Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Today we have Kevin Swanson with us, who has given the last two and a half decades of his life to really focus on the sufficiency of scripture for education. And that's what we're going to talk about. Hope you enjoy the time. So Jason, how come The United States of America keeps spending more and more and more and more and more on education and getting less and less and less and less out of it.

Like huge percentages of kids can't read and they can't write. What is going on? You know, if it's an inverse relationship, I think we should drop funding to zero and see what happens. Yeah. I mean, okay, so you have a kid in the United States and through K through 12, he's going to Spend 16, 000 hours sitting at a desk.

That's amazing. What's wrong with this picture? So of all the conferences Church and Family Life has ever done, especially the national conferences, My favorite was in Cincinnati in 2009, the Sufficiency of Scriptures. I don't have one that I would rate higher than that one. There were a couple of really memorable messages that I'll never forget.

And one of them was Kevin Swanson on sufficiency of scripture for education. So I'm glad we've got him here. We're trying to get you to reprise that here. Yeah, hey, and it's still almost everybody in America sends their kids to the Marxist and Doctrination Centers. And it's not going all Christians, right?

People who say they're Christians. Is it, is it 96% something like that? You know that, you know, the statistics. So Kevin, what happened? Well, brothers, this is, I think probably the most insidious demonic attack upon the Christian church in the history of the Christian church, just simply because our entire educational system has been co-opted by the socialists, controlled by governments, and then completely turned over to a humanistic man-centered philosophy and theology.

Naturalism, humanism, evolutionism, socialism, that's all wrapped up into a one trillion dollar monopoly that's been foisted upon the American public. And the pastors are silent. They just let the lambs get slaughtered. And I think it's because of a bad epistemology, a bad theory of knowledge, and they just don't think the Bible is sufficient to the area of knowledge and education. And that has been devastating to the church.

I think it's what's destroyed the Christian church in the Western world. I just don't think that's an exaggeration. So this is a major, major Houston, we have a problem situation. This is a big deal. And we need to get back to the Bible for salvaging family, for salvaging the faith, for seeing our kids will be in heaven when we get there, for the future of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Western world and everywhere, because secularism and socialism and the socialist schools teach mainly humanism, ethical autonomy, the sexual autonomy, sexual chaos, all that's being exported to Africa, to Asia, South America, wherever America is influential.

And so I think we're ruining the world. We're ruining the church. We have basically curtailed generational faith because of this educational cartel that has been pretty much monopolized by governments for the last hundred years. So it's time somebody throws a flag on the play and that's for us to do. So you said the last hundred years, what's happened in the last hundred years?

Well I think simply put John Dewey, I mean I think that's obvious, but you push it back to John Jacques Rousseau and the horse man and so forth. And the separation of education from the family and church and putting it under the rubric of the state, the humanist state, the polytheistic state, the naturalistic evolutionist state, and turning all of that over to the monopoly of the state has pretty much put the control of education under these extremely powerful forces that I think are controlled by principies and powers. And it's for parents, and I think the only thing standing in the way is parents who believe in God, parents have the faith, and they have a love for their kids to stand up and say, enough. We are going to raise our children, the nurture and the admonition of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the paideia of Jesus.

And so if you walk into the average public school and say, do you raise children? Do you educate children? The paideia, the educational system of Jesus, They'll say, oh no, we don't do that here. Okay, well then leave. So it's just that simple.

But I think it comes back to the question, Scott, of whether or not the scriptures are applicable, whether or not they're really going to equip the man or woman of God for every good work. And of course, the whole idea is the Bible is separated from natural philosophy built up on human reason. This is the Aquinas thing. And so therefore, the Bible has nothing to say about education, about science, history, literature, etc., etc. Educational is a neutral subject, it's built up on human reason, and we're not going to identify a distinctly Christian education philosophy in the churches.

And it's also a refusal to fight the good fight. Pastors, parents need to stand up and say, no, we are not going to take this bad worldview and inculcate it into our kids through these schools. We're going to find a distinctively Christian approach to education, which as I see it, absolutely is given to us in the book of Proverbs, Deuteronomy 6-7, etc. I just came upon a book written by a Reformed scholar on epistemology, and this very, very conservative Reformed scholar was building out a biblical view of knowledge, which of course involves education. Not to mention, Proverbs 1-7, did not mention Ephesians 6-4, did not mention Deuteronomy 6-7, forgot to mention every text referring to a biblical epistemology, but that's because he's so rooted and grounded in Aquinas, And it's extremely dangerous.

