Why is it young people know the minute details of pop culture, but struggle with basic historical and cultural understanding?
It all boils down to one word:
Meaning.
In case you are new here, I’m Sherry Hayes, the interesting mom of 15, and I want to share some things with you today that will ADD to your life, not waste your time.
Whether you started homeschooling yesterday or years ago, if you’re serious about your child’s education, this channel, Mom Delights, has something to offer you.
I don’t follow fads or trends, I only share deep, but practical, truths that I’ve gained as I’ve homeschooled our 15 children over 37 years.
Lately, we have been talking about the Four Pillars of excellent education, which are:
- Gaining favor with God and Man
- The tools and skills for learning
- Content
- Application
Today, I am introducing the third pillar; content. I will not be sharing a lot of the practical, but I will be laying down some solid ground on which we can build an entire lifetime’s worth of plans, both for you and your children! In future podcasts I hope to give you enough practical ideas and instructions so you can take off and have some of the best years of your life with your children.
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To continue…
Compulsory education has succeeded in stripping the meaning out of almost everything in life. The word coined for this is “nihilism.” Here is the definition:
a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
Meriam-Webster
(Doesn’t this describe public school curriculum to a “T”?)
There is a reason young people keep themselves distracted with the latest movies, concerts, and podcasts of their favorite pop culture characters; they are desperately trying to keep occupied so they don’t hear the despair that is screaming to them in the back of their minds.
This is what our education system (along with the media) has taught them:
- There is no such thing as absolute truth.
- There is no rhyme or reason to history.
- The world is doomed to die, and all we can do is try to become smarter to keep it alive.
- God is not interested in helping us; we are on our own.
- Relationships are not for a lifetime; you can’t count on anyone or anything.
- Don’t even try and make a change; it’s all rigged anyway.
- History is made up of a bunch of dead people who were all in it for themselves, just like the corrupt politicians of today.
- There is no good form of government; they are all meant to take advantage of us.
- We aren’t experts, so we can’t trust our natural inclination to order and beauty.
- All the good art and music has already been created.
- AI is going to take over and we’re all going to die.
And the despondency of the secular public has invaded Christian thinking, just in a different way:
- The world is just going to get worse and worse; we’ve got to save as many as we can before things get really bad.
- We shouldn’t be surprised if things go to hell in a hand basket, that’s what the Bible predicts, anyways. We’ve just got to stand by and watch the whole thing burn.
- Well, if this world goes down the tubes I’ll be alright, because I’ve got my ticket to heaven!
Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad!
This is NOT what Jesus said; He said this:
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in his field. Although it is the smallest of all seeds, yet it grows into the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and mixed into three measures of flour, until all of it was leavened.”
Matthew 13:31-33
And what did He pray?:
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:10
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Habakkuk 2:14
I’ve lived over six decades, and 50 of them as a believer in Jesus and I’ve witnessed a lot of Christian fads, such as The Late Great Planet Earth prediction that Jesus was going to come back in 1988.
I was totally convinced for many years to expect the worst, to believe that things were supposed to get dark and horrible and awful to the point of despair before God’s Kingdom could be established. I believed all of the news we were being fed via the media, and I was easily able to fit it into my projections of the future according to popular eschatology.
But, as I studied history more closely with my children, I started to see some interesting patterns.
For one thing, I began to notice that people tend to take the immediate crisis and make sense of it without taking the big picture into context.
For instance, WWI was not called WWI, it was called “The Great War” because people were certain nothing could be bigger. They were also banking on The League of Nations to make certain something like that never erupted again.
But, then, WWII happened, and all bets were off.
In religious terms, there were not a few heresies which evolved because of all the dire predictions of the world ending. Some grew up to create whole cult movements that we must deal with today.
At first I thought these reactions were unique, until I realized this pattern has happened time and again with similar results ever since Jesus resurrected and returned to heaven. Some world-wide event or catastrophe occurs and everyone goes to speculating on what it all means, then predictions are made, and before you know it new splinter groups form as a result.
Even what we’ve been going through in the last few years has been typical, and the current AI scare fits right in with the pattern.
I once thought that our fixation on the idea that the world is getting worse and worse was a modern malady, until I found out people have been thinking that way since the first civilizations in Mesopotamia. Even back then they were worried about population growth, believing they would run out of room and all the arable land would be taken up.
But they were obviously wrong back then, and they continue to be obviously wrong today.
Turns out the planet is actually doing better than ever, and people are not the problem, they are the solution. For one thing, as the population grows, there are more people to innovate and solve problems. We see evidence of this every day, but we rarely recognize it or appreciate it.
For another thing, there is ample evidence that people themselves are not faring worse; they are doing better than ever before.
Less people live in abject poverty today than at any time in recorded history. The life expectancy of human beings has also increased worldwide.
If you need to check these assumptions out, I refer you to the book Super Abundance by Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley (affiliate link). This book is filled with statistical proof of what I am asserting here.
And, as for the Gospel, Christianity is exploding the world over. A greater percentage of the population of the earth believes in Christ than ever before. Pentecostals, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox are among those who are seeing surges.
And it isn’t just at a personal level.
Entire countries are dedicating themselves to Jesus Christ, including nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Uganda.
Regular worship sessions, prayer, and declaration of the Lordship of Christ are becoming common occurrences in our nation’s capital.
I even heard that in the state where I reside officials who work in our capital attend classes on Biblical ethics.
Now, I’m not saying we are just about to see the return of Jesus to rule and reign. Most likely, this is just another crest in wave, after wave, after wave of the Kingdom of God making progress in history.
But God IS making progress, and the Kingdom is taking more and more ground.
So there are reasons to pay attention to history. It’s good to know about the Mongols and native Americans. We need to understand how land features have affected economic and land development. There are reasons to learn about pi and how molecules operate. We need the experiences of the past and knowledge of how the world works because we have lots of work still to do.
There are also reasons to create beautiful art and music, not because we want to impress others with our knowledge, but because God has given us all things freely to enjoy, and we honor Him as beings made in His image when we exercise our creativity.
(And no AI will ever be able to replace the human touch, as we are all finding out!)
We learn all of these things and teach them to our children because we have the task of advancing God’s Kingdom in every realm for His glory and the benefit of others.
Why haven’t you and I been told all of this good news?
Because it would mean we would have hope, and hopeful people are not as dependent as hopeless ones. Keeping people traumatized keeps them from questioning as their freedoms are being gradually drained away.
But you are different. You can take your children, your home, your extended family, and bring them out of the darkness. You can be part of bringing part of heaven to earth via the grace offered to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And you can start by using this new perspective as you and your children explore history, geography, science, and the arts together.
In the next post, we are going to be talking about changing the lenses of our glasses, the ones through which we view the world. I am going to give you some phrases and slogans which you can operate from as you attempt to gather resources and plan how you will proceed as you and your children embark on the amazing adventure of learning together.
After this, we are going to get down to practicals. We are going to share procedures and resources which have been proven to aid mommies and their children to gather information, analyze it, and develop conclusions which can be applied to real life, all while producing items for documenting progress and fulfilling the requirements of education officials.
For the podcast version of this post, please click below:
iTunes: Kids Ace Pop Culture But Miss Meaning; Here’s Why
Spotify: Kids Ace Pop Culture But Miss Meaning; Here’s Why
