by James Thomas Lee, Jr. 11/06/96 Copyrighted 1995 by James Thomas Lee, Jr. Copyright Number: TXu 704-227
Chapter 8. How This System Fails Us {214 words}
a. Trained To Ignore The Spiritual {395 words}
b. Teaching Half-Truths and Lies {438 words}
c. Difficult For Individuals To Believe In God {306 words}
d. Difficult For A Nation To Believe In God {242 words}
e. We Are A Nation Without God {537 words}
f. Declining Moral Standards of a Whole Nation {162 words}
g. Trying To Guess About Christianity {463 words}
h. Young People Grow Up With The Wrong Values {356 words}
i. A Call For Openness In Education {161 words}
Chapter 8. How This System Fails Us {214 words}
As a young, vulnerable kid and even as an older teenager in high school, I had looked to the system around us to give me the proper training and guidance for life, but that system let me down! Like I stated in the opening chapter, my problems were not with the nearby environment or with those things in my life which could have easily been seen. My home life had been fairly good. The national environment, in terms of economics, peace, and security, had also been pretty good. Yet, there was a difficulty which was deeply affecting my life and me, and that difficulty was within the layer of existence which has already been referred to as the system around us. During the early, hectic years of my life, I had not even known about this powerful influence. Yet, like everyone else, I was being brainwashed by a system which did not want me to know all the facts, and at the time, I did not even realize it!
The evidence against this mighty system force is, in my opinion, overwhelming! And like I for such a long time, most people have lived their entire life without even being aware of a problem, much less of a system-wide, spiritual problem. Yet, the symptoms are all around us. When someone watches a television show or movie which is basically clean, then that individual rarely notices if the show fails to give honor and glory to the Lord. Most shows do not, but few people really question or challenge why. They enjoy the entertainment which is set before them and, in effect, grant their unconditional consent.
The reason for such undaunted, unchallenged approval on the part of most people is that we have all been trained to ignore and even accept the absence of a spiritual setting. Since our public school system did not and does not acknowledge God, most individuals who have been and are being passed through that system never think about Him, either. These people never even consider how society is constantly leaving Him out! Consequently, like it or not, each of us has, at least to some degree, been programmed, brainwashed, or simply lulled to sleep by a very clever and very manipulative system.
In the last four chapters, theories about the origins of the universe and human life have been presented, along with information which showed that neither of those theories can be proven. At those times, four questions were asked to aid in one's understanding of each, and the first two of the four were discussed at that time for each theory. Now, after having dealt with both of those opening inquiries for each theory, the final two questions need to be considered. The third is, what do these two non-provable scientific beliefs really imply to the typical, unsuspecting listener? Then, fourth and most importantly is, what are the real consequences of this type of instruction?
To view this last question from a slightly different perspective, the emphasis shall be on how society and people like us are actually being affected by these non-proven, unsubstantiated teachings, both the scientific teachings of our educational system and also the more subtle forms of scientific instruction from within the entertainment industry.
To begin this evaluation, let us consider how the average listener is affected by being exposed to all this propaganda. It should not be that difficult to see! The teaching of the Big Bang and evolution theories in classrooms throughout the world, coupled with the simultaneous omission of all spiritual instruction, both in the classroom and by the entertainment industry, for the most part implies to young minds either that God does not exist or that He is not very important!
One might conclude that such reasoning is absurd, but I would beg to differ. How can this type of intentionally biased instruction mean anything else? Most forms of entertainment leave out the Lord. At the same time, neither of the two scientific theories, which have already been presented, even hints at the presence of a Supreme Being. Both theories rely on their own brand of supernatural ideas to explain how the universe and life began, and both choose natural phenomenon over heavenly intervention! The results should be clear! We and our children are being misled by a very deceptive system, one which gives out faulty information, teaches half-truths, and fails to teach the whole truth about God.
The damage with this type of instruction is especially evident in the classroom. If a child or young teenager sits in a classroom and hears a lesson on the Big Bang theory or the Theory of Evolution, then that individual tends to accept the theory, whether such a belief is valid or not. What junior high or high school student would dare challenge the professor's position and authority? Most likely, none! On the other hand, if a student sitting in the same classroom is not allowed to hear that God "might have" created the Earth or that He "might have" created mankind, then the opposite occurs. This time, the person tends to disbelieve or ignore the unspoken belief, again without giving much regard to whether the belief is valid or not. Our society grants the classroom environment and professor an almost unquestioned credibility. To their own detriment, students, like putty in the potter's hands, tend to trust and believe what they do hear, and they tend to distrust and reject what they do not hear, even when the verbalized or non-verbalized communication is wrong or incomplete!
