Narrow and closed minds

Here’s a little test of your sensitivity to the current culture:

So begins this commentary on the state of panic in the public schools over the mere hint of religion, and what the consequence might be of banning it.

Suppose your child’s school announces a Christmas celebration – and your child, while subscribing to your atheistic beliefs, decides to participate. So he goes, dressed as Santa Claus.

Uh-uh, say school officials. This is Christmas. Take off the red suit, and come back when you can wear something shepherd-y.

Care to guess how fast the American Civil Liberties Union could whip up a lawsuit on that one?

How, then, to explain their silence in the case of a 10-year-old student at Willow Hill Elementary in Philadelphia?

The fourth-grader, like many Christians, faces a quandary about Halloween. On the one hand, parties and candy are nice; on the other, all that focus on blood and witchery and horror stuff seems like a rather unhealthy infatuation with the darkest elements of the human soul. Especially for one who is trying to follow the Light.

Why bring up Halloween costumes in the beginning of March? Anti-Christian attitudes, behaviors and policies are an all-the-time problem that has seeped from the culture into the schools.

What is it about the Christian faith that so unnerves our public officials and private atheists? Not believing is one thing – persecuting those who do is something else. Did school authorities really believe that this child’s peers, seeing him dressed as Jesus, would fall to their knees and convert on the spot? That they’d go home and ask their parents questions? Did they think the boy would grab a mike and start preaching, or try to turn pumpkins into wine?

Really, the nature of their panic is hard to fathom. After all, Jesus’ teachings are not only important to those who consider Him the Son of God; they are the basis for countless tenets of polite behavior. Why we wouldn’t want our children learning to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, reach out in mercy to those who are lonely or impoverished or hurting? Would it be so awful if they strove to emulate His integrity, His selflessness, His love

Johnson makes the good point here that when religion is excised out of the educational environment, something will move in to fill the void.

Better to let our kids watch cinematic bloodbaths, and joke about serial killers and satanic rites and bewitching vengeances. These are the ideals that inspire depth of character. These are what we want to parade before our children, and celebrate with publicly-funded school festivities.

Interesting, all the effort our government and courts expend, frantically trying to keep our kids away from a God Who is – by definition – everywhere, all the time. Maybe we think that by systematically removing every element of faith from our society, we’re gradually evolving a more broad-minded generation.

Carried through to its logical progression, this avoidance of the true moral compass of faith actually evolves the cult of the closed mind by the time these students hit college.

Every culture demands and prohibits, encourages and exhorts. The desire to have a university free from demands, a classroom sanitized and unhaunted, is nothing short of desiring an education free from culture. Many professors and administrators today desire this kind of education. For multiculturalism, “diversity,” and disembodied “critical thinking” add up to an imaginary, spectral meta-culture that is, by definition, no culture at all. And as I have said, students are not stupid. They realize that an education free from the commanding truths of culture is an invitation to live as clever, well-trained, and socially productive animals; and like all good students, they live up to the expectations.