Alarmed But Not Surprised!

I am more and more convinced that the most important thing that all education does is to shape the worldview or belief system of the student (regardless of age).  This conviction has been reinforced each and every day as I see what is happening in society.  I also realize  that what is happening in society or the culture ends up happening in homes, schools and even in churches.  The only thing that somewhat amazes me is when I see and/or hear Christians being surprised by the “shocking” things they are confronted with.

An example of this is something that has been in the headlines this past week.  It seems like everyone is alarmed about a situation where a mother has been reported about driving her son to become a female.  Reports that the boy’s father was being denied his rights to stop this effort to transexualize his son.  It was even said that the mother of this young 7 year-old boy was going to have him go through gender altering chemical treatment and surgery.

More than likely, you have heard about this.  The outcry about this was everywhere.  Social media was filled with shock and condemnation about the possibility of this taking place.  People from all walks of life were wondering how can the culture allow something like this to happen.  It became so bad that a governor and state attorney general had to get involved and try to stop this type of “idiocy” from taking place.

I, too, have found myself being angry when I witness some of this insanity that has become so commonplace in the world today.  However, I am not surprised at all by it.  What can we expect when generation and generation of young children and youth have been indoctrinated by a secular education system for the past 100 plus years.  There has been and continues to be an atheistic worldview undergirding secular education throughout history.  God is ignored or denied and evolution is the only “scientific” answer to the origin of the universe and life.

This has led to two similar “isms” that now dominate the thinking of people in the world today.  The first one of these is called materialism.  This philosophy can be defined as,

physical matter is the only reality and that everything — including thought, feeling, mind and will — can all be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.

The other “ism” is naturalisim.  This term carries with it this meaning.

all can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws.  Nothing has moral, spiritual, or supernatural significance.

This is why Carl Sagan opened his Cosmos series with these words.

The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.

Young children are hit with this same lie when Actual Factual, the world’s foremost bear scientist, answers the question, what is nature? with these words.

It’s all that is, or was, or ever will be.

The only thing that is eternal is the cosmos or the material world.  If this is true, then there is no eternal God that created man in His image.  Therefore, man has no greater significance than any other material thing.  Man is just a natural phenomenon that is like anything and everything else.  This is why some lawyers are arguing to a judge that Happy, an elephant in the Bronx zoo, should have the same rights as humans — including the fundamental entitlement to liberty.  Their argument is that this elephant should be considered a person.

If everything can be explained in terms of natural causes, then man being imago Dei is a false belief.  This is why it was reported last week that the suicide rate of 10-14 year olds has almost tripled between 2007 and 2017.  The “experts” blame this on social media and bullying.  However, all of these other “reasons” are a reality of what happens when human beings are no longer considered to be image bearers of God.

I am convinced that if something drastic doesn’t change it is only going to become more bizarre and disastrous in the very near future.  When I read about a judge’s ruling concerning a doctor who was fired because he refused to refer to a bearded man as “she” because of his religious beliefs, I realized what we are going to face in the coming days.  The court ruled that,

the Bible, especially its teaching that man was created in His image, male and female is incompatible with human dignity especially because of its lack of belief in transgenderism.

The judge went on to rule that this doctor’s religious beliefs goes beyond just personal, private thoughts.

Those beliefs form part of one’s wider faith [Christianity] and this wider belief also does not satisfy the requirement of being worthy of respect in a democratic society.

WOW!  Christianity is not worthy of respect in a democratic society!  This is because biblical Christianity is built on the truth that God created everything and He created man as the capstone of His creation.  Man was created in the image of God and, therefore, has inherent worth and value.

In closing, I want to go back to the premise for this post.  Christians should not be shocked by what we are witnessing in our secularized society.  In fact, we should be taking responsibility for a lot of this.  We are the ones who have educated the majority of our children and youth in secular educational systems from birth through their teenage and college years.  Parents, pastors, church leaders and educators have chosen to have a secular worldview education shape their beliefs and values.

As the depravity of man becomes  more and more evident, what will it take for Christians to wake up, stand up and say enough is enough.  We will no longer give our children over to the world to educate.  We, the home, church and school, will unite and provide our children with a biblical worldview education.  I pray we won’t wait until it is too late!