The Educator’s Mission:  Preparing and Preserving Salt and Light

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel.^[1]

Evil . . . starts with the verbal abuse of reality.^[2]

Moral Character is assessed not by what a man knows, but by what he loves^[3]

You shall love the Lord your God with all your . . . mind^[4]

No longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds^[5]

Be transformed by the renewal of your mind^[6]

Preparing your minds for action^[7]

Preface:  Thinking Christianly About Education

This week we continue to explore how we should think Christianly about education.  Because we are commanded to love God with all our minds, educational effectiveness should be a concern to all who follow Jesus.  Being sober-minded – thinking well – is crucial for arresting pagan influences as advanced by the devil himself.^[8]  Thus far, we have examined the Educator’s Audience (anthropology) and the Educator’s Context (cosmology).  This week we tackle the Educator’s Mission:  Preparing and Preserving Salt and Light.  Let’s get to the gist.

Introduction:  Beginning with the End

Christian educators need to know where they are going.  As we noted earlier, teachers do not teach subjects; they teach people. And while subject matter mastery is crucial, it is secondary to the true end-product:  well-formed and well-prepared students who manifest moral clarity, moral conviction, and moral courage aka “salt & light.”  

To accomplish this effectively, teachers must be mindful of the blueprint depicting the final project; they need to understand, changing the metaphor, what the cathedral is supposed to look like before grabbing a bundle of lumber, bricks, concrete, nails, paint, and tools.  Throwing data at people, especially children, fails to actually educate them and will not educate them.  The presentation of data must be ordered and organized toward a greater designed end.

While it’s a true maxim, that “ships are safe in the harbor, but they’re not designed for the harbor,” ships must first be properly designed, developed, and detailed for seaworthiness before departing the harbor for the open sea.  

The same holds true for young Christians:  they too – before launching – must be diligently forged, prepared, and equipped to engage the world in a way that maximizes their being salt and light, cathedral builders, and seaworthy sailors.  They must become worthy of the voyage.  An educator’s mission therefore includes making students seaworthy before they encounter the open sea and its various challenges:  storms, sea monsters, and tempting ports of call.^[9]  We next explore the dynamics of being forged, prepared, and equipped using Scripture’s depiction of the Armor of God, as facilitating their being salty salt & unshaded light.

God’s Armor:  Preparing for the Cultural Battle – and the Educated Life

Following a marvelous theological explication, the Apostle Paul turns “practical”^[10] in addressing the Ephesian congregation.  In his closing words he speaks of donning God’s armor,^[11] a pre-condition for effectively living the Christian life he’s outlined for them:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.  Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.  Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,  and, as shoes for your feet,having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.  In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one;  and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,  praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.^[12]

That is quite the image and final charge for a man held in prison by chains.  This armor metaphor conveys special meaning to our family.  Two of our four sons were commissioned as USMC infantry officers.  They took an arduous path.  First, they had to become Marines and receive a commission – a path with a high attrition rate.^[13]  Next, they had to endure something innocuously called the “Infantry Officers Course.” This demanding course produces character, competence, and a high degree of attrition.^[14]   The course’s informal motto is “I can’t tell you about IOC, but every day was the worst day of my life.”^[15]

Part of their Marine training consists of what they wear and how it supports facilitating their mission:

• Camouflage
• Helmets
• Boots
• Packs:  food, water, bedding
• Utility Belts

• Ammo Magazines
• Grenades
• Gas masks
• Night Vision Goggles
• Spare Batteries
• Utility tools
• Kevlar Vest and 20 + pounds of Armor Plates

Marine leaders are not making a fashion statement.  Rather, they and their Marines adorn themselves with this stuff for two primary reasons: (1) Protect the men; and (2) Promote the mission.  This assemble is not for fashion, but for function.  When armor is worn, there’s something to do; armor and its related tools facilitate accomplishing what’s do be done.

