Think, or somebody will do the thinking for you! Worldview Series (Part 7)

Who said you have to start school when you’re six? Who said you have to be reading by then? Who has determined that life should be taught in pieces called subjects?

Who said that you should continue in school until you’re eighteen years of age? Who said? Who said that you can’t be successful if you don’t do it this way, or you don’t do it that way? Why don’t we ask some questions? Show me, where does it say this? Where did you get this idea? How did you come to that conclusion?

Could it be that it is the only thing you have ever seen or been presented with? Are there alternatives to the way things have always been done?

What about socialization I am asked? My answer is usually, “what about socialization?”. “What is your concern?” You know what I get for an answer? Usually a blank look, because they’ve never actually thought about it. They’re simply repeating what they’ve been told. We’re all guilty of this very same thing. Somebody has done the thinking for us.

In the high school that I taught in for the last fourteen years of the school teaching part of my ongoing career, they had pillars in the cafeteria, and anybody could put up a saying, for a fee. It was another bizarre example of public schools needing to raise additional funds.

My students actually pulled together and collected money because they wanted to write my wise sayings up there for the world to see.

I asked, what was their favourite saying. They simply said, what we hear almost every day: “Think, or somebody will do the thinking for you.”

That’s true: think, or someone is going to do the thinking for you and those who would think for you don’t usually have your best interest in mind.

You know what? We’re all guilty of having people think for us. How many times have you asked yourself, “Why do I believe this?” “Why do we do this?” In the church, when you ask the question, “What’s the answer?” You often get, “Because that’s the way it’s always been done.” That’s not a good enough answer.

My challenge at this point is to simply say: ask questions. Find out. Why is it that we believe the things that we believe? Ask lots and lots of questions. That’s how you are going to learn.

As a matter of fact, who are the best learners in the whole wide world? Two-year-olds. They’ve just learned to talk. They know “mom,” “dad,” and “why?” They’re learning and they are not shy about asking questions, any question on anything, without reservations!

We’ve been emphasizing Christian values and what we should understand and believe. We need to believe in the authority of the Bible.

I’m a creationist because I started to question what I had come to believe. I’ve been studying this issue now for forty years. If I have a choice in believing in millions of years (as told by the media, most books, and every movie I watch) and believing in God’s creation in six days, I’m going to put my faith simply in the Bible.

Because I can’t prove either one. I wasn’t there for either one. Yet, I do have the Bible from which we can read an account that has been around for thousands of years as opposed to the “scientific” explanation that has continued to “evolve” over the last hundred years or so.

I will put my faith in the Bible. As a Christian, I will take the authority of the scripture, and I’ll say, if there’s a debate, I’m going to have to fall on that side. Because, let me tell you, the Bible’s been around for a long time, evolution hasn’t. If I know nothing more, that’s good enough for me.

Ever wonder why Christian schools fail here? Because the teacher believes in evolution? No, probably not. But the teachers are going to have to teach the curriculum. The curriculum talks about evolution, it doesn’t talk about creation at all.

So while teaching evolution, if some little guy puts up his hand and says, “I don’t believe that”, the teacher will likely reply by saying, “Well, I don’t believe it either. You know, we don’t believe in evolution, I’m just teaching it because I have to. We believe in the Bible.”

How far do you think that’s going to go in your child’s life? If he keeps hearing the same evolution story over and over and over again, and all he gets on the Christian side is “Oh, we just kind of believe in the Bible,” and that’s all they get, what will he end up believing?

I am not suggesting here that we indoctrinate our children in any way. I am suggesting that you teach them that there is a universal absolute truth and that they would be wise to discover it. You should present both sides to an issue and then discuss the likelihood of either side being true.

Evolutionists are supporting their side with all kinds of stuff. We really do need to be informed of their side and ours as well. We should start by informing ourselves of what is in the Bible and what it really means.

 

Evolution and Creation: Worldview Series (Part 6)

Carrying on with our discussion on our having a choice between two opposing thoughts, let me give you a really good, quick example.

Evolution and Creation are two entirely different things. Anybody who’s stopped to study it finds they’re mutually exclusive.

Yet if you were to take a survey of people, Christian and non-Christian alike, where do most people sit? Right smack in the middle. Eighty-five percent of people are what we call theistic evolutionists.

They believe in God, and yes, God did create with power, but evolution is how everything came here. That doesn’t make any sense.

It doesn’t make any sense because people are trying to mix, or to blend, two entirely different things, with both sides claiming that they hold the keys to the truth.

And so, every time you watch television, every time you read a book, every time you look in a textbook, or whatever, every time you look at an animal, you’re going to look at evolution, correct? Then you read the Bible and it tells you something altogether different.

You want to believe all the stuff that you’re hearing and reading, and you want to believe everything that’s in the Bible, so what do you do? Put the two together. But what are you? You’re mixed up. Because they’re two separate things altogether. You can’t put them in the same pile.

This is what I really appreciated about the whole idea of having what we call the “dichotomist” view of life. That’s what the Bible shows us. We’re either righteous or unrighteous; right or wrong; heaven-bound or hell-bound.

It’s real simple, so it helps us to understand a simplified viewpoint where self-righteousness is not based on God but “me” and whatever I have determined is right or wrong.

This is where we come from, that is, we believe in scripture, where we find there are really only two choices, the right choice and the wrong choice. That’s how we want to raise our children, and yet, we often fail to make our choices based on right or wrong. We usually prefer to do it our way, not necessarily the right way.

Have you ever stopped to think of that? In a way, we are sort of hypocrites. We tell our children there’s only two choices, and yet we demonstrate our belief that there’s a multitude of choices and that there’s all kinds of possibilities.

The reason we do that is twofold. First, we tend to think we are the centre of the universe and so what we want is what we do. It is also possible that we make bad decisions because we just don’t know the truth. Perhaps it is not ultimately, that important to us.

The majority of people are theistic evolutionists not because they are great believers in evolution, and not even because they’re great believers in creation. It’s because, if you were to ask them to explain the creation story, they couldn’t explain it to you.

They do know it’s in Genesis somewhere, probably the first few chapters. They don’t really know. They haven’t really gone there and studied it. They haven’t read the multitude of books that are out there to help us to understand the creation story.

They really haven’t looked into evolution either. I catch a lot of people that believe in evolution by simply asking how, or why. Ask them a question. Ask them if they believe in millions of years and when they answer yes, ask them why?

Like evolution vs creation, life is also black or white. The only true believers in greys are either misinformed or do not want to be informed. They like their greys because they move the boundaries to suit them. No commitment needed. Just whatever is most convenient and least demanding.

Unfortunately, this is not true. We need to pick a side.