Trading Truth for Solidarity - Part 3
Shaping the Global 'Christian' Youth
By Berit Kjos - August 2007
Background information: Church Youth Trained for UNESCO's Culture of Peace
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Trading Truth for Solidarity - Part 3 Shaping the Global 'Christian' Youth
By Berit Kjos - August 2007 Background information: Church Youth Trained for UNESCO's Culture of Peace |
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Note: Since this article is more than five years old, some of the links are obsolete
"...the purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students."[1] Dr. Benjamin Bloom, "Father of Outcome-Based Education"
"Postmodern culture is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent yourself for the 21st century or die."[2] Leonard Sweet in Soul Tsunami (endorsed by Rick Warren)
"In this new reformation of self-esteem, the first thing required is to pull God down from His supremely elevated place so you can then lift yourself up."[3] A warning from Pastor John MacArthur
"The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one,"
we are told in 1 John 5:19. And the leaders of today's world are just as determined to undermine God’s Word as those who despised Christianity two millennia ago. The fact that their tools and tactics are more sophisticated these days gives us plenty of reasons to heed God's repeated warnings: Be watchful! Pray! Don't be deceived!The guiding vision of contemporary world leaders
was summarized by Professor Raymond Houghton back in 1970. As you ponder his words, remember that the key strategies used in secular schools are now embraced by market-driven churches around the world:"...absolute behavior control is imminent.... The critical point of behavior control, in effect, is sneaking up on mankind without his self-conscious realization that a crisis is at hand. Man will... never self-consciously know that it has happened."[5]
The main targets of these change agents have been our children, our youth, and our Biblical faith. Have these revolutionaries succeeded? Yes! We are now immersed in the fruit of their labor: a postmodern world that rejects the Truth and moral foundations that shaped America's faith and freedom. .
Global Transformation
Like our secular guides, today's postmodern, purpose-driven church guides keep sounding the call for continual change. And their restless audience -- dulled by decades of "progressive education" and corrupt entertainment -- are fast falling in line behind the most popular pied pipers.
There's little to hold them back from the tempting snares that tug at their hearts these days. The greatest obstacle to deception has always been God's unchanging Word. But that wall of resistance is crumbling fast. Today's transformational leaders know that their pleasure-loving followers would rather dialogue about "biblical principles" in popular movies than study or memorize Scriptures. And such facilitated dialogue is central to this revolution. As Professor Benjamin Bloom ("Father of Outcome-Based Education") wrote back in 1971,
[6]"...a large part of what we call 'good teaching' is the teacher's ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues."
Bloom was building on the revolutionary foundation laid by Julian Huxley, first head of UNESCO. In his 1947 exposé of the UN agenda, "UNESCO: Its purpose and Its Philosophy," Huxley wrote:
"The task is to help the emergence of a single world culture.... And it is necessary, for at the moment, two opposing philosophies of life confront each other from the West and from the East.... Can these opposites be reconciled, this antithesis be resolved in a higher synthesis?...
"In pursuing this aim, we must eschew [shun] dogma - whether it be theological dogma or Marxist dogma.... East and West will not agree on a basis of the future if they merely hurl at each other the fixed ideas of the past... If we are to achieve progress, we must learn to uncrystalize our dogmas." [Read more here]
Could pastors and church leaders be willing to "uncrystallize" their Biblical foundations? Faced with the world's tempting incentives, today's pragmatic leaders are selling their souls for the latest marketing models. For example, one of today's popular Sunday School programs is the costly KIDMO. Its website emphasizes a unifying "mission," not Biblical literacy:
"In order to equip mentors to inspire world changers, your kids need a MISSION. ... It creates clarity, causes action, and changes perspective."[3]
Changing perspectives is key to this transformation. As Professor Houghton warned decades ago, you won't even "know that it has happened." Compromise becomes the norm as blinded shepherds of God's flocks pursue the latest strategies for "success." The steps below are vital to their unbiblical mission:
Replace solid Biblical teaching with feel-good storytelling.
