There’s a lot of talk now about how racism and white supremacy is responsible for the killing of twenty people in an El Paso, TX big box store.
The killer may have been part of a hate group. But why are these hate groups attractive to some people?
I was listening to a YouTube talk today by the celebrated UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who won ten NCAA basketball victories. He mentioned that growing up on a farm in southern Indiana, his dad said that you should never try to be better than someone else. He said, “Always learn from others – never cease to be the best that you can be. That’s under your control.”
This wisdom, nurtured by the poetry read by his dad in the evenings growing up in the 1920’s, formed the character that Wood looked for in his athletes.
Wooden read some of the poetry that was common in that era. It was simple and moving.
At God’s footstool a poor soul knelt, and bowed his head. I failed, he cried.
The Master said, “Thou didst thy best, that is success.”
Splendid company
He talked about a schoolteacher who responded to a question as to why she taught school. She answered by saying that “Where could I find such splendid company?” She then wrote a poem about the satisfaction of teaching a future statesman, doctor, etc. She added,
And there a builder; upward rise
The arch of a church he builds,
Where is the minister who may speak the word of God,
and lead a stumbling soul to touch the Christ.
These examples show how a society that teaches the virtues of hard work, honesty, integrity, and family values are rooted in a Judeo-Christian respect and love for God. They flow easily from a foundation of a belief in God, who is the final judge of all men’s souls.
Whatever happened to these great books of the past?
I have a current-day reprint of McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, grades 1-6, with an original copyright of 1879. It is a book sought out by homeschoolers. Also on my shelf is a beat-up and yellowed copy of Brumbaugh’s Standard Fifth Reader. All these books are sprinkled with favorable references to Christianity, and were commonly used in public schools throughout America until several generations ago.
These books set kids’ minds in the right direction. When you have to ultimately answer to a higher power, you tend to respect others, and work out your differences in a civil way without resorting to terrorism.
Reaping the whirlwind
But today’s students in public schools hear little or nothing good of God or of Christians or of the Catholic Church. Not much favorably anyway. Now we are reaping the whirlwind. And so the Eric Harrises and Dylan Klebolds of Columbine infamy are sitting in public school seats today, being nurtured with the crumbs of a religious vacuum. Like teenage boys without fathers growing up the hood, they reach out for a system of gangsters that gives vent and legitimacy to their anger.
Atheism is not the default philosophical system when it comes to education. It seems to me that today’s atheistic approach was carried out in a systematic and planned way throughout the twentieth century by propaganda and then federal court decisions.
Our detractors say we cannot turn back the hands of time. Hey – the clock is broken already. Something must be done. We must infuse the culture with Gospel values, and convince people that a truly human society hungers for a Judeo-Christian understanding of human nature and its God-given dignity.
