Whose Worldview is Best for Our Children?

Publisher’s Note…

Below is an editorial letter written by one of our readers to a local paper about a discussion which has been ongoing at her local school board related to teaching the Bible as an elective course. Quite frankly, her letter could be addressed to practically any and every public school in our nation. Her letter raises a host of excellent questions and makes a lot of outstanding points which every Christian parent with a child in the public education system should be asking and considering.

Dear Editor,

Thank you for covering the school board meetings and the discussion about teaching the Bible as an elective in school. As interesting as I have found the discussions to be, I believe there is a much more important issue underlying the debate; that issue being whether the community is willing to give our children an education based on truth.
    God commands parents to teach children the truth – or, in other words, to give them a biblical worldview. Education was never meant to be secular or pagan. It was meant to glorify God. If any teaching contradicts Scripture, it is to be considered false doctrine, or, false teaching. In the Bible, God has given the truth about life, faith and practice and it is every Christian’s responsibility to make sure their children are educated from a biblical worldview perspective.

What is a biblical worldview? It is understanding the cause, nature and purpose of the universe from God’s perspective, as revealed through Holy Scripture. A well-rounded education will include studying other worldviews, but they should always be studied in light of God’s Word. If we study other worldviews and treat them as being equally valid, we are essentially telling our children that there is no such thing as absolute truth. The fact of the matter is, our children need to study other worldviews and compare them to Scripture, so they can be better equipped to identify and refute the fallacies of other worldview philosophies, tenets and perspectives. How do we know what worldview/s are being taught at our child’s school? By studying our children’s textbooks, reviewing the curriculum and talking to their teachers.     A teacher can be a Christian, but be forced to teach a curriculum that is based upon naturalism (which contends that all of life can be explained by natural processes, i.e. Darwinian Evolution), secular humanism (which is based upon the premise that man and reason are the ultimate authority), postmodernism (which holds that all views are equal) and New Age doctrine (which is rooted in eastern religious beliefs). The following questions can help you determine the worldview of your school. How do the textbooks answer these questions? Do they emphasize or even mention that there is a God or

gods? If so, what is He or they like? Is Christ presented as the one and only true God or as one of many man-made gods? Do the teachers give more time to Christ than they give to the Greek, Roman, or Native American gods? Is Christ considered simply a man or a good prophet? Is the New Age Mother Earth or Mother Nature presented in the curriculum? What is the nature of the universe – its origin and structure? Did God create, as He said He did, the heavens, the Earth, and Man or did they come about by natural selection and evolutionary processes as Darwin proposed? Does Man have intrinsic value given by God or is Man nothing more than matter – a random natural accident? There is much scientific research that points to an intelligent “Designer.” Is this position taught or even mentioned? Do the textbooks or library books teach that the Earth is millions or billions of years old, with dinosaurs before man, or do they teach that the earth is, according to biblical chronologies, only thousands of years old with land animals and man being created on the same day? There is much geological, archeological and historical evidence to point to a young earth, but are our children seeing this evidence? Do they teach that men were once cavemen with crude ways of living or do they teach that Adam, the first man, was intelligent with the most “civilized” skills? What is the essential nature of man? Is man basically good or basically sinful? How did man become sinful? What is the basis of morality and ethics? Does God create Law or does man? Does God determine what is right and wrong or do we? Does your school teach biblical morality or situational ethics? When we tell a student that an action is wrong, what is our basis for saying it’s wrong? Who has ultimate authority: God or Man? What happens to Man at death: does he turn to dust and that’s it? Does he live forever, either in heaven or hell? Does he come back reincarnated? How did death come into the world? Has death always been a part of God’s process or did God bring it into the world as punishment to Adam and Eve for disobeying Him? What is the meaning of history? Do the textbooks teach that history is the unfolding of God’s plan of glorifying Himself? Do they teach that history is His story? Is history linear or cyclical? Is there a beginning and an end, or does it just keep going in circles? Did God begin time, space and matter? Is God the only eternal thing or has nature existed forever? Does God raise up and tear down nations according to their obedience or, are nations strong because of their own strength and wisdom? Are we teaching our children eschatology – the doctrine of future things and of Christ’s return – or are we leading them to believe that life will continue as is, with nothing supernatural happening, until the sun runs out of energy? Do we really want to give our children a curriculum that gives no hope?

Why are these questions important? The way our children are taught to answer these questions will affect their views and policy-making about life, death, marriage, homosexuality, abortion, submission to authority, euthanasia, stem cell research, the death penalty, economics, politics, law, art, modesty, education, and a multitude of other life-related issues.

