"When I walk through these doors, my Bible stays out."
-- New York state Sen. Eric Adams, urging his colleagues to set aside
religious convictions and join him in voting for a gay-marriage bill.
The New York Times, Dec. 2, 2009
Yesterday while I was out driving around doing my various retailing jobs, I heard a local news update on the radio that got me chuckling and yet shaking my head in disgust. Before I get to that, I have to set things up. Our state legislature is currently proceeding ahead with a bill that will allow schools to offer elective courses in the Old Testament and New Testament. The backers of this bill emphasize the classes are strictly elective and are not required by students, and such education in the Scriptures is necessary to understand our country's founding and much of past literature, such as Shakespeare, Milton, and many others.
Part of me says it is about time that we get back to the basics in education. Yet the other part of me says "I don't know about this." Look how our current educational structure has mismanaged teaching history (history revisionism), science (evolution, global warming, etc.), social sciences (Heather has Two Mommies, "safe" sex, etc.), civics (the superiority of political socialism over capitalism), just to name a few. Now just imagine what they will do to Scriptures. How can an unregenerate high school teacher, for example, properly teach the Word of God to students? How many would want a professing, practicing Mormon to teach the Bible to young impressionable minds? But again, if it is an elective course, those matters I suppose could be researched and found out by parents before their student enrols in a class.
Laying aside for the moment the discussion whether the bill is good and necessary or fraught with possible difficulties, I turn now to the news update that had me laughing and rolling my eyes at the same time. One state senator, who is known for being very liberal, and who recently lost his bid to become mayor in Tulsa, said in opposition to this bill that our country had a secular beginning. Perhaps he thinks the Pilgrims came over here with copies of Mein Kampf. Our educational system did a great job in giving a degree to this state senator! He makes the point more forcefully than any proponent of this bill that we need this bill, and we need it in a hurry. What we really need is a total educational makeover.
I wish I had the opportunity to be a state senator for just one day yesterday. After I repented of my backsliding, I would return to my normal life after that one day. I would love to have asked this state senator from the senate floor what percentage of our country's beginning was secular in nature (I am sure he had the Enlightenment in mind, and people such as Thomas Paine, unless of course the senator was talking out of blind ignorance or prejudicial bias, which could be the case.), and what percentage of our country's founding he thinks was religious in nature. I would have loved to hear his answer. Even if he would have said that 95% of our country's beginning was totally secular in nature, which would be a greater admission of his colossal ignorance, I would not argue that point with him. Instead, I would respond back by saying that since our educational system has for generations now been almost totally taken over by a secular humanistic approach, is it not only fair and right that we take 5% of our time, with an elective course, to teach about our religious beginnings.
I am a big proponent of education, the right kind that is. Today we are stuck with eccentric education. Eccentric means "departing from an established pattern, unconventional." The established pattern or norm for education in our country at one time was far different than what we are getting from Pre-K to PhD today. My wife and I have been making the rounds in visiting various colleges that are interested in our graduating high school senior, and ones that our senior has expressed interest in attending. One of these colleges, which shall remain nameless, made a pretty good impression on me initially. They all have their own sales pitches, but this one had some things in its favor--for one thing, they offer a full scholarship to my daughter, their costs are much lower than other state schools, their graduation rates are much higher, but the best thing that caught my attention was their educational philosophy.
This state, non-private, college is a liberal arts college. They have identified one big glaring problem of higher education today, and that is we have a fractured, highly specialized, compartmentalized educational assembly line that churns out graduates with degrees in specific fields, but graduates who lack a well-rounded knowledge in many fields. The tragic result is that they are unable to find jobs beyond their specialization when the economy takes a downturn or when technological changes or cultural shifts cause a movement toward other fields and away from other fields. A liberal arts degree is intended to prepare a student with a broad knowledge, beyond one's particular "major", and a knowledge that ties all the fields together in a comprehensive whole. The student with a liberal arts degree then can make adjustments more quickly in the future job market should situations warrant it.
Liberal arts education was the established norm in this country at its beginning. Today we are eccentric. We no longer have universities. We have "multi-versities"--the political science department teaches one theory of man, the psychology department teaches another theory of man, the history department teaches another theory of man, the biology department teaches another theory of man, and never the two or three or one hundred departments on a typical college campus ever meet anywhere at any time. Our society is so fragmented and divided, not because of right-wing Bible-thumping religious zealots as some would claim, because we have been teaching ourselves that man is fragmented and divided.
A professor at this college gave an illustration from her own educational past. She took a class in college entitled 20th Century Female Poets in China. All she learned in that class was very specialized in nature. Did she learn anything about the history of China during that time period? No. Did she learn anything about the changing political climate in China? No. Did she learn anything about other aspects of cultural life in China during the past century? No. Her educational heritage, like so many, was eccentric in nature. Over her lifetime as she saw the numerous disadvantages in her own educational journey, she became a convert to liberal arts education, the once-established norm.
Liberal arts education will have, for example, a class on American history that every college student must take. During the course of that semester class, a professor from the music department will come over to lecture maybe one or two days about the development of music styles during that period of time. Another day a science professor may lecture in that history class about the scientific advancements made during that period of time and their ramifications on American life. Another day an economics professor will talk on the various economic cycles that occurred during the time in question, and how that impacted Americans in general and legislation in particular. Such is the wisdom behind a liberal arts education.
