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Creating God-Sized Holes
Recently a monumental tree in Colorado fell to the ground with a resounding crash after having stood inspirationally on a hill for more than four hundred years. A sapling when Columbus landed in San Salvador, over the centuries this tree had been struck by lightning 14 times, braved great windstorms, and even defied an earthquake. In the end, however, it was killed by some little beetles.1
Those same centuries have seen America rise to inspiring heights. However, one seemingly benign concept, the secularization of education, has been able to pierce the bark of American tradition and has chewed the mighty fibers of its host.
The idea that secularization of education, removing the teaching of Christian or other religious ideas, could actually threaten the internal structure of a world “superpower” seemed a bit alarmist, even to this believer in Christ. Yet, after recognizing the holes masticated into education and the resultant wilting in our population from loss of essential sustenance, the need to deal with this particular parasitic idea is evident.
As a former public school teacher, I understand the rationale behind secularizing education: to avoid indoctrination into any belief system. Yet, the incongruous result by pushing any real discussion about God out of education and attempting to explain all in the universe solely by nature and chance, without any discussion of God-relevant ideas, is simply indoctrination into another belief system: materialist atheism. The state is now sponsoring a belief system over all others.
Imagine yourself as a member of a jury. The prosecutor stands up and presents all arguments supporting his side, then sits down. The defendant stands up, but before being able to give supportive evidence for his side, the judge instructs the defendant to stop and sit down, and then the judge turns to the jury and says, “Make your decision.” This is precisely the situation we have through K-12 public education and into collegiate life.
Looking at the God-Sized Holes
I was able to illustrate the God-sized holes this causes in our education in a high school classroom, which I never should have been allowed to do. While I was waiting to teach an after-school Christian group in a public high school, I was brought in to sit in a world history classroom. The students had finished the day’s work early, and with ten minutes left the teacher asked if I wanted to promote the after-school class I would be teaching. I am sure I had my trouble-maker-smile, at least on the inside, as I walked to the front desk.
Asking the high schoolers to open their world history books to the section on Ghandi, I asked how many pages, time in class, and test questions where invested in Ghandi? Then, I did the same for Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. Finally, I had them do the same for Jesus. My point became obvious, but I asked the class anyway: “Do you see the tremendous quantity and quality of study difference between the former figures and Jesus?”
Dramatic difference—yet, Ghandi, Lincoln, and MLK all declared Jesus is the most important figure in all history. So why does our education go the opposite direction?
Next big question and corresponding eye-opener: Jesus claimed to be God, with the purpose of demonstrating the seriousness of our situation and personally enduring the consequences of our wrongdoing so we can have relationship with him. He then predicted he would validate his claim with an unprecedented event.
Don’t you think that is something important to include in our education of this figure? If Lincoln made the same claims, you can be sure we would be discussing it. If you believe Jesus was just some moral teacher, your understanding is like cramming a square peg into a round hole—it just does not fit historically or logically. We are being undereducated, or more accurately, miseducated.
Consider yourself or your children sitting through an entire United States history course, and the teacher spent only a few minutes of very general and unfocussed mention of the Constitution. That significant hole in the education about this nation would not only create an equally significant void in understanding about our country, but also would deprive the students of essential components to apply to their lives in America.
The very cursory and uneducated coverage of Christ leaves a cross-shaped hole in our education, not only creating a void of understanding on an historic scale when compared to other events and people of history, but also depriving students of essential components of application to their lives, in which, regardless of their beliefs, the historical Jesus plays a significant role. The result of this equation is indoctrination, with essential facts of life falling through the holes.
Wouldn’t you have a problem with that situation, or more likely conclude such a situation would be a display of miseducating educators? Such a situation is currently the standard in world history education about the most important figure in history!
You will also see the holes in other fields of study. Consider science. Looking through science textbooks, the idea the universe is eternal and has always existed was what was taught. Even when Einstein began realizing the universe wasn’t eternal but may have had a beginning, he rejected the possibility as the consensus in science, and throughout his education was adamant the universe is eternal. Eventually, requiring some of the most important discoveries in all science, the scientific community recognized and accepted the universe did not always exist, but had a beginning, and began from something beyond the nature we are a part of.
