This is probably the most unusual Sunday school I've ever done, but hopefully it will do what needs to be done. Here's the title. Why Christian education and all education are so important. and where we'll be going in the months ahead. How's that for a Sunday school class title, okay? Jesus, you can see it up here on the mission board, Jesus not only said all authority in heaven and on earth is given to me, but he said you go make disciples, make followers of me, baptizing them, that's kind of step one, and then teaching them, not just teaching, but teaching them to keep all that I've commanded. and low and with you always to the end of the age." Teaching means teaching, okay? And so why Christian education and all education are so important. I'm going to give you a real quick, let's see, 15 minutes summary of church history channeled through education. Christianity and the Transformation of Education. So basically, we look at three periods in church history. One is the early church, and that's roughly the first four centuries. And there was a growing conviction, because the New Testament was built on the old, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now fear is not quaking fear here. Fear is a deep respect for it's a it's a trust in it's a looking to it's okay So the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge now. I'm going to anticipate what's going to come Our modern culture by and large has replaced this with something else Okay, so the fear of the Lord's the beginning of knowledge. So what happened you're baptized in the early church and And you're taught, that's what Jesus said to do, and you're taught to be made a disciple. And we taught Joe and Linda catechism. That was the primary way of teaching people a basic question and answer way of understanding what the Bible taught. Who is God? What is God? God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Why did God make you? These kinds of things, that's called catechism. And there were catechism classes. Now, here's the thing about education. Education is a little bit like eating peanuts. When you begin to get a little education and you learn things, and that helps you govern your own life and your role in the world, you want more education. So, within a few centuries, In the Christian church, along with catechism, there were schools. And those schools were, basically it began by teaching people trades. As the Bible says, you're supposed to labor six days, right? Well, how do you labor? And of course, trades come in. languages, and history, and not all at once, but grammar, and logic, and science. And so by the 5th century, 400s, there were pretty well-developed schools in the early church. And I never realized this, but St. Augustine, who was probably the leading one of the church fathers, did a six-volume work, Mary you'll appreciate this, on music. And Augustine dealt with what the Bible teaches about music. He dealt with the orderliness in music, beauty in music, and so on. And that became kind of the standard for how people understood music for many years. So it broadened into other fields. Why? Well, there was a sense God, remember this is dawning on pagans, God created the world, okay? And so there's truth that's impregnated into the world and there's beauty and there's a sense of justice. And so the text, Psalm 19 and verse 1, the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the works of his hands, and we're made in God's image, and so we're creative, and we investigate, and we learn, and so on. That blossomed. And here is what I really want to impress upon you. It was both men and women who learned, and that was different than with the pagans. With the pagans, the women were not even treated, in many cases, as human beings. And yet Christians did instruct both men and women. By the fourth century, by the 400s actually, St. Augustine said, our Christian women are better informed in divine matters than pagan male philosophers. Wow. So again, I'm telling you folks, the view that Christianity has degraded women, it turns truth on its head. Then we come to the Middle Ages, basically the 5th century 400s to the 15th century, the 1400s, not the Dark Ages. Recent studies are showing that there was a lot of technology that was developed in Europe at the time. And what's interesting, see what happened is this. The Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century. And the Roman Empire was the repository, it was the library, for basically the knowledge that had been acquired at that point from the Greeks, from the Romans, from those that preceded the Greeks, but especially the Greeks and the Romans, who did a lot of writing and a lot of poetry and a lot of drama and music as well. When the Empire fell, There were monasteries, Christians who separated themselves from culture, and they took this material and copied it and so on, and therefore the monasteries became schools, and later developed into universities. Now, I want you to think about the name university. University means basically there is one mind. There's a unified truth, university, like unified, because they knew that education came from the one true and living God. And there was also the tremendous development of technology. By AD 1200, European technology really was outstanding in many, many ways. Now, that brings us to the 16th century, the 1500s to the present, the Reformation and the post-Reformation period. The reformers, you see a couple of their pictures in there, Calvin and Luther in particular. Luther, Martin Luther, was a strong proponent of education. Why? So he could read the Bible. And he said the poorest handmaiden, a woman with her Bible, has far more understanding than a priest without it. And it was actually, both Luther and Calvin regarded it as criminal if parents did not educate their children or have provision for their education. So they saw