It was a very compelling story this college professor told. . .but something was missing. As we walked across campus, I told my wife that this school is on to something very big. They have identified a problem and they are addressing it, sort of. What is missing was what was THE BIG established norm in our educational system. Theology was called the "queen of the sciences." It was the unifying, over-arching study that brought every field of study under it. At one time we did have uni-versities. Diverse studies were all brought together under a unified biblical worldview. I would kindly ask this liberal state senator to examine the beginnings of Yale and Harvard for example, and he would see that theology and not secular humanism was the established norm.
And for this state senator from New York whom I quoted at the top, I would simply say when the college student at Yale and Harvard in the 1700s walked through the college doors, they always carried their Bibles with them. How we have arrived at a day when a New York or an Oklahoma state senator can expose his eccentric views without anyone batting an eye only goes to show what a theology-devoid educational system can do to any civilization over time.
And the same applies, even more so, to the church's educational system. Even if the entire higher learning culture in our country goes to hell in a hand basket, the church should be the one place where the queen of sciences is taught with due diligence and extreme care. The first church put first things first, and we would be foolhardy to do anything else. "And they continued steadfastly in the APOSTLES' DOCTRINE and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers." (Acts 2:42) Is the modern church by and large following that example? Or are we rather being bombarded by a steady diet of self-help motivational sermons topped off with a little divinity to make it appear legitimate? We may know how to put the sizzle back in our marriage, but we may know next to nothing about justification. We may know the "steps" or "keys" or "principles" to establish a healthy financial future, but we may know very little about the means of personal sanctification.
What is embarrassing is to compare what school children had to know in the 1700s compared to what they know or are being taught today. Do a study sometime and you will find your head reeling when you see how far we have fallen. Here is something more embarrassing. Discover what children learned in our churches at one time from their catechism classes (Bible and theology instruction, the pre- crayon-coloring, puppet-show, video-games days) to what church adults or long-time church members know today.
It is kind of hard to fault the multi-versities out there on college campuses, when we have more of the same in our church houses. We have a highly fragmented, fractured system of learning where children are segregated from youth and youth are segregated from adults, and adults are further fragmented by classifications of singles, senior adults, young marrieds, etc. What is taught over there can not be the same as what is taught over another place, because felt needs and life situations have replaced "the apostles' doctrine." We have no unifying queen of sciences.
The eccentric education at our places of higher learning has reached a boiling point, an ebullition. More and more graduates at our multi-versities are painfully learning that what they have learned may not have adequately prepared them for the future. Just recently riots have broken out again on numerous college campuses because of cutbacks in education. We have a free Pre-K to PhD mentality. We consider education, like health care, a guaranteed right--another travesty of our eccentric educational system that has failed to teach what exactly is in the Bill of Rights and what is not. Since the federal government has become heavily involved in our educational system, the costs of education have risen five times the national rate of inflation.
A good sign for revival in our day would be a growing, non-violent, ebullition among God's people over the eccentric education in our churches. When there is a holy uprising among God's people for not being adequately fed from God's Word, then there is tremendous hope for change, not from DC but from Heaven. It may take a "supreme sacrifice", for example, for families to take their children out of large youth groups where they are being babysat, entertained and spoon fed dribble, and then take their families to a church, big or small, where there really is a uni-versity in place.
At times I am extremely hopeful, but then at other times I am left to wonder. This week our entire family went to the annual end-of-basketball-season banquet for a Christian basketball organization, of which our youngest daughter was a part and a player on an older girls' team. After the pizza was all gone, we all then headed to the worship center of the church where we were meeting. We had a recognition service where the customary celebratory remarks were made and awards given. Then there was a keynote speaker with a speech to be followed by a devotion, as it was called in the printed program. We heard lots of things, but never a word of Scripture was spoken. To top it off, at the end of the devotion, quickly we were all asked to bow our heads and the devotion speaker led us all in the sinner's prayer. We were to repeat silently what he said out loud. Children (and adults) were encouraged to fill out a card, check the appropriate box, and then turn the cards in, because there was going to be prizes given for cards that were randomly drawn later.
The men who spoke were good-hearted men. They were not evil in their intentions. But what they did, all under the appearance of religious sincerity for the salvation of others, was ask people to do something very important without any scriptural content at all. This is what happens when the queen of sciences has been dethroned in our churches. This is the outcome of a cataclysmic shift in the church's educational system.
As I walked back to my vehicle after the meeting was concluded, the thing I kept asking myself was this, "How many in that large gathering of folks was really bothered by what they had just seen and heard, or have we become so accustomed to something like this, that we consider it just standard procedure?" Have we become so attached to our own eccentric education that we see it as the established norm, and when what was really the once established norm is pursued by someone or some church, we consider those people odd and eccentric? (Isaiah 5:20)
The prayer of our day should be that there would be a growing ebullition over the eccentric education in our churches. In case that terminology does not light our fire, here is a simpler way to say it (for the benefit of all of us who have graduated from our multi-versities): When are we going to be fed up for not being fed?
With such royalty as King Jesus and Queen Theology in place, the church can lead the way, educationally speaking and in all other ways, which is what the Head had in mind all along when He said we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. (Matthew 5:13-15)
Yours for the teaching of the Truth,
Chris