The conclusion should be tragically obvious. It is that no child or teenager growing up in this environment or in this system around us can easily believe in the true God! Why not? Because none of the teaching in this environment says anything favorable about Him or His existence. None of the public school teaching even mentions His name. As a result, the combined effect of all of this type of training within our system is that it actually works more to drive an individual from the Lord than to bring an individual to Him. It is as though a decision is consciously being made for a person, yet that person does not have any part in the process! By not teaching both spiritual and scientific viewpoints, the system around us is telling its citizens, in essence, that they do not need to know all the facts and that they do not need to have a role in their own spiritual, decision-making process.
This gap in our training has not been and is not without costs! Given that these present concerns really are true and an accurate reflection of our current system, then what are the consequences of living in a system which does not teach its children about God, yet does fill their heads with unproved beliefs and anti-God propaganda? See Table 5. The answer is that there are at least five costs to bear, and each one sends a very clear, but wrong message to our children about right living and also about their Creator!
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Table 5. Society's Costs For Its Anti-God Instruction.
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The first and most obvious cost of being trained in our system is that young people who do not learn early about the Lord will probably grow up with a tendency to NEVER believe in Him. Year after year, they will hear about the universe originating from the explosion of a single, compact mass. They will learn about life beginning in a unique lagoon-like or Space-like environment. Yet, neither of those scenarios, as taught by public school educators, requires God, so His name is never even mentioned. Those same young people will, then, watch television or go to the movies and take in more of this same type of anti-God instruction. Consequently, given all of these things, who can possibly deny the obvious result? Either the average young student will conclude that God does not exist, or he or she will have to decide that God is not very important. Either way, the real observation is even more profound, namely that no one being raised exclusively in this kind of environment can realistically grow up with a proper understanding of the Lord!
The second consequence of this anti-God, scientific instruction in our society is an extension of the first. By so many people not coming to the Lord, we have become or are becoming a nation without God! For the most part, those young children, who were not taught about the Lord when young, grow up to be adults who do not know anything about Him. In a nutshell, that was my problem when I was young! I had not been educated in spiritual matters, so I did not know anything about them. Multiply that same occurrence across the masses, and the final result is again clear. We have become or are becoming a nation without God! Why are a genuine belief in God and a reverence for Him disappearing from our land and the world? Because our kids are, by design, being taught half-truths and outright lies about their origin, both in the classroom and also by the entertainment industry. Worse yet, they are being taught these half-truths and lies in an "apparently safe" societal and classroom environment under a cloak of trust.
The result of this second consequence is that our nation pays a very high premium for its neglect of the spiritual. In terms of actual cost, one must readily acknowledge the obvious! We have an exceedingly high crime rate, the use of drugs and alcohol is out of control, our nation suffers from a breakdown of the home and family, we have a very high rate of abortion and teenage pregnancy, we are destroying ourselves through AIDS, plus there are numerous other manmade disasters and predicaments. One can easily go on and on. Often, seemingly normal people just freak out and go on a rampage, killing others at will. This drama in our culture is becoming more and more the norm. Drug-related gang violence and murders are now at an all-time high, and the increase in these types of crimes is likely to continue! When will all the insanity stop? Many would argue that our country is overrun with these and other uncontrollable and probably insolvable social problems, and most of them will never end! More disappointing, though, is the realization that this whole predicament probably could have been and maybe still could be prevented!
Wrongful, distorted teaching by our educators and the media has greatly influenced the direction of our society and largely been responsible for these first two consequences. Moreover, all have been affected! For thirty-plus years, young people have been herded through a system which only tells part of the truth, and it has been the part that this system has left out which has done the greater harm! In the Fifties, television shows and movies lacked spiritual content, yet they were still decent! Now, most shows and movies resemble something which looks like it came right out of a garbage can. One would be hard pressed to find anything from within the entertainment industry which does not wreak with ugly language and explicit, filthy scenes. What gets rated "PG" today would have been rated "R", "X" or perhaps worse in the Fifties and Sixties.
