Sexuality in the Public School

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This episode's question says, "my daughter's math homework included word problem examples with gay couples. How do we lovingly confront this undermining ideology while keeping the other students in the class in mind? Do we tell our children not to mention these things in front of other students?"

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Foundation Worldview Podcast where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm so excited you've joined me for another episode today. Today's question is one that I think is probably on a lot of people's minds, so I'm excited to dive in and discuss it. Today's question says, "my daughter's math homework included word problem examples with gay couples. How do we lovingly confront this undermining ideology while keeping the other students in the class in mind? Do we tell our children not to mention these things in front of other students?" That's a great question because we know that this is the world in which we find ourselves.

Now, when we think through the answer to this question, I am sure that many people's gut reactions would be pull the kid out of public school, pull the kid out of being indoctrinated by secular ideologies. Now, I do think that being intentional about our schooling options is vital, and in today's culture, I do always think that considering pulling kids out of public education is a good idea. However, realistically, just with the different situations in which God has placed us, many times that's not an option. Or there may be certain families who, for certain reasons based on their location or their child's personality, or the community in which they find themselves feel very directly instructed from the Lord to send their kids to public school. So for those who find themselves in one of those situations where their children are attending public school, either because there's no other option or because it's a very intentional decision, what I would recommend is first off, just foundationally, we have to make sure that we have built up a positive biblical case for the goodness of God's design.

In previous podcast episodes as well as Foundation Worldview webinars, I've discussed how important it is that the first conversations that we have with our children about sex are positive ones, not conversations where we're saying, don't do this, or This is wrong or this is bad, but actually looking at what is God's good design? So before we address any of these deviations from God's good design, we need to make sure that we've laid the groundwork for that positive biblical theology of sex and sexuality. Now, if you have chosen to send your children to public school, like the person who is asking this question, that first conversation about God's good design for sex and sexuality must take place before kindergarten. It must in today's culture. Now, in many areas across the country, even in kindergarten and preschool, there are books being read just about different kinds of families, about two mommies or two daddies.

There are books being read about transgenderism and being able to choose your own gender. So it's so foundational that if our children are going to be exposed to these things, we have to have built up the positive biblical theology before they're exposed to these deviations from God's good design. We have to make sure they have that positive understanding and that we are the ones who talk with them about this subject first. Now, if you're thinking, but Elizabeth, I live in a very conservative area of the country, all that stuff that's happening in other areas of the country, that hasn't even hit our community yet. If that's the case, that's great news that it hasn't hit yet. It's pretty much a guarantee that it won't be much longer before it has before. Those will be things that are mandated in every public school system. But if it hasn't hit yet, that's a great thing.

However, I would say even if you live in a very conservative area of the country, you still need to have these conversations with your child before he or she enters kindergarten. I grew up in the nineties. I started kindergarten in the nineties, and so this whole sexual revolution was not front and center quite as much then as it is today. However, even in my kindergarten classroom in the early nineties, I was confronted with students in my classroom talking frequently about sex and sexuality. In fact, one of my first memories of this was playing outside on the playground during recess in kindergarten, and one of the students in my classroom coming up and telling me that one of the little boys in my classroom had said that he had wanted to have sex with me. Now, can you imagine what would've happened if my mom had not already had conversations with me about God's good design for sex and sexuality?

If I was a clueless little kindergartner, I probably would've said, what's that? And then, can you imagine the explanation that I would've gotten from a kindergarten boy who had already been exposed to a lot? I would've then come home and hopefully had a conversation with my mom, and she would've had to do a lot of damage control, and my first understanding of sex and sexuality would've been a very negative one. But praise God, my mom and her already had a sex talk with me and talked about God's good design. And so my response on the playground to the student that came up to me was, well, you can tell 'em. I said, no, sex is only for a husband and a wife. And then I moved on with my day. So it's so important that we have these conversations even several years after that, when I was in middle school, my mom was teaching preschool at a preschool in our area, and there was one day for some reason, my middle school classes were canceled, but my mom was still pre-teaching preschool, and I remember going to the classroom with her, and during one of the play times, one of the little boys had two of the Barbie dolls in the classroom.

He had taken all of their clothes off one another and had laid the Barbie dolls on top of each other. And he went and grabbed my mom and he said, "look, Ms. Karen, gay." And I mean, this is in the late nineties that this is happening, and that was happening in a preschool classroom. Now, I'm not saying that that's happening in every classroom all across the country or even across the world, but just saying that if I experienced these things in the nineties, you can guarantee that they're being experienced across the country now because children are exposed to so much more because of our hyper, her hyper, woo, I can't even say that word, hyper sexualized culture, but also because of the prevalence of screens and the things that our children's friends will be exposed to, even if we do not allow our children to be exposed to these things.

So if we are going to have our children in a public school setting, we need to make sure that we have had a conversation with them about God's good design for sex and sexuality before they enter kindergarten. And I can tell you from a decade of experience teaching in a wonderful private Christian school that it's even a wise idea to have that conversation before your child enters a wonderful private Christian school classroom because the things that children are exposed to from other families, you'd be pretty surprised. Once we've built up this positive biblical understanding of sex being a good gift from God, that God has given solely for a husband and a wife for the purpose of creating families and for the purpose of bonding a husband and wife together, that's when we can then go in and talk about the deviations in our culture from God's good design.

