These days are crazy indeed! Even if the problems surrounding us as a result of the pandemic are ignored, we still have a boatload of crazy ideas flying about. Biblical Christians have been dealing with secularism and its sub-categories of progressivism, humanism, materialism, postmodernism, and socialism for over one hundred years now. But, in the current presidential cycle, Americans have been inundated with a bunch of new sounding anti-biblical concepts disguised as the best that mankind has yet devised. The cancel culture, woke-ism, and Black Lives Matter are the new mantras of the Marxist left. How should the Church understand these concepts? Christians are to be concerned about other people, right? Is that what this is about?
I realize that as a white, retired, male, heterosexual, I am not considered by those promoting these concepts as qualified to even consider let alone speak about the subject. Nevertheless, as an American living under a valued constitution that affords me that right, here follows my take.
I have written and spoken much about the war of the worldviews, and I think the “new social justice” movement, in the Church especially, can be understood as another aspect of biblical compromise. It all starts with the word “science.” I have always liked true science. I had to understand true science and properly apply it to make a living as an engineer. Originally, science was a synonym for the word knowledge. But a crazy thing happened in the 19th century. In a successful attempt by atheists and deists to take the imparting of learning away from the Church, the word science was redefined as “naturalism.” That allowed for historical geological philosophies, such as deep time, and the biological idea of evolution to be accepted as science in the mainstream of intellectual society. Instead of a Creator God, blind random chance was imagined as the primary cause for the universe. Put simply that meant that to do science one must reject God and the Bible. This was, and is, not true science. It is science falsely so-called.
Once the redefinition of science was accomplished, the worldview war became an all-out fight between man and the God of the Bible. It was the secular worldview against the biblical worldview. It was evolution versus creation, and it became man’s opinion against God’s opinion.
A majority of Christians today probably believe that everyone believes in the concept of truth. Truth is a major doctrine throughout the Bible. Until the secularists took over our universities, public schools, and media that was the way it really was, i.e. truth was on everyone’s mind. But, Western mainstream science is no longer about truth and has not been for at least sixty years. Only relative truth has been the output of our universities and public schools for these past sixty years. For this reason most of the people now in charge of our cultural and governmental institutions have been indoctrinated to replace intellect with will, reason with emotion, morality with relativism. To these influential movers reality is nothing more than a social construct. Accordingly, individual people have no choice but to be locked into the limited perspective of their own people group.
Thus, politicians have been trained to separate people into these groups to fight over policy, liberty, power, and everything else whether important or not. From this kind of education comes the ability for a woke culture to be born that tells me that I have been cancelled from the conversation due to my skin color, genealogy, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and whatever else they don’t like about me.
In all of the dictionaries on my bookshelf the word, “woke” has only one definition: “noun, a simple past tense of wake.” Evidently, for the next (woke) generation the word has a new definition: “adjective, having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights.” As with the rest of the ideas that have resulted from naturalistic religions this concept is decidedly circular. This woke culture rejects the biblical concepts of sin, redemption, tolerance, and salvation as being unnecessary and outmoded, excepting for those who have been woke cancelled (like myself).
I believe the Bible clearly teaches that there is just one race—the human race. For this reason I try hard to treat people with as much kindness and grace as I can muster, no matter the color of their skin. To the extent that I am able to do that I am not a racist, and I do not accept that racist tag that has been given to me by those in the leftist woke crowd.
Hence, black lives do matter as do those with other skin coloration. All people of all types are made in the image of God. But, the BLM movement is not so much interested in equality as it is in power. We can know this because any movement that believes it can restrict the freedom of speech and/or religion of certain others is not really after equality.
When I was at the university as a pre-Christian in the mid-1960s, I noticed that all ideas were acceptable on the campus, excepting for biblical Christian ideas. That situation at most of our universities has only accelerated and become more dangerous for Bible believers. Christians today must be aware of that situation when helping their children choose any aspect of education. If at all possible avoid public schools.* Support alternative education over secular whenever you can. These actions are the only hope for the continued freedom of speech and religion to which we have become accustomed.
In conclusion, the societal craziness really does boil down to the battle between the ideas of creation versus evolution, and it starts with our kids in elementary school. Sadly, this is the age at which children are first indoctrinated into the religion of naturalism in our public schools these days.
*Consider these statistics for public schools from the (evolutionist) National Center for Science Education:
1. From 2007 to 2019 there was a 60% increase in the mean number of class hours reported as devoted to human evolution.
2. From 2007 to 2019 there was a 25% increase in teaching evolutionary processes.
3. From 2007 to 2019, the number of high school biology teachers who believed the theory of evolution “is a fact,” while giving “no credence to creationism as science,” rose from 51% to 67%.
4. From 2007 to 2019 the number of teachers who didn’t teach creationism or intelligent design at all increased from 75% to 82%.
5. From 2007 to 2019 the number of teachers who reported “exclusively emphasizing creationism as a ‘valid scientific alternative,’ dropped from 8.6% to 5.6%.
And contemplate this, the title of the study was, “Teaching evolution in U.S. public schools: A continuing challenge.”
My judgment is that public education today can be described as nothing but an exercise in secular indoctrination, with no longer any attempt to teach people how to think on their own. What do you think, and more importantly, what will you do about it?
J.D. Mitchell
November, 2020