Yet, over 3,000 years prior, the Bible had proclaimed those precise facts, and others! If taken as part of the discussion of our universe, maybe minds would have allowed wider vision to encompass realities otherwise not in our proscribed view. Consider how many of the founders of the different fields in science were Christians, who were led to investigate the creation and how it worked. The Bible provided accurate knowledge about our reality, which was unique and unprecedented, and which is now the consensus in science.
Mathematical physicist Frank Tipler stated, “From the perspective of the latest physical theories, Christianity is not a mere religion, but an experimentally testable science” (Tipler, The Physics of Christianity, Preface).
And those who chose to limit their perspective as our education had prescribed lived the analogy described by astronomer Robert Jastrow’s comments:
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. (Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, pp. 105–106)
When educating children on right and wrong and the inherent value and equality of all people, we must ask—what are those beliefs or ideas grounded in? In other words, what can make those beliefs more than subjective ideas, just an illusion that anyone can disagree about with equal justification? What can determine these ideas we base so much of our lives on are objectively true for all people, places, and times, regardless of personal opinion?
The Founding Fathers knew this. When stating in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . .”, the authors recognized that without having the foundation of a Creator, in the position and authority beyond humanity to establish objective morality, then claims of right and wrong and equality were no more self-evident than King George’s opposing opinions.
A student should get extra credit if she pointed out just because a society, or the majority, or evolution, or the “common good” leads to certain opinions of right and wrong, those opinions are subjective and no more objectively true, or based in absolute reality and worth accepting, than entirely different subjective moral claims.
Whether objective morality can be properly grounded by a transcendent authority or we just live under subjective moral claims has obvious ramifications, both in comprehensive and accurate education and in application to students’ lives. If morality is subjective due to evolution or society, how can we rationally judge as objectively wrong the actions of Nazi Germany or slave traders or Harvey Weinstein? How can we claim there is some standard all people ought to ascribe to? There is a hole in our thinking when these issues come up, both in school and out.
The necessary knowledge and skills to apply this knowledge have been available, and when put to use in a complete education—with the holes in our education being appropriately filled with knowledge regarding God—the perennial student question, “How am I going to use this outside of school?” will be answered again and again throughout life in wide quantity and deep quality. More and more people will be making their thoughts, responses, choices, goals, and direction of their lives based on a supported foundation of beliefs.
Further, wrong beliefs can lead to faulty thoughts, actions, and goals on historic levels. Was 9/11 an honorable act, or horrendous? It depends on whether the belief system of those who carried it out is accurate or not. Either way, it would benefit all involved if we had better instruction and practice founding our guiding belief system on reality.
Finally, and most personally, your beliefs on the “big questions in life”[1] impact you by acting as your lighthouse, which you use to light up understanding on how the world really is, and as a foundation from which you build endless thoughts, choices, actions, responses, goals, and direction in your life. And because the different belief systems contradict each other on their foundational answers, the law of noncontradiction makes it clear that only one, at most, can be accurate. And if we are not given instruction and practice applying reasons from all applicable areas of life to these foundational questions, we become like an infant, toddling toward a busy street.
Filling in the God-Sized Holes
Many just expected churches and families to fill in these holes, but have they? Of course not. You need experts who can devote significant lifetime study in specific fields to teach what needs to be known. Church leaders and parents are way too busy directing the entire scope of their respective churches or families. Unfortunately, the experts sitting in the pews had remained seated and hadn’t been encouraged by the church, until recently, which is why studies[2] are showing such a loss in churches and chaos, doubt, and struggle in Christians’ lives currently.
And this is not just about the families who want their children to have religious education. It is even more significant to children who don’t have a religious background. The concepts involved still are essential for anyone to be educated about, as noted by the examples above, and these children are even less likely to have these dark regions in their education illuminated.
The main reasons these people are walking away from belief are the same and include having questions not answered and not even knowing how to involve science, theology, logic, personal experience, etc. comprehensively in a perspective from which to base their beliefs upon. Of course people feel unable to do this; they were not taught nor did they practice such because our education is not whole but holey.