Now, especially if you're talking with kids in kindergarten, first or second grade, you don't need to go into graphic detail about the deviations in our culture, but you can just very simply explain, you know what, sometimes people don't follow God's good design. They don't follow God's good design for sex, just being between a husband and a wife. That you know what? Sometimes people think that it's okay for people to have sex outside of marriage, but is that God's good design? No. And you know what? God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman, good design. But you know what? Sometimes people have taken that and they've twisted it, and they said that marriage could be between a man and a man or a woman and a woman. Is that God's good design? No. Okay. So just explaining these basic things to your kids, but then giving them a game plan for when they do encounter them.

Because if you're talking to a child between the ages of three and seven years old, you can pretty much be guaranteed that whenever they, they come across some form of sexual deviation, it's going to come out of their mouth. My mommy said, that's not God's good design. And while that is true, that we know from scripture that any form of sexual deviation that's outside of marriage between a man and a woman is not God's good design. Speaking the truth in love is something we want to do very carefully, not just have our children blurt out what mommy or daddy said. So what I would encourage you to do is to prepare them that these are the things they're going to encounter in school, that sometimes there might be a child in their class who has two mommies or two daddies, or there might be a problem that comes up in their math class about two mommies or two daddies, or there might be a book read in their class and then give them a game plan for moving forward when they encounter that.

And what I would suggest is coming up with some kind of secret code that you can have just between you and your child. And this secret code will just be something that they can say in their minds, and you can say in your mind anytime you see a deviation from God's good design. So the secret code could be something like, okay, every time your teacher reads you a book about two mommies or two daddies, or you see a word problem about two mommies or two daddies, this is what we're going to say right away in our minds. God created marriage for one man and one woman, and sex is only for marriage. God's design is so good, and then practicing that over and over and over and over and over again. It doesn't have to be exactly that, but just something about God's good design, practicing it over and over and over and over again.

And so that way it can just be something that where you're actually catechizing your children, okay? You're actually teaching them to speak the truth anytime they encounter error. And so anytime they encounter that, just in their mind, they can think, oh God, design marriage for one man and one woman, and sex is only for marriage. God's design is so good. And then you can talk about how when this comes up in class, you're not going to say this out loud, you're just going to say it in your mind. But when you come home, as soon as you come home, I want you to tell me exactly what you saw in school today, and then we'll have an opportunity to say our secret code together. So turn it into something like a game where you're having the opportunity to really catechize your son or your daughter in the truth.

Then if you're working with older children, if you're working with children eight on up, I would suggest that you just read through Romans one together. So after you've built up that positive biblical theology, explain some of the sexual deviations from God's good design in our society. Then read through Romans one together and just talk through how everything that we're seeing in our society is just the natural, logical outworking of a culture that has exchanged worship of the creator for worship of the creation, that that's what Romans one says, that when we exchange the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator that God gives us over to a debased mind, to the dishonoring of our bodies among one another. And so discuss how the main problem here in our society is not that we are sexually deviant.

It's not that we have turned away from God's good design. Is that a problem? Yes, that's a big problem. But the main problem, the root of the issue, okay, is found in Romans 1:20 that what is clearly known about God, okay? Can be clearly seen through creation. People have abandoned, okay? So the main problem is not sexual sin. The main problem is the problem of people not being reconciled to God of people wallowing in the sin of unbelief. So we want to help our kids see that what we see in our society, the Bible has already told us about, it's already shown us that this is the natural outworking of a society, that it's serving itself rather than serving God, a society that is suppressing the truth. And then we also want our kids to see that our goal as Christians is not to convince everyone that they need to become heterosexual and that they need to enter into a one man, one woman marriage.

Would it be great if people agreed with that? Yes. But the primary root issue is that people are not reconciled to God, and that that's what we want to focus on. We want to focus on sharing the truth of who God is, of his goodness, and his love and his justice, the weight of our sin and how that separates us from God and puts us under God's wrath, and then how God has made reconciliation and forgiveness possible through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. So if you're working with older kids, go through that and make sure that you show them that this is what God has already clearly outlined in his word. Just before we wrap up, just one final thought. If you have made the decision to send your children to public school, one thing I want you to think of is that it is vital.

It is vital that you make sure that you are spending more time discipling your children than the public school system is, and that means that you're going to have to be very intentional in after school times. I mean, Jesus has said, you know that when a disciple is fully trained, he will become like his teacher. So if our children are spending seven to eight hours a day in a secular environment where they're really being catechized in the ways of the world, we need to be intentional about what are we doing in the after school times? What are we doing in the before school times? What are we doing over the weekend to make sure that we are having more input into our children's lives than in the secular education system in which we have placed them? So again, I'm not saying that pulling kids out of public school is the right option for everyone, but just if public schooling is the option that we have chosen, we need to make sure that we are spending more time discipling our kids than the secular education system is in our country.

Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. As always, if you have found this content beneficial, we ask that you would consider liking subscribing, writing a review, and also just sharing it within your sphere of influence. We want to be able to reach as many people as possible so that we can equip the next generation to know and follow the truth. As always, my prayer for you as we leave this time together is that God would richly bless you as you continue to faithfully disciple the children he's placed in your care. I'll see you next time.