, Chapter 57-1; emphasis added). When we witness the baptism of an infant, do we not vow to pray for that child? Do we not also vow to help him or her come to true faith, repentance, and obedience and to become a communing member of the church-in other words, to help the child grow up to be a believing, practicing follower of Christ?

Others may debate whether or not it takes a village to raise a child, but well-taught Christians should have no doubt that, under ordinary circumstances, it takes a church to raise a Christian child. The Christian school can be a powerful arm of the church as it works towards that end.

The Role of the Home

Much of the work of raising a child to be a Christian is informal. Parents instruct in conversation and show by example what a Christian believes and does (Deut. 6:7). Children learn to pray and worship first by participating in family devotions and praying with Mommy or Daddy at their bedside. They learn the importance of keeping God’s Law and the consequences of disobedience as they disobey and are disciplined. They learn God’s unconditional love for His children as they see their parents’ unconditional love for them. A boy or girl learns what it is to walk by faith when he or she sees Dad and Mom face crises with trust in God. Children learn what love for strangers is through hospitality extended in the home. Through such experiences, and the interpretation of them furnished by their parents, children learn most of what it is to be a Christian in faith, word, and deed.

The Role of the Church

The church also has a role in the upbringing of a covenant child. It is in the services of the church that children learn corporate worship, worship even more important than family worship as far as the Scriptures are concerned. The Lord’s Supper, with all the grace it conveys, is celebrated in the church, not the home. Pastors and Sunday school teachers provide formal instruction in Bible and doctrine. In the church, children encounter others who share their parents’ faith, an encouraging thing considering that not many of the neighbors are likely to share the family’s faith. What the Bible says about Christ dying for the world is more believable when the child sees that biblical faith is not confined to the family circle. In the church, children see that some Christians have one gift, some another, all to be used for the good of the Body. Indeed, it is only in the church that the concept of the Body of Christ finds meaning. The immediate Christian family is never called the Body of Christ.

The Role of the School

There comes a time in every child’s life when formal instruction becomes necessary. Children need to learn a lot of facts and skills. They need to build a Christian worldview, a framework for seeing everything in its relationship to biblical truth. Here Christian parents face three basic choices: home schooling, public schooling, or Christian schooling. I don’t intend to condemn either public schooling or home schooling in this article; we all know children from believing homes who have succeeded in growing in Christ and in Christian thinking under all three regimens. But I write as a teacher in a Christian school to tell others how the Christian school can be a partner with the home and the church in raising children for the Lord.

What are the particular benefits of sending your child to a Christian school? The greatest is surely this: teachers in the Christian school view the training of covenant children as their calling from God and have prepared themselves to exercise that high calling faithfully and effectively. The teacher is the single most important element in any school experience. More than textbooks and other learning materials, more than the physical facilities where the school is housed, more than schoolmates, the dedicated, competent Christian teacher exercises the most important influence on a child during school hours.

To be sure, no one will love your child and be dedicated to his or her success in school more than you. If love and dedication were the only considerations, I suppose everyone should homeschool. But some parents can’t homeschool, and others realize that they don’t know how to teach effectively in a formal way or (especially in the upper grades) don’t know the material their children need to learn. Plus, in homes with children of different ages, the parent simply may not be able to teach all of them well and do all the other things necessary to keep the home running. The competent Christian teacher has academic knowledge, professional expertise, and an interest in your child that will enable her or him to be your partner-and the church’s partner-in giving your son or daughter the knowledge, skills, and biblical worldview he or she needs.

A second benefit of Christian schooling is that your child will be part of a Christian community. There your child rubs shoulders with Christian peers, much as you rub shoulders with fellow Christians in the life of the church. Covenant children are members of the church, but they do not participate as equals with communing members on Sunday morning or Wednesday evening. But in the Christian school, children have the experience of participating as equals with other Christians-immature Christians like themselves, to be sure, but equals nonetheless. They will be offended and have to learn to forgive; they will offend and have to seek forgiveness for foolish and sinful words and acts. They will have opportunities for leadership. They will pull together in common projects for the sake of Christ and His kingdom. The Christian school is not a church, but it is a training ground for church life as well as for life in the world. And all this takes place under the supervision and guidance of adult Christians who spend six to eight hours a day devoted to your child’s growth and development in Christ.

A third benefit of the Christian school is that it is a prism refracting the phenomena of nature, the events of history, and all the other facts of life and the world through the medium of the Bible. The diverse interpretations of men and things given by the media and the public school are naturalistic and worldly. (While a Christian school environment provides an ideal setting for this, let us thank God for the many godly public school teachers who do not dish up the world this way to their pupils.) Christian parents must continually challenge and correct non-biblical ideas their children encounter. Some parents do this consistently and well. The church also, through its teaching ministry, must expose and correct worldly ideas that bombard its members, children as well as adults. The Christian school partners with the parents and the church in this task.

