The Home-Schooled: Poets [Platonists] and Don’t Know It
Is there a more deceived mass of humanity than the homeschool community? I doubt it. While thinking they are the epitome of a Christianity that supposedly founded America, the depths of their cluelessness is stunning. The Neo-Puritan movement has all but totally taken over homeschool curriculum resulting in a whole Christian subculture of functioning Platonists.
Something seems to be missing from their history books: colonial Puritans were known as “Christian Platonists” by those who were the movers and shakers in the American Revolution. Puritans, the undisputed heroes of the homeschoolers, were little more than Eastern mystics without the same penchant for colorful dress codes.
One of the more visible signs of their functioning Platonism is the secular is evil mentality. My wife Susan likes to share one of her favorite examples of how she was once a functioning Platonist like most good Baptist Kool-Aid drinkers. As a professional educator, being a teacher in the public realm was unthinkable to her. She also believed that secular educators do not have a true grasp of reality because they are “secular”, i.e. spiritual, good – secular, evil. That’s simple Platonism. Another way of stating it: weak equals evil.
After buying into the whole Christian education is ministry motif resulting in no retirement and near financial destitution, she was forced to take a teaching position in the dreaded secular realm of abject evil. To her shock, she was barely qualified to cut it in that realm.
The Reformed have always been masters at integrating Scripture into their Marxist worldview, and they presently own Christian publications not excluding homeschool curriculum. The present-day Neo-Puritan homeschool movement is the greatest threat to American liberty in this present age because of its astir ability to present evil as good to the future leadership of the church. In addition, their rewriting of world history is egregiously disingenuous. Below, I have included an excerpt from a Christian homeschool book sent to me by a homeschool mom that is very indicative of the problem:
The Birth of Postmodernism
Social critics have observed that the rise of modern society in America follows a similar plot line [to the Tower of Babel account]. A people who were proud of their automobiles, their computers, their moon landings, their weapons of mass destruction, and their scientific methods of birth control, devised to build themselves a city. It would be based on man-made laws, and it would serve to exalt the ways of man rather than the ways of God. Human reason, not divine revelation, would bring the people into a heaven made on earth.
The rise and fall of the Tower of Babel and modernism are similar. As with the Tower of Babel, the building of modernism stopped with the gathering of peoples. In the confusion over who or what would replace the authority of God, a popular saying emerged: “What is true for you is not necessarily true for me.” Society, lacking a cohesive set of absolutes, broke apart, splintering into a myriad of divergent communities. Women opposed to men; children opposed to their parents; whites opposed minorities; heterosexuals opposed homosexuals; “Pro-lifers” opposed “Pro-choicers”; the Religious Right opposed the Liberal Left; etc.
As we pass from modernism, society is becoming more obessed with the “right” to choose according to individual ideas of right and wrong. People no longer look to or acknowledge an objective, universal standard of truth. Everyone is doing “what is right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). American literature reflects this shift. It, too, has fallen into a downward spiral, beginning with God-oriented, historical accounts during the colonial period; slipping to Romanticized portrayals of nature and man in the nineteenth century; and finally, dropping to man-centered pictures of reality that have only caused disillusionment and confusion.
In the dawning of the postmodern age, the walls of certainty and truth have crumbled and art has tumbled into the gulf of meaninglessness. The only writers and artists worthy of serious attention are those that have not only recorded the fall of truth but also attempted to put the pieces back together again.
The Modern Age. Thomas Oden, professor of theology at Drew University, argues that the modern age lasted exactly two hundred years-from 1789 to 1989. At its beginning was the French Revolution, which exalted human reason. In the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the revolutionaries tore down images of Christ and erected a statue of the goddess of Reason. The Rights of Man became superior to the rights of God. Man was enthroned as the ultimate authority. Man and his intellectual abilities would bring society into the form of socialism and communism.
The Russian Revolution put into practice the economic theories of Karl Marx, instituting a communist state. Marx, borrowing from the scientific theories of Charles Darwin, believed that the lower classes would eventually emerge to the top. This would complete the evolution of society. There would be no upper class or lower class, everyone would be equal. Gene Veith correctly stated, “Communism was the most thoroughgoing attempt to remake society by means of human reason.” Devoid of the influence of the Scriptures, it based its advancement on science and human reason.
The appeal of Marxism was deceptive. While claiming to create a utopian state based soley on human reason, it found its power in “oppression and brute force”. After WWII, the term Iron Curtain came to be used for the barrier against communication and travel that the Communists erected. It limited the citizens of communist states from relations with Western Europe and the United States. Human reason did not lead the people to greater freedom. On the contrary, it led to the greatest horrors that this world has known, namely, the extermination of more than six million Jews in Nazi Germany and the execution and starvation of millions of “class enemies” first in Stalin’s Russia and later in China under communist dictator Mao Tse-tung. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, signaling the fall of the Iron Curtain and the death of the modern age.
In America, the Rights of Man never became as thoroughgoing as in Russia. The Christian roots and capitalistic economy of America were too well grounded in the nation’s demeanor. “One nation under God” was not merely a decorative slogan printed on the tokens of free enterprise. The existence of a personal God was and still is recognized by a majority of Americans.
