TC@TC

Education and Imbecility

“We have educated ourselves into imbecility,” quipped the noted English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, as he bemoaned the many nefarious ideas that are shaping modern beliefs. Venting an identical disillusionment in his commentary on American culture, George Will averred that there is nothing so vulgar left in our experience for which we cannot transport some professor from somewhere to justify it.

Why this juxtaposing of aberrant behavior with the halls of learning? The answer is well worth pursuing if we are to deal with our present world cultural malaise by understanding its progenitors, and thwart what looms as a future with terrifying possibilities.  

It is not unprecedented that as a young nation begins to reach its adolescent years, it craves freedom from any restraint. Emulating a legal proceeding in which an attorney tries valiantly to discredit witnesses who injure his or her case, secular thinkers unleashed a concerted effort to prejudice the minds of this generation. If even a slight doubt could be raised upon any minutiae of theistic belief, it was exultantly implied that the whole worldview should be deemed false. The goal was to forge a new breed of young scholars and opinion-makers who would be perceived as saviors, delivering society from the tyranny of a God-infested past and remaking culture in their own image.

The principal means to accomplish this was to take control of the intellectual strongholds, our universities, and under a steady barrage of “scholarly” attack, to change the plausibility structure for belief in God, so that God was no longer a plausible entity in scholastic settings. This assault on religious belief was carried out in the name of political or academic freedom, while the actual intent was to vanquish philosophically anything that smacked of moral restraint. Unblushingly, the full brunt of the attack has been leveled against Christianity as Eastern religions enjoy a patronizing nod and the protection of mystical license. As for Islam, no university dares offend. Hand-in-hand with this unmasked intellectual cowardice and concealed duplicity came mockery and ridicule of the Christian, which has now become commonplace, a “civilized” form of torture.

In such fashion came the onslaught of all that had gone before; the pen became the sword and the professorial lectern, the pulpit. If young, fertile minds could be programmed into believing that truth as a category does not exist and that skepticism is sophisticated, then it would be only a matter of time before every social institution could be wrested to advantage in the fight against the absolute.

However, over time the sword has cut the hand that wielded it, and learning itself has lost its authority. Today as we look upon our social landscape, the answers to the most basic questions of life, from birth to sexuality to death, remain completely confounded. The very scholars who taught their students to question authority are themselves disparaged by the same measure. No one knows what to believe as true anymore; and if anything is believed, the burden of justification has been removed.  

Yet, all is not lost. In spite of the varied and willful attempts made by antitheistic thinkers to undermine the spiritual and to thrust it into the arena of the irrational, or at best deem it a private matter, the hunger for the transcendent remains unabated. After nearly two decades of lecturing on campuses around the world, it is evident to me that the yearning for the spiritual just will not die. In fact, at virtually every engagement I have found the auditorium filled to capacity and the appreciative response quite overwhelming, even in antagonistic settings. There is no clearer demonstration of this unrelenting hunger than the experiences of Russia and China as each has in its own way tried to exterminate the idea of God, only to realize that God rises up to outlive his pallbearers.

Our universities tell a similar story. Though proud skepticism is rife in academic bastions, the human spirit still longs for something more. This tension must be addressed, especially at this time of cultural upheaval, and it is imperative that the answers we espouse meet not only the intimations of the heart but the demands of the mind. The familiar adage rings true: the mind is too great an asset to waste, for it is the command control of each individual life. And it is my desire that each of us may come to recognize the greatest mind of all, even God Himself, whose existence or non-existence is essential to defining everything else.

Ravi Zacharias is founder and president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

     Whenever engaging unbelievers in conversation regarding the gospel, never be fooled into thinking that as a Christian you are somehow operating out of a perceptional framework that is apart from the “norm” and therefore illegitimate. In one sense yes, your perception of reality as a believer will be considered unusual or apart from “the norm” if defined simply by percentages in comparing the unbelieving and believing population. That is, as a believer in a world characterized by unbelief and in effect rebellion against the God of the bible (Romans 1:18-30; Eph. 2:1-5; 1 John 5:19), you will be in the minority laying hold to and operating out of a biblical worldview (Matt 7:14; Luke10:23-24). Although Christians may be in a mathematical minority as far as a biblical worldview goes, it would be error to infer that only “religious” groups are those that operate out of and make claims to truth derived from entire worldviews packages and the functional presuppositions that are derived from these worldview claims.

