Girls are Girls at ECS

In my last post I talked about how boys are welcome at Emmanuel Christian School. In this post I want to address some of the pressing issues facing girls and what we at ECS are doing about it. I’m going to say from the start this isn’t an easy post to write, and I imagine it will be even harder to read.

There’s no way for me to talk about this without stating bluntly that I believe our broader culture is wicked and immoral when it comes to the topic of biological sex. We are a nation in sin, and we are a nation in need of repentance. And one of the most devastating elements of this sin is we are destroying our own children by it. Jesus said it would be better to have a millstone tied around the neck and be thrown into the sea than to cause a little one to stumble (Matthew 18:6). Yet, as a nation, we tell girls there is no such thing as being a woman, we have drag shows in local libraries, we let men into women’s bathrooms, and then we have the audacity to ask why girls are confused about what it means to be a woman.

Let me answer “What is a woman?” by going back to the beginning. In Genesis 1-2 we read how everything God created is good. Except we get to man all by himself, and bachelorhood is the one thing in all of creation God looks at and says “not good” (Genesis 2:18). In that same verse God says “I will make a helper as his complement” (HCSB) and thus we see how Eve is created. God created Eve as a helper and complement to Adam. And God did this before there was any sin in the world mucking things up. This was and is God’s purposeful and good design in creation.

But as we know sin happened after this. And sin has a way of ruining everything it touches. In the words of Cornelius Plantinga, things are not the way they are supposed to be. Our society is in culpable unbelief about how God created us, and thus our society is in rebellion about what it means to be male and female. And we have to raise daughters in this sinful world that lies to them about who they are and how they are made.

I have two daughters myself. The weight of raising them at this time, in this place, does not escape me. As a man I want to protect my daughters. And yet I know there is such a deliberate, intentional, and pervasive onslaught against them from our culture. It could easily feel hopeless, but I know I am not alone. And neither are you.

Emmanuel Christian School is a refuge, an outpost preserving what might otherwise be lost. Girls are girls at ECS. And we encourage that, we teach it. Our 7th and 8th graders are enrolled in a Bible class on biblical manhood and womanhood this semester. From day one we teach kids about how God created the world, and what that means with respect to our purpose and how we should live. Most important, we constantly present our students with the Gospel. It’s not a side salad added on to a main course that looks just like the public schools. It’s not relegated to chapel once a week, or even just to devotions at the beginning of the day. The remission of sin through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the beating heart of everything we believe and do.

Because Jesus Christ is Lord we cannot and will not bow the knee to a surrounding culture that tells girls they can be boys. We will teach each student they are made in the image of God, and that male and female God created them (Genesis 1:26-27). We will not allow girls to be threatened in the bathroom by the presence of boys and men; nor will we allow female student athletes to be robbed of opportunity by having to compete against male student athletes. We will answer the call of God and partner with parents and families to protect children and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (see Ephesians 5).

Girls are girls at ECS. You can learn more about our approach to education here.