From the Principal’s Desk
Dear Parents,
Within the last year, I was in an educational setting listening to a person lecture on a particular historical event. The person spoke with a command of the subject and moved his way with ease from one aspect of the topic to the next, developing quite artfully the scenes of the event. As I listened, I felt like was grasping the past with fresh understanding, sort of with an insider’s view.
At the end of the lecturing stage, the person asked the all-important, probing question: why? Why did this particular event happen? What shaped the thinking of this people group that led them to commit such atrocities? He went around the room asking those in attendance what they thought, and different ones gave their opinions. When the circular flow came back to him, I expected him to give an analysis of why the event happened, but he didn’t. I was left with an unsatisfied sense to the conclusion. There wasn’t a conclusion beyond the facts that occurred.
As I listened to the entire presentation, I was reminded of several things we do at Bethel when we teach history and why I like the way we teach history: 1) We try to represent the facts accurately; 2)We analyze the facts or the way of thinking to see how it compares to Scripture; 3) We evaluate what took place in light of what Scripture says (in other words, we decide based on Scripture if something is right or wrong); 4) We seek to change our lives based on the lesson we learn. All of this requires belief in absolute truth.
However, if a person does or school does not believe in absolute truth, then it cannot say that an event, a way of thinking, or a behavior is right or wrong. He cannot make a value judgment, in part because of the pressure not to offend anyone’s belief or way of life. (This, by the way, is where “political correctness” comes in.) As a result, people cannot correctly judge what took place in history; neither can they correctly judge what is taking place in the present. In the school setting, children, at best, only learn certain facts of history, but they do not learn lessons for life because they are not taught to evaluate the rightness or the wrongness of an event or way of thinking.
History is intended to teach us lessons for life based on the choices—good or bad—people have made in the past. Without the ability to judge those choices, people are unable to learn the lessons history has to offer. In other words, if a person is not learning history from the vantage of absolute truth, he is not truly learning history. He is held back in history.
Your children do have the opportunity to learn accurate lessons from history because they are learning history from the perspective of the Bible. As a result, they are gaining the potential to discern events of the past to decide if those events should be repeated or rejected.
Sincerely,
Pastor Sutton
Dear Parents,
Within the last year, I was in an educational setting listening to a person lecture on a particular historical event. The person spoke with a command of the subject and moved his way with ease from one aspect of the topic to the next, developing quite artfully the scenes of the event. As I listened, I felt like was grasping the past with fresh understanding, sort of with an insider’s view.
At the end of the