In the same way believers are commanded to “put on” the armor of God^[16] for a purpose:  so that we can be salt and light which withstands and clears away the schemes of the devil.  Godly teachers are instrumental in equipping students in this way.

Remember further the stakes of this mission.  Paul tells us that Christians are at war.^[17]  And, in this battle, there are, and there can be, no Switzerlands.  Like it or not we – and our children – are involved.  This is serious business, and every square inch of reality is a contested space:  As Charles Chaput put it:

Like it or not, we are involved—and there is, after all, a war on (Ephesians 6:12).  . . . .  It’s the same conflict C.S. Lewis meant when he wrote that “there is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.”  And this war goes on without rest in every age, in every nation, in every human life, in every choice, in every decision, in every action, in every public issue.^[18]

Teachers note again:  The battle armor our students should be wearing repels and protects against a particular threat:  standing against the schemes of the devil.  What are those schemes?  Knowing these devices informs teachers of how they can more effectively instruct their students.

The Educational Enterprise and Schemes of the Devil

Presuming that education is neutral permits the (wrongful) conclusion that Satan and his tactics stop at the schoolhouse door.  A Christian worldview recognizes – and requires – that there can be no neutrality.  Every inch of every subject is in principle contested ground – claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.  Satan seeks to advance his position and undermine God’s by deploying schemes.  This is no less true in education.

Snapshots of Satan’s Schemes

Our culture and many Christians conceive of the devil’s schemes in terms of spooky darkness and the occult – voodoo, seances, druids, etc.  And, indeed those activities do reflect evil schemes.  However, the devil’s tool bag is not limited to overtly devilish things.  Remember, he’s a liar because he is truthless; it’s his nature to lie.^[19]  Yet, lies are often packaged attractively; sin is deceitful^[20].  The application of the devil’s schemes is often subtle or latent and thereby can dupe instructors – and thus compromise their ability to equip students to be salt and light. Teachers need to resist these tactics by being discerning.  Here are some examples that arise from the history curriculum.

1. World War 2 Schemes

1. Who Dunnit??!! The Katyn Forest Massacre

1.   1940 – The Nazis led 8000 Polish Military officers and about 6000 Polish Policeman, and about 7000 Polish Citizens into the Katyn Forest and executed them and then buried them in mass graves

2.   Discovered in 1943, this brutality led Stalin to break alliances with Hitler

3.   EXCEPT that is was ACTUALLY the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD), acting upon Stalin’s explicit command, who ACTUALLY committed these atrocities . . . all the while blaming the Nazis for political reasons . . . This reality was not acknowledged nor admitted until 1990

• Churchill the Villain; Hitler the Reasonable?

Speaking of World War 2, we are now seeing among the New Right pseudo historians platformed by media celebrities who denigrate Winston Churchill as “the villain” and fete Hitler as a reasonable leader faced with an overabundance of immigrants and POWs.  TxC Scholar Briain Mattson explains this childish immaturity:

Speaking of childishness, on Wednesday I noted Tucker Carlson’s latest provocation: hosting an amateur “historian” to explain to everybody how we’ve all been lied to about … World War II. Probably the most well-documented series of events in the annals of world history. Hitler was actually the reasonable one, you see; it was that warmonger Winston Churchill who was really to blame!

This is a number of things all at once: a symptom of our revolutionary times in which the past (the so-called “Post-War Consensus”) must be destroyed; an edgy motte-and-bailey probe designed to shift the Overton Window toward making antisemitism more publicly palatable (you think the Hamas apologists of the Left have cornered that market?); but mostly just the sheer excitement of transgressive discourse. Sort of like preteen kids in the back alley sharing a stolen cigarette or trying out new cuss words, people are trying out “naughty” things to see how cool they look. “They”—the “establishment,” the “elites”—are hiding something; they want to keep you in the dark as a subservient slave. Question authority, dude! Sigh. Yes, here in A.D. 2024 the “conservative” right has turned itself into Haight-Ashbury hippies of 1968. I did not have “Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance start talking like Noam Chomsky” on my bingo card, but, alas, here we are.

