Reeling in the years
By Charles Sporleder
web posted June 10, 2013
The lyric from Steely Dan goes like this, "The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned, the things that pass for knowledge I can't understand." There is a cancer in this country. On college campuses there are millions of students who pay their, (or their parents), money to become better educated. But they are not receiving an education as much as they are being indoctrinated. They are being indoctrinated with the lies of the progressives and liberals so that at some point they can join the ranks of those who call evil good, and good evil. Faculties are literally biting the hands that feed them and we ignore what is passing for knowledge because we have blindly entrusted the future of our children to the professionals. It is time we took our children back.
I understand that higher education is required for nearly any job today that is sufficient to support a family but we ought to at least be ensuring that the moral fiber of our society is being upheld. Many educators today were taught by those who were taught by free thinking people who decided that they would arbitrate the things which would comprise a good curriculum, and being the degreed professionals they purport to be, they begin to bend the knowledge base of our youth until they believe whatever the professionals tell them they should. I have no degree. I learned to be a trade printer through on-the-job-training and it served me well for over thirty years. As that profession began to dry up, largely due to the influx of personal computing, I went to trade school to be able to drive a truck. It was not a glamorous choice and it did not make me wealthy by the standards of the world.
I have never been bound by the standards of the world and the older I get; the more those supposed standards disgust me. We have become a people who do not think. We cannot reason. Society can, and does, hold truth in their hands and still allows falsity to be poured down the throats of the children because the professional educators tell us that the things they teach are the latest, best and most worthwhile teachings to ever have been had. We are being lied to! All it takes is an eighth grade education and the desire to apply some common sense to the world around us in order to see that we are being sold a bill of goods. My case in point comes via the University of Chicago.
Imprimis, a monthly publication of Hillsdale College, in the April 2013 issue featured a column by R.R. Reno, a theology and ethics professor at Creighton University in Omaha, NE, wherein he made reference to the position of a professor Brian Leitner from the University of Chicago concerning the inappropriateness of religious principles as a basis of deciding whose liberty should be entitled to protection under the law. Quoting from the article, Leitner states, "‘There is no principled reason for legal or constitutional regimes to single out religion for protection.' Leitner describes religious belief as a uniquely bad combination of moral fervor and mental blindness, serving no public good that justifies special protection … … it is patently unfair to afford religion such protection. … Evoking the principle of fairness, Leitner argues that everybody's conscience should be afforded the same legal protections."
If we were to remove the very concept of God from every area of our lives, this might make a little more sense; but we can't. Dr. Leitner begins with the assertion that religion has no legal or Constitutional basis for being protected. Evidently Dr. Leitner has never read the founding documents because it seems that it was exactly that, which concerned the lawmakers at the time of their drafting. The first amendment is designed to keep government out of the spiritual affairs of the citizenry by stating that we cannot make laws concerning the establishment of religion nor the free practice thereof. Apparently, the framers of this nation thought that our religious liberty deserved more than a passing nod. Describing religious belief as a uniquely bad combination of moral fervor and mental blindness, serving no public good that should justify special protection is absurd on its face.
What Leitner fails to recognize is that there could be no public good were it not for God. It is only by the moral absolutes of a holy God that any of us can be held responsible for our actions. Unless God had said that we were not to commit murder, how could we now justify condemning murder as a crime? Except that God told us that stealing and lying were wrong, why should we avoid such things? The public good is not only guarded by the commandments of God; it is established by the giver of those commandments, the Lord God Almighty. The Declaration of Independence begins by stating that, "All men are created equal," and what's more, "that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These truths are held to be self-evident! What happiness is afforded anyone who lives in a climate of unbridled human desire with no regard to the dictates of a holy, loving and just God?
"It is patently unfair to afford religion such protection." Dr. Leitner, it is patently insane to not afford religion such protection. But let's push past the overt absurdity of the good doctor's assertions to see if he might have any standing at all in his thinking. If we want to deny protection for the religious freedoms we have become accustomed to enjoying up until this point, why is it that certain religious groups are molding legislation to suit themselves without overt interference? How does the city of Dearborn Michigan commandeer the fruit of public taxation by using the city's storm warning system to call its Muslim followers to prayer 5 times a day? Such a thing ought to at least be a violation of the peace for the residents who choose to worship in other ways.
I realize that there are some practices, within certain sects, that are considered illegal. Though largely stemmed, polygamy is still against the law in America. Hallucinogens are used in some tribal rituals in the Native American cultures and while a valid part of their ancestral foundations, a schedule 1 drug is still a schedule 1 drug. It may be that we should not be attempting to codify any of these activities but the one thing that should be codified is the right of a religious order to exist as a religious order without undue influence from those who disagree with the particular tenants of that order. Maybe we should consider saying that the American Indian can smoke of otherwise ingest whatever they want as long as they do not operate a motor vehicle off the reservation; maybe we should let the man with multiple wives be and let him deal with the multiplied headaches of family life and the horrors of divorce court.
I believe that the only true faith is biblical Christianity. If someone wants to believe something else, it doesn't, (or should not be allowed to), affect me. But to have our professional educators setting up straw dogs to make invalid points to students that are easily misled is inexcusable. I have, as I said earlier, no degree. I am not ordained by any church, I have no special revelation for the hungry masses and I tell people up front that there is no reason to accept what I say at face value. I encourage everyone to check what I say in Scripture and I expect them to utilize a modicum of common sense. A college professor can throw out any set of statements they choose and require the student to accept as fact, and be responsible to pass a test concerning anything they decide is the most proper thing, even if it flies in the face of every sensible thing that has come before it.
If knowledge says that God is passé, that religion is a myth or that the believer is just a weak willed individual who requires a fable to shore up their continence then the things that pass for knowledge, I truly can not understand. But rather than spend the little time God has given me trying to re-educate myself so that the new neo-knowledge makes sense, I will spend my efforts in trumpeting the truth, the truth of old, the truth of God's Word so that someone might have the opportunity to find something that makes better sense and hopefully leads them to the moment of salvation. I know that the learned would say that salvation and our need for it are just antiquated hogwash but I will persist. To hear the words, "Well done my good and faithful servant," will tell me that though I may have left this life being considered misguided, that I arrived in glory after doing something that was ultimately… 
Charles Sporleder runs the blog The Fundamentalist Blog. This is his first contribution to Enter Stage Right.