Reinvent our sovereign holy God as a permissive buddy who applauds your goodness.
Keep affirming God's love and understanding; forget His holy standard and judgment.
Trade Bible study (too didactic and divisive) for facilitated group dialogue.
Stress human deeds not God's doctrine.
Contextualize the gospel and emphasize unity in diversity.
Tolerate everything except old-fashioned parents and other obstacles to change.
Whose Values Will Guide Our Children?
Parents? Where do they fit into this picture? Mike Yaconelli, the celebrated founder of the popular "Christian" Youth Specialties, gave us a clue in his article "The Problem of Parents
:""What's the biggest obstacle to effective youth ministry? Parents.... Why are young people stressed out? Parents. Why are young people obsessed with education, good grades, SAT scores...? Parents.... Who supports our ministries until their child has a negative experience, or is disciplined, or is injured, or doesn't like youth group, or the music, or their counselor, or a new sponsor, or the way the youth group is being run? Parents."[7] Mike Yaconelli, "The Problem of Parents"
Concerned parents have distressed secular change agents as well. That's why Professor John Goodlad, who worked with UNESCO in the seventies, warned fellow educators that -
"...most youth still hold the same values as their parents.... If we do not alter this pattern, if we don't resocialize... our society may decay."[8]
"Enlightened social engineering is required to face situations that demand global action now. Parents and the general public must be reached also, otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home."
[9]Megan Fuller, a visitor to our website, shows us the results of this anti-family ideology. "I ran across an article by Mike Yaconelli from Youth Specialties about a week ago," she wrote, "and I was floored by his open disdain for parents and traditional church leadership. But it served to bring to mind my own rebellion, and I began to wonder if his disdain and my experiences in youth group weren’t really all that far apart."[10] She continued,
"I began attending a mega-church called Capital Christian Center which has recently strayed into the Emergent Church scene (though they wouldn’t admit it). Within one year of attending that church, I was in the beginning stages of rebellion against my parents and against the foundation of God's Word that was instilled in me as a young girl. Two years after becoming an ACTIVE member of the youth group (and in its leadership) I was in full rebellion against everything my parents had taught me as a child.
"I thought I was righteous. I thought I was the one who had it right. I thought my parents were legalistic (I HATED the writings of Paul). I thought my parents had too many expectations for me. I thought they weren’t really concerned about spreading the gospel as much as I was. I thought I was on fire for Christ. But I thought wrong…and had God not delivered me from that rebellion, I would be lost. Just another product of a youth group much like Mike Yaconelli envisions for every youth group. God help us!"[10]
[Since children and youth are the most vulnerable victims in this spiritual revolution, our next article will deal with three "Models" for facilitating a child's "spiritual formation." All are tested and used in public as well as church school: Contemplative-Reflective, Pragmatic-Participatory, and Media-driven Active Engagement Model.]
Training Tomorrow's World Changers
Contrary to Biblical guidelines, the church and the world now share a common goal: to train today's youth to lead tomorrow's pluralistic world. Both church and world are picking out their most promising leaders -- those who heartily pursue the "right" vision and the evolving global mission. I met some of them at the UN conferences and [Gorbachev's] State of the World Forums. Those "chosen" teens from diverse nations were led, through the dialectic process, to synthesize opposing views and embrace an evolving, preplanned consensus. They were trained to think, speak and act as citizens of a collective global village.
Like postmodern "Christian" youth, many of those "chosen" youth believed in God but doubted the Bible. They believed in personal truths but rejected God's absolute Truth. They believed in a Christ but not in our Savior. They loved the creation but denied the Creator. As Harvard student Bill Burke-White reported during Gorbachev's 1996 Forum,
"We have spent this week re-imagining and re-envisioning the world we have inherited.... Just a few short steps from your meeting rooms this week there is a community of youth who were born into the global village.... This is a community that will not tolerate the continued ecological devastation of the sacred landscape of our home... [and] that has no tolerance for dogmatism and fundamentalism."
