Author: Michael Wagner

The Government (Part 1) – A Brief History

Part of the series The Problem
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-01-25.

Government was initially established when the people rejected God.

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. Please understand that while it is our responsibility to tell the truth, we must never lose sight of the fact that our enemy is not made of flesh and blood and that we ultimately have the choice to conform and compromise or to stand on principle. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: 1 Samuel 8

In the movie trilogy, Back To The Future (1985-1990), some very interesting cases of “reaping what has been sown”, are cleverly presented. Without doing a movie review, the story is based in Hill Valley (a rather oxymoronic name, don’t you think?), presented as a stereotypical town ostensibly built on a premiss of definable rights and wrongs. A return to the past redirects an unscrupulous man named Biff, to be able to predict future sporting event scores with pinpoint accuracy, causing him to become insanely wealthy and powerful, rewriting the entire makeup of the town. Returning to the present from the future, without knowing that the past has been changed, our protagonists, Marty and Doc, find themselves no longer in the original Hill Valley, but in a place more aptly named Hell Valley (not so oxymoronic!). The difference is quite dramatic. The original town had certain values you could depend on. The remade one lacked anything even resembling decency and order. I realize that I am taking a bit of license as the movie did not mention the likelihood of the first town acknowledging God and the second denying Him, but Christian logic would dictate that the obvious reason for the shocking differences between the two towns would be the place God occupied in them.

Imagine a place where God has been given no place at all. We actually get a glimpse of that in the Revelation of John, and it is not a pretty picture. As a matter of fact, the time is referred to as “the great tribulation”! On occasion, when I find myself in such a Godless environment where evil seems to be the operational standard, I am reminded of the unbelievably dark nature of the second town in that movie. Take God out of government and you get “Biffville”, an anarchic, self-serving, ugly place to be.

Enough talk about the movie! What about real life? Are we or have we kicked God out of the public square? To properly answer that question we need to look at another account of a change in leadership, a true story coming from a more reliable source, the Bible.

Initially, there was Adam and God. Then as the human population grew, the patriarch of a family represented God. As time moved on, tribal leaders took an overarching responsibility, eventually leading to the judges. Two things need to be established before carrying on. First, God has always been God. He has never changed and has in no point ever, been out of control. The second point is that whether we talk of patriarchs, tribal leaders, priests, judges or kings, all come after the fall and all are noticeably imperfect.

The last judge mentioned in the Bible was a man called Samuel. He was a good (not perfect) man but he had bad sons, so bad in fact, that the people of Israel did not want to be ruled by them. So, they asked Samuel (not God) for a king like other nations had. When a displeased Samuel consulted God, two things came to light. First, God clearly saw this as a rejection of Him and His leadership. The second point is that in spite of God’s warning that a king would confiscate their children and property, the children of Israel still wanted an earthly king! Samuel warned them that they would regret that decision and we have ever since.

God warned the children of Israel right from the start that a king would negatively affect the family, property, freedom, etc. Of note is the fact that the king, what we now know as the government, was initially founded and established upon a rejection of God. Not all governments are evil, however when people reject God, something else has to take His place in their lives and that is usually a king (government) lusting for that position. Modern government, acting as “God”, has mandated that all students attend its schools and follow its curriculum in order to advance its secular socialist ideology directing us away from God to man, while forcing everyone to pay for it through taxes. We were warned of that in Samuel’s day when the people first chose a man over God. This may be another example of something that doesn’t change! It really is a Bible version of having traded in Hill Valley for Hell Valley.

To Conform or Not to Conform

Part of the series Root of The Problem
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-01-18.

In who’s image are we conforming to?

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. Please understand that while it is our responsibility to tell the truth, we must never lose sight of the fact that our enemy is not made of flesh and blood and that we ultimately have the choice to conform and compromise or to stand on principle. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Gal. 5:1

I am fond of saying that whereas God delights in diversity, man insists on conformity. Just look at God’s creation! For that matter, consider the unfathomable number of people who have been created since the dawn of time and the fact that no two fingerprints have ever been the same! If you think about it, diversity is essential for freedom. Alternatively, bondage pretty well requires conformity. It does not make sense that we should have diversity in bondage! Alas only someone as strange as I would give this much thought!