“All right, you make a good case for Christian schooling on paper,” the skeptical reader may reply, “but I know Christian schools that are virtually indistinguishable from public schools. The instruction is mediocre, the facilities are inadequate, and the kids are just as worldly as public school kids. Why should I send my child to a school like that?”

The answer to that question is, of course, you shouldn’t send your child to such a school. Parents need to be discerning as they look for a Christian school for their children. All Christian schools are not equal. To be sure, all or nearly all Christian schools will have a dress code, a weekly chapel service, and required Bible classes. Virtually all will feature instruction extolling a creationist approach to science. But there is much more to a Christian school than that! Christian parents should settle for nothing less than the following:

1. The school you choose must not be staffed with pious teachers who lack academic and professional competence, nor should it employ those who are merely competent, apart from godliness. The teachers must be models of what educated, godly disciples of Christ ought to be, and they must make both learning and godliness attractive to their pupils by word and by example.

2. The school must teach all subjects from a biblical perspective, consciously helping its pupils develop a mature Christian world and life view. That view must be comprehensive, embracing all of human life and experience. The great Dutch Reformed thinker Abraham Kuyper said it well: There is not a square inch of life or thought where Christ has not said, “This is mine!” I believe that “reformed thinkers” have worked out what a biblical world and life view entails more completely and consistently than Christians of other traditions, and I conclude that the ideal Christian school is reformed as well as evangelical. Yet it is not smug, obnoxious, or sectarian in upholding reformed convictions. If a Christian school can make the reformed view of God, men, and life attractive to non-reformed Christians, as well as to Presbyterians, it has struck the right balance.

3. The school must challenge its pupils to practice consistent biblical thinking and living both in and out of the classroom. Compartmentalization-thinking and behaving as a Christian in school and church, thinking and living like the world the rest of the time-is a great temptation for all of us, children included. A good Christian school challenges its students to think and live as Christians all the time, and tries to show them how.

If you already have this kind of Christian school in your community, well and good. If you do not, why not ask your Session to consider starting a church-based school? My experience and observations have reinforced the conviction that the Christian school functions best when it operates as a cooperative ministry of the church rather than under the auspices of an independent board. Few independent Christian schools are consistently reformed. Establishing and operating a school under the authority of the church should make it easier to maintain a reformed philosophy. If God leads you to pursue the seemingly daunting task of starting a Christian school, CE&P can put you in contact with PCA churches and schools that would be happy to share their experiences, observations, and ideas with you.

No Christian school is ideal. Christian teachers are sinners saved by grace, just like other Christians. They do not always carry out their commission with complete faithfulness. Maybe some of the teachers are not as well trained as they could be. Here is an opportunity for parents with particular expertise to volunteer to help. Maybe a particular teacher does not relate well to your child, or to other children. Here is an opportunity to talk with that teacher. Be an active parent! Meet with and get to know the teacher. Let him or her know your concerns. The Christian school is a partner with the home and the church. Partnership requires communication.

When you are tempted to be critical of your Christian school, remember that parents and churches are not perfect either. But our gracious God does for us above what we ask or think. God is faithful even if we are faithless (Rom. 2:2-3). How much more will he bless if we faithfully seek godly education for our covenant children!

Theodicy: Understanding the Goodness of God in the Midst of Evil

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Recently several people have asked our staff to recommend good material on theodicy. These inquiries may have arisen as the result of the September 11 tragedy in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. It is certainly natural and understandable that people would ask questions when events such as those occur.

We have been taught that God is wise, powerful, and good-that he rules his world completely. We have further been taught that God determines all things that come to pass. But the question surfaces: If God is good and all-powerful, why is there evil in his world? Is he really God? All-powerful? Good? Does he really rule his world? Where does he fit into the picture with all the bad things going on? And bottom line, we ask, How is it possible to reconcile the realities of life-sin, evil, and wickedness-with God’s all powerful and good rule? Theodicy is an attempt to justify and harmonize those things.

The problem is that we tend to approach this topic solely within the area of reason and logic. That is not all bad, but when we are talking about God, reason and logic have their limits because God transcends both. Even the notion of trying to justify God’s control puzzles us because if God is who he says he is, why do bad things continually happen to good people? And, we cannot cop out by saying there are no good people, true as that may be. It begs the real question that theodicy seeks to address. Historically people have tried to deal with this complex subject in many ways. The following four key explanations prevalent today will serve our purposes in this pr