Paul Derengowski, ThM
Yesterday, I was listening to one of the local afternoon drive guys—Rick Roberts at WBAP—address the issue of gun control, shootings in schools, and what he considered to be the real problem of why the latter was taking place.
His conclusion was that God and prayer needed to be let back into the pubic education system.
At first thought, it seemed like he was onto something.
Beyond that, though, it reminded me of something a preacher said long ago, and I think still holds true, and it is simply this: even if God and prayer were allowed in public education, would there be enough cohesion among the ranks of students, teachers, and administrators to make it worthwhile or would a virtual Pandora’s box be opened that would cause more harm than good?
For example, which god would be recognized?
The host claims that he believes in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, but all kinds of people believe all kinds of weird ideas about those three characters, many of which of downright heretical.
Mormons, for example, believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but believe them to be three separate gods, none of which were always gods, but were human beings that worked their ways to godhood.
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but reject the Trinitarian relationship in the godhood, which means that neither Jesus, nor the Holy Spirit, are deity.
In fact, Jesus is nothing more than another creature and the Holy Spirit is God’s “active force” or an impersonal motivator that Jehovah uses to compel people to act in certain ways.
Oneness Pentecostals also reject the Trinity, except in a more stealthy-type of way, by promoting the heretical notion known as Modalism.
God manifests himself as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, except those three persons are actually only one person who wears three different masks.
When God feels the need to change masks (modes), he does so, but remains the same person.
Hence, there is no communion between Father and Son, Son and Holy Spirit, or Father and Holy Spirit, which is complete nonsense, if one simply picks up the Bible and reads it (see Matt. 3:13-17; Jn. 17:1-ff.).
The Muslims, on the other hand, completely reject the idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Instead, there is only Allah, Jesus was a great prophet, but not God’s Son, and the Holy Spirit is actually the archangel Gabriel.
These are only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, when it comes to either weird or competing ideas that billions of people share when they start thinking and talking about God.
So, before we talk about reintroducing God back into the classroom, an agreement is going to have to be made over just who is being talked about.
Given the current climate of spiritual-biblical stupidity going on in contemporary America, an agreement is not going to happen in the near future.
Then there is the issue of prayer.
Most people treat prayer like they treat the subject of God—stupidly.
Prayer, even in most churches, has very little to do with communing with God in worship and everything to do with selfishly bartering with God to get something from him.
That is typically followed up with a whole lot of acting and empty words, whereby more attention is paid to the person doing the praying, than is paid to God.
Pretension is either lauded for the wondrous oratory of the refined speech read off the written page or the prayer is sneered at or mocked for its vanity.
Add to that the number of individuals who would see the opportunity to “pray” as the means to push a godless agenda—for example, the Satanic Temple—and it would not be long until one lawsuit after another would be filed to either shut it all down or tie it up in court.
The end result would be the directive to mumble a carefully edited script of “politically correct” gibberish during “prayer time” that would mean absolutely nothing!
Therefore, while on the face of it, the idea of bringing God and prayer back to the public education system would be a good thing, the more one thinks about it, the less likely it would be such, simply because the current spiritual climate will not allow it.
Besides, if God and prayer are already absent from many homes across America, which means God and prayer are absent from many American churches, then the question, again, is going to be, what kind of god and prayer is going to be introduced in our schools?
The United States is at a terrible crossroads in its history and many people are quite aware of it.
God and prayer are integral features for the survival of any society.
However, unless the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is manifested in the Trinity and revealed in the Bible, is the focus of the attention of the people’s prayer life, then that society might as well write Ichabod across the door entries of our public schools.
The latter action would be actually more meaningful than wasting the time and effort reintroducing God and prayer into a public education system where the glory of God has long since departed.
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