There is a lot of good analysis of the (de)merits of all this garbage. Real Historian™ Andrew Roberts gives it a good whipping here. Niall Ferguson, also a Real Historian™, piles on here at The Free Press (if you can get around the paywall.)^[21]

Notice that Carlson’s click-generating sideshow is premised on deception – a lie regarding the actual history.  This is not to say, nor is Mattson saying, that Carlson is consciously being Satanic. However, it is to say that his cavalier treatment of the facts is irresponsibly devilish and deceitful.  Good teachers must filter out factual and ideological toxins from what they teach and what their students hear and see, even if advanced by wildly popular supposedly conservative or Christian celebrities.

1. Sexuality Schemes and Shenanigans

1. Lying to Impose Abortion on Demand: Roe v. Wade(1973):  

The Abortion regime frames their story as a struggle for “reproductive rights” this way:

1.   A young women named Norma was brutally beaten and assaulted . . .

2.   She found herself single, poor, and pregnant

3.   Her ONLY option was to abort her child and in doing so anonymously challenge the Texas ban on abortion given this instance of rape . . . 

4.   EXCEPT:

a.   Norma had NOT been Attacked

b.   She had NOT been Raped

c.   She did NOT abort her child

d.   And, yet, for an ideology, she was duped into changing the ENTIRE landscape of the US culture and its jurisprudence, with her attorneys knowingly relying on false and deceptive assertions before the Supreme Court of the United States – Roe v. Wade^[22]

Yet, the overall narrative of the entire claim advanced a known ruse, a lie used to justify and then impose an end, by-passing the citizens’ sense and overruling the laws for most states.  Good teachers will explode conventional myths used to prop up sacred cultural cows.^[23]

• Lying to Legalize Romans 1 Defilements: Lawrence v. Texas (2003)  

The narrative used to justify LGBTQ “rights” includes this scenario:

1.   The Police burst into a private bedroom

2.   They see two men actively engaging in same-sex behavior and they arrest these participants for “being intimate with the person they love”

3. This incident becomes THE vehicle for affirming the so-called right of same-sex couples to engage in private consensual sexual behavior, overruling the laws of many states

4.   EXCEPT:

1. These two men were NOT engaging in sexual conduct at all

• They were NOT, nor had ever been, a couple

• The entire scheme (!) turns out to have been a setup, a faux scenario^[24]

• Yet, this carefully edited portrayal later changed the very face of America via the pen of Justice Kennedy, who, citing this case (which he wrote), penned a subsequent opinion legally reconfiguring marriage—saying that NO rational reason existed for this creational norm – only animus and bigotry could sustain limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman.^[25]

Historical narratives, fashioned “by human cunning” or “deceitful schemes” destabilize lives by “tossing them to and fro by the waves and every wind of doctrine.”^[26]  Teachers stand as bulwarks against such schemes and their consequences.

1. The “Hate Crime” Hoax:  Matthew Shepherd’s Murder (1998):  

Lying again is the mode the devil, and his minions use.  This can consist of fabrication or subtle deception.  Many will recall the heart-tugging story of a young bullied boy assaulted and left to die in desolate Wyoming.  Because he was a homosexual, the LGBTQ lobby leveraged this tragic incident to generate sympathy for its cause, as well as fomenting blame and distain for the “hateful” “religious right.”  It was all a false flag operation.