The point is really to show that if freedom is what we are seeking, we must be free to be different. Schools, government, churches, essentially any institution will insist on conformity. Even institutes of higher learning have been grabbing a lot of media attention lately for penalizing individuals and groups who do not “conform” to the status quo secular, humanist, socialist, scientific agenda.

With all this pressure to conform to man’s idea of what and who we should be, it is not difficult to understand how we have slowly been led to think as we should. In fact the speed of this universal indoctrination has been greatly accelerated of late. You noticed my use of the word universal, I hope. It is truly amazing that all the radical changes being forced upon us in our society are also occurring in pretty much the entire world, especially in those parts of it that have historically, most benefitted from Christianity and its applications to life. Why this trend? If you follow it closely, it seems to be a global move away from God, away from Jesus in particular, to establish man as his own god. Actually, man cannot ever be God or god. He can only agree to follow and serve either the good God or the god of evil.

I have been around long enough to witness this pattern of departure from Christianity accelerate, as well as the overall effect this has had on the home education community. When Christians first became concerned about the secularization of public education in the early 1970s, they thought they could escape it by simply Christianizing the school. Christian schools were created with a Christian desire, but in keeping with a school mindset. They were destined to fail from the start as they represented a form of “confused conformity”. In the 1980s, when it was discovered that these schools were actually just schools with a prayer or two, the home education movement was born. People desiring to do so were the radical nonconformists of the day. These pioneers of home education made a clear distinction between obeying God or following man, making them very obvious and causing a great deal of concern on behalf of not only the government, but just as much by the church as it was also conforming to the “school” way of thinking.

Last week I mentioned that one of the things that doesn’t seem to change was the near guarantee of persecution for doing good. It should therefore come as no surprise that these early risk-taking, deeply convicted, committed, non-conforming pioneers of home education were persecuted by nearly everybody, including family, friends, neighbours, church, governing “authorities”, unions, in fact, society at large. Why were they being persecuted? More importantly, why is home education no longer being persecuted? Do you believe those initially opposed to home education have come around to our way of thinking? Or is it more likely that the majority of those involved in Christian and home education have come to conform to the modern day secular socialist world view? Simply observing the latest trends in Christian education will clearly communicate that much of this unbiblical world view has been adopted, incorporated and corrupted our supposed Christian world view. What is scary about this situation is that most everybody seems oblivious, even blind to this growing conformity to this world which has slowly replaced the image of God.

In the beginning, freedom-seeking home educating parents, understanding the reason for God’s creating diversity, willingly risked persecution for not conforming to the world’s standards and desires. However, this mindset has slowly, but determinedly devolved into a bondage of conformity as we pay less and less attention to matters of God and His eternal purposes and focus more and more on what matters to man.

… And So, Who Is The Enemy?

Part of the series Root of The Problem
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-01-11.

We often mistakenly judge and condemn people when missing the point that our enemy is not made of flesh and blood.

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. Please understand that while it is our responsibility to tell the truth, we must never lose sight of the fact that our enemy is not made of flesh and blood and that we ultimately have the choice to conform and compromise or to stand on principle. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Eph. 6:12

There is a reason for what has been presented thus far in this year’s blog series. All of it has been to prepare my audience for what is coming, not only for where the blog is going but just as much for where home education is headed if current trends continue. We are all aware of the fact that things don’t seem to stay the same. We are pretty well all convinced that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, but most everything else is dynamic rather than static. It has been said that the only sure things in life are death and taxes but even here, death is unpredictable and taxes are always … increasing! There is perhaps one other place where things don’t seem to change. It seems there is always something going on that defies the goodness of God and that should goodness be applied, the reward is usually persecution!

If God does not change and we know Him to be the author of all good things, then it should make sense that the one responsible for evil and the persecution of good works would not be God, but the devil. However simple this sounds, the age old battle between good and evil would not exist if it were not for us and free will, meaning that the flesh can be tempted to sin, which is to choose evil over good.

Even though the apostle Paul tells us, in his letter to the Ephesians, that our struggles are not ultimately with flesh and blood, all of us are tempted by evil all the time. Given free will, one would expect everyone to follow God, but the devil is sly and makes the alternative to good works seem very attractive. Without a solid understanding of biblical directives and a principled life of obedience to God, sin takes over.

