Pioneer Christian Monthly - September, 1990

Editorial
Henry Van Essen

Welcome to an issue packed with information about education. The articles range from solid presentations to human interest stories. They cover Adult Education, university study, and instruction at the grade school level. This issue of Pioneer Christian Monthly is meant to make all of us think, think about what has been happening in the area of education.

When the first flood of immigrants from the Netherlands arrived in the early fifties the question of Christian day schools was raised. After all, most of the church going immigrants had been raised in Christian Day schools in the Netherlands. But after some investigation ministers and lay leaders decided that the Canadian public schools were not anti-Christian. Instead it was found that there was a great deal of Christian instruction.

But now here we are forty years later. A great deal has changed. All of us know how Christian instruction has become value instruction, and how the Lord's Prayer has been replaced by prayers from other religions. We all know how non-Christian the public school has become. Actually that is not even the whole truth. For Christian instruction and the Lord's Prayer are only outward matters. Something else has happened which affects our children much, much, more than the absence of some Bible teaching or Christian prayer. It is the underlying thought pattern of practically all teaching in the public schools.

It all began with a man by the name of Charles Darwin. He was a student of nature and as such he sailed with a ship around the world, making notes on what he saw. This was in the eighteen hundreds. Eventually he published his findings in a book. His conclusion was that everything in this world develops by chance. The stronger ones survive, the weaker ones die off. The ones who manage to adapt themselves to changing circumstances survive. The others die off. There is no one who governs life. All development is more or less by chance. We are all a little familiar with this theory as it also suggests that humans have developed out of monkeys.

But that is not the worst of it. What is really destructive for the Christian faith is the thought that there is no God. Everything happens by chance. No one is in control. But now by chance the human race has come about. It has brains. It is able to think, to plan, to foresee what may happen. The human race therefore is the only species on earth which can exercise some control over what is going to happen. That means that the human race is really God. The God of the Bible does not exist. That is the final message of Darwinism. The only one who can exercise control is the human. Thus history is taught with this view as its basis. History is no longer a record of the Lord God governing the earth, together with the response of people to His commands. History now is the record of how men and women have controlled their world. The family is no longer instituted by the Lord God. The family just developed by chance, and some day it will likely disappear and be replaced by another form of living together.

Ever since we humans have discovered that we are the only ones on earth who can control things to a degree, we have become very concerned that the earth continue. As a result we now feel we must save the earth. Of course, there are many people who are not smart enough to see what should be done. Therefore we must listen to leaders who are much wiser than we are, leaders such as David Suzuki, and government leaders. If we listen to them and do what they say, we will be saved from disaster. The governments and the intellectuals together, are our saviours.

You may not agree that this is so, yet this is behind practically everything that is taught in the public school system today. The children are taught in every discipline about the world, as though God has nothing to do with it, or what happens in it. Our children are taught as though the human race is God. This is the very thing the serpent suggested to Eve in Paradise: "If you eat of it you shall become like God."

The result is that what our children hear in Sunday School and in church is either contrary to what is taught in school during the week; or what they hear about the Lord Jesus has nothing to do with their daily lives. Either way our children are learning to think of our daily lives as being outside the control of the Lord God - if He can do anything at all, God is someone who can help you a little with your inner life. It is no wonder that many children of Christian families drift away from the Christian faith when they grow up. The five day per week infiltration by literally god-less thinking is hard to undo by half an hour Sunday School per week, or a 15-20 minute sermon.

It is for this reason that this issue of Pioneer Christian Monthly has been put together. Various people are sharing how they challenge this godless teaching in our society. One thing is certain: We promise at baptism that we will bring up our children in the Lord. That means that we promise to see to it that our children learn to think about this world and this life with the Lord God as the centre of all. What is the best way to do that? Read and consider. Talk with others. Then do what must be done.

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