Hope for America’s Future

Hope for America’s Future

As we are approaching the 2020 election and I reflect upon the last year in America, I believe we truly are a nation that is in turmoil.  A year ago, I would not have expected that we would see riots, looting, statues being torn down, an economy being shut down or that there would be a movement to defund police departments.  This has challenged me to think deeply about what I have seen in recent decades in America, and as I do, I realize that much of this should have been expected.   For decades, our public schools and higher education has indoctrinated students in secularism and Marxist ideologies.  An anti-Christian vision of society has been forced upon us through law, media and entertainment.  The dream of liberty being defined as freedom from sin has been replaced with a vision that freedom is to do whatever we want, in other words, a freedom to sin.  We have embraced a worldview that man is nothing more than the highest evolved animal and that there is no purpose or significance to human life. We have gotten to a place in our culture where many people cannot see the self-evident truth that God designed men and women to raise families in the covenant of marriage or that humans in the womb must be protected.  The issues that we are facing are both serious and dangerous.  They are so entrenched in our culture that they will not be fixed through an election, or even many elections.  We have been in the midst of a culture war for the faith and character of our nation for many decades and the only way we can win this war is by raising up a generation who will restore the fear of the Lord to America.

We all need to wrestle with our own convictions in order to pass faith in Christ and hope for the future on to our children.  I have heard many people express that they have no hope for the future of America, that it is impossible to win the culture war.  To some, the issues we are facing seem insurmountable.  Yet, because of a deep faith in Jesus, a knowledge of scripture, an understanding of history and what I see at Fortis Academy, I have hope that everything can be turned around.

When I ponder the birth of America, I see a people who caught a dream of liberty due to the first great awakening.  They dared to believe that God champions the cause of freedom and they boldly went to war with the most powerful empire of the day.  In many ways it was an impossible war to win.  After suffering terrible defeats during the war, many patriots questioned whether they could win.  One of the key elements of success in war is morale, and with morale hanging in the balance, people needed a word of hope.  John Adams gave such a strengthening word when confronted with that very question; he boldly proclaimed that they could win if they would fear God and repent of their sins.  The point is that great victories can be won against tyranny and sin through faith in Christ and obedience to Him.  We can do the same today.

We need to raise up a generation that loves the Lord and has the courage and skills to change culture.  I see that happening at Fortis Academy.  I have great hope because of the commitment of our families, our faculty and staff, but most importantly, because of our students.  They are being given the type of education that every child should receive.  It is an education in faith and virtue that develops the skills of persuasion.  As Christians, we know that no matter what happens in the world, Jesus Christ is Lord.  He wins!  Yet, I am deeply convinced that it is our Christian duty to champion love, liberty and truth in culture because that is pleasing to God.   In our students, I can see the hope for the future of America.

Ordering Our Loves

There are many benefits to private Christian education, and one of them is a safe environment for our children to grow in their faith and their Christian character.  Our passion is not just to see our kids obey rules, but to love and do what is right.  One of the goals of classical education is to rightly order our loves.  C.S. Lewis writes, “St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”[1] We always pursue what we love and when we love that which is good we cause earth to reflect heaven.  Hebrews speaks about Jesus: “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companion.” (Hebrews 1:9, ESV).  A life that loves what is good is also filled with joy.  Our passion is to raise our children to love what is good, but we also acknowledge that this is not natural, it is the result of God’s grace and a biblical education.

There is something incredible and wonderful about every child.  They are all cute and lovable.  They are also descendants of Adam, who introduced sin into the human race, and are not perfect either.  In Christian circles, there is often a high expectation that we should be loving and virtuous, and that is as it should be.  That is certainly the goal we should all be striving for, yet what truly creates a Christian community is not the lack of sin, but what we do when people do sin.  We must have rules in place to protect our children, but we also need to pray and seek God’s grace to change hearts to love and do what is good. They need to be inspired to love and follow Jesus.  One way a classical Christian education does this through a curriculum that works a Christian worldview into every subject with the purpose of giving students a vision of who Jesus is and what it looks like to be loving and virtuous.  Yet that is not enough, because we also want them to become genuinely good and loving, and that ultimately comes through God’s grace.  That is why discipleship and the great commission are the foundation of Fortis Academy’s mission.  We hope that all of our students will become lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ.

While our curriculum and studies are aimed to help our children know and love what is good, true and beautiful, at the heart of Fortis Academy is a genuine longing that each of our children would develop a personal relationship with and commitment to Jesus Christ.  We believe that the greatest chance for this to happen is for us to model such a life before our children.  One of my professors said that it was his mission in life to infect people with the love of Jesus.  That is what we need to do by modeling a love for Christ and for all that is good, true and beautiful.  When we consider how much our children our worth and how important their relationship with Christ is, we have to conclude that the heart of a Christian community that can succeed with such a vision is through the grace of God.  May the Lord touch our hearts and help us to touch the hearts of our children so that their loves may be rightly ordered, and that their first love is Jesus Christ.

