Cause
and Effect:
The Bible,
the Educational System, and It's Influence
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prv. 22:6).
The principle behind this proverb is applicable to both families and nations. It being impossible for an educational or legal system to separate itself from a belief system (as moral laws and practices are based upon such), America's children were once most generally raised and schooled1 with the basic moral values of the general Christian faith being taught, which (though there were exceptions and deviations) promoted reverence for God, the Bible, and the Lord's day, honor toward parents, respect toward authority, and in general, disapproval of sin and esteem of righteousness. Though there were gross violations of morals by many, and in such things as slavery (selective application by many as to who qualified for “love thy neighbor”), yet insofar as the Bible was reverenced and the evangelical faith revived, then this country of a mixed multitudes was influenced, inspired and enabled to resist evil and to progress in both moral reforms (including abolition) and economic advancement.
To the degree that a society obeys the light innately given them (Rm. 2:12-14), and is influenced of the Bible and it's evangelical gospel, it will be both restrained from doing evil, and inspired to do good, so that man's universal lust for pleasure, possessions and power does not bring an early end to it, nor bring it to be overtly suppressed by government, or subdued into mere functionaries of man or earthly religion. This is especially critical for a free country that seeks to work with a minimum of Government, while tremendous natural resources lay waiting to be both discovered and used by a wealth of mankind out of of virtually every kindred and tongue. Which factors would normally work toward either dictatorships or anarchy if not for the preaching of the cross, and the often hidden influence of the Holy Spirit of God working in mens hearts and lives.
Those who are not sufficiently controlled from within, by God and a sound conscience, must sooner or later be controlled from without, necessitating the growth of Government. The commission of the born – again Church is to bring souls into submission to the Lord Jesus by spiritual means, “By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left” (2Cor. 6:6, 7; cf. Eph. 6:10-19) — and not by physical arms. Jesus said we are to be the “light of the world” (Mt. 5:14; if only the “lesser light” reflecting the real Light, analogous to Gn. 1:16), so that the church, by the use of the Sword of the Spirit, works to bring souls to be controlled in heart and thus actions (even atheists can be influenced to have a more Biblically based moral conscience).
In contrast, the commission of the State enables it to use the sword of men to constrain obedience on those who are not sufficiently controlled by the former means (Rm. 13:1-7). It thus follows that the weaker the church is, the more powerful the State must become. “For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof” )Prv. 28:2a). And if the Government itself becomes less governed by Biblical precepts and principles, calling evil good, and good evil (Is. 5:20), and contrary to it's charter, punishes those who do good and praises them that do evil (contra. 1 Pet. 2:14), then “the wicked shall do wickedly,” and persecute those who would actually preserve the State by calling it to be instructed by Christ (Ps. 2). And while in such persecution, the Christ – believing remnant “shall be purified, and made white, and tried” (Dan., 12:10), yet both willful hypocrites and the church that sought to save it's life by compromising truth and placating sin will lose what they sought to save and more – even their eternal souls (Mt. 7:21-23)!
As we all will be tempted – for ”we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22) – then may we all be “sober, and watch unto prayer” (1Pt. 4:7), and seek to worship God “in Spirit and Truth” (Jn. 4:34), letting none of His words “fall to the ground“ (as it were: 1Sam.3:14). And by the mercy and power of Almighty God may we serve the Lord with gladness”(Ps. 110:2), loving one another, and “holding forth the Word of Life” to the lost“ (Phil. 2:16), despite persecutions, “rightly dividing the Word of truth” (2Tim. 2:15). “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Eph. 6:13)!
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1Ninety percent of the first private colleges of this country were founded as Christian institutions to teach the Gospel. Harvard, Yale and Princeton are three examples. All three were established to teach young men to be pastors. The founders of Harvard College, established in 1636, professed that, "All knowledge without Christ was vain."
The New England Primer, a reader used in what would be our 1st grade, was introduced in 1690 and taught many children how to read for 200 years, until 1900. The Alphabet was taught with Bible verses that began with each letter of the alphabet. Lessons had questions about the Bible and the Ten Commandments. An example of the Primer is, A = In Adam's fall, we sinned all. B = Heaven to find, the Bible mind." (The Honorable Judge Robert Ulrich Chief Justice, Missouri Court Of Appeals, Western District; http://www.shalomjerusalem.com/heritage/heritage19.html),
The first elementary schools also taught Christian morality, and even the Unitarian “Father of American Education,” Horace Mann, assured critics (alarmed at the concept of secular schools), that his system "inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible...," but he did insist that Bible reading be without comment to discourage sectarian bickering. (Mann, Twelfth Annual Report for 1848 of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts. Reprinted in Blau 183-84.)
Mann became Secretary of Education in 1837. However, before and after Mann, the overtly Christian “New England Primer” was used in New England, which is estimated to have sold upwards to 3,000,000 copies from 1700 to 1850. In addition, approximately half of all American children (beginning in 1836 to approx 1930) learned from the “McGuffey Reader,” of which 122 million copies were published (during a time when the population was much less than today, and books were passed on more). This was an advanced teaching system for it's time, written by a man who later became a Presbyterian minister, a work which earned him the title, “the Great Schoolmaster of the Nation.” He exalted the Lord Jesus Christ, and used the Bible more than any other source. It became a unifying force in American culture, not only in instilling a basic morality, but also giving America “a common body of allusions, a sense of common experience and of common possession” (Historian Henry Steele Commager).