It's ruining the Christian faith. And we need to bring back a distinctively Christian theory of knowledge, a distinctively Christian approach, biblical approach to education, because the Bible speaks to these things. The Bible is sufficient in this area. And this is a major line, I think, drawn between those churches that are heretical and on the road to apostasy, even within the Reformed community, and those that retain a distinctively biblical approach to knowledge and certainly the education of our children, which is so, so, so very crucial for the Christian church. So talk to us about the Christian school movement, because the Christian, much of the Christian school movement, well, I'm gonna call it an upgrade.

It still looks like the pagan educational methodology. Scott, you're right. To some extent, we did a survey of 10, 000 young people raised in Christian homes in the 1990s. Some were Christian schools, some public school, and some homeschool. Turns out the homeschoolers were two and a half times more likely to keep the faith, stay on track in terms of attending church, believing in Jesus, and going on as faithful Christians in the next generation.

But Christian schools and public schools were almost no different. Now, it might have been a slight improvement in Christian schools, but also one of the statistics we identified in this study was the longer these kids were in Christian schools, the less likely they were to believe in creation, the less likely they were to believe in God, the less likely they were to stay in the faith. So it appears on average. Now, I know there's been some studies like me and my institute that's identified certain kinds of schools, like principal approach schools, or certain super, super hyper conservative, biblically oriented schools that do a good job. So I'm not saying they're all bad, but on average, on average, Christian schools do as bad of a job as public schools when it comes to discipling children into the faith.

And I think the bottom line is we just need to go back to Scripture and almost nobody wants to go to Scripture and say, what does the Bible say about education? I walked into the largest Christian school, the administration building here in the Denver metro area, and there's this gigantic verse on the walls, you shall teach your children God's word as you sit in your house. And I looked around and thought, this doesn't look like my house. So Again, I don't know as if Christian pastors are just going, okay, I'm done with Horace Mann, I'm done with John Jarkees, I'm done with John Dewey, I'm done with our kids all going to hell. What does the Bible say about education?

They pull out Deuteronomy 6-7, and boy, that looks a lot like family-based discipleship. You know what I'm saying? I just don't know as if pastors are asking this question, if they're really genuine about this question as to whether the scriptures are sufficient for this field of education. To me, the crux of it is Proverbs 1-7, what is that? It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

In other words, you can't even start knowing until you fear the Lord. It's a prerequisite for knowledge. And so, yes, you can memorize the date that William of Orange invaded England, but you don't have a framework for that having meaning and you don't understand where it fits in. You begin to know after you have begun to fear the Lord. So, a system of education that is divorced from a knowledge of God is doomed to failure because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Absolutely. And this, I think, is where we need to start through all our curriculum. We want a God-centered view of creation of origins, of history, of literature, etc. And if our children aren't coming out all of this, fearing God, more reverence for God, then we have failed. And that's one reason when we put together, God made the world, God made life, these are some that I've written for our curriculum.

I have references to God on every page. In fact, average about seven to eight references to God on each page and constantly referring to the awesomeness of God, the praise worthiness of God on every page. And I noticed a lot of the curriculum that we went through in the early 70s and 80s, we weren't seeing enough. I mean, a Christian curriculum would have one little reference to God at the beginning, and then the rest of it is just all these facts they're pushing into kids' minds. But rather, the purpose of education is to glorify God, to enjoy Him forever.

Therefore, at the end of every chapter, for example, in these books, we have singing the doxology, you're singing a hymn, you're singing a psalm, a praise. When you see the awesomeness of God's creation, you just really need to stand up in the classroom, lift your hands, and praise God. There should be an increase, some total increase of the fear of God, the reverence for God in the curriculum. And honestly, brothers, I think we just need to put this on steroids. We just absolutely need to bring a God-centered, God-fearing approach to education in every single class, effectively every minute of the class.

