Sunday, January 13, 2019

A Nation Divided




A Nation divided cannot stand when pressed into action.  Today we see the division of this country ripping us apart.  Battle lines are drawn between Republican & Democrat.  And now we have Liberalism and Socialism to muddy the waters.

So I sit and ponder the cause of such division.  I open my Bible and find Matthew 7: 24-27 which tells us to build wisely; to build on rock rather than sand.  I take a wider look at this and begin to form a conclusion, not just in building, but in sustaining what has been built.

Our country was built on the wisdom of our Founding Fathers.  Over the recent years many have taken to tearing down this legacy; to diminish their great creation, with misunderstandings of their times.  Today we face a major challenge.  This challenge is to harness their wisdom and apply it to modern times.  

Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of education & preserving our liberties.  George Washington said:  “The more homogeneous (or similar) our Citizens can be made in these particulars, the greater will be our prospect of permanent Union; and a primary object of such a National Institution should be, the education of our Youth in the science of Government.  In a Republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty, more pressing on its Legislature, than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those, who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the Country? “(Bennett, 1997)

Noah Webster (commonly referred to as the Father of American Scholarship & Education) said:  “But every child in America should be acquainted with his own country.  He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice.  As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty, and of these illustrious heroes and statesman who have wrought a revolution in her favor. (Bennett, 1997)

So as you can see from the very beginning they realized that their work in forming a Nation, the lessons learned that caused them to break from a tyrannical government, needed to be passed on to our youth so as to not lose sight of our patriotism and fall back into confusion, separation, divisiveness and tyranny.  This is the path I see our great country going down today, and I ask why?

The answer is simple; the education of our youth has become a cesspool of liberalism.  As I have wrote about before our country is being torn apart from the inside out.  Our enemies (and yes we have many) realized long ago they couldn’t beat us on the perimeters so they infiltrated from within; and the greatest of our enemies is satan. 

We live in a promised land whether you realize it or not.  We live in a land of milk and honey but it has been tarnished with dreams of silk and money.  Our enemy has coursed his way into the hearts and minds of educators that serve less than patriotic and Godly aspirations and more a self- serving and scientific or mathematical solution to everything.  They have used the separation of Church and State not to keep our government from enacting a national religion (as intended) but rather to remove God from our very existence.  They have twisted our ancient ideals into modern day immoralities.

So, not only has our education system been attacked from teaching the core values and ideals this country was based on, but also to remove formal training in the skills of labor.  We have migrated into this thought pattern that a $40,000 liberal arts degree is more valuable than learning carpentry.  Faced with shrinking budgets schools eliminated shop class and home economics in favor of standardized testing that does nothing more than create generations of like thinking uneducated zombies; students who can pass a test rather than think for themselves.  Tests that are multiple-choice instead of essay questions that challenge the mind and make our youth really think rather than memorize.

A system of education that recognizes our history and teaches our youth survival skills is paramount to our survival as a nation.  As Noah Webster so eloquently states “ such a system of education as gives every citizen an opportunity of acquiring knowledge and fitting himself for places of trust.  These are fundamental articles; the sine qua non (Latin for something absolutely essential) of the existence of the American republics”. (Bennett, 1997)

Many of our educators today seem to have nothing more in mind than a mission to remove the American ideals this country was founded on.  They are a cancer on our Republic for they have forgotten that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow His precepts have good understanding” (Psalm 111) and “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and knowledge" (Proverbs 1).  They have forgotten or choose to ignore what Solomon said about wisdom “if you call out for insight and cry out for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord.” (Proverbs 2) And what is wisdom's reward?  “Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her.  Long life is in her right hand; and in her left hand are riches and honor.  Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace.   She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed” (Proverbs 3). 

Our country was founded by great thinkers, leaders and men of great wisdom.  We must return to teaching our children not only the ideals we were founded on, but the basic beliefs this country was founded on; the basics of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that is founded in the core beliefs of the Word of God and the Ways of our Savior. 

I know this is a lot to ask, but let’s start somewhere and let that somewhere be in teaching the true ideals & history of our great nation and the skills of meaningful labor, then the morals of a God loving nation will prevail into the hearts and minds of our youth and current population so we can be a country of togetherness rather than divisiveness.  “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (Mark 3: 24-25).

"Together We Stand...Divided We Fall" (Pink Floyd, 1979) 

REFERENCES & REFLECTIONS:

Bennett 1997 – Bennett, William J. - “The Spirit of America, Our Sacred Honor” © Simon & Schuster NY, NY.  1997   Pages 257-258 and 265-266

Holy Bible – NIV – © 2006 Zondervan Publishers Grand Rapids, Michigan U.S.A.

Pink Floyd 1979 - From the Song "Hey You" Track 1 on CD # 2 on the Album "The Wall"

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