McGuffey Readers were used widely in America until just after World War I. But the devil also has his disciples, and one was named John Dewey, head of the Teachers College at Columbia University from 1904 to 1930. He also taught in Peking University in China, and after that in Turkey. After he returned to America, in 1933 he signed (along with 34 prominent Americans) the Humanist Manifesto (1), which he helped to author. The first manifesto talked of a new "religion", and referred to humanism as a religious movement meant to transcend and replace previous, deity-based religions. This was the Americanized version of the Communist Manifesto (sadly written by a soul with a root of bitterness, Karl Marx, and through which many were defiled: cf. Heb. 12:15).
Humanism in America is partly credited to a Unitarian preacher named Charles Potter who created the First Humanist Society of New York in 1929. A year later he penned “Humanism: A New Religion. In this declaration he boldly declared, “education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?”
Dewey became the father of modern American education, and he and his disciples worked to change the basic moral belief system that undergirded the moral educational system, in which [when the Engel v. Vitale case was decided] an estimated 75% of the school systems in the South had religious services and Bible readings (Colliers 1961 Yearbook p. 224). Rather than implicitly and often explicitly recognizing that God and the Bible were the ultimate authority on what was right and wrong, Dewey wrongly believed that it is the State that ultimately determines such. Replacing the transcendent proven source of true liberty and it's necessary limits (the Bible) with the social engineering of secular humanism, allows a nations school children to be indoctrinated with an ever morphing morality that progressively calls evil good and good evil. In 1962 (in Engel v. Vitale) and in 1963, respectively, officially sanctioned prayer and devotional Bible reading were outlawed by the U.S Supreme Court in America public schools. The latest most manifest result of this rejection of Biblical morality in favor of secular humanism was when the Massachusetts “Supreme” Judicial Court overturned 6,000+ years of martial normalcy (heterosexual), and ruled that men may legally marry other men! (See here regard to this).
The State religion of Secular Humanism propagates it's own belief system (in the name of separation of church and State), rejecting absolute Biblical morals and truths (thereby allowing the teachers thereof to rationalize away their own guilt). The deleterious effects of this are increasingly manifest, as increasingly souls are evidenced who have little conscience, or a perverted and confused one, with a moral compass that points whichever way is popular or pressured, neither knowing which way is right nor how to deal with the guilt of being wrong. The present generation sadly is the most Biblically ignorant and morally confused one this nation has ever seen, though they have benefited by the effects of the gospel in many ways. Yet the proven, time – tested “law of the LORD is still “perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple” (Ps. 19:7). God and His word do not change, and still offers salvation to sinners and the way of truth, righteousness and spiritual liberty to those who walk in His ways. Jesus said, “If ye continue in My word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn. 8:31, 32).
It is the gospel of Christ which alone “is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth,” and it is “the preaching of the cross” that is “the power of God” to the saved (Rm. 1:16; 1Cor. 1:18). It is this Biblical gospel which works to convicts souls of their utter inability to escape Hell nor merit Heaven, and thus calls humbled and helpless souls to look directly to the Son sent by the Father, who sacrificially died for us and rose to glory, and to receive the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and to give them His life – giving Holy Spirit, and to save them from Hell and to Heaven! And which decision is shown by being baptized under wanter in identification with their LORD (Rm. 6).
And it is the preaching of the cross that calls and enables souls to follow the Lord by His grace, forsaking the world, self and sin, by yielding to His Holy Spirit in obeying His Word (the Bible), and exchanging dependence upon the flesh for the power of God. It is in so doing that we respond to “so great salvation” (Heb. 2:3), on God's expense and righteousness, who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up or us all” (Rm. 8:32), and show our love for Christ who shed His own sinless blood for our sins and rose again. Those who freely receive “abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness” to reign in life by Christ (Rm. 5:17), will show it, and such faith will be tested, for “we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). But true love for God will endure, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1Cor. 2:9). Praise ye the Lord.
Yet sadly, though churches still have much freedom to preach in their pulpits in this country, most often what is heard is the preaching of “smooth things” (Is. 30:10), which makes a mantra of grace, but will not expound on the absolute holiness and perfect justice of Almighty God, whereby souls are convicted of “sin, and of righteousness and of judgment” (Jn. 16:8b), and thus realize their need for grace! The modern gospel usually results in superficial conversions in a society whose beliefs themselves are often superficial, which lack the Biblical conviction in which souls realize their dire need for “so great salvation, ”at so great a price, by “the Great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Thus the “conversion” of such hearts often results in little effectual Biblical response.
When will we “sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst” (Ezek. 9:4) of this nation and world, beginning with our own sins? “Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But He giveth more grace. Wherefore He saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (Ja. 4:5-10).
Repentance and a revived church is the only remedy for a carnal and an often doctrinally aberrant church, whom the Lord declares He will fight against with the sword of His mouth, and for a comfortable church whom He will spew out of His mouth (Rev. 2:16, 3:16), and for a nation that shall be turned into Hell (Ps. 9:7) – unless it repents!
God changes not, otherwise we would already be consumed (Mal. 3:6), but it is us (including me) who must change, to be more like Him and to do His work, for His eternal glory! It's Holiness or Hell, as saved souls are they who follow Christ (Jn. 10:27) in order to glorify God, out of love for Him who has bestowed upon us “abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness” by Jesus Christ (Rm. 5:17).
Hear the words of the apostle to the carnal church: “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame” (1Cor. 15:34). Wherefore we must take heed, and yield to the Spirit of grace while time is yet given to us to repent, and to know and serve the One True and Living God in “In holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life” (Lk. 1:75).
Email: saved2serve@gmail.com
“O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good; for His mercy for ever” (Ps. 107:1)!