By now you have heard of
the tragic school shooting in Minneapolis, MN. In a most evil act of hate and
irrationality, Robin Westman fired dozens of rounds from a rifle through the windows of a
Christian school during their morning worship service. Two children were killed
and 14 injured. Three adults were also injured.
The shooter was a transgender
who was born Robert Westman and recently had his name changed to Robin Westman. His murder of these children has troubling similarities to the murder of six children in 2023 at a
Christian school in Tennessee by a young man who also identified as a woman.
I confess that I am angered at the shooter and his contempt for the life of young children. I am also angered at the moral and cultural trends in America that have led to the cultural environment wherein such a horrendous crime could occur. This is what I will focus on in this article.
Who’s
to Blame?
School shootings and
cultural violence have become all too common in America, and it is time to identify
the cause and assign blame where it belongs. Ultimate blame, of course, lies
with the shooter, for it is clear from Scripture that each of us are
accountable to God for our words and actions (Matt. 12:36; II Cor. 5:10). His closest associates, such as parents and friends, also bear responsibility for how they responded to the warning signs they must have observed.
But in this essay, I also want to place blame squarely on the shoulders of every secularist activist and politician who has pushed for the removal of
Bibles, prayers, crosses, Ten Commandments, and all Christian symbols from the
public schools. I will show how these symbols exert positive moral influence on everyone who falls within their visual range. When I was a teenager in the 1960s, schools were free to pray and post Christian symbols and we never heard of a school shooting.
Tragically, the moral
values of the Bible have been replaced with post-modern ideology that says
since there is no God and no absolute morality or truth, we are all free to
create our own. If you don’t like your parents’ moral values, you can create
your own. If you don’t like being a boy, you can create your own reality and identify
as a girl.
According to these “progressive”
educators, the Bible is an antiquated book that should have no place in the
classroom. In the early 20th century, John Dewey was at the
forefront of the fight to secularize America’s education system and his ideals
are still embraced by modern educators, including those of the NEA (National
Education Association). Dewey was an atheist who hated Christianity, and he wrote,
The battle for humankind’s future
must be waged and won in the public-school classroom . . . between the rotting
corpse of Christianity and the new faith of humanism (Hyatt, The Book that Made America Great, 149).
The secularizing of the American
classroom with the removal of all biblical statements and symbols, has had
devastating consequences. This was made clear in an interview I heard years ago wherein Charlie Rose interviewed a social scientist who had just led, and completed, a
study on the power of religious symbols.
This social scientist laid
out their amazing discoveries on the power of religious symbols. One thing he
said, I will never forget. He said they discovered that a person, sitting in a
room with a Bible in view, is less likely to tell a lie than if there is no
Bible in view. They found that the very presence of a Bible exudes a positive
moral influence on those present.
The
Tragic Consequences
This
means that the removal of the Bible, prayers, and Christian symbols from the public
schools is a major contributing factor to the violence and hate that has
erupted in our society. Without those positive moral constraints, the worst in
human nature is free to roam.
It
was not always this way. As a teenager in high school in the 1960s, we had
never heard of a school shooting. It never crossed our minds that such a thing
might happen. We were not angels, but there were not the rampant hatred and
violence that is all too common in today’s schools and society in general
Could
it, perhaps, be partly because there was no problem with a teacher reading a
verse from the Bible or having prayer before class? I remember how that at the
beginning of every Friday night football game in Temple, Oklahoma, where I
attended junior high school, a local pastor or minister would pray. The many
hundreds—and maybe thousands—in the stands would all stand and I can still see
the hundreds of men removing their hats and caps as the person began to pray.
It
all began to change when I was 15 years old and in two Supreme Court rulings,
Engel vs Vitale (1962) and Abington School vs Schempp (1963) the
nation’s highest court banned school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in the
public schools of America. This ruling was based on a contorted and novel interpretation
of that part of the First Amendment that reads, “Congress shall make no law
concerning the establishment of religion or hindering the free exercise
thereof.”
These
rulings opened the floodgates of anti-Christian activism. Since that time,
lawsuits filed by atheist and secularist organizations have resulted in the
removal of crosses, Ten Commandment
displays, and other Christian expressions from public property. Schoolchildren
have been told they cannot sing Joy to the World or Hark or
The Herald Angels Sing at Christmas because that would be a violation of
the First Amendment.
As
part of this crusade to de-Christianize America, the secularists insist on
calling a Christmas Tree a Holiday Tree and referring to the Christmas Holiday
as The Winter Holiday. Veteran groups and military chaplains have been
told they cannot pray in the Name of Jesus. A high school band in
Mississippi was ordered by a judge to remove How Great Thou Art from the
repertoire of music that they play at football games and other school events.
On
April 6, 2009, President Barak Obama announced to a Turkish audience, “America
is not a Christian nation.” His audacious statement showed the extent to which
the crusade to de-Christianize America and remove her from her biblical moorings
had come.
We
Must Also Bear the Blame
We
as Christians must also bear blame for this secularization of the
public school system and society in general, for this has all happened on our
watch. We have not been the “salt” and “light” that Jesus called us to be in
Matthew 5:13-14. In that culture, before refrigeration, salt was used as a
preservative to restrain spoilage and corruption in meats and other food. “Light”
is used to dispel darkness, which is the absence of light.
When
the church is truly salt and light, the evils of this present world will be restrained
and held at bay. But if the salt loses its “saltiness,” as Jesus warned, it is no
longer good for anything but is thrown out and trodden underfoot by men.
I read a German Christian's remorseful testimony of how the German church responded to the Holocaust and Hitler. He told how the church he attended was next to a railroad and there were times, during their services, that a train would pass and they would hear the cries and screams of those being taken to the death camps. What was their their response? He said, "We sang louder."
We as American Christians must do more than "sing louder." To
be salt and light we must make our voices heard
on our social media platforms, in school board meetings, and in whatever venue the Lord
may open for your voice. We must die to self and to the fear of man. We must also support public officials who support positive
biblical values in the public schools and in society.
We must also continue to pray for another Great Awakening to roll like a
tsunami wave across the land. There are hopeful indicators that we are the verge
of such an Awakening, but we must press in and lay hold of it in faith and
prayer. The future of America is in our hands for II Chronicles 7:14, which
gives the wonderful promise of national healing, begins with the condition,
If My people . . ..
This article is derived in part from the books, 1726: The Year that Defined America and The Book that Made America Great by Dr. Eddie L. Hyatt and available from Amazon and his website at http://www.eddiehyatt.com.
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