[1] Lewis, C. S.. The Abolition of Man (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (p. 17). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

The Power of Ideas

The Power of Ideas

Society reflects the ideas that are in the hearts of people. We can imagine the power of ideas by examining just one of the predominant ideas of our day, that man is nothing more than a data-processing machine that evolved.  (more…)

An Axe to the Root

An Axe to the Root

We are facing many cultural problems as a nation, and I would challenge that what we are doing at Fortis Academy is preparing a generation to solve those problems.  Some years ago, the media was very concerned because the suicide rates of military vets were increasing at an alarming rate.  A good friend of mine who worked at the VA at the time pulled the suicide rates of the general public and discovered that the suicide growth rate among vets was lower than the growth rate of the general public, implying that we have a very significant cultural problem as a nation.    Since then the rate has continued to increase.  Some are categorizing these as deaths of despair and include deaths cause by the current opioid crisis.

We are also seeing some very frightening examples of violence such as school shootings.  Not too long ago, there was momentum to hire a security resource officer for the Liberty Hill public schools and in the end they ended up with their own police.  At the time I began asking questions and found that the primary danger is not from those outside the school, but from students or ex-students.  While all of us are willing to do whatever we can to protect our children, we should also be asking the larger question about the cause of the problem.

In light of problems like these, the words of John the Baptist bring hope, “And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9, NKJV).  While contextually John was referring to the Jewish nation, the principle is that the gospel of Jesus Christ gets to the root of the problem and is able to remove everything that bears bad fruit.  The gospel mandate is to make disciples who accept all the Christ has taught us, and that includes developing a biblical worldview that teaches ideas such as rooting the value of people in truths such as being created in the image of God and being redeemed by the death of Jesus Christ.  The hope for the future is to raise us a generation who is firmly rooted in Christian faith and virtue, and this requires the right kind of education.

Current public education is only utilitarian.  The goal is the prepare children for jobs.  Plato saw serious problems in his culture and proposed an educational system that focuses on developing virtue, especially a love and knowledge of good as a solution.  That dream never truly succeeded until Jesus Christ, because Jesus is the fountain of all goodness, truth and beauty.  The Western educational tradition that brought forth modernity succeeded because it was ecclesiastical. That is what classical Christian education is restoring in our generation, and it cuts to the heart of the problems facing society by giving people purpose and significance in Christ and calling them to be His disciples.

Jesus, King of America

Jesus, King of America

We all have dreams and visions, and Fortis Academy has enlarged my vision to fulfill a dream that I have had on my heart for decades. Ultimately, the vision is to see Christ’s kingdom rule over all the earth. That is the vision that is implied by the Lord’s prayer, “Let Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus would not have taught us to pray that way if it was not God’s desire to transform life on earth. Since God has seen fit to make me a citizen of the United States, my dream has become more specific, to restore the fear of the Lord to America. As a pastor, that dream has inspired all of my labor and choices, and has caused me to constantly seek how it may be accomplished. My opinion is that cultures are created by the faith and values of people. As we become more like Christ, the world begins to look more like heaven. But how do we practically succeed with such a radical vision? My conviction is that a classical Christian education is one of the most powerful ways to transform society, because it puts the dream of a world governed by the love of God in their hearts and gives them the character and skills necessary to make it a reality.

What is the American dream? Today, it often seems like it is tied to money, pleasure and power. Freedom, which was so important to our founding fathers, today is often seen as the freedom to do whatever we want. Yet there was once a different dream in the hearts of American citizens. During the Revolution, their battle cry was “no king but King Jesus.” Their view of freedom was freedom from tyranny and oppression, in other words, freedom from sin. That generation was cultivating the dream that they received through the first great awakening. That is why, during the revolution, they went into the sepulcher, cut a piece off of George Whitefield’s robe and said, “Father, we are finishing the work you began.” What is more, they looked to scripture as inspiration for the laws and institutions they established. They had a dream and a vision to accomplish it by ordering all things according to the wisdom and principles revealed in God’s word and the result was our U.S. Constitution. As Blackstone’s commentary on the law, which was the foundation of American jurisprudence states, stated that any law which is contrary to God’s law is by nature null and void. They also understood that our form of government only works for a moral and religious people, so they immediately founded schools to raise up our children in the fear of the Lord. Most of our universities were founded for this purpose. What they were doing was continuing a great tradition of Western Civilization that was begun in the monasteries that educated the West.

They were so successful at fulfilling their vision, that Alexis DeTouqueville came from France to figure out the source of American “exceptionalism.” His evaluation was that it was due to the fact that Christianity spread its benevolent influence over every area of society. He even enquired what made American women stronger and more industrious than all of the other women in the world. His conclusion was that it was due to the marriage covenant being treated as more sacred in America than in other nations. That is a direct example of how a biblical social architecture was implemented. America is still reaping the benefits of the culture and institutions handed down to us from our fathers, but we have cut ourselves off from its source. The dream of Fortis Academy is to reconnect our children to that great tradition so that they can rebuild our nation upon its founding dream by immersing them in the great tradition that inspired it. That is what a classical Christian education does.