Loving Your Neighbor Is Apparently Political Now (And That’s a Problem)
I’ve noticed something strange over the past few years. Many Christians I know genuinely care about kids, families, and the health of their community. They show up when someone’s in crisis, bring meals, volunteer, and pray faithfully. But when the conversation turns to public schools—especially funding them—something shifts. The room tightens. The tone changes. We would support schools, but…
And then we fill in the blank with whatever topic is on the top of our minds. (Or the topic that our favorite pundit was talking about yesterday.)
For some reason, supporting schools feels less like caring for neighbors and more like endorsing an ideology. Which is odd, because most of our neighbors’ kids go to public school. That’s not a political talking point; it’s just reality. And yet, this is where things often start to feel backward.
Does Supporting Public Schools Mean Compromising Christian Values?
A lot of Christians I talk with carry a quiet fear underneath the conversation: If I support public schools, am I supporting something that contradicts my values? It’s an understandable concern. I’ve wrestled with it myself. But it’s also a question that needs a little air and clarity, because it assumes something that simply isn’t true.
Supporting public schools is not the same thing as endorsing everything that happens in them. If that were the standard, Christians wouldn’t be able to function in modern society at all. We pay taxes that fund programs we disagree with. We drive on roads maintained by governments we critique loudly—sometimes while sitting in traffic and critiquing them very creatively (No? Just me?). None of us lives in a world of perfect alignment. We live in a world of shared systems, imperfect institutions, and real people who depend on them.
If total agreement were the price of participation, faithfulness would be impossible—and frankly exhausting. Christianity has never required that kind of insulation in order to be faithful. In fact, no church has 100% agreement on doctrine/theology. I can almost guarantee that you disagree with your pastor about something. I know this because I’ve been working in the church at some capacity since 1998. The pastors on staff disagree with each other over what some would consider core doctrinal issues.
Can you imagine a life where you only participated in systems that you 100% agreed with? And I mean, no ounce of disagreement. The only songs we could sing would be songs we wrote ourselves. The only books we could read would be books we wrote. The only podcasts we could listen to would be podcasts we made. And the funny thing is, even then, we couldn’t listen to ourselves for long because eventually we change our minds about something. So, we’d have to go back and burn our own books.
Biblical Precedent: Faithful Presence in Imperfect Systems
Scripture gives us repeated examples of God’s people being called to work for good inside broken systems they neither designed nor controlled. One of the clearest moments comes when Israel is living in exile, under a foreign empire with values very different from their own. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God tells them not to withdraw, wait it out, or spend all their energy cursing Babylon. Instead, He says, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for if it prospers, you will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7, NET). That instruction is striking because it doesn’t come with a list of conditions. God doesn’t say, “Seek the welfare of the city once you agree with it,” or “once you’re in charge,” or “once it reflects your values.” The call is to seek its good precisely because real people’s lives are bound up in it.
The New Testament carries that same posture forward. Paul reminds believers that God works through imperfect governing structures to restrain chaos and promote basic order, even when those structures fall far short of righteousness. In Romans 13, he writes that governing authorities are “God’s servants” in the limited sense of maintaining order, not moral perfection (Romans 13:4, NET). That doesn’t mean Christians stop critiquing injustice or abandon discernment, but it does mean engagement is not betrayal. Scripture consistently presents faithful presence, prayer, and participation as the norm—not withdrawal. The biblical pattern is clear: God’s people are called to seek the flourishing of the places they inhabit, even (especially) when those places are complicated, frustrating, and far from ideal.
Why Withdrawing from Public Schools Isn’t Neutral
This is where I think some of our instincts get crossed. Many Christians are trying to protect their convictions, which is good. But sometimes protection quietly turns into withdrawal, and withdrawal starts to look like neutrality. The problem is that opting out doesn’t actually create neutrality—it just removes your influence.(And, as far as I’m concerned, I think it would be much better to have your influence in our community.)
The schools don’t disappear. The kids don’t vanish. The families don’t suddenly gain better options. What disappears is your presence, your voice, your care, and your willingness to share responsibility. And the voices of the extremes are all that’s left. And to be clear, this isn’t an argument against homeschooling or private schools. Families make those choices for many thoughtful, faithful reasons. This is an argument against disengaging from the common good while still benefiting from it, because withdrawal doesn’t protect communities—it fragments them.
Loving Your Neighbor Where They Actually Are
There are those who are using Battle Ground as their own political project for personal gain. But most families in Battle Ground don’t have the same agenda. Their experience in this community isn’t an experiment, it’s life. While-collar and blue-collar families, construction families, single-income households, and families doing their best with what they have who don’t have unlimited options. For many of them, “just choose something else” isn’t realistic; it’s theoretical. And love that ignores economic reality isn’t love—it’s an idea.
If loving our neighbor means anything at all, it means paying attention to where their lives actually take place. For most kids in our community, that place is public school, whether we’re comfortable with that or not.
Stewardship Without Control
I also think we sometimes confuse stewardship with control. Christians can slip into the assumption that if we don’t run something, own it, or fully agree with it, we can’t care for it responsibly. But stewardship doesn’t require dominance. It requires attention, responsibility, and humility. You can steward something you don’t control. You can care without commandeering. You can invest without endorsing everything.
If our faith only works when we’re in charge, it’s more fragile than we’d probably like to admit. For most of the New Testament, Christianity flourished in a world where it has zero control.
What Supporting Public Schools Actually Means
That’s why it helps to be very clear about what supporting public schools actually means—and what it doesn’t. Supporting schools means caring about kids’ safety, learning, and dignity. It means sharing responsibility with neighbors and investing in the place you actually live. It does not mean agreeing with every policy, abandoning convictions, trusting blindly, or pretending concerns don’t exist. This isn’t blind trust; it’s neighborly responsibility, and those are not the same thing. It’s looking at the needs of the kids in our community and saying: “They deserve better. Someone needs to advocate for them the way someone advocated for me.”
Faith Is Local Before It’s Ideological
Faith, after all, isn’t abstract. It has an address. It has faces. It shows up in ordinary places—like schools full of kids who didn’t ask to be part of our debates or carry the weight of our distrust. It’s much easier to argue about national politics than to wrestle with local consequences. It’s easier to talk about values than to ask what love looks like on your own street.
Supporting public schools isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about refusing to abandon the place God has already planted us, seeking and advocating for its flourishing. And that, inconveniently and quietly, looks a lot like loving your neighbor.
