A FIXED STANDARD OF TRUTH
Proverbs 16:3
Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.
Some people mistakenly believe that whenever you try to inject ethics into the debate about what schools should teach, it’s an attempt to force religion into the schools and a violation of the separation of church and state. While the church and the state are, in fact, separate institutions with separate callings, the idea that faith and ethics have no place in the debate is not sound. Our founders never intended for there to be a separation between ethics and knowledge, or even between information and religion. In fact, giving schoolchildren knowledge without a fixed standard of truth is dangerous. Whenever you get information without a standard, then you yourself determine how you use that information.
The reason we are spending more money than ever on education and getting less positive results than ever before in terms of children’s lives is because the schools are caught in a worldview crisis. A school can teach a young boy that one plus one equals two. But when he grows up and goes out on the street, a drug dealer wants to teach him how to make one plus one equal a thousand by selling some of his stuff. If that young man doesn’t have the right worldview, he will take the knowledge from the school and apply it in the wrong way. The problem is not information; it is a problem of worldview. We must never divorce information from ethics. There is no such thing as a nonreligious education, because all knowledge involves values. Education must not only give the mind information but must renew the mind with the right set of values so that knowledge is properly used (Romans 12:1–2).
REFLECTION: Why is it important that knowledge be guided by moral truth? How can we teach our children to know—and care about—right and wrong? Read Deuteronomy 11:18–21. Father, there is no such thing as a nonreligious education because all knowledge involves values. I pray for peace in our schools and that Your values will be made manifest.
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