A personal example comes to mind that illustrates how we all are susceptible to missing pieces due to artificially constricted education. Some adults and a group of students went to the University of California, Berkeley for a student debate and discussions regarding belief in God. During a dinner, the plan was to mingle people with differing beliefs to facilitate getting to know one another. Sitting next to me were the atheist organization’s president, the debate team leader, and several professors. When asked to provide one reason from science to support my belief, I did. Then after the debate leader acknowledged my point, one professor, whose title seemed as long as this paragraph, exclaimed, “How come I have not heard of this?! This is important!”
His shock and genuineness are what made the situation stick in my memory, and one of the reasons I do the Thoughtful Beliefs website. This person didn’t care what his colleagues thought about him placing importance and credence to the support provided against their belief. He was upset not to have what he recognized as obvious and important information.
Whether our life is what the professor had believed, (a) solely the result of random accident; or (b) the result of a purposeful Father, who spread out His arms wide on a cross to demonstrate the seriousness of our situation, the value placed on us, and the authority over an existence after life; or (c) one of the other possible belief systems (there are as many belief systems as there are people’s wants of what to believe) carries very serious and differing impacts on us, depending on which is accurate and whether we base our beliefs on the accurate one or not. Both the professor and I agreed on this point.
Imagine yourself as the night watchman of a huge house. You are required to stay in the office, so how do you monitor the entire house? Cameras. As we monitor our own life, we also have cameras: physics, philosophy, mathematics, theology, history, and others, which monitor life through respective, unique points of view. While each camera sends back its own view and information, you can combine all the views in order to have the most comprehensive possible coverage. That is a good system, and the watcher can feel secure of being aware of as much as is possible.
Now, you can choose to turn off or ignore a camera, if you don’t like or trust what it shows. This is beneficial if the view is invalid as it is only noise, but if that camera is valid, providing an accurate and unique view, then we will have purposefully created a blind spot. And if that blind spot is in the area where worldview beliefs are determined, then so many of our thoughts, responses, goals, priorities, and directions in life will be impacted. You have created a blind spot, and it is from that unilluminated area of the house where disastrous consequences gain entrance.
How can we get the full view, fill in the holes in our knowledge base? Easier now than ever. The ThoughtfulBeliefs.org website walks you through simple steps anyone can use to determine what they believe and why.
At each step in the path, there are intersections (a choice for you to make) about which worldview best fits reality and what other maps need to be discarded or revised. We will cover interesting information from many fields of science and life, which serve as guideposts at each intersection along the path. We can talk about galaxies and atoms, kangaroo babies and the music group Tool, evolution and Star Wars (or The Notebook for our romance readers), the Bible and Shakespeare, Jesus and Hinduism, the odds of surviving a fall from 10,000 feet without a parachute, and other amazing things in this life. You can use this information to help in your choice of beliefs. And as a side-benefit of this program, your brain will literally grow. New connections will actually be made within your brain as you take in information new to you. While it is unfortunate so much of this information has not been taught, or not taught well, the good thing is you will now add impressive and interesting conversation pieces in many areas.
No matter what you believe about your life, most would rather surf the internet than examine their beliefs. There are days I would, too. However, while hours of television will give good entertainment, moving your investment from other activities into going through this study can pay greater dividends for your life than most any other activity. Not because this study is special, but because the topic is. Go at your own rate and ask questions as they come up. It is your decision to make and stand upon.
References
[1] Like it or not, everyone born into this world must answer the “big questions in life”: 1. Origin (Where did we come from?), 2. Purpose (Why are we here?), 3. Current Situation (Can things be better? Is there true right/wrong?), 4. Destination (Where are we going?)
[2] Barna, “Most Twentysomethings Put Christianity on the Shelf Following Spiritually Active Teen Years” (2006); McNeal, Reggie, The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church
(2009); Smith, Christian and Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults
(2009); Pew Research Center, “Why American’s ‘Nones’ Left Religion Behind” (2016);
Pew Research Center, “A Closer Look at America’s Rapidly Growing Religious ‘Nones’” (2015).
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