Biblical View on Issues

Front Page Article
"The Lenses of Reformation Concerning the Myth of Neutrality in Education"
by Dr. Patti Amsden

God, as Creator, formed and fashioned all aspects of the created order, both the seen and the unseen, according to His will and His wisdom. Every fact about every aspect of the creation serves the intent of God. Every detail works in conjunction and harmony with every other detail. Nothing is random, unconnected, or contrary to original design. Every detail of every facet is thoroughly understood, and nothing is outside of God’s total comprehension and control. Truth and reality are God-defined concepts.
Reformation lens #1 – Neutrality does not exist; everything must be interpreted in terms of what God has revealed.

Man, as the steward of God’s creation, has the honor and duty to discover the reality imbedded into the created order. From the perspective of God-defined factuality, man can work successfully in the created order without damaging the creation or the creatures whose lives and beings are intrinsically tied to the creation. God gives to man the needed knowledge and understanding to successfully govern the earth, to discover the latent potential within the earth, and to unleash the creation’s abilities. When men seek to ignore God’s blueprints in creation and arrogantly believe that knowledge is self-defined and autonomously discovered, men build a world where men are exalted as gods and God’s voice is restricted or denounced.
Reformation lens #2 – Intellectual neutrality, or cosmic impersonalism, forms a worldview where men believe that there is no God, or that the Bible is not a comprehensive book, or that God limits His interaction with people to mostly spiritual matters.

The myth of neutrality sets the educational system into the providence of man and humanistic knowledge, which stands opposed to the providence of God and divine revelation. The original temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden was set into the backdrop of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent suggested that Eve could determine facts for herself, analyze those facts, act upon her interpretation, and achieve the results that she desired. The suggestion, or the temptation, was based upon a lie. God had claimant rights to true knowledge and no substitution for reality was going to be allowed. Mankind was so fashioned to be able to comprehend and apprehend God’s version of facts and truth, but mankind was not granted authority to be a self-determiner of facts. The outcome for Adam and Eve was not their desired end of becoming like gods but, rather, that the introduction of destruction and death into the creation.
Reformation lens #3 – The myth of neutrality disguises the fact that choosing to ignore God’s interpretation of facts is actually inconsistent with a neutral position because it is, in reality, choosing the position of humanistic interpretation of facts.

As reformers, we must comprehend that neutrality does not exist. Facts are either God-interpreted or man-interpreted. Morals are either God-defined or man-circumscribed. Actions are either in harmony with eternal truths or are congruent with pragmatism. Parents are required to train up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. For parents to entrust the education of their children into the hands of those who would not hold the knowledge of God and the saving grace of Jesus as the foundation upon which all facts must rest is for parents to entrust anti-god systems and educators to train their children in humanism, if not paganism. Reformers must take courage and take a stand. Parents must awaken to the dangers of the myth of neutrality and place their children into educational systems that script the hearts and minds of the next generation with God-defined reality.