“Well, I went to public school and I turned out fine.”

This is from RC Sproul jr "Kingdom Notes" that he emails out. They have been good and thought provoking. Here he notes how we dont realize how much we have been influenced by "just normal stuff" This is so dead on and is part of the Does a fish know hes wet theme? (the answer is no) Lots of good thinking going on at the Highlands study center. When somehting has just been accepted as normal for a long time (Generations) it can be almost impossible to see it otherwise. we need Gods grace so bad.

Pride Before a Fall
R.C. Sproul Jr.

Most of us, at least I hope, don’t act this way when it comes to immorality. We don’t think so highly of our spiritual purity that we think it safe to spend our time in brothels. Why, I wonder, are we so persuaded that we will be able to stand when it comes to ideological assaults against all that is good and right? I find this attitude most often as it touches on education, at every level from the local government school up to the highest institutions of higher learning.

When, for instance, I suggest that the challenge of raising a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord lies somewhere between Herculean and impossible when we send our little ones off to institutions where the Lord’s name cannot be mentioned for seven hours a day, I often get this retort, “Well, I went to public school and I turned out fine.” I’m still looking for a gracious way to deliver the obvious argument- that you think you turned out fine is compelling proof that you did not turn out fine.

We make much the same argument about that institution that is built in the neighborhood of the stadium of our favorite football team, State U. We survived our four year loaf there, came out with a bevy of fraternity brothers, and still go to church and vote Republican, so how bad can it be? Bad enough that we came away thinking going to church and voting Republican was the standard for spiritual maturity. Worse still, the experience made us stupid enough to think it would be a good experience for our children.

It may, on the other hand, be most shocking that we see the same phenomenon with respect to seminaries. I have heard people actually argue that it is a good thing to go to a liberal seminary, that such would strengthen ones faith. Strange, because my faith calls me to not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor to stand in the way of sinners, nor to sit in the seat of the scoffers.

Even were I to choose a seminary committed to the complete authority, sufficiency and inerrancy of the Bible, even were I to chose one committed to the Reformed faith, odds are high that most of the faculty would have received their PhD’s from institutions that spit on such convictions. Why do we think it will not, in the end, show?

Institutional entropy, that doctrine chalk full of empirical evidence that holds that all institutions tend toward apostasy, exists in the end not because it is some sort of natural law, but because we are all, in the end, naturally anti-law. Institutions fall because of the pride of those who run them. We think we can play with ideological fire and not get burned, and our ivory towers come crashing down around us.

We are not safe in houses of ill-repute, whether they house women of loose morals, or professors of loose convictions. If we think we made it out safely, we too were infected.