"This community needs to learn about the new paradigm or to unlearn the old -- we were born into an awakening Earth.... Imagine, if you will, a world which has realized the Youth summit's vision of building a Global Youth Alliance, a planet-wide conversation, an interlinking, a networking of the many youth organizations that share these heart-felt visions...."[11]
"Unlearning the old" ways is key to the global transformation. And its pied pipers are determined to break the old ties and restraints, whatever it takes. Like the Phoenix rising out of its own ashes, the new world must rise above the old beliefs and values. Their arguments sound good and noble -- almost Christian -- to those who never learned to love God's true and living Word. Notice the logical progression from untrue assumptions (#1) to mainstream deceptions (#3):
1. Global peace demands global oneness. Therefore all must follow the global guidelines to unity.
2. Global unity demands collective thinking. Therefore all must participate in small group dialogue.
3. Dialogue and consensus require respect for diversity and synthesis of opposites. Therefore resisters and their divisive Truth must be silenced.
Such spiritual assaults on Biblical Christianity are neither new nor surprising. God's holy ways have never pleased the world. They certainly don't fit today's emphasis on self-esteem and feel-good spirituality. And since they undermine God's moral and spiritual boundaries, they invite chaos rather than unity -- coercion instead of freedom.
The transformation is speeding up. Those who simply flow with the revolution will find acceptance, while those who passionately pursue "progress" will probably be tomorrow's leaders. But concerned resisters will face some hard choices. Dan (another website visitor) illustrates the battle:
1) My company was recently bought by another company. The new company had individual meetings with us to explain the 'company culture.' At the end of the meeting, we were asked to verbalize our commitment to the company culture with a yes or a no: 'If you agree to our culture, please answer 'Yes.' They wanted a verbal commitment. Car salesmen use the same tactic to get you in a 'yes' verbal pattern. It also matches the new evangelism.
2) A television commercial for Lexus automobiles shows a gentleman walking thru a metropolitan area, with extremely fast-moving scenery, attempting to give the impression that things are changing very quickly. The gentleman (aka the viewer) is looking things over, as if contemplating what to do. The narrator says something about how the world is changing very quickly, and then in a very pointed way, says - 'Are you IN, or OUT?' It's Us or Them!"Where do you stand?
Rick Warren assures his followers that "fundamentalism, of all varieties, will be 'one of the big enemies of the 21st century.'" [12] He may be right! His worldwide influence will surely speed the rising hostility toward the fundamental Truths of God -- a major obstacle to global solidarity.[13]
"If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.... If they persecuted Me they will persecute you... for they do not know the One who sent Me." John 15:19-21
"But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." Acts 20:24
Enemy of The People? | The Rising World Religion
Who defines the Kingdom of God?
Endnotes:
1. Benjamin Bloom, All Our Children Learning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 180.
2. Leonard Sweet, Soul Tsunami," pps 74-75. www.crossroad.to/Quotes/Church/post-modern/leonard-sweet.htm
3. John MacArthur, Hard to Believe (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 4.
5. To Nurture Humaneness: Commitment for the '70s (Washington DC: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, NEA, 1970).6. David Krathwohl, Benjamin Bloom and Bertram Massia, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook II: Affective Domain, (McKay Publishers, 1956), 55.
7. Mike Yaconelli, The Problem of Parents at www.youthspecialties.com/articles/Yaconelli/parents.php
8.John Goodlad, "Report of Task Force C: Strategies for Change," Schooling for the Future, a report to the President's Commission on Schools Finance, Issue #9, 1971.
9. James Becker, Editor, Schooling for a Global Age, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1979), xiii, xvii.
10. Megan was referring to this article: “Piling on the Milestones,” which is not available.
The State of the World according to Gorbachev at www.crossroad.to/text/articles/tstotw1196.html12. Paul Nussbaum, "The purpose-driven pastor," The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 8, 2006, at www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/religion/13573441.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
13. Five fundamentals: 1. Deity of Christ. 2. Virgin birth. 3. Blood atonement. 4. Resurrection of Jesus. 5. Inerrancy of Scriptures. (From http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/pewreligion.htm#fundamentals)