rightly, not the state, but the family had responsibility for the family. And then there was, with the Reformation, a surge of schools in Europe, including schools for women, especially in the Protestant areas. And then later, 1700s, that's the evangelical awakening. A lot of the hymns that we use from Isaac Watts, for example, was a big proponent of education. He wrote picture books for children, Isaac Watts, interesting guy. So anyway, with the evangelical awakening, there was a realization people were ignorant, and people were having children, population was growing, and there wasn't the provision of what were called common schools back then, or public schools. So there was a surge of schools run by volunteers, and because the children, remember they worked, they were beginning to work in the factories and so on, the only time they could meet was Sunday, which was still respected as a day off. Hence, in July 1780, under a woman named Mrs. Meredith, in a place called Sooty Alley, Gloucester, in England, you had the first what? Sunday school, July of 1780, she invited children into her home to not only teach them the Bible, teach them how to read, how to write, and so on. And by 1831, this is fascinating, there were about one and a quarter million children in England. And about one quarter of them, you can do the math, were attending Sunday schools. They were led by Christians who volunteered their labors, as people have done in Sunday schools for years. And there were tens of thousands of Christians that would open their homes or go to stores, wherever it would be, and you have the Sunday school movement that began and that developed into ragged schools because the Sunday schools were for the children who the parents had money and they looked good. And parents who had children that didn't look good or smell good, they didn't want to send their children to the Sunday schools, so they developed the ragged schools for the poor children. And that's a fast, it was started actually by churches. They offered free education and food and clothes, and they taught not only reading and writing and arithmetic, the big three, they taught women how to cook. They taught trades, especially carpentry. The big thing they taught people was how to make shoes. And so it was very practical education. And why did they do that? Because people are made in God's image. And while you had a class system that was developing in England where you had the hoity-toity and all the rest, Christians said, here's where doctrine comes in. People are made in God's image, and they all should be taught and educated. It's a fascinating study. And then that, of course, spread to the mission field. Burma, Myanmar, is known as Myanmar today. Adoniram Judson and his wife started schools in Burma. And in India, that's where William Carey went. And after many years of not a whole lot of success in his work, things really took off and developed with schools. And I love this. Because folks, Christian education is inherently counter-cultural. It doesn't ape the culture, challenges it. You know where Christians got in trouble in India? They got in trouble with, because they opposed the caste system. There was a whole group of people called the Untouchables, because you didn't go near them if you were not in that caste. And the Christians basically said, my words, baloney. And they educated, they worked to educate. They got a lot of opposition for it too, but they worked to educate the untouchables. Why? Because they're made in God's image. So a book, a fascinating book by Vishal Mengelwadi, my apologies if I'm mispronouncing his name, but really interesting book, an Indian Christian. And his book is called, The Book That Made Your World, How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. And it's really an interesting read as he talks about India, because that's where he's from, and how India was influenced, at least in certain areas, by the Christian faith. It's really a fascinating read. And there were similar developments in the United States of America that kind of paralleled this. Wow, two minutes ahead, because I do want you to ask questions. where we're going to be going in the months ahead. Jesse Kelly and I have our difference of opinion about this. We called it the Sunday Seminary in Franklin Square. Jesse said, that doesn't really communicate in our culture, but for once, I'll disagree with her. We're gonna call this the Haven Sunday Seminary, okay? And I'm your professor, and we'll have some others come in and visit. What's a seminary? You learn the, a good one, you learn the doctrines of the Bible. And you learn, seminary, it's like seminal. You just get seed ideas. And for some of us, they were pretty big seeds, but you get seed ideas that you develop in your ministry. And so we're gonna give you seed ideas that you develop in your own lives. So we'll call this the Haven Sunday Seminary. God willing, in January of 2023, which is coming our way, We're going to start working through the book Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul David Tripp, which is a primer on counseling. And here's the reason for that. We've talked about a Christian counseling center here. What's interesting is counsel that we've received from other pastors have been basically don't do it. Because a counseling center will tend to drive the church. and you'll have people who come to the counseling center that will never darken the doors of a church, and you drain your energies. Far better to do what the father of biblical counseling, Jay Adams, said, called competent to counsel. Train every Christian to be able to do basic counseling. So we'll, that's God willing what will begin in January. But what are we gonna do between now and December? If you and I are going to counsel people, and connect with them and not be speaking to the left or the right or above or below them. You've