1.   Enter Mathew Shepherd, a young man, picked on, harassed, and then beaten, and left on a fence post to die of his injuries and exposure in the Wyoming barrenness

2.   Shepherd become the Paradigmatic Poster Child of Homophobic Bullying

3.   The outrage was hot and directed at Dr. James Dobson and the so-called Religious Right for spawning animus and bigoted hatred toward homosexuals

4.   EXCEPT that’s NOT what happened:

a.   The perpetrator and the victim KNEW each other; this assault did not stem from “stranger danger” randomness, nor from targeting and bullying an effeminate boy

b.   The assailant and the victim were business partners . . .  in dealing drugs

c.   And, they were homosexual lovers who had recently partied together

5.   WHY was the story shaved and told the way it was????

6.   We are NOW told by a homosexual investigative reporter why this scheme – [of the devil] was used:

How do people sold on one version of history react to being told that facts are slippery – that thinking of Shepard’s murder as a hate crime does not mean it was a hate crime?

There are valuable reasons for telling stories in a certain way at pivotal times, but that doesn’t mean we have to hold on to them once they’ve outlived their usefulness ^[27]

Here’s the immoral moral of the story:  Lying is OK if it serves a purpose; that, and not the assertion’s veracity, comprises the sole justification for its use.  \

These cultural incidents provide insight into the origins and nature of the schemes of the devil.  This frames what we face in educating our students, forming them to be salt and light. These deceitful schemes must be acknowledged and overcome.

Defeating the Devil’s Schemes

Recall again Paul’s cosmology.  In Romans 1 he informs us the role the Lie plays in the fallen world:

i.    Truth is Suppressed

ii.    Truth is exchanged for the Lie

iii.   Creation is Worship and Served

iv.   Unrighteousness is Practiced

v.    Unrighteousness is Approved

Because the Truth is exchanged for the Lie, it follows that those advancing Satan’s agenda – whether conscious of it of not – are given to deceit, lying, and otherwise suppressing the Truth.  And make no mistake.  This modality of falsehood serves their despising of the Gospel itself.

False ideas – Satan’s native tongue – unsurprisingly form the biggest impediment to the Gospel’s reception:

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.^[28] 

This means that education cannot be neutral because there will always be matters suppressed and therefore impeding the Gospel’s reception.  Consequently, teachers must understand this dynamic and instruct in terms of it – comprehensively.

The Comprehensive Scope of the Educational Mission

Imagine you walk into a room and the floor is covered with water. . . . 

There is clearly a problem . . .

What do you do, if anything??

Unless you are willing to: (1) Turn off the tap; and (2) Repair the pipe, don’t bother wiping up the wet floor.^[29]  In other words, we ultimately must address not only symptoms of the problems, but also their systems and structures.  Just as sin affects every nook and cranny, so too is redemption comprehensive – and education must be accomplished in and ordered to that reality.  

A teacher can never let his pedagogy, nor his students, be mired in the Fall.  God’s story begins in Creation and ends in Redemption, all things being reconciled in Christ, “whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of Christ.”^[30]

Note carefully:  Christian teachers and parents have been entrusted with a mission, a mission to prepare children to understand and fulfill THEIR mission, while making them seaworthy to depart the harbor to further that mission.

And, that mission is about MORE than wiping up the wet cultural floor.  It is also a mission to turn off the tap and repair the pipes.  To foster and forge them to do so it takes far more than transferring data; in addition, they must be transforming persons.  While ideas have consequences, people change culture.  More precisely, changed people change culture and a Christian journey begins, but certainly does not end, with internal personal change – character.  

Arresting the devil’s schemes therefore requires more than collecting data points or stockpiling facts. Factoids, though essential, do not properly assess moral character.^[31]  Rather, as Augustine quipped:

Moral character is assessed not by what one knows, but by what one loves.^[32]

Teachers must cultivate the students’ love for God, neighbor, and learning.  Why?  Because:  The loves of few men move the lives of many.^[33]

Accordingly, the educator’s mission is not so much about the transfer of information as it is about the transformation of the individual that ultimately matters.  Ideas have consequences, but again PEOPLE CHANGE CULTURES – and teachers change people – and that’s only way the mission of God can be fulfilled long term:  without reserve; without retreat; and without regret.

