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Jesus, New Math, and The 21st
Century
by Marnie Pehrson
In watching the recent CBS mini-series Jesus I
came away with mixed feelings. Overall, I enjoyed the way they brought
Jesus to life. They made him approachable, loving and forgiving.
And that is the Jesus I know. Sure, he was a bit more emotional
than I would imagine, but I believe he has a sense of humor. He’d
have to have one to put up with the likes of us. Yes, there were some
discrepancies here and there. But overall I was pleased until it came
down to the last hour.
Why did Jesus die? According to this mini-series it was to
‘‘show God’s love.’’ And this is true; Jesus died to show
God’s love. But this film totally left out that he died for the sins
of the world. No mention was made of this. He simply died to
‘‘show God’s love.’’ Now, I might ask, why would the brutal
murder of a sinless being in and of itself show God’s love? It
wouldn’t! Let’s bring it down to something we can relate to. What
kind of person shows their love for you by allowing his son to be
murdered or by allowing himself to be killed for no reason? On the
other hand, if your best friend allowed himself to be sacrificed in
your place or took your place on death row for a crime you had
committed, then we would see the love.
In order for Jesus’ death to make any sense at all, it has to be
because he died for each of our sins – to satisfy the demands of
justice. Not only did he pay for our sins, but Isaiah 53:4 tells us
that he bore our grief and carried our sorrows. In a real, infinite
way, he paid for all the sins, misdeeds, mistakes of the whole world
and carried all our grief, pain and sorrow. Isaiah 53:11 says the
Father ‘‘shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many;
for he shall bear their iniquities.’’
But, if you strip out the fact that we can sin, if you take away
right and wrong, good and evil, then Jesus’ sacrifice makes little
sense. I came away from the mini-series with a disturbing feeling. Why
would Hollywood take out the most important reason that Jesus died? I
believe it is because as a society, we have greatly eliminated the
concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. Now mind you, many
individuals still believe in moral rights and wrongs, but Hollywood is
always a few steps ahead of us as a society. And for a long time, they
have been whittling away at basic principles of right and wrong.
They’ve been doing a wonderful job of subtly chipping away at the 10
Commandments for years now. And as a society we’ve followed them
because what we see, we eventually do.
But it’s not just Hollywood that has been chipping away at the
moral foundation of this country, our Federal School System has done a
wonderful job themselves. Let’s look back over the last few decades
and list some of the concepts and activities that have been
implemented in our school system:
In 1962 the United States Supreme Court ruled that it was
unconstitutional for the state of New York to allow the recitation of
prayer in their public schools.
The prayer that had been read
daily said: ‘‘Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon
Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and
our country.’’ For more on this subject, Click
here. This was the beginning of the elimination of prayers and
eventually God from our national school system.
‘‘In 1968 the Supreme Court of the United States declared
unconstitutional any law banning the teaching of evolution in public
schools.''
Since that time evolution has been taught eventually to
the exclusion of creationism. ''Since that time Christian
Fundamentalists have introduced bills in a number of state
legislatures ordering that the teaching of
‘‘evolution-science’’ be balanced by allocating equal time to
‘‘creation-science.’’ In the 1980s Arkansas and Louisiana
passed acts requiring the balanced treatment of evolution-science and
creation-science in the schools, but opponents successfully challenged
the acts as violations of the constitutionally mandated separation of
church and state.’’ (From Encyclopedia Britannica.com
‘‘Evolution.’’)
In the 1990’s we saw the widespread introduction of ‘‘New
Math’’ on a national level.
New Math encourages guessing and
has children do complex division before they even learn how to
multiply. They just take a guess. Not only does this lead to high
school graduates who must take remedial math before entering college,
but it also does something more subtle with our children’s value
systems. Let me explain. In math there is always a right and a wrong
answer. 2+2 always equal 4. 1000 divided by 10 always equals 100.
There is something comforting in math because you always know there is
a right answer. But in new math, a child could guess that 500 divided
by 25 is 16 and the teacher would say, ‘‘Well, that’s a good
guess, Johnny.’’
And many of the questions you find in New Math are unanswerable.
They are subjective and require guessing, like:
What is the likelihood of a person getting on a plane within the
next year?
a) Very unlikely
b) Somewhat unlikely
c) Likely
d) Very likely
If this person were a traveling executive, the answer would be
‘‘very likely,’’ but if it were someone who’s terrified of
flying, the answer would be ‘‘very unlikely.’’ How is a child
supposed to answer this? There is no answer. It’s relative. Any
answer will do. And that’s what I believe makes New Math so
deviously subtle. Because now, there are no right and wrong answers
– even in something so concrete and logical as math! Now even math
is relative. Truth becomes relative. Really there is no truth. There
is no right and wrong. It’s all relative. Whatever makes us feel
good is ok to do now.
As we raise generations of individuals through a school system that
omits God, undermines the foundational concepts of right and wrong,
makes truth relative, hands out condoms to our teenagers, and keeps
them in school an ever-increasing number of hours per day and days per
year, what are the results? What happens when we take those same
children and expose them to 3-6 hours/day of TV and violent video
games after school? What do we get now? Oh, and add in children who
grow up in homes with only one parent, who are used as bargaining
chips between their parents, or worse don’t even know who their
father is. What happens when these children grow up and have children
of their own? Is it any wonder that we have children killing children,
teenage pregnancy, teenage suicide, drug addiction, pornography,
gangs, high crime rates? According to former Education Secretary
William Bennett, the United States boasts ‘‘more murders, violent
crime, juvenile crime, abortion, single-parent families, divorce . . .
pornography, and the consumption of. . . drugs than any other
industrialized country.’’
What do we get when we take God out of our lives, when there is no
right and wrong? It’s mighty bitter fruit we’re plucking from
these trees. Isn’t it time we corrected this? We may not be able to
control Hollywood, but we can control what our family chooses to
watch. We may not be able to reverse Supreme Court rulings, but we can
become active in our communities, in our schools and work to support
good leaders on a local, state and federal level. And most importantly
of all, we can work to correct all the false information which is
being fed into the minds of our children. We can fortify our homes as
loving, peaceful refuges from the storms of the world. We can take
responsibility for teaching our children correct principles. If we
want to save the world, lets start within the walls of our own homes.
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