got, and I have got, to understand this culture that we're in. And it has been rightly called by Dr. Carl Truman in his popularized version of his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, strange new world and that we're going to be, I'll be using this seminally for seed thoughts for our classes and discussion. Why go through this book? This West, now follow me folks, this is kind of a rough ride, okay? This Western historic view of education which begins with words, is developed by words, and grows by words. That Western historic view of education has been deeply eroded in our culture, and in other cultures too, incidentally. And it's being eroded right now. And in fact, you and I experience that erosion in various ways. Now this is Pastor Shishko's kind of popular history of things, because I love, I'm fascinated with what's called media ecology, how the medium influences the message. Beginning in the 1950s, not that there weren't problems before then, but beginning in the 1950s, there were multiple developments that have created a confluence. A confluence is a lot of different forces all coming together to form a whole different view of education. It's no longer the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, a respect for, a clinging to, a trust in. It's the fear of the iPhone. is the beginning of knowledge. And again, obviously I'm not against them because I have one. But all media influence things. Today, it's the idols of technology that are forming a whole different way of thinking. It's forming, and not just a world view, it's a heart view. What do I mean by the idols of technology? Television, the internet, magazines, which actually proliferated in the 1950s, social media, an interesting phrase, virtual reality, the iPhone, much of which is sexually driven. When television became more common in the 1950s, it was 1952, and Westinghouse was selling its appliances, its refrigerators. And they found out that if Betty Furness, who was very pretty, was advertising the refrigerator on television, their sales went up. Because psychologically, when you're watching that image, and Betty Furness is promoting the refrigerator, you're not just getting the refrigerator, guess what else you're getting? That's a very simple thing, but it will become even far more profound That created what probably the leading authority on, who wrote the book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor, calls the social imaginary. Not words that form the way we think, but the social imaginary. What's the social imaginary? This is my definition. A common understanding about self and the world that is not particularly reflective. Reflection usually comes from reading and digesting and thinking of words, but rather is imagined as reality, leading to common practices, the social imaginary, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy, especially in sexual matters. the social imaginary, a common understanding about self and the world that is not particularly reflective, but rather is imagined as reality, leading to common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy, especially in sexual matters. For example, it doesn't really take much reflection to realize God made a difference with men and women. Right? It doesn't take a whole lot of reflection. Now, yeah, there are genetic kinks, and there always have been, but that's a very small minority. But the social imaginary, a common understanding about self and the world that is not particularly reflective but rather is imagined as reality. If I really believe and feel that I'm a woman, then there must be something to that. Without even asking the question, what makes you feel that way, right? But it's also to leading to common practices. And you wed this with technology. I can get hormones. I can get estrogen or testosterone that can be put into my system to make me feel even more like a man or a woman. And I can get the surgery that will make me look like a man or a woman. You'll see where we're going with this in just a moment. Remember Carl Truman's book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self? And so with LGBTQ issues, homosexual marriages, Polyandry and polygamy. Oh, yeah, they're right there coming right down the pike. Why? People feel like they love a number of people. Why can't they have multiple spouses? And it leads to common practices like homosexual marriages and a widely shared sense of legitimacy, especially in sexual matters, which comes out like this. You must respect my right to live out of my feelings. Okay, we respect the fact they're made in God's image, yes. The right to live out of your feelings. Historic view is that our feelings may be dangerous things. I may feel like killing somebody. It's just that that hasn't become legitimate yet in the social imaginary. But this is what's happening. Not only do I have the right to have this practice, but it's wrong for you to oppose it. And in fact, you're an enemy if you oppose what I want to do with my body. I think that's where we are, folks. So that's called the social imaginary, a common understanding about self and the world that is not particularly reflective. but rather is imagined as reality, leading to common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy. Now this brings tremendous challenges to those of us from the older generation. That doesn't include Hayoung and Jackie, but for a lot of us in here, okay. This brings tremendous challenges to those of us from the older generation, because we don't understand this. let alone do we really know how to connect with it, with the social imaginary. And here's what churches will do. They'll hunker down and keep the old ways they've done things, and a lot of them we need to keep that way. They will not interact with their culture and just basically say, let it go to hell in a handbasket. Those churches will