This means one thing. When we see sin, error, failures or we observe Christians behaving in ways that contradict scripture and sound reason, we need not condemn, but understand that the author of everything leading us away from the truth and God is none other than the devil himself. This is not to excuse bad behaviour, for ultimately we do have a choice of whom we will follow and obey. Jesus clearly stated that the choice we had was either to be for Him or against Him. This is not a part time, ever changing or relative choice. It is right or wrong, good or bad, serving God or… serving ourselves, which is really to be serving satan. This simple for-or-against becomes the test of our motivation or ultimate reason for doing things. Does it carry eternal goals or temporal ones? Is it helping those in need or using them to advance our own purpose? Are we giving or taking? Serving God or man? Free choice gives us the option of focussing on Him or on ourselves.

The next few weeks will see some rather strong statements and may appear to be judgemental or negative. However, the best way to suffocate is to have our heads stuck in the sand. With the new ideological approach to problem solving often being to ignore it, and the new Christian virtue seemingly being to elevate tolerance over judgement of sin and error, things that should not be named among us have crept in largely unnoticed. If reaping what we sow has any merit, home (Christian) education in Alberta is definitely in big trouble.

I have spent my entire life in education. In fact this is my fortieth year of experience as a professional educator. That makes me both old enough to quit and concerned enough to continue. I cannot help but do everything I can to help in the training and teaching of children, no matter where I am. You may call me committed or focussed or even driven but you cannot accuse me of being uncaring. I am passionate about educational freedom and willing to take risks to advance and defend it. That is why I am doing what I am doing. It has been stated that “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” (Proverbs 27:5-6). I believe it far easier to defend what we have than to reclaim what we have lost. My intention in discussing what I see as taking place in this province is not meant to claim perfection on my part, but to expose what may ultimately lead to the loss of the right to freely home educate within a Christian context in the Province of Alberta.

The Age of Deception

Part of the series Root of The Problem
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2016-01-04.

Are you sure that what you know or what you hear is true?

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. Please understand that while it is our responsibility to tell the truth, we must never lose sight of the fact that our enemy is not made of flesh and blood and that we ultimately have the choice to conform and compromise or to stand on principle. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Mark 13:22

Once upon a time, a person’s word was generally accepted as true, and a man’s word was his honour. However, things are no longer that way. Never in the history of the world have things been so favourable for replacing the truth with what is not. What is being advanced as the information age is really the misinformation age, and what is likely to be seen later in history as The Age of Deception.

How often do you think that we are being lied to? Who can really be trusted to be honest in a world that advances truth as relative? When truth becomes more a matter of one’s own opinion of what is or is not acceptable, rather than on fixed, absolute truth, how can anything really be trusted as true? Our modern misplaced belief in the leadership of those in “authority” having our best interest in mind often causes us to neglect the possibility that not all of the information presented is accurate. Sources may withhold information to protect us from discomfort, or present information to lead us into believing what is not true. Often, the real motivation behind the information being presented is, in actuality, to prevent us from learning too much. If knowledge is power then individuals, groups, bureaucracies and institutions desiring power will be threatened by people who know too much. How many such cases can you think of?

Is the news really news or propaganda? Can the media be trusted to deliver the truth? Are politicians known as pillars of integrity? Do you trust the government to have your best interest in mind? How many truly believe the diatribe of the televangelist? What about the real objectives of the local “Christian” gatherings? Are they based in truth or tradition? Are religious activities being advanced as foundations for truth, rather than truth being advanced as the foundation for religion? Is the school really concerned about the educational welfare of students? Are Christian schools really Christian? More to the point, if the leadership engages in activities that can truly be questioned in light of scripture, to which of the two possible eternal ends are they leading us? Can universities, who attack whoever does not agree with the status quo beliefs of secular socialism, be considered places of true reasoning and logic? Do the advertisers concern themselves with truth or sales? Haven’t we all been lied to?

By now, you must be starting to think that no one is to be trusted! To be sure, not every person or institution is a bona fide liar and we should not cynically suspect everything said and done to be lies, but neither should we be looking at the world through rose colored glasses. To not fully disclose, or to colour the truth or to exaggerate or say one thing when meaning another is not much different from outright lying. What is communicated is either true or it is not. It is that simple. Scripture makes that clear, yet it is truly amazing, shocking really, how many lies are advanced every day, not only by those who know nothing of what God expects, but discouragingly as often from those who claim they do.

