21 November 2023
Someone close to me had his kids in a private Christian school attached to the church they attend. We need not discuss the "school" part, but the "Christian" part is pertinent here.
Upon an invitation, I attended a Christmas presentation a couple of years ago. The half-dozen classes performed in various ways on a stage. Lots of decent stuff, and some you tolerated because the kids were still learning. The thing that caused a discussion between me and this fellow was that the middle schoolers performed sign language to an old Christmas hymn. Instead of something sung by other students (some quite competent), they chose a recording -- by Pentatonix.
Of course, their voices are excellent. The arrangement was superb, as you would expect from a group that performs acapella for a living. I'll grant you that there are only a few acts in the CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) industry that can compete with that. And let's get real: The CCM harbors some very unholy performers. The same song would be just as defiling with some of them as it would be with Pentatonix.
I suppose you do know that Pentatonix are quite public in their support of the LGBTQ+ community? So much do they support it that several members are some version of LGBTQ+ personally. That's actually not much worse than the sexual shenanigans of some performers in the CCM.
Yes, sexual looseness defiles and destroys a civilization. That is a problem, and those students should have learned that. I seriously doubt they ever will. But again, that's not exactly what drove me to have a discussion with the dad later. He missed the point, too, talking about how we cannot hope to reach sinners if we don't let them in our lives. Apparently this church teaches such a lesson quite often. It was their way of "bringing Pentatonix to church."
My point was that there was no significant difference between this school and any secular school. Do you recall the condemnation on the Church of Laodecia in Revelation 3:14-21? Laodecia was the kind of place that would hire secular/pagan folks to fill church staff. Where were the boundaries? Just this one little thing symbolized the utter lack of covenant boundaries the whole church failed to understand.
My friend's church was just an entertainment franchise. The pastor was always telling his congregation about investing in real estate and how "God blessed it" because he was a Charismatic who prayed in tongues, though his business practices were hardly different from other home-flippers in our area who claimed the same religious bona fides -- which is almost all of them. Their whole game is not blessing people with getting them out from under a heavy mortgage, or making older properties available cheaply. No, their emphasis is doing only a tiny few cosmetic upgrades and jacking up the selling price.
And they encourage the kids to engage in the same trendy crap that secular/pagan kids do. Just come to weekly worship and listen to the praise band and the preacher, and be sure to give big offerings. And everybody pray in tongues on cue so that God will bless whatever it is they do. Don't worry about actual boundaries of holiness. It reminds me of LifeChurch where the praise teams are likely to perform secular or even politically themed music during worship.
Here was my point: I wondered aloud to my friend why this expensive private church academy couldn't raise the students' consciousness to a higher level, so that they wouldn't want to such trendy crap. Not that you could stop them from listening to filthy pagans sing, but why didn't the kids realize this was so far beneath them? Why did they aspire to be like everyone who didn't go to church? Where's the salt and light?
Don't tell me that's how kids are. When I was in Europe my military job put me in contact with children who attended a DoD-funded school attached to a US embassy. Those kids were different from other kids. The schools and teachers were not all that much better, but the kids themselves were. Not a self-conscious arrogance, but a self-assurance and sense of purpose ruled their lives. There were things they avoided, not from a rule-bound stricture, but they were wise enough to know it would suck them in and distract them from their life's mission. And these were secular kids, but they had a sense of prime directive.
Tell me why a church can't build that kind of atmosphere. Tell me why a private church academy can't promote that kind of thing.
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