Lie Number 6: Religoin and Education
Lie Number 6. Religion Is Not And May Not Be Taught In America’s Public Schools
Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, gave us the well-known infallible truth in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” I am afraid that we know those words so well, that we no longer grasp their deepest and most urgent meanings. You see, every child finds as he grows up in this world that several ways to walk in will be offered to him as he travels through life. And you can be sure of this, that your child will choose one of them. They all do! To be sure, the variety of the choices makes it difficult and confusing.
It is the most critical choice of our children’s lives, because only one of those ways is the high road to Heaven, while all of the others, though disguised by Satan as attractive and viable options, are low roads to Hell. We as parents are divinely ordained to train them to walk on the way of morals and virtue with Jesus Christ when they are very young. It makes no sense to teach them one way, and to model the opposite. Truth is better conveyed than taught anyway. It is not the lessons that we teach but the lessons that we are that will stick to their bones. They will not understand everything about the faith that we teach them, but it is far better to mystify them than to mislead them. Only the child that is loved will be inclined to love God and others.
It is so often true, that things in the natural often give us illustrations of the spiritual. Why train them when they are young? When you want your plants to produce fruit in the autumn, it is a commonly known fact that you must water and fertilize them in the spring. Some say, “It is never too late.” Solomon says, “It is never too early.” It makes all the difference in the world how a child enters upon life and what he sees first.
We must remember too that as precious in fact and innocent in appearance as our children are, they are born in sin. Therefore their judgments are distorted, and they have an inner propensity to choose the wrong way. Remember the words of Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” He is speaking about all men. Our children’s natural bent is to choose the wrong way. Therefore our calling, though high and holy, is not an easy or simple one as parents. If we claim that we passionately desire that our children will reach the end of life’s journey safely in Heaven, we will verify that claim by prayerfully bringing them to Jesus and modeling for them and teaching to them the Christian life from infancy on.
Our highest calling in life as parents is to be evangelists and teachers in our homes. Then alone do we have the positive assurance of the promise, “When he is old he will not depart from it.” But be assured that our parental calling is a 24/7 calling. It is and must be all-consuming, for our children are so inestimably precious, and eternity is so interminably long. Otherwise we will be like the majority of parents in this world who completely ignore their children’s spiritual and eternal welfare. All that they have done is to have given their children bodies only to damn their souls.
To greatly complicate the challenge of parenting, the historic mold of Christian education in America’s public schools has been shattered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The youth of this nation have been poured into a totally different mold in public education. When my dear wife was young, the public school that she attended opened each school day with prayer, Scripture reading, and the singing of Christian songs. The Ten Commandments were not only hung on the school walls, but were drilled into the student’s minds and hearts as they were taught and enforced in the classroom. This nation was literally founded upon the Ten Commandments which were part and parcel of the public educational process.
Now no religion is taught in our schools which are totally neutral on spiritual matters! Wrong! Think again! Nothing could be further from the truth. Religion is being taught in the public schools every school day of every school year. What is that religion? It is the religion of “Secular Humanism.” It is a religion complete with its own doctrines and bible. The old testament of Secular Humanism is the Humanist Manifesto I, and the new testament of Secular Humanism is the Humanism Manifesto II. The founders of this religion, including John Dewey and Charles Francis Potter, called it a religion in their manifesto. The United States Supreme Court in 1961 also declared it to be a religion.
One of the main tenets of Secular Humanism is that man is but a part of nature, and that he emerged (evolved) as the result of an ongoing process. Also expressly taught is that the universe is self-existent and self-maintaining, and that the universe and man were not created. To top it off, Secular Humanism expressly teaches that it is a non-theistic religion, and that it begins with man and not God, with nature and not deity. This is not Genesis 1:1, “In the Beginning God.” That is what children used to see first in school. Rather, this is Dewey 1:1, “In the beginning man.” That is what they now see first. This is verbatim the starting point of public education today. Which is why John Dewey stated, “Education therefore is a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism.”
Secular Humanism and Evolution are married. They are both taught explicitly or implicitly in our school system as the essence of Secular Humanism. I know, because I have read the textbooks. From matter to monkey to mankind! From the goo to the zoo to you! Even though the missing link is still missing and always will be, for it doesn’t exist. Not only is the missing link still missing, the entire transmutational chain is missing. Yet man still chooses to teach and believe the lie of evolution. And remember, if you believe that you came from animals, you will live like animals too. Welcome to our world and our schools.
Our challenge as Christian parents to train up our children correctly has doubled, as if we needed that! We must give our children the window to God’s wonderful and exciting creation, while in the classroom they monkey around with their brains. Christian education is not simply and endlessly discussing God. It is discussing and seeing everything in the light of God, as He has made Himself known in Jesus Christ. And it is our duty, I believe, to teach them not only the Word of God, but the Declaration of Independence which is firmly rooted in Scripture and show them what this nation used to be. Teachers can no longer teach our founding document without the fear of being fired.
Of course, public educators today would not agree. They call it a “Neutral Education.” There is no such thing as neutral education. Neutral education is a myth! Not to be pro-creationism is to believe in some form of evolution. To be anti-God will end you up in some form of pro-Darwinism. You can’t have it both ways, and you can’t have it no-way, unless you are brain dead. When man rejects God, it does not mean that he will believe in nothing, but rather, that he will surely believe in something else. Creationism has been replaced by Darwinism. Moral absolutes have been replaced by situation ethics and values clarification. Welcome to our totally non-neutral and secularly humanistic public schools and to the religion which they teach.
Well now, we have gone a long way down hill since President George Washington addressed the Delaware Indian Chiefs on May 12, 1779 and said, “What students will learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ.” That originally is what America’s student saw and learned first not only, but saw and learned all the way through the educational process. Now what they see and learn first is the religion of Secular Humanism.