So that happens more in the context of discipleship, it happens more in terms of a Christian classroom in which you're not separating out discipleship from just shoving facts in the kids' heads. And so, yeah, I think we have a highly distinctive form of education. Most people say, well, yeah, you're using the Book of Proverbs, but that applies on Sunday for Sunday school, but it certainly doesn't apply on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the chemistry class. And I'd say, well, that's the reason why the faith has died in the Western world because of this radical dualism that has separated out the fear of God, reverence for God, the developing of the character of the fear of God and faith in our children in the midst of the biology class, in the midst of the math class and the literature class. Okay, Kevin, I want to drill down on two areas.

And the first is, what does the sufficiency of scripture look in terms of methodology? Because you have methodology and you have messaging, right? So start with methodology, and then I want to talk about messaging. What does the scripture say in terms of methodology about education? Right.

Deuteronomy 6-7, I think, is the locust classica, so the classic focal point for education, for a biblical theory of education. I would say Deuteronomy 6, 7, Ephesians 6, 4. In terms of methodology, I think it's pretty obvious. There you have the integration of parents, you have the integration of the Word of God, and the integration of life. So that's what you want.

You want the Word of God just thoroughly integrated as a frontlet. I call it frontlet curriculum. That's why, you know, when I'm putting together my stuff, I've got there's a Bible verse there, there's a Bible verse there, there's another Bible verse, there's a Bible verse, there's a Bible verse, oh there's another Bible verse, oh there's another Bible verse, there's another Bible verse. You know, I mean, you get the idea? I mean, I just randomly went through it.

I didn't have to look for it. There were two to three per page, and I really think what we want is to integrate Scripture into the science class, into the science curriculum. And this is how I believe we got to bring together a natural and special revelation. Calvin would speak of the Word of God being as eyeglasses. By the way, they had vented eyeglasses by the 14th century, so Andy, you can work that into your institutes if you want in the 1540s.

But he presented the Word of God as eyeglasses, which as I see is a perfect presentation of what we see in Deuteronomy 6-7, because there you have the frontlet, and we're looking through the eyeglasses of God's Word, intimate connection with that natural revelation we're going to pick up in science as we examine the creation in history, as we examine the actions of men throughout history, and in literature as we examine the psychology or the anthropology of men. But we have to have the Word of God as a frontlet, as the eyeglasses through which to view. So that's number one. You absolutely need to have hundreds of Bible verses scattered throughout your history, your science books and such. So that's what we've done.

So we just very simply went to the Word of God saying, obviously, whatever is happening in our world is destroying the faith. It's actually destroying education. I believe it's destroying science and other things as well. So what does God's Word tell us? What kind of wisdom, what kind of sufficient application of God's Word can we bring to this field?

And you just open to Deuteronomy 6-7, it says the Word needs to be as a front lip before your eyes. Okay, got it. Then we'll integrate a lot of the Word of God into every aspect of our children's curriculum. Then secondly, it's parent integrated. You shall teach your children as you sit in your home.

So there must be a pretty significant parental integration involved there. I would say, yeah, there's an occasion. People usually go to Eli and Samuel, you know, like, oh, there's a delegation. We got a delegation example in Scripture, you know, there it is, where Eli adopted Samuel into his home and homeschooled him. Okay, there is one example of some delegation, and I believe there is delegation.

Jesus was at the temple at 12 years of age, and you know, there's instances of that throughout Scripture, but God's will appears to have parents integrated very, very much so in their children's day-to-day education. And then the third thing is it's life integrated. It's not just something we read, not just something we look at as we're sitting in the house, but it's also something that's integrated as we walk, by the way, as we rise up, as we lie down. And that's a very important part of our philosophy that we bring into our workshops and seminars and conferences that we do around the world. And then, of course, Ephesians 6.4 is bring your children up in the nurture and the admonition of Jesus.

Sometimes I'll stand up in front of a conference. I'm heading out to Africa next week. We'll do four conferences there. And a lot of times what I do is I stand up and I'll say, okay, guys, do whatever Jesus did. And I'll go, thank you very much.

You know, have a nice day. That's the end of the conference. You know, it's a simple way to put it. Usually they call me back and say, can you develop on that just a little bit? Okay, we can do that.

So the idea of doing what Jesus did is, I think, very helpful because what Jesus does, he very much integrates faith and application into the teaching. We don't sit in classrooms. We are involved far more in what we would call discipleship than we are in a purely academic environment. So those are some things. I don't have time to give you the three-hour approach, but I do think the word is sufficient to give us a sense of what the focal point is.