If Christ’s claim to be the way, the truth and the life is true (and it is!), then we should expect the world to be immersing society in deception (lies) as it prepares for the coming of the antichrist. Since the day the devil deceived Eve with perversions of the truth (lies), fallen man has had a propensity to lie, just like the one who tricked him in the first place. As we approach the time of the revelation of the antichrist, we should expect to see more of his nature on display. Unless we wholeheartedly give ourselves over to the truth, we cannot be prevented from lying and being tricked by lies. If the end times are upon us, we should understand that we are in an age of deception and that we should not be surprised when it comes to us through avenues we would never have believed possible, not that long ago.

Be careful of what you accept as true. Make sure it is, and always question the true motivation of those who are “informing” you. Not only can lies severely skew your world view, but should you have some leadership talents, you will end up propagating these lies, becoming more a part of the problem of deception than it’s solution.

Completely Hungup!?

Part of the series Hangups
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2015-12-14.

Do we question what we believe?

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Col. 2:20

It is now time to review and summarize the hangups we all seem to be burdened with. To be abundantly clear, all that we are is a combination of what we have experienced and how we have allowed it to affect us. If we are actively putting the pieces of our lives together, we will carefully consider what goes into our beings, but if we are just “floating” around like on a breeze and passively allowing ourselves to be programmed, we will end up being what somebody else wants us to be. World view is formed by what we consent to and if we are not vigilant, by what we do not consent to, as well. It is a matter of being in control of our lives or of allowing some other agency to be.

Should man’s system, a system that openly opposes Jesus and His teachings, in fact, more likely all things pertaining to God and truth, be the standard by which we conduct our lives? Even a thorough cleansing of this system can at best become a cleaner version of error, which remains error! A “Christianized” version of a secular world view, or the secularization of a “Christian” world view, created through the consistent normalization of errors is no better than an unabashed anti-Christian world view. The environment that we live in puts us first and God second and as a consequence, our modern western conception of God’s redemption can be more a matter of our own creative genius than a wholesome understanding of who Jesus is and what He has done for us. This clouds our understanding of everything else.

As our western culture becomes more biblically illiterate, more secular and more focussed on self, we become more dependent on “ourselves” for answers. We hear statements like, “Is this legal?” or, “What does the government say?” or, “What are we supposed to do?”, but are we asking ourselves what it really means to lead, or are we even seeking to lead, a Christ-centred life? When I hear “I am a Christian, you know”, I have to admit that I become wary. Why should one feel a need to say so? Should it not be obvious by the life being led? Honestly, with what is being offered as “Christian” today, it is not hard to understand why the world has developed such a bad attitude about faith in Christ! We need to remind ourselves that our job as faithful followers of Christ is to individually assure that we are good ambassadors for Christ so we can collectively reflect His true character.

How does our life affect those around us? Are we living in such a way that others want what we have, or are we no different from those who have a limited, temporal understanding of reality? Worse still, are we turning people off with our misunderstandings and religious nonsense? These last few months provided me with an opportunity to get a really good look at what is being advanced as Christian education today. It was very disheartening to see just how secular, “Christian” education has become. This did not come about overnight, but through incremental compromising as schools succumbed to the temptation to give government control over the training and teaching of the children God created. We seem to have lost our focus. Even though it is parents who give birth to children by a power given them by God, and even though we pay lip service to “training them up in the way that they should go” it is no longer God’s way that is being followed, but man’s; and the very children who we should be striving to train and teach have become the currency that drives the system. This is based in fear, not faith and can legitimately be questioned as to how this can be “Christian”.

We need to ask ourselves a few questions to determine where our thinking respecting education is. Do we truly question what we have come to traditionally and culturally accept as the truth about school? Do we realize just how indoctrinated, directed and fearful we are of something that is, in essence, disconnected from the truth about education? Do we know that we have had our world view programmed with secular nonsense about children, how they learn and what awaits them in the their futures? Basing our understanding on what we have experienced, we believe we are expressing the truth about these things, and we may not even know that we are unwittingly advancing the problem as part of the solution.

The Sinister Nature of Lies

Part of the series Hangups
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2015-12-07.

We generally have no idea of how many lies we pass for truth because we are usually not even aware that we are being lied to.