Because it resides in a not just fallen but also within a falling society, the entertainment industry suffers from a steadily deteriorating standard. This can be seen in the fact that what seemed awful just a few years ago does not seem so bad anymore. Note, however, that the standards among people have also deteriorated, leading to consequence number three. The moral standards of this nation are continually getting worse, year after year. The entertainment industry continues to produce filth. With each year, the amount of unclean programming increases. Yet, we continue to buy tickets and fail to see anything wrong! As time passes, our standards concerning right and wrong are likely to become even more liberal and distorted. We currently live in the anything-goes Nineties, but conditions can and probably will still get much worse, as we continue to decline!
The lack of spiritual instruction in the classroom causes young people to grow up without learning about the Lord. The entertainment industry with its endless procession of godless programming does more of the same. In our generation, this type of slanted instruction has already caused our country to become or at least to start becoming a nation without God. It has also led to a collapse of our moral standards. Yet, there are still two more dramatic consequences of this anti-God training.
The fourth consequence of our anti-God instruction is that we have a host of people at all ages trying to guess about or even define their own rules for Christianity, as if either of these would really do any good! These individuals, like I in 1967, are simply ignorant about most spiritual matters. In a country where churches are quite plentiful, very few people, in general, really know how to get right with the Lord. In fact, very few, even within the church, have a true understanding of what being right with Him actually means. Many would say that Christianity is comprised chiefly of doing good works, of going to church every time the doors are open, of helping others and being benevolent, and of doing whatever else that that person deems important. But these so-called good works are not the real essence of Bible Christianity! Neither is the list of all the things that one should not do. All of these actions or inactions, as they were, are merely good things for everyone to do or not do, as the case may be. None really applies explicitly to Bible Christianity.
Christianity is not concerned with performing good works or with refraining from bad. It is concerned with a relationship between God and the individual, a relationship which is only made possible because Jesus offered Himself as our sin sacrifice on the cross at Calvary! It is a relationship which is only possible when an individual confesses his or her sins and receives this free gift of salvation (see John 3:16). Without Christ, without His sacrifice, and without the truly unique, very special relationship which one can have with God, nothing else in this world matters! Nevertheless, the confusion persists in our land because the system around us has made spiritual truth a precious and difficult commodity to obtain. People do not know the truth about the Lord because this system around us has intentionally placed itself between God and the individual!
All of this misunderstanding in spiritual matters leads to the final cost of our anti-God instruction, and this last consequence is perhaps the most disturbing of all. It is that young people in our country grow up with poor values and a bad concept of success, education, money, power, and the like.
The mentality of our Age is that a higher education, a good job and career, earning big bucks, and acquiring great possessions are essential! To many, these goals hold ultimate appeal. However, education, money, power, and all of the other temporal gains, which one might acquire in this life, are secondary to knowing the Lord and knowing about Him. By not teaching our children about God, the system around us, in addition to cheating a whole generation out of knowing their Creator, has also created a society of worldly-minded, selfish individuals!
When someone suggests teaching kids all the facts, both scientific and spiritual, biblical opponents quickly come back to their much used argument of religious freedom. But a great deal more seems to be going on here than just trying to ensure religious freedom! We appear to be living in a system which does not have our best interests at heart and also one which cannot be trusted to teach us ALL the truth. By twisting and creating their own brand of truth, the system around us has all but told the young, tender ears of our youth either that there is no God or that He is not very important. Neither, by the way, is correct! But this type of teaching was still largely responsible for my early spiritual problems, and it has been and still is the cause of problems for many others. Just look around and see what is happening! Young people who are not taught to turn to God will naturally turn from Him.
In my opinion, our educational system has led many astray! Consequently, the scientists and educators of this nation would do a greater service to the country and to its children if they did not teach anything about one's origin, instead of intentionally presenting a position which is distorted, incomplete, and unproven. The entertainment industry would also do a better service to the people if it would just pull the plug and go off the air, rather than put forth programming which points its viewers away from Christ. But as most of us already know, no positive changes to any of these predicaments are ever likely to happen! Hence, it really is easy to see why so many people are confused about God and also uncertain about how to live right for Him in this present society. There is much opportunity in this system around us for one to be overtaken by confusion and uncertainty.
Chapter 9. The Historical Search For God
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