^[1] J. Gresham Machen, cited in Justin Taylor, Machen:  False Ideas as Obstacles to the Reception of the Gospel,https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/machen-false-ideas-as-obstacles-to/

^[2] Robert Farrar Capon, Hunting the Divine Fox – An Introduction to the Language of Theology, 72, 73 (1974, 1985)

^[3] Augustine, Epistolae, 155

^[4] Matt. 22:37

^[5] Eph. 4:17

^[6] Romans 12:2

^[7] 1 Peter 1:13

^[8] 1 Peter 5:8: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

^[9] This is why this no doubt well- intended piece by a toddler’s mother widely misses the mark:  Stephani McDade, Public School Can be a Training Ground Faith, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/09/public-school-can-be-a-training-ground-for-faith/  

 Wisdom counsels otherwise:   Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.  (Proverbs 13:20)

^[10] Correctly understood, all theology is application, as John Frame puts it:  https://kuyperian.com/theology-as-application-to-all-of-life/

^[11] Paul may be drawing on Isaiah 59:17 for this armor metaphor; notice there that the context involves engaging the public squares because “truth has stumbled” and “there was no justice” since “there was no one to intercede.”  (Is. 59:14-16). Wearing armor evidently involves or relates to the faith’s ethics applied publicly.

^[12] Eph. 6:10-20

^[13] The USMC attrition rate for Officer Candidate School fluctuates between 25 and 40%, which is much higher than the Army’s similar program.  https://www.serviceacademyforums.com/index.php?threads/marine-corps-ocs.72380/

^[14] This course has historically had attrition rates of 25-30%; however, egalitarian political pressure has caused the Corps to change, that is, lower standards, resulting in lower attrition rates.  The impact of such decisions lies beyond the scope of this Dicta edition.  https://breakingintothebrotherhood.com/2021/11/08/the-infantry-officers-course/

^[15] For a redacted and sanitized overview, see https://www.fexgear.com/single-post/marine-corps-infantry-officer-course

^[16]Eph. 6:11

^[17] Eph. 6:12

^[18] https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/why-we-re-here.html  This quote also appears in his work Render Unto Caesar (2009).  This understanding reflects not a sectarian view, but one reflecting “mere orthodoxy” or catholicity, and while TxC is unapologetically Reformational, it recognizes that church history did not begin with Billy Graham, nor end with Thomas Acquinas.

^[19] John 8:44

^[20] Heb. 3:13

^[21] Brian Mattson, Putting Away Childish Things, September 7, 2024, https://brianmattson.substack.com/p/putting-away-childish-things?utm_campaign=email-post&r=2hn8d7&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

^[22] Wrong Then, Wrong Now:  The Fake Abortion History of Roe v. Wade, https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2021/09/78200/

^[23] Compare Eph. 5:11:  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

^[24] LGBTQ law professor, Dale Carpenter, honestly recounts this history.  Flagrant Conduct:  The Story of Lawrence v. Texas (2013); and Dale Carpenter, The Unknown Past of Lawrence v. Texas (2004), https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol102/iss7/2/

^[25]Obergefell v. Hodges, 576, 644 (2025).  For a critical assessment, see,  https://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF15G67.pdf

^[26] Eph. 4:14 – notice Paul’s drawing upon a nautical metaphor.

^[27] Aaron Hicklin, Have We Got Matthew Shepherd All Wrong?  https://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/09/13/have-we-got-matthew-shepard-all-wrong

^[28] Justin Taylor, Machen:  False Ideas as Obstacles to the Reception of the Gospel,https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/machen-false-ideas-as-obstacles-to/

^[29] Illustration taken from Thaddeus Barnum, Never Silent:  How Third World Missionaries Are Now Bringing the Gospel to the US (2008)

^[30] Col. 1:20

^[31] Compare, as T.S. Eliot lamented: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” The Rock

^[32] Augustine, Epistolae, 155

^[33] https://www.eternitynews.com.au/archive/live-australian-christian-lobby-national-conference/