die. because we're in the world, but we're not to be of it. So how did this social imaginary come into being? And more importantly, what's a biblical framework for understanding it? And how do you respond to it? That's what we're going to begin doing next week, okay? And I'll be using Strange New World, but I'm going to use it as kind of a jumping off point. I really want to look into some of the biblical texts, so I want you to bring your Bibles next week. Now, a few less things and we'll be done. You can ask your questions. This book has helped me to deal with things in our own family. And they're things that a lot of you are going through in your family. In fact, it is so disconcerting to read how this opens up our culture. And I don't want the class to be disconcerting for you, but boy, it really helps. And so as it's helped me, I think this will help you. We're not going to do this to be critical. This is not going to be gay bashing or LGBTQ bashing. I don't want to have any of that stuff. But how do you understand this strange new world? And more importantly, how do you come up with a constructive alternative to it? That's not really difficult. The Word of God gives us that. So here's what the goals are gonna be, and it's pretty much the goals Dr. Truman has in his book. One, to help us live in intentional and counter-culture ways. thinking about what you do and realizing, yes, the way the Word of God tells us to do things in the fear of the Lord, it's going to be real counterculture. And my guess is it's going to mean there's going to be some legal battles for some of us. It is number two to embody and promote an alternative to the social imaginary. The social imaginary is not real. I mean, folks, if you have a law professor of the Berkeley University Law School who struggles to define what a woman is, you know that's a social imaginary that she's trying to live with. And you can't. You cannot escape living in God's world. So we want to embody, live out, and promote an alternative to the social imaginary. The challenge to the rise and triumph of the modern self, number three, is to demonstrate truth about you and others as human people, body and soul. And folks, particularly the sexual practices that are being promoted in our culture, I'm not gonna bash all this stuff, I'm telling you right now, it's gonna destroy lots of people. Why does the church exist? As a community, we need to be what our name is, a haven, so people can come and not have their lifestyle accepted, but have a certain understanding of why they're doing this. And that's gonna come by listening, incidentally. Saying to them, the way of the transgressor is hard, without being condemnatory, the way of the transgressor is hard, And let's show you an alternative, not a social imaginary, but a social reality. And that's really what it's about. The difference between the real and the imagined. And that's why, folks, I want to do this, because, to put it real bluntly, I don't want this to be another dying OPC. Just keep the way we've done things and speak to the 1950s generation. You ain't going to reach this culture. It's hard enough to reach this culture. But at least try to understand where people are coming from. Let them come to your homes, to the church, to our gatherings. And so long as they know that you're showing the love of Christ to them, and you've got something real that they don't, wow, what an impact you can have. So that's what we're gonna go with. It's kind of like that couple. Bill and Margaret are holding hands. We want a relationship like that. See, that's the kind of thing. Okay, so I'm done. 1229. See Jim, I told you you'd be done by 1230 so you get your wife home. Questions, comments, arguments, issues, and I'm not asking you to agree with me on everything, but I want you to listen. Please. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, she is down in North Carolina. Yeah, Rosaria Butterfish. I forget what her married name is. She was head of the School of Lesbian Studies up in Syracuse. Oh, she's brilliant. And what was interesting, this is an example for you. Ken and Floyd Smith, the pastor and his wife, had her over. It's funny to hear, when she went to the house the first time, she had a pickup truck. She says, I don't know if I want to go into the house. But she did go in, and they didn't even talk with her about church or the Lord. But then they had family worship, and they sang psalms. And she was fascinated with the singing of these old things written a thousand years before Christ. And that's what began to draw her in, the word of God. I think not only technology but also so-called science is preventing people from knowing God as well. Because before, when there were a lot of mysterious, it was easier to have fear for the Creator. But then with the modern science, like in China, when you are talking about spirituality, they will put that into the category of superstition. Superstition. Science or religion? Religion. Because you can't say it, you can't use science to prove it. It cannot be proved as true. So that influences a lot of people believing in God as well. Yeah, very interesting. And there really is not science, there are scientific theories. Some years ago when Dr. Mether, I don't know if you remember Dr. Herb, Dr. Mether ended up being an elder in Bohemia, but he was an elder in Franklin Square. And he taught in the physics department at Stony Brook. And he was quite an anomaly there, because secular school, and he's a very committed Christian, a reformed Christian. And so we were talking about scientific truth. He said, there is no scientific truth. There's just scientific theories that can fit the facts as we know them. But as you learn more, those theories will change. So even that concept of science as truth is part of the social imaginary. Yes, Iris. We can. I don't think you need to, Iris. I mean, if you want a copy, we can get it and you can read it. Yeah, I'm going to go through the chapters. