Posted on 03/01/2011 12:38:28 PM PST by Kaslin
My friend Jill is one of the lucky few who seem to eat all day, yet never gain a pound.
Last weekend, she stopped at Panera Bread for lunch, simply ravenous. But it was one of those days when the lunchtime lines were long, circling back to the door. The cashiers worked as fast as they could, greeting customers cheerfully, taking their orders, and moving them on.
A young woman who had just stepped away from the counter, after placing her order, returned and caught the cashier’s attention.
“Yes, is something wrong?” the cashier asked.
“You overpaid me,” said the woman, “You gave me two tens instead of one.”
“Oh, honey, I am so glad you came back.” The cashier looked relieved, took a minute to look over the receipt and the change and then thanked her. “You’re very honest.”
The young man in front of Jill muttered. “She should have kept the money. She’s making all of us wait.”
As hungry as she was, Jill told me, she had to defend the young woman. “I’m hungry too. But she did the right thing, don’t you think?” The young man turned away, impatient and annoyed.
What made the young woman do the right thing? And why did the young man’s hunger overcome his sense of honesty?
In a word, “worldview.”
A person’s worldview shows itself in “unguarded moments,” according to Del Tackett of Focus on the Family. It’s “a combination of all you believe to be true and [this] becomes the driving force behind every emotion, decision and action.”
Chuck Colson’s Center for Christian Worldview puts it this way: “worldview [is] a vision of the world and our place in it where every facet of our life—family, occupation, recreation, relationships, finances, everything—finds its meaning and end in God’s purposes for us and for the world.”
Jill’s encounter points out that a faulty worldview—like the young man’s self-absorbed mindset—affects the small, daily decisions of life.
But it affects our crucial life-changing decisions as well.
Another friend, Terry, is four months pregnant and recently learned that her baby has Down Syndrome. At Terry’s sonogram appointment to confirm the diagnosis, someone helpfully told her that an abortion clinic operated on the first floor of the same building.
She was horrified.
Because her worldview centers on God and His truth, she sees the goodness of this child’s life and trusts in His Providence to help her raise this baby.
But how tempting must it be for women who feel devastated by the prospect of a Down Syndrome child to go right downstairs and schedule an abortion? The cultural messages bombarding her are based on faulty worldviews. Some emphasize “usefulness,” and question the value of a less than perfect child. Others center on individual choice and limitless “freedom,” and reject the burdens of caring for a special needs child.
The worldview we choose carries real-life consequences.
How to Save Your Family: Cultivate A Biblical Worldview
Only one worldview is worthy of human beings. And only one worldview will bring us happiness: God’s worldview, rooted in the truths revealed in Scripture and in the logical principles that flow consistently from those truths.
Teach your children that the decisions each of us makes every day will reflect the truths we hold dear. The secular culture proposes deceptive “truths” that become our underlying assumptions if we fail to think critically. As believers, we must intentionally choose and cultivate a worldview based on truth—God’s truth. It’s the only place we are sure to find the right answers.
Chuck Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship, has developed an incredible resource, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, for believers who want to see, understand, and engage the world from a biblical perspective. The videos, articles, and updates will both teach and challenge you, leading towards a happier, more consistent life.
We need less worldly world views out there.
“worldly” simply means Satanic, for he’s the “prince of this world”.
You’ll get a lot of flack for having a Biblical Worldview, but it’s worth it.
One thing I always taught my children about lying was “you don't want to lie because God can't bless a lie, and your hanging out there by yourself and you are no match for satan. It's a scary place!”
That same principle applies to not keeping money you know doesn't belong to you.... you place yourself in a scary place.
Sending children into GODLESS government schools that teach children to think and reason GODLESSLY is NOT NOT NOT the way to cultivate a biblical worldview.
Government schoolins WILL WILL WILL cultivate a GODLESS worldview.
Yeah! I am shouting and jumping up and down and having a fit. It is appalling to me that so many conservatives fail to understand that government schools are freedom and our nation's most serious threat.
Last year I gave a 20 back to a Wal-Mart cashier who accidentally handed it to me instead of a 10. I’m an atheist.
It’s basic consideration for others. If you want a selfish motive, I don’t want it on my conscience that a minimum wage cashier came up $10 behind when turning in her drawer because I wanted to pocket $10. It’s basically theft. Regardless of your religion, society will become a pretty crappy place if everybody’s looking out for himself at the expense of others.
I am always surprised when someone says they are an atheist yet believe they have a conscience (which can not be “proven” as an organ or existing at all in our body). :)
C.S. Lewis began as an agnostic... which actually sounds to me more like what you are.... but, hey, I’m surely not God!