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: John 8:44

Pontius Pilate likely stated one of the most important questions ever asked when he said “what is truth?”. He was stating a fundamental question that has directed man since creation. Indeed, one of the earliest Biblical accounts of man involves a discussion on this very issue, a discussion that continues to this day. World view, self-centredness, tradition, culture, religion, all have this common characteristic. They are established on a belief in or understanding of what is truth.

Truth is hard to describe. It is not a matter of public opinion, democratic rule or consensus. It is not something established by world view, but rather establishes world view. It is not our understanding of what we think is true, nor is it true because we believe it or created it. That is self-righteousness. It is not true because our traditions say it is, nor is it true because it is advanced or accepted by our modern culture as true. Truth has no variants. It is or it is not true. No greys, just black or white. Most importantly, it is not established by man, whose perceptions are myopically restricted by time and space, but by God, who is universal, whose vision is eternal and whose judgments are absolute.

In today’s secular society, where it is no longer the church but the Government that decides what is right and wrong, a new morality is at play. Not one based on objective or absolute truth, but on what some people (often a small minority of people) have determined to be legitimately or justifiably “true” and advanced with an attitude of moral superiority that does not debate or even tolerate opponents, but silences them. We are encouraged to applaud things that used to be understood as wrong, while denying the very same right of individual expression to those with whom we disagree, almost to the point of condoning acts bordering on terrorism. Did you realize that terrorism can actually be nonviolent? Obviously, there are those who kill to persuade others to join forces with their idea of truth, but there is also the less obvious approach of claiming authority to legislate while forcing others to conform with what is advanced as “truth”. Then there is an even more sinister form of terrorism when people and agencies willfully or unknowingly advance traditionally or culturally perpetuated half truths, errors, lies and omissions. Whether by bullets, bombs, legislation or indoctrination, to diminish the freedom to question and to direct behaviour, are forms of terrorism as each method uses fear to control the thinking and actions of others.

Whether “truth” is being sought or implanted, the fundamental question remains. What is truth? Is it something we are actively seeking or are we being told what we should be accepting as such? Adolph Hitler was said to have quipped that if you advance a big enough lie, often enough and loud enough, people will come to accept it as the truth… and that was before the advent of the new digital age! C. S. Lewis said that the best lie was 98% true, meaning that if it is not completely true, then it is not true at all.

As we have a natural tendency to create our own god, we end up creating our own way of reaching him, establishing our own parameters for what is right or wrong, acceptable or not, punishable or celebrated. However, whether cloaked in feelings of good will or advanced as right, lies so often resemble the truth that they are mistakenly accepted as such. Such is the sinister nature of lies.

Religion

Part of the series Hangups
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2015-11-30.

While religion can be advanced as positive, it often gets in the way of growing in our faith.

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Heb. 11:1-3

Religion! There are a lot of things that can be said about it, but all of it is dependent on our understanding of what the word means.

I am certainly no scholar of Greek, the original language of the New Testament, so I did a bit of research on the internet to try and come to grips with the word religion. I found the that there are two Greek words that may be translated into the English word religion. One refers to pagan superstition and the other to the externalization of someone’s internal beliefs as used in James 1:26-27. If religion can represent the service and worship of God (or the supernatural) or a personal set or institutionalized system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices, it should be obvious that religion can either be positive or negative in nature.

When looking at the English word, there seem to be two Latin possibilities for the word “religion”: relegere, meaning to read something over and over again; or religare, which is a combination of re (to return or to repeat) and ligare (to tie or to bind). If we consider the second option, religion can mean a returning to restraint or a fastening of the self to something that is considered important. Positively understood, religion is “a reconnecting to something important”, but within a negative light, religion simply means “a return to bondage.”

Even more important to note is that Jesus never calls people to religion but to faith. In fact, Jesus was openly hostile to the religious practices of the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, the spiritual leaders and system of that time. They had “twisted” the scripture to become a set of rules that they were zealous to enforce, even if not that good at applying to their own lives. While they advanced a religious set of “dos” and “don’ts” that people feared, Jesus lovingly taught us to simply “be”, by faith.