You can take communism, fascism, socialism, utopianism – any “ism” that has negatively impacted our world, break it down, and find that its religious worldviews are either naturalistic, secular humanist, postmodern, or New Age. Their basic presuppositions are anti-biblical. As a Democratic Republic, we should be teaching our children the worldview that supports a republic, where people are accountable to God and are, therefore, a self-governing body.

Are we giving the children in our community a biblical worldview? Are we teaching truth in our schools? If we aren’t, why aren’t we? Our Founding Fathers’ blood was shed so that we might learn about the one true God, Christ, Who is the wellspring of all knowledge and wisdom, Who is the creator and sustainer of all natural law and Who is the great moral law giver. Have our children been taught the slogan from the Revolutionary War, “No King but King Jesus”?

What our children learn at church is certainly important, but it’s not enough. A few hours at church and home is not adequate time to prepare a child to confront the onslaught of relativism in college or on the streets of life.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5) We should be supporting Christian education – whether it be in the public schools, in home schooling or in Christian schools. Don’t we want our children to honor God in their thinking?

If we’re not convinced that having a biblical worldview really makes a difference, note the anti-biblical worldviews of the following men:

Charles Darwin believed that man evolved and was not created. Darwinism is the root of racism, as it teaches that certain groups are more evolved, and therefore, superior to others. The Columbine students who shot their classmates believed in evolution and honored Darwin.

Nietzsche looked at Christianity as a morality for slaves. He, too, believed in evolution. His ideas gave birth to Nazism. Hitler, who believed as Nietzsche did, in a “super race”, destroyed millions of Jewish “inferior” lives.

Rene Descartes believed that man, rather than God, was the source of truth. Man’s “experience” was what was important. His worldview was one of pragmatism, rather than truth. Pragmatism teaches that whatever “works” for a society is good.

John Dewey, the father of progressive education, also believed in pragmatism, basing his philosophies of education on what “worked”, rather than on objective truth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that man was basically good and that corruption comes from external social forces, rather than from the fallen nature of man. The role of the government was, therefore, to come in and remove any corrupt forces. His worldview was that utopia could be achieved by the state taking control, a fundamental belief of communism.

Carl Sagan believed in the doxology, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” He claimed, “A universe that is infinitely old requires no Creator.” He believed in evolution and animal rights until he became ill and animals had to be used to prolong his life.

Karl Marx believed that man was inherently good. Evil and greed came from wanting to own private property. His definition of “salvation” was to revolt, return to original communism and have no class conflict.

Ernest Hemingway, although a great writer, was an existentialist, believing that life is all there is. Because he didn’t believe in an afterlife, he grabbed all he could while alive and ended his life with suicide.

Peter Singer, a leading ethics teacher at Princeton University, teaches that parents should have the right to kill their baby if it is going to be a burden on society. Many people who follow this logic support euthanasia.

NASA, although having accomplished great things for the glory of God, now has programs to prove how man came to be. “The story of how you and the ground beneath your feet evolved out of space dust is beginning to unfold with a new batch of findings from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope” is a quote taken from their web site. Our tax dollars are being used to attempt to prove evolution!

National Geographic, although having some of the best photography and journalism in the world, is corrupting our children with naturalistic, humanistic and postmodern ideology.

Even our St. Louis Zoo has a room dedicated to Darwin and how man came to be from simple-celled organisms! Think of all the school children who have been exposed to that false exhibit!

All these worldviews point our children away from God, away from the inerrancy of His Holy Word, and away from truth. There was a time when this country

trained its public school children under the authority of God. The children learned to read and write using scripture verses. Character lessons were taken from the Bible. Godly character can only be achieved if we know who God is and what He expects. Concerning our Democratic Republic, several Founding Fathers acknowledged the correlation between being accountable to our Triune God and having liberties: Benjamin Franklin said, “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God.” Thomas Paine wrote, “Heaven knows how to put a price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.” Samuel Adams penned, “The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty…may best be understood by reading and carefully studying the institutions of The Great Law Giver and the Head of the Christian Church.” Alexander Hamilton stated, “Natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race; and

that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.”
Noah Webster proclaimed, “Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.”

There is a battle for our children’s minds. The humanists understand this. From their January-February 1983 issue of The Humanist Magazine, they state, “The battle for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom…The classroom must and will become the arena of conflict between old and new---the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of humanism.” (Two resources which can shed light on humanism are The Humanist Manifesto and the book, Clergy in the Classroom.)

Adolph Hitler said, “Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.”

Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

If we are to remain a nation “under God”, then we have to teach our children to think “under God”. Education is not neutral; someone’s worldview is being taught at all times. To the parents of all public school students I ask, “Whose worldview do you think is best for our children and for our nation?”

Thank you very much,

Melinda Tyler