It’s a chicken-egg thing. I say morals were developed by societies as a way to work together and become stable. Care for others in a society being necessary to the strength of that society was even written about by Darwin. He didn’t apply genetic natural selection to humans because he knew it, a.k.a., eugenics, wouldn’t work due to our social nature. Over time these basic rules of interaction were codified into various religions as morals, commandments from God.
I know some impressively honest atheists. My dear father was one (until he later came back to the Catholic Church.) Msny factors go into conscience including your temperament, your training early in life, the example of those around you, and your reflections on the consequences of your actions.
Proponents of Natural Law (this would include many Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc) are convinced that there is some drive toward moral evaluation built into the human "wiring," which can be sharpenend by reasonable reflection. (Says so in the Bible, too.) You're proof of that!
How Should We Then Live
“How Should We Then Live”
I am presently leading a discussion group, using the book and dvds of Schaeffer’s “How Should We Then Live”. That along with James Sire’s book, “The Universe Next Door”, have made for exciting discussions, going longer than the promised alloted time limit.
Yes, you are right. Government schools, since Dewey, are designed to destroy the belief in Christianity and designed (Prussian design) to create group think. That is why they have forced schooling...one age of big mass—so they can make those who think out of the box (Christians=individuality) humiliated and feel dumb and “different”. They employ Skinner/Pavlov methods to condition kids to think religion is myth and the providence of fools. They marginalize it constantly in many ways and it is reinforce by the media 24/7.
Secular humanism is being glorified and children are being sexualized and seduced into the dialectic materialism and paganism of hedonism and not taught the knowledge of Western Civilization—that of Aristotle and Cicero and Aquinas and Locke. They are taught cognitive dissonance to prevent all logic and reasoning.
worldview = weltanschauung, one of them highfalutin buzzwords from German philosophy that conquered the globe and made us all dumber.
“He didn’t apply genetic natural selection to humans because he knew it, a.k.a., eugenics, wouldn’t work due to our social nature.”
Firstly, he didn’t know about genes. He prefigured them, in a way, since his variations in inheritability had to be passed on through some medium or other. But not really.
Secondly, he did so apply natural selection to humans. He assumed, following Malthus, that the same forces shaping the animal kingdom held for humans. Which made him, and to an extent all his followers (especially the stupid, stupid sociobiologists), ignorant of human nature. Not to say evolution isn’t one of the greatest scientific theories of all time. It is. It just doesn’t apply to humans, or certain other species with which humans mess.
By the way,...Christian teachers who attempt to sneak in a little Christian philosophy into their godless classrooms are teaching important lesson. They are teaching the children that Christians are sneaky!
Exactly....Children perceive the current in the classroom which, in thousands of ways, is telling them that Christianity is bigoted, illogical, stupid, etc. Even if they get some positive introspection from a teacher here and there, it is quickly overwhelmed by the repetition of secular humanism which sets a constant drum beat that the idea of God is ridiculous and irrational.
Just promoting homosexual behavior is saying the Bible is wrong (therefore, it is not the word of God). When they support all cultures, they marginalize the Christian one which denigrate all those Christians who have created such a wealth of ideas and theories, art and science which is far superior to any other culture.
This is all cognitive dissonance....they teach moral relativism....what you think is right and wrong is all that matters....God’s moral absolutes do not exist.
All classes promote moral relativism....they never teach Christian morality—that there is absolutes. That is the basis of the secular teaching. It allows a vacuum which is filled with any hair-brained idea out there because Western Civilization with Christianity is the basis of Logic and Reason and Science.
EXCELLENT POST, SavageSusie.
Back a few years ago ( ;-) ) when I attended school, we still had the Ten Commandments in view every day. Imparting God’s wisdom to tender minds DID work.
If you borrowed a pencil or lunch money from a classmate, it was important to repay as soon as possible. You thought twice about stealing - as children are apt to do - because His Commandments said explicitly Thou Shalt Not.
As is with any group, I had no way of knowing the background of all of the other kids. I can say, however, that regardless of background the Ten Commandments were ingrained in our young minds and you did your best to not break them. If you broke a commandment, you carried that unpleasant, heavy burden which was hopefully enough in most cases to break one from doing it the second time. I hope that the reading of the Ten Commandments carried many children into adulthood seeking a true relationship with Jesus Christ. Either way, I am convinced that those wonderful, blessed Ten Commandments were never erased from their hearts - even if it were the only reading they ever had of God’s word. I know they never left my heart.
