Education and the Gospel

An Internet rabbit trail last week led me to a website that I wish I hadn't found: Cedarville Out. Cedarville University, a Christian college near Dayton, Ohio, is my alma mater, and Cedarville Out, the website explains, is a group of "gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (GLBT) alumni of Cedarville University. We are straight alumni who support our GLBT friends. And we are bound together in our belief that everyone's sexuality is a precious gift from God." The group is not in any way supported by the university.


Included on the website are pictures of the alumni members of the group along with their stories and statements, recounting their experience of finally embracing their homosexuality, many of them believing now that there is no conflict between being a Christian and being a homosexual.


I recognize many of the faces on that site. In fact, one of the women influenced my academic choices, and I'm grateful that I knew her. She was a unit mate my freshman year, and I listened carefully as she advised me to take classes from the best professors--the ones who taught me to think biblically, the ones who themselves were Calvinists. One time she invited me, with a group of her friends, to go to a church where Dr. Grier was preaching.  In a Baptist college where Calvinism was not well respected by most, Dr. Grier, along with several others, helped shape my thinking about theology, and their influence pointed me in the direction of Reformed theology and the faith that informs all that I think, do, and believe.


I'm sad for the people on the Cedarville Out site--both the ones who have come out and those who support them. Although there are many denominations, institutions (Calvin College comes to mind), and individuals who want to debate the matter, homosexuality is a sin. Like worshiping idols, taking God's name in vain, lying, murder, adultery, and coveting, homosexuality is a sin. It's not necessary to be a New Testament scholar to read Romans 1 and understand that the apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is declaring homosexuality to be a sin. It's not a question of whether the Bible says it's a sin; it's a question of whether a person believes that the Scriptures are the Word of God--that they are authoritative and undeniably true when they tell us that homosexuality is a sin.


As I read some of the stories, I found it interesting that one alumna credited professors like Dr. Grier and Dr. Ron and Mrs. Jody Grosh with teaching her how to think for herself, to think "outside of the box," enabling her to realize that God is a God of diversity, of gay and straight people alike, and that He blesses gay people with loving partners.


And I credit those same professors, and one other, Dr. Jim McGoldrick, with teaching me how to think Christianly. They taught me to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. In fact, I remember an exercise that Jody Grosh used in my freshman comp class to demonstrate to us students that truth is not a relative thing--that God is the definer of truth. Scripture alone is the source of truth and morality, and to twist God's Word to suit our own purposes, to justify our own sinfulness, is to believe a lie. I would say that these same teachers helped me develop the thinking skills that help me understand that homosexuality, most certainly, is a sin.


What was re-enforced for me through this experience is something that I already knew: education cannot save us. In our Reformed circles, we value education and learning--and we should. God would have us develop our intellectual abilities as well as we can to bring glory to Him. We Reformed parents take vows at our children's baptisms that we will train our children up in a way that is consistent with the Word of God and our confessions.  Some of us place our children in private Christian schools and some of us home-school and a few of us take advantage of public schools, but all of us are motivated by the desire to see our children grow in the faith that they have been baptized in, to have dominion over the world God has created. We know that it's critical to a life of faith that we learn and develop our minds. 


But lest we become too confident in education and start to believe that the right type of education will guarantee our children's faithfulness, we must remember the true source of our salvation. The most faithful Christian education, the instruction of the most godly teachers, which I believe I received from certain professors at Cedarville, cannot create in us faithfulness and obedience and submission to God's Word. If what we get from our education is the ability to justify our sins rather than repent of them, we have missed the message of the gospel, which is the only thing that can truly save.