We focus on the faith, the character, of the end result of more reverence for God in the classroom. We integrate the teaching into a life application. So, you know, not only are they learning math, but they're right away in the kitchen, doubling the recipe almost instantly. So that's what I would call life integration. A biblical view of epistemology is very much involved in doing the Word and not just knowing the Word.

I always bring in James 1 as an example of that, that God does not want us just to be hearers of the Word, but doers. If we're hearers but not doers, we're like those who see ourselves in the mirror in a straight way, forget what man or a man we are. And to me, that means that we don't just study, you know, God made life, God made animals, God made the world, but we immediately realize that the most dangerous animal on earth is the mosquito. And so the life application that follows immediately is to go outside the home and dump out the water and the wheelbarrows and the wagons and fill in the potholes and get rid of the mosquito breeding grounds and every little nine and 10 year old can do this. So what does that mean?

That means that we want to be sure that education is rooted into life itself, which makes it way more relevant, way more interesting, far less boring for the average child. But I think it also follows through on what I would call a biblical approach to knowledge and to education. So those are just some examples I would throw out. Again, you know, if you're gonna say the Bible is sufficient, then what would you do? Well, let's look up how to give knowledge, wisdom, understanding to a young man or young woman.

And you look up in Quartets, knowledge, wisdom, understanding to a young man, young woman. Oh, the book of Proverbs. Maybe we should bring the book of Proverbs into the discussion, you know. And then you've got 31 chapters you can go through where there is both, I think, methodology and messaging throughout the book of Proverbs. That's why I say the book of Proverbs is really the core curriculum.

So that's why I put together three, three volume family study series on the book of Proverbs. And by the way, I'm rewriting this cover to cover guys. I really believe it's so important and such, you know, a mothership aspect of our curriculum, so so very core that I am actually day after day after day rewriting it cover to cover and this is actually two thirds rewritten where I'm rewriting every edition I'm seven editions into it but every time I republish it's all rewritten. So I've got kind of, it's kind of like Calvin's institutes, except this is more like Kev's instruction for young teens. Okay.

Spiral bound. Spiral bound. Yeah. Calvin never spiral bounded his institutes, but I'm doing it for the family of Bible study. Okay, so what you're saying is if all we had was the Bible to educate our children, it would happen in the home, it would happen in all of life, and it would be focused on the knowledge of God.

Amen. That's the sufficiency of scripture for education. That's it. And to integrate the word of God into every aspect of it. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah. Yep. That's it. That's it.

That wraps it up, man. There's more to say. I can stretch the conference into five sessions, but- Okay. Okay. Hey, what are some of the things that you're creating curriculum for this?

So show it to us. Well, yeah, it's the history, it's the, I just finished another edition of taking the world for Jesus. I'm actually using it to prop up my, my computer, my mistake here, we can tell you look like you're in a ship, you're in you're out in the Atlantic Ocean season. Yeah, it's wobbling a bit. But Yeah, taking the world for Jesus.

This has been a work in progress for about four to five years. And let me say this also, that Scott Brown has been one of my major cheerleaders slash coaches in staying on this. So Scott, I mean, I published one edition of this. You should keep going. Let's keep working this.

So this is my second edition and we're up to 700, 800 pages. But this is, I think, a thrilling, thrilling story. We keep Jesus at the very center of it. Honestly, I think, you know, when you do history, if Jesus doesn't show up at the center, we've got a problem, guys. I mean, I ask audiences all over the world, and of course they're Christian audiences, but I ask them this simple question, who is the most important person in all of history?

Nobody says Napoleon. Nobody says Hitler. Nobody says William the Conqueror, or William the Orange, either way. They'll say Jesus. Everybody says Jesus.

And so I said, well, why don't you just put that on the cover then and make it all about Jesus? How about that? And so true, true, you know, we'll tell about Napoleon. I probably got two or three pages on Napoleon in his efforts to conquer the world, but at the end of his life, you know, he confessed he died on an island off the coast of Africa, and he confessed at the end of his life, the greatest man who ever lived wasn't me, it was Jesus. So it was a little bit like, you know, touche.

