Recently I had an illuminating conversation with a friend.
Danielle is the lovely mom of three children, one each currently in elementary school, middle school, and high school. For a number of years she has had a front row seat to the infiltration into education of what many parents consider to be social indoctrination—requiring constant vigilance on her part. It is, as parents around the country are finding out, the drip drip of subtle—and not-so-subtle—attacks on classical education, and, not surprisingly, the Judeo-Christian worldview.
Danielle has not been inclined to sit by quietly. Pre-pandemic she was frequently in front of the school board questioning teachers’ inappropriate comments in class, or some new and alarming school policy. “Everybody knows me and what I stand for,” she says matter-of-factly. She was always polite, informed, and firm.
Now, post-pandemic, she finds herself taking on a highly controversial curriculum. “It isn’t an elective. Every student is required to take it.” In a conversation with one (there is, thankfully, one) sympathetic board member, she was told that a group advocating the curriculum introduced it during the educational chaos of the pandemic and got it approved. When board members were asked in a recent meeting if any of them had read it, not one of them had.
What is Danielle’s response? She’s running for an open seat on the board.
I thought about this while reading the Book of Colossians. Paul wrote this letter in prison to a church planted by one of his converts, Epaphras. Colosse was a remote country town in modern day Turkey—and seems an unlikely place for seeds of a religious heresy to sprout. But sprouting they were. Here’s “gnosticism” in a nutshell:
- worship of angels
- strict, Judaistic rules going far beyond the law of Moses
- the denial of both the authority of Christ and the absolute power of His redemption
Paul had an inkling of this years earlier. In Acts 20:30, Luke quotes him:
Even some men from your own group will rise up and distort the truth in order to draw a following.
And so, this letter. Although it has been called “combative in tone and abrupt in style”*, it also gives us these eloquent verses– in a long paragraph of eloquent verses—that I always love to read:
For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him [Christ],
and through Him to reconcile everything to Himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. (1:19, 20 CSB)
Paul took on the gnostic infiltration of the faith via a letter from jail. Danielle takes on the infiltration of social poison every time she stands before the school board or, now, runs for a seat and a voice on that board. She continues to be polite, informed, and firm. She is also prayerful. Sometimes we’re called to enter the fray in unexpected ways. The clarity and guidance of the Holy Spirit is essential. Just how willing might we be?
Resisting means, of course, slings and arrows, but this is important work. Worth it. Paul would agree.
*Spirit-filled Life Bible, page 1736