Understood in light of Jesus’ teachings, religion ends up being the enemy of faith. When Jesus claimed that not all those who say onto Him, Lord, Lord, would enter the Kingdom of heaven, it was the religious, not the faithful who would be rejected. A cursory look at our modern western version of “Christianity” finds that there are likely two negative religious systems at work today. One is a return to the bondage of rules and regulations within a stringently fundamentalist mindset. The other is a watering down of the way through unceasingly compromising with the world, creating a religious system that demonstrates a greater fear of man and his institutions than faith in God. There are, of course, always those who wholeheartedly desire to be of service to the real Jesus who resurrected from the dead, initiating true freedom from religious hypocrisy.

Is it possible that religion is nothing more than a fixed worldview that will not be changed due to the fact that we start any discussion on the premise of being right? Could it be that religion has us believing we are okay when in actuality we have no idea how far we have strayed from the truth, how biblically illiterate we really are, and how insensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit we have become?

What describes you best? What do you believe and put your trust in? Fear or Faith? Government or God? Religion or freedom? Against Him or for Him? Think about it. It could start a new pathway for you.

Tradition and Culture

Part of the series Hangups
Written by Léo Gaumont, published on 2015-11-23.

We reduce our ability to learn about the truth when we put our traditions first.

We are generally all ignorant of what is actually happening around us. This ignorance can either be perpetuated and capitalized upon or fixed to empower the masses. It is time to enlighten home educators who have generally been kept in the dark respecting what is occurring within their community. (Ephesians 4: 11-16)

Bible Reference: Matt. 15:1-13

Although world view is developed individually, it is largely identified in groupings of “like-minded” people who believe more or less the same thing. Since world view is built on a foundation of an understanding of God, whatever that may be, world views are generally grouped according to “religious” affiliations. These groupings can be very large: as in Eastern vs Western and First World vs Third World; or it can be divisions based on beliefs such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism; or derivatives from a particular group such as Catholic, Protestant, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormon; or even smaller groupings within a particular derivative such as the various denominations of Protestantism. Whatever the grouping, it is dependent on a collective world view about “deity” and its resultant application in life.

The fact that we naturally see ourselves as the centre of the universe and therefore correct in our thinking, because we say so, leads us to naturally gather with those of like mind. As we continue within this grouping, we often forget what the impetus for joining or forming the group was. That is, we start doing things because that is the way it has always been done and not necessarily because we have a definitive purpose in doing it. Tradition is what we do as a group in spite of what is written. Tradition is naturally dogmatic, in that it represents principles or sets of principles laid down by some authority as incontrovertibly true. Dissecting this further, dogma is something, or someone in authority or acting as though they are in authority, telling us what is true, whether or not it is, in fact, true… and it is something we are not to question. Combining the fact that we are told not to question something someone has told us is true, with the natural tendency to avoid being wrong at all costs, you can clearly see how Jesus could state that the word of God could be nullified through our traditions.

Once tradition is set, it slowly becomes culture when handed down from one generation to the next. If tradition is hard to change, culture is nearly impossible to change. It is fixed, whether founded on truth, error or things not important. It is because it is, and not much is going to change that.

Tradition and culture are fine. Indeed, we all enjoy living with tradition and we don’t even question the culture we are part of. Our language, dress and food is what makes us unique and interesting to say the least. However, as much as we can celebrate tradition and culture, it is even better if we know why we believe or do the things we do.

As we are likely to behave in keeping with what we have acquired, whether world view, tradition or culture and since we naturally default to being right, advancing anything that questions what we believe, or think, or do, is usually seen as an assault, attack or “act of war”. We become so certain that we are right that we become “religious” about our understanding. Whether based on facts or opinions, we gravitate to those who agree with our position, often looking to them for support in defence of what we deem to be right.

Secular education has slowly crept in and replaced what used to be largely based on biblical principles. Things advanced as sinful a few generations ago, are now advanced, not only as acceptable but worthy of celebration and it is now “sinful” to suggest that what used to be sin is still sin. Modern secular education system has tapped into the understanding that whatever we are exposed to can become part of our world view and when repeated everywhere can infuse our tradition which eventually morphs as part of our culture over time. Our Christian traditions have been under attack since their inceptions and as a consequence, our western Christian culture has become very secular. Try questioning anybody about anything respecting education and you will see that the majority will see you as an enemy. Question “Christian” education and you are likely to be seen as a heretic. Recommend a return to biblical training and teaching and you are likely to be seen as a lunatic lacking respect for our “tradition” and “culture”. Jesus tried it!