Why I still don't like my Christian high school experience...

Today as I was reading the Kansas City Star I noticed a section I had never seen before: Education. I didn't know they had an education section! Heather and I are trying to decide where Amos' first school experience should take place at, and so this section grabbed my attention. So as I flipped through the pages, I stumbled upon a full page ad for my old high school, Kansas City Christian Academy. I went there my whole life, kindergarten through 12th grade. I know that the school has grown since my days there, but never would expect to see a full page for them; granted it was in the "education" section.

The bottom half of the page was set like an advertisement, with an image of the core of an eaten, rotten apple with a big motto: "We bear fruit that lasts". I thought that was actually a pretty good little slogan. Then the top half of the page was the school describing itself. It gave a little information about the academy and then said,"...because here we bear fruit that lasts. For example:..."and then lists about 15 professions that alumni from the school now have. This brings me to my point. The first one was a missile technician in Nebraska. I'm sorry, what? Fruit that lasts means building weapons that can only be used for war? War? Fruit that lasts? I'm confused. Then the next fourteen are all clearly the most prestigious professions held by any of the alumni the school could track down. This was the problem when I was there. There is all this spiritual talk and spiritual catch phrases like "fruit that lasts", and then the application is no different than the rest of the world. I'm sorry, but no profession and certainly no war is going to "last". When I think of what lasts I think of character development, families, spiritual growth and discipleship.

I understand that a school has to "sell" itself and that is why they put a full page ad in the paper, but are they trying to appeal to Christians interested in raising their children in a spiritual environment, or are they trying to establish themselves as an elite college prep school? Sure you can have both spiritual and good education, but to use biblical catch phrases to sell anything is at least disappointing if not questionable. I guess one also has to wonder how spiritual of an environment it is if they believe an arms specialist is an example of "fruit that lasts".