He lost, but Jesus won. And so we'll talk about Napoleon some, and we'll talk about the terrible Spanish Empire that persecuted so many Christians and then took the slave trade all over the world. I mean, yeah, okay, that's newsworthy. We give them a page, but then we'll give the Moravian brethren 15 pages for what they did to bring the gospel into the Caribbean for the first time. Some of them enslaving themselves to the slave masters in the plantations in the Caribbean.

So we'll tell us, you know, obviously our thrust is going to be different. You know, our thrust is going to be more Christ-centered. We want to know what Jesus has done. Also, we tend not to be super, super Americentric, like America is the final kingdom of God on planet Earth. I mean, despite the fact we're going into the golden age, you know, I understand that.

But seriously, guys, I really believe that Jesus actually did way more than anybody else, and he continues to do that work. And he needs to be recognized in every continent on the globe. So our entire history curriculum is based around Jesus, starting with taking the Middle East for Jesus, taking Africa for Jesus, taking the Americas for Jesus, taking Asia for Jesus, taking Europe for Jesus, and then taking the world for Jesus. So that's the way you go from the second grade on into the ninth grade as you learn about what Christ has done all over the world. So It's a totally different approach, different focus than what you would get with a more man-centered, humanistic approach to, you know, the kingdoms of men is all that matter, forget the kingdom of God.

Now, I do believe the kingdom of God has interaction, intersection with the world, And so, of course, we're going to tell many of the stories of the presidents and the wars and different things that have happened, but always from a distinctly Christian viewpoint. We're also going to take sides. You take sides in history. I'll just say that one more thing is that, you know, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly. You have the Ahabs, and Ahabs are bad kings.

And let me just say this, Woodrow Wilson was a bad president. You know, so when I wrote American God's providence, I take sides. Woodrow Wilson was awful. He turned away from his Presbyterian roots and took the Bible out of Princeton, said, no more Bible classes in Princeton, and eventually used the Ouija board and started getting into Spiritism. And then he became president of the United States and introduced a lot of eugenics and racism into America.

Just horrible, horrible. Very very socialist, very humanist, terrible president. So you have an A head there. Then there's Amaziah. Amaziah did that was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not with a good heart.

And that's a little bit like Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson did some good things. So he did some things that were right in the eyes of the Lord, but not with a good heart. And that's a little bit like Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson did some good things.

So he did some things that were right in the eyes of the Lord, but he also broke covenant with the creek and the Cherokee down in Georgia. So he didn't bat a thousand. Then you have some pretty decent presidents, I would say some good presidents. Take somebody like McKinley or Rutherford Hayes, who restored solid money after the Civil War and had him sing in the White House on a regular basis. So yeah, we're going to tell the stories, the good, the bad, the ugly.

We're not going to hide the mistakes and the sins that people committed as they led this country and so forth. But you have to bring a biblical, ethical view to bear in order to draw good conclusions on issues like that. So absolutely, your history has to be based in what I would say a Christian worldview. We haven't talked about ethics very much, but we absolutely must be concerned about ethics. What is right and wrong in history?

How do you determine that? You have to do it on the basis of God's law. And without God's law, how in the world can you ever come to decent conclusions on things like economics, politics, etc.? So we've got an entire course in economics called How the World Runs and Your Part in it, where we bring four or five hundred Bible verses to bear in the area of economics. But I just really believe that we need to carve out a distinctively biblical-based education, brothers, for the next generation of kids.

You're on board with this, right? Amen. Hey, I'm going to keep cheering you on. Remember my dad used to cheer you on all the time. I'm just now he's dead.

I'm just going to, I'm just going to pick up for him. Remember when he sent you that postcards like three feet by two feet, just to say, go Kevin, go. It was the biggest letter I ever received is, yeah, three foot by 24 foot all folded up. I thought, this is phenomenal. I've never received a letter like that.

And that came from your father just trying to cheer you up. Yeah, thank you. That's right. Okay, Kevin. Hey, so let's wrap it up, man.

I really, really appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm looking forward to the conference coming up this spring. Yeah, let's do it.

Okay. Yeah, you're going to go for it. I can't wait to hear your message. I should be here, Lord willing, and the creek don't rise. Okay, good deal.

Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Hope you can join us next time. Church and Family Life is proclaiming the sufficiency of Scripture by helping build strong families and strong churches. If you found this resource helpful, we encourage you to check out churchandfamilylife.com.