What now? What do kids in the public school system have who have no Church life at home? What moral guidelines are taught in school?
“You came from a monkey so, dagnabbit, act like one and take that d*** banana away from Baby Monkey! It’s your right!”
A pet peeve, and maybe and this isn’t the proper thread which to apply it - so, please forgive if I err in doing so - is the saying that is so very common these days: “You DESERVE it.”
Umm ... why? Why does a person deserve anything other than what they have worked to attain? And even the ability to work to attain is a blessing from God. Why do I, poor me, hear and see ads telling me that I deserve a brand new, out-of-my-league, 60 thousand dollar car that I don’t want in the first place? Do they actually know me? If they did, they sure as heck would not be telling me that I deserve anything. Why on earth would I deserve it? I don’t deserve half of what I have now and live in shame for the little I do have while others go without. I don’t deserve the air I breathe. It’s God allowance for me, but I did nothing to deserve it.
Ah. But there ya go. That is the current mind set amongst the majority of our youth in America. They “deserve” everything but can’t explain why. And we have marketers telling them more and more that they darn DESERVE whatever is their heart’s desire but never tell them once that they should try to DESERVE the Grace of Almighty God and He will give them their heart’s desire after placing Him first in their lives.
My Best,
In the earliest modern government schools children were offered a generic and lukewarm Protestantism that could be minimally accepted by the majority and basically reflected the religious worldview of the **progressive** Unitarians who lobbied so hard for compulsory government schooling.
Well...We know what Christ does with the lukewarm. He spits them out of His mouth!
It didn't take long for the secularist progressives to thoroughly gain control of teacher education and curriculum development. The goal of these 19th century progressives has **always** been to completely secularize government education for all children in our nation.
There was a HUGE difference between the education worldview of my grandmother and father's government school and that of the Catholic education of my mother and me. My grandmother was born in 1894 and my father in 1913. Even by then their education was godlessly secular with sprinkles of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and a short scripture in the morning. I will say, though, that they did benefit from the influences of their Christian teachers but, in no possible way, could their experience be compared to the **thoroughly** integrated Catholic experience of my mother and me.
My last two years of high school was spent in government school. Believe me there is a very BIG BIG BIG difference between having a nod to religion in the morning and having the philosophy of one’s religion woven throughout the curriculum and reflected in all the school policies. Even by 1964, the majority of teachers themselves were Secular Humanists, and pushing the envelop of the norms of the culture. It was the worldview of secular humanism that the students learned in all of their classes.
It has now been 5 generations, in our family, since my grandmother. If we send our children into godless schools, staffed with godless secular humanist teachers, they WILL learn to think and reason GODLESSLY.
Just as elections have consequences, GODLESS government school has consequences as well.
Solution:
***We MUST MUST MUST, as conservatives, shut down the government schools.
***We MUST MUST MUST get our nation's children into conservative and Judeo Christian based settings that thoroughly integrate into every class the specific faith of the child's family and our nation's founding principles.
By the way....Our Founding Fathers highly valued education. They likely had in mind their **own** educations: homeschool, tutoring by family and neighbors, some paid tutoring, one room schools organized by families, dame schools, apprenticeships, and home based academies to prepare the brightest for entrance into college as a young teen.
Prussian-style schools are expensive to run and maintain and they teach children to be compliant prisoners of state authority.
Yes, even so-called atheists in their fifties and sixties still were immersed with the Christian worldview if they grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s although that is when the stealth in the elementary schools started the deliberate destruction of the Christian ethic with their moral relativism and the end of school prayers, etc. Elite universities already threw out God, even if they were originally founded by a Christian denomination. So all educators which educated the “future” teachers were teaching the atheist/collectivist worldview which then would filter into the elementary schools. Skinner was injected into the curricula to form the “new” worldview (which is actually as old as Plato and never worked worth a d*mn).
It was intentional, by the Postmodernists, to destroy the idea of God-given rights, so they can design man as they see fit and make them slaves to their worldview of nihilism.
The individuality and dignity and worth that Christianity imparts can never condone a culture that embraces abortion, euthanasia, free sex with no restraint, even among children/adults, and the idea that useless citizens can be killed.
Postmoderns/marxist hate the family unit...because of the loyalty and independence from the state that it creates....destroy the relationship of parents and you destroy the emotional health of the children who will be dependent on the state and open to any belief system and will summit to communal aspect of living. Affections have to be universal to the collective—no special “biological” ties because it will create added importance to the relationship.
They are defying Natural Law Theory, which is the foundation of the US, and trying to redesign man.....into their vision of utopia which is impossible....being just “trousered apes”.
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