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Islamic Indoctrination In American Public Schools - The Real Issue

4/22/2015

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Recently there has been a lot of public outcry over an assignment given at a Wisconsin public high school. The assignment was given as part of a history class.

What is the assignment?

Well, as Jay Sekulow put it:
"Pretend you are Muslim."
...
The assignment requires students to write from the “point of view” of a Muslim.  “Pretend you are Muslim.”  That’s not an assignment.  That’s Islamic indoctrination.

Jay Sekulow has rallied the outcry against this assignment and collected over a hundred thousand signatures petitioning the Department of Education with the following:
Public schools are a place for religious freedom, not indoctrination. Stop Islamic indoctrination in our schools and protect the religious liberty of students.

Well, I could see how this assignment would be considered Islamic indoctrination. But what I'm wondering is, how is it any worse than the secular humanist indoctrination that takes place for virtually every other assignment in virtually every other class?

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"Back to School" and the Christian Life

8/25/2014

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One Room Schoolhouse by William Ladd Taylor
Buy truth, and do not sell it;
buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.
-Proverbs 23:23
I remember loving this time of year - especially as I grew older. And I still love it!

By the time I was in college "back to school" was the greatest phrase to me. It meant learning, understanding; growing. How could that not be something everyone would want to do?(1) And in the Biblical context that's truly a legitimate desire.(2)

But the key is, only in a Biblical context is the pursuit of knowledge a legitimate endeavor. Yes we have the teacher saying all throughout the book of Proverbs that we ought to go after knowledge, seek knowledge, get knowledge.(2) Knowledge ought to be a primary pursuit!
But the thing is, knowledge to Solomon is not something in and of itself. He defines "knowledge" as an understanding at which the very foundation is the fear of the Lord (Prv. 1:7). In other words, whereas the fool - the very fool who in his heart says "there is no God" (Ps. 14:1) - whereas he is one who literally "hates knowledge" (Prv. 1:22, true knowledge), the godly man (in God's sovereign mercy) understands that true knowledge can only be attained by beginning with the fear of the Lord (Prv. 1:7, 9:10).

True knowledge (and I say true knowledge because there is in Scripture something described as a knowledge falsely so-called - 1 Tim. 6:20): True knowledge does not merely conclude with the fear of the Lord, nor does it merely accept the fear of the Lord along the way. True knowledge begins - at its most basic point - begins with the fear of the Lord.

And that certainly has implications for the Christian life and how we go about the business of "back to school."

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When You Make the Wrong Assumptions, You'll Get the Wrong Answers

3/6/2014

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Smart Money Smart Kids
Dave Ramsey recently released a "preview" of his upcoming book, Smart Money Smart Kids, in which he advocates public schools as being a good, Christian alternative to private Christian schools. (Why he does not mention homeschooling as an option, I'm not sure - possibly he does in the book but just not in this snippet.)

Either way, I would encourage every Christian, especially those that abide by all things Dave, to evaluate the realm of education in light of what they should evaluate anything else - that is, in light of God's Word.

Does God's Word make it evident that public schools are indeed a good, Christian alternative to private Christian schools or homeschooling?

Let's examine Dave's article (you can read it here) and analyze it in light of what God has revealed. 
As we'll see, in dealing with Christian ethics (that is, Christian living applied to any area of life), there is much to be said for not only the conclusions you draw, but also the questions you ask - and the assumptions upon which those questions are based.

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Voting NO for Your Local School Levy - A Biblical Case

11/4/2013

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I realize the temptation to vote according to your wallet. Trust me, I feel it. And it could be there from either direction. You could be thinking “I don’t want to pay an extra $80 a month on my property taxes, so I’m voting this down.” Or you could be thinking (and I'm talking only wallet at this point), “I want my property to maintain its value at minimum and preferably go up. But in order to keep that value up I need to make sure our schools are well-funded; so I’m voting yes.”
But you need to keep in mind two things (among the others covered further down): (1) It’s not a matter of your wallet, but a matter of what is right in God’s eyes (Mt. 6:24), and (2) you’re not just voting for something that affects you; you’re voting for what affects your entire community. Who doesn’t want their property value to go up? Yet as a believer, are you willing to say it’s okay to go force your neighbor to apportion some of his own earnings toward keeping your property value up? Is that really loving your neighbor?

But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

First let me assure you of the things that I am not saying:


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Book Review: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

9/19/2013

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A Paradigm Shift in Our Understanding of Communication

Although there's definitely a temptation for us to amuse ourselves to death with things that have always had the intent of amusement (sitcoms, dramas, sci-fi, fantasy, etc), Neil Postman has nothing bad to say about "junk television" (as it's called in the introduction).

Rather, his very compelling argument is that we're turning into a society that will amuse itself to death because our capacity to comprehend and act on things is transforming into one that only operates on amusement itself. In other words, it's not that we make things for the sake of amusement that will hurt us, it's that we now make everything - even things that are not meant to be amusing - into a venue of entertainment.(1)

While originally published in 1985, I sincerely think this book is just as relevant today (in the age of Google, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter)* if not even more so than when it was first penned. Postman takes the reader through the history of our mediums of communication and shows (and I mean, really shows from history) that when our culture of communication started to turn from the printed word to visual images, our capacity to think through things cogently had started to drop significantly. Our attention span has taken a terrible plummet. And even our humanity has been desensitized to a degree.


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One Thing Christians Must Continually Affirm: A Response to Steve McSwain

9/17/2013

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On 2/28/13 Steve McSwain was published in the Huffington Post's Religion section with the following article:

6 Things Christians Should Just Stop Saying

The list is pretty straight forward, although he does some lengthy elaborations on some of the points. But in summary, here are the six things which a fellow(?)-Christian(1) says all other Christians really need to stop saying:
  1. The Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God
  2. We just believe the Bible
  3. Jesus is the only way to heaven
  4. The rapture of Jesus is imminent
  5. Homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle and it is a sin against God
  6. The earth is less than 10,000 years old

While I wanted to respond back then, I didn't really have a forum to do so; and I also didn't really have the time until just recently (preparing for the birth of our daughter, learning how to be a Dad to a newborn, going through an unexpected job change, etc.). Nonetheless, now that I do have time, I'd like to do something of my part in protecting (or encouraging) the flock, and give (by God's grace in me) what I believe is a Biblical response.

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Book Review: The Closing of the American Mind

9/17/2011

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I think I understand why this book got such raving reviews at its publication in 1987. Allan Bloom certainly documents his acute observations on how our society moved from one that had absolute standards to a society where everything is relativized and the only thing absolute is the maxim that all views are equally valid (except the view that holds that not all views are equally valid).

Through the book, Bloom takes the reader on a journey through three main sections:

Part One: Students
Part Two: Nihilism, American Style
Part Three: The University

While some places are easier to understand than others, throughout the book I was constantly scratching my head either because of a criticism he gave that offered a lot to think about or simply because he used such high-minded language I had no idea what he said.

I was reminded of a book published 11 years earlier called Foundations of Christian Scholarship, where the contributors' aim was to write for upper division college students and graduate students with the caveat that "If Christians had done their work properly in the field of private Christian education, these essays would be geared for high school seniors, or at the most, college freshman." That was in 1976. I would venture to guess even upper division college students and/or graduate students would have a hard time with the book at this point (although I will say it was still easier than Bloom's).


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