Oh, how I love your law!
  I meditate on it all day long.
Your commands make me wiser than my enemies,
  for they are ever with me.
I have more insight than all my teachers,
  for I meditate on your statutes.
I have more understanding than the elders,
  for I obey your precepts.
I have kept my feet from every evil path
  so that I might obey your word.
I have not departed from your laws,
  for you yourself have taught me.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
  sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I gain understanding from your precepts;
  therefore I hate every wrong path.
(Psalm 119:97-104)

I have some thoughts for students. Since they are based on broad principles, others can also derive some benefit. Now, if you attend a Christian school, your situation is so dangerous, and your soul is in such peril, that a brief word will not do. Beg the Lord to spare you from heresies, subtle deceptions, and a gradual deadening of your spirit. Here I will focus on those who go to non-Christian schools, where they also teach lies but do not disguise them with Christian vernacular.

You have been told, by Christians no less, that although non-Christian teachers blaspheme your God and hold your dearest beliefs in contempt, you should nevertheless respect them for their scholarship and experience, and to learn all the truths that you can from them. They tell you that these men, even though they are unbelievers, and even though they despise your faith, are brilliant men who have labored long and achieved much in their fields. Humility demands that you listen to them.

But I tell you, that is complete rubbish. It is the worst advice that can be offered to a student. You say, “But my parents told me this.” Your parents lied to you. And you say, “But my pastor told me this.” Your pastor was a fool. He did not know what he was talking about, and if he knew what damage his advice could cause, he must have been a demon in the flesh to have told you to open your mind to non-Christian teachers.

Whatever the reason, it seems that many Christians think that this is what they are supposed to say to students. But this advice, if accepted, dulls your spiritual aggression, reduces your inward power to resist unbelief, and compels you to become vulnerable to deception. It divides your heart and generates a contradiction in you. The non-Christians do not hesitate to consistently deride your beliefs, and thus the bad advice puts you at a great disadvantage. To bow before the devil is not humility, but idolatry. It is sinful and foolish. On the other hand, it is not arrogant to despise falsehood, and to spit on idols.

Non-Christians are educated and accomplished only according to their own standards, and those standards are according to wickedness and foolishness, not according to holiness and truth. Just because non-Christians tell you that they are intelligent and successful according to their own standards, this does not mean that you have to accept their standards and accept their claims. To do so would be to become a non-Christian.

Rather, whether educated or uneducated, whether rich or poor, whether accomplished or unaccomplished, according to God’s standards, non-Christians are bad people, just like you were a bad person before Christ changed you and rescued you. Non-Christians, as long as they remain non-Christians, are at least as bad as you were before you were converted. So either you admit that non-Christians are sinful and stupid, or you deny that you were sinful and stupid before Christ saved you, in which case you would insult the grace of Christ, and cast doubt upon the genuineness of your own faith.

If you are a Christian, you have inherited the most intelligent and powerful system of thought in existence. It is the only true religion, the only sound philosophy. If you are a Christian, then you believe the Bible, the verbal revelation of God. For this reason, you are in a position of knowledge, and just as God himself is intellectually superior to all non-Christians, because you have accepted God’s wisdom, it is not arrogant for you to think that you are superior to all non-Christians in your intellect and knowledge. You are not superior in yourself or because of yourself, but God is superior, and you have received from him.

Do you not know about the foundation of all reality, which is God? Non-Christians do not know him. Do you not know the way of salvation, about which unbelievers are entirely ignorant? Do you not know about the creation of the world, the doctrines of moral excellence, or righteousness, or ethical judgment? Do you not know, or at least have access to, the universal and enduring principles concerning religion, psychology, politics, economics, history, family, sexuality, and all pivotal topics, and how all these fit together? Non-Christians know none of these things. If you have learned and believed any portion of Scripture at all, then to deny that you are superior to all non-Christians in wisdom and knowledge is also to deny that God is superior to them in these things.

To affirm that you have received good gifts from God is not arrogance, but the very definition of humility. Arrogance supposes that you possess good things when you have nothing, or to boast about something that you have received as a gift, as if you have not received it, and as if it was not given to you as a gift. It is not arrogant to say that you know more and that you know better than the non-Christians, if it is because you have learned the words of the Bible, and that God has, as a gift, given you faith to believe in these words.

Non-Christians know no truth and can teach no truth. Even their opinions in a field like mathematics must be thoroughly reinterpreted and reconstructed in order to arrive at something that is in touch with reality. But if this is the case, what is the reason for attending a non-Christian school?

First, there is the practical benefit of earning a diploma that allows you to circulate more freely in society. Even from a Christian institution, a diploma is nothing more than a symbol of human approval. It is no proof of intellectual competence or proficiency in anything important. A Christian who seeks God’s approval should place no pride in it. But men, since they have no approval from God, seek approval from one another. And the diploma is a document that shows you have been included in men’s pathetic exercise in self-approval. Convenience is its sole benefit.

Second, non-Christians can show you what it means to be non-Christians. I do not mean that they can teach you the truth about themselves. No, they do not understand themselves, and they cannot teach you anything. Rather, since they are non-Christians, they will talk and behave as non-Christians, and by living among them, you can perhaps gain some familiarity about their thinking and lifestyle. This will enable to you infiltrate circles that are mainly infested by non-Christians, and to build a life in this world, so that you may more effectively promote God’s agenda among them, as well as to undermine their own.

Therefore, attend the schools which divine providence assigns to you, whether Christian or non-Christian. Both kinds of schools are dangerous, since so few are faithful to the Lord, but you will find safety not in men, but in the words of the Bible. Cling close to the Book, and you will be invincible in spiritual conflict. Submit to Potiphar in his household, but resist the seduction of that whore of a wife, and endure the vexation of spirit under his idolatrous culture. Do this not to gain Potiphar’s approval, but so that one day you may rule over him.