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll be using it. You really don't need it. I'd rather you be reading your Bibles, quite frankly. John? He wrote a book on education in America. It was fascinating. He talked about the history of the enemies of God. They're very much coordinated and they're very deceitful in education more than anything else. And really, all the way back to Roman times, where he used this phrase, idea, idea, idea. And it's sort of like the indoctrination of children. And that's what the movement has become since really the turn of the 20th century. You know, just a real quick one. He just showed how, you know, early on, I guess the turn of the century, every classroom there'd be a Bible at the desk. And they went through this whole routine with the Bible. And what they did is they took that away and put the American flag. And then they put the Pledge of Allegiance as a replacement. Yeah, that's profound What's the book Battle for the American mind Okay, I want to use Fox News as we rep it that's two things in that regard the children your children are not the state's They're yours. And the drive in public education from Horace Mann in the 19th century on has been, we're raising citizens of the state. No way. They want to be good citizens. First of all, you're raising them to be citizens of the kingdom, and that's the second thing. But they're not your children. They're not the state's children, they're yours. Now, Fox News. I don't, I listen to CBS news a little bit, we don't have a television, not out of conviction, I just, I don't want to waste the money. You want to waste the money, it's your business. At night, I will, on my phone, I will read Fox News for the day. Drives me crazy. linked with a story about the Ukraine and are we going to have a nuclear war because of Vladimir Putin. There's a story about the affairs, sexual affairs, of a couple of celebrities I'd never heard of before. And then there's a story about a shooting. And then there's a story about another affair. All listed. That's the social imaginary. It creates a world, and I'm using that word properly here, it creates a world that is not real. And it makes you homogenize every single thing that you listen to. When you put the possibility of nuclear war on par with two relatively unknown people, or whether they've had affairs with them. But notice what they put in. It's an affair. See the sexually driven character of media. So we're all affected by this, folks, okay? But we do need to be aware of it. And I said 12... Yes, sir. Yeah. One more quick thing. Yeah, sure. And then Mike. Just real quick, he said that all news, you cannot sit in front of a TV and listen to or watch news and be neutral. That you are sucked into that world, and that world, he described it like thinking you can breathe underwater. Yeah, that's right. He used that illustration. And he thought he was breathing underwater, then finally someone grabbed him and pulled him out. That's the social imaginary. Beautiful illustration. whether you know it or not, it's called amusement. You don't think, it's not particularly reflective. You react to it. Incidentally, the Christian Reformed churches used to do a television program. and they studied media, they stopped doing it, because they said you cannot but alter the message when you're using visual medium for it. They're not against television, but they use the radio broadcast for the word, so yeah. Mike, use it. I would just say it's a world we live in yet, still, so a world we have to interact with. Got to. And I think a great news source, I would just give a plug for Epoch TV, E-P-O-C-H. Yeah, okay. Wonderful news source. Truth in reporting, I don't think there's nothing else out there like it. It's linked to NTD as well, and that's a sister station, and it's great reporting. Nobody knows about it. It's like every time I talk to people, it's amazing to me that nobody knows about Epoch. people, you know, experts, world experts on these topics. Yeah, they send out a daily thing too. I get a number of things from them on your phone. They have Epoch Times too. I mean, you know, it's a paid subscription, but you can get it on smart TVs for free. All right. Thank you. So bring your Bibles next week. Bring something to write on. If you want the book, I can order it for you. You really won't need it. But I love this kind of discussion that we're going to have. All right. Yes, Mary. Oh. A week from this Thursday. Okay. Right. Linda, Samaritan's Christmas child. in Samaritan's Purse, the Christmas shoebox, Christmas collection. I'm going to pass out information, suggested items that we can send. I'll do the collections. You bring everything here, and I'll make it to the donation site. And we'll make the shoeboxes, right? We'll put them together? It can go in a regular shoebox. It can go in a plastic bag. You can also go to Hobby Lobby. They have a special section. Oh, neat. OK. Okay, good. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Mission, mission, mission. John, why don't you lead us in prayer and ask the Lord's blessing and pray for God's blessing on the food. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for the preaching of your word today. We do rejoice that you are our Father, our Lord. Amen. As we come in prayer, O Lord, we come as children to a father and asking these things. We thank you, O Lord, for the provision that you've given us with the food. We thank you for the brewers being with us and for the work that they did in providing the food. We are thankful for that each and every day. Just praising for this class, we pray it might be a means by which We are driven to be changers in this world and a haven to those. Amen. Bless this time now, O Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.