…
The Art of Meaninglessness. Sir Arnold Toynbee, a historian of world civilizations, has observed the societies that stop believing in a universal standard of morals tend to lose their ability to create great pieces of art. As we survey the landscape of American literature, we can see this occurring. Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor and Jonathan Edwards all spoke with beauty about the God who rules over His creation. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville argued with the same God, yet with eloquence, acknowledging His presence. Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman all denounced the God of the Bible and questioned the idea of truth. Their work, though inventive, lacked a connection with the real world. Hemingway and Fitzgerald could paint a clear picture of problems but they left readers without an answer. Their works lack the goodness of wisdom that makes art truly beautiful. …
American Literature
Alpha Omega Publications
Author: Krista L. White, B.S.
Editor: Alan Christopherson, M.S.
Newtown Massacre Isn’t a Plug for Christian Homeschooling
Another public school massacre has taken place. This time it involved very young children at a distinguished elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. And of course, Christians en masse will jump on the “he (the shooter) was mentality ill” bandwagon.
This shows again how Christians claim to be Scriptoriums, but function in life like any other the Bible is just a book written by men crowd. In the New Testament we read the historical account of King Herod ordering the death of every child two years old and younger in Bethlehem and surrounding regions. Whatever means were used to slay these infants in front of their mothers would have been a very gruesome scene. But yet, if Herod or any of the soldiers that carried out the act were “mentally ill” the Holy Spirit didn’t get the memo. And this is mass murder of infants on an unfathomable scale. Moreover, there are no words for how trite Herod’s reasoning was in comparison to the order.
We don’t know much about this hideous massacre, that’s “hideous massacre” not “tragedy,” other than the fact that the murderer was the live-in-20-something son of a school teacher employed by the school. She was found dead at her home where the son/murderer also lived. Obviously, something went awry in that relationship and the social/professional connection with the school ended up in the crossfire. But it wasn’t a “senseless” act, it was a SINFUL act, and like many other similar acts—well planned.
It is understandable that the world has no answers for these events for they can’t even rightly identify such with correct words, but Christians shouldn’t ape their ignorance—they should at least act like being a Christian means that we live by God’s wisdom and He informs us according to the world He created.
Sometimes that means using common sense which God is not opposed to. He gave it to us for a purpose. We have raised-up a whole generation of hyper self-centered adolescents via child-centered parenting on steroids. Christians have added to the fray through such things like homeschooling which teaches our children that they are either too good to be schooled with the world’s children or too mindless to defend themselves intellectually. Or both. Yes, indeed, because Christians are weak thinkers, for sure the public schools would drag our children into hell with little or no effort. This is a valid fear because American Christians have never been more dumbed down which is a Protestant tradition from the Dark Ages.
Couple this child-centered parenting with the steady flow of violent images that are poured into the minds of our children through TV, movies, and video games. The result is people who do not take “no” well. Examples of the violent results abound. Parents who cut off a teenage boy/girl relationship because of inappropriate behavior end up dead at the hands of the offended teens. A mother who refused to let her son borrow the family car—dead accordingly. Former friends of Charles Manson; such as, the Beach Boys and Neil Young among many other top recording artists point to his failure to obtain a recording contract as being instrumental to the horrific acts that followed. As Neil Young stated, “Charles didn’t take rejection well.”
When these events take place, it would be better if Christians would simply remain silent. We both echo the world and reinforce their beliefs that we don’t know any more than they do, or we implement the either/or hermeneutic; i.e., this happens because public schools don’t buy into the Christian whiffle dust. If schools would only let the children pray and display the Ten Commandments while teaching that this nation was founded on Deism Christianity, God would smile from heaven and surround said schools with a Star Trek deflector shield. Look, what’s all of this nonsense about public schools keeping God out? They can’t do that. If our children are Christians, He is IN them, not a Ten Commandments statue. Neither does showy prayers impress a lost world—they want to see a life of answers from people who supposedly hangout with God.
I have been a youth pastor. When you suggest to the teens that they befriend the bullied outcasts of their school they look at you as if you’re from another planet. When children are bullied at school, love or justice of any kind rarely shows up. They become hopeless and feel powerless to do anything about their dilemma. Middle schools and high schools are the epitome of a social caste system which is usually written off as “kids being kids” until the bullied outcaste shows up with a willingness to trade his whole life for one hour of being empowered to inflict justice on a cruel world. In one of the most notorious school massacres ever, one of the perpetrators walked into the school cafeteria and yelled, “All jocks stand up.” What’s our first clue?
Yet, in all of the desperate clamor for answers, where are the Christian ministries that target the outcastes in our public school systems? “In home schools.” Well, touché. At one church Susan and I attended, we heard continued prayer requests for a troubled child who was being bullied at school. Finally, Susan and I, somewhat perplexed, asked why the police had not been called into the situation as bullying is a criminal offence in the state of Ohio. The answer? “These are just children we are talking about!” In regard to this same student, I had previously encouraged the youth of our church to reach out to this young man in the name of Christ. The suggestion was met with blank stares. When there are no answers—when there is no hope—things will happen.
Christians showing the world that we will gladly take the rejects that the world doesn’t want is a start—it’s at least something. It is better than mimicking the ignorance of the world or selling magic whiffle dust in the form of a Christian flag, Ten Commandment statues, or a hokey meet at the pole prayer show. Something is better than stupid.
And a third one as well: the suggestion that this event is a plug for more homeschooling where our mindless lazy-thinking children will be safe.
If we want God back in the schools, He will be there within our children. And if His glory is shown in them, it will be through the mind of Christ and His wisdom.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
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