            A number of those I have talked to about the gospel of Christ in recent months have all made this false assumption. Namely, these people who are not Christians, by virtue of their lack of belief in Jesus Christ perceive themselves as in some type of neutral position with regard to the things of God and His claims to truth in His Word. That is, if asked, they most likely will not outright and explicitly reject or embrace Christianity (or for that matter Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Marxism, etc). Rather, operating as a postmodern and pluralist will simply say something along the lines of not being able to reject or accept claims of religions because either 1) No one religion can claim supremacy 2) Humans cannot know objective and absolute truth, thus we cannot perceive reality as it truly is. The irony of these claims is that these operate out of a worldview they assume is true and typically have some type of belief in a god, fashioned after their own image, and construct their beliefs of this god from the research done in a couple minutes of Google searching “errors in the bible”, Dante’s Inferno, and the latest Discovery Channel program on the Mayan calendar. The sober reality is that these people are not in danger of encountering the hell of a fourteenth century Italian poet, rather are in danger of the Hell warned of by the King of the cosmos (Matt 13:40-43; John 3:18). Thus it is imperative as believers to meet these people with grace and mercy and gently speak gospel truth into their lives in order for the blindness of their natural state and captivity to Satan and sin to be revealed to them by the Spirit and the Word of God (2 Corinthians 4:4).

     Not only is the lost postmodern enslaved to perpetual idolatry and isolation from the one true God (as well as Christians prior to salvation), they also posit a self-refuting position (Galatians 4:8). By making the statements that no faith can claim supremacy and humans cannot know truth, they are making a truth claim. Namely, disguised as “open-mindedness”, they are making a massive worldview claim in stating: the truth is that there is no truth or that truth is unattainable. As stated before, this position is self-refuting. Regardless, by rejecting the God of the bible and His claims, these people are operating with tremendous worldview presuppositions (the bible is not true, the God of scripture is not real, Jesus was not who he said he was, sin is not real, etc.). By rejecting Christ, these people are not neutral or in some type of “default” mindset, rather are refuting the truth claims of scripture and exchanging it for their own.

     The truth is this: every human being has a worldview and operates according to the presuppositions they derive from it. For instance, on Thursday a professor at SBTS was speaking on biblical gender differences and cited the bible’s claims to gender versus the secular culture’s. Recently, the president of Harvard University was fired/forced to resign for making the observation that his baby girl preferred to play with girls’ toys rather than boy’s at an early age when she was offered both by her parents. The president of Harvard correlated the difference in toy choice to perhaps account for the reason why men gravitated to hard sciences and fewer females were observed in these programs at the university.Our professor made the point to say that in the setting of the secular university, the president of Harvard committed heresy. That is to say, by firing the president for making an observation in regards to gender which differs from that established by Harvard (and for that matter the secular world), the president challenged secular culture’s truth claims, thus he was ousted. Whereas Southern Seminary has the Abstract of Principles and the Southern Baptist Confession of Faith, Harvard University has its own version of these dictations, either explicitly stated or implicitly observed by its faculty. In essence, what we see are two competing worldviews, neither one is neutral. Southern Seminary posits that differences do exist between men and women and bases these claims from the revealed truth of scripture, while Harvard University claims that the truth of gender is that there is no such thing as gender and bases these truth claims from the attitudes and mores of the culture.

     Both are small portions of competing worldview and truth package claims. One operates according to the presupposition that there is a God who is real, who is not silent, who is Creator and Lord of creation and has revealed Himself in His Word, while the other operates with the presupposition that these claims are false and replaces this with another worldview. One doesn’t have to be a professing atheist to call the God of the bible a liar, rather operate out of a worldview which isn’t that revealed by Christ. Those who aren’t for Him are against Him, but those who are against Him can be for Him with repentance and belief in the gospel.        

1) http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-02-21-harvard_x.htm

-Sinner Saved By Grace Through Faith

With all of the infirmity and weakness that surrounds this broken heart, it is kept and cared for under the mercy of grace. It is only this concept that can mend and withdraw the frustration of my inability to mend it myself. The more I take it within my hands, the more it crumbles. Only the maker of this heart can fix it; he is the only one who knows how to do so. It is not him who steals my heart from me but me who withholds it from its owner and fastener. Why then, do I claim ownership or rather act accordingly? Let me surrender not my heart, but my own folly. This heart is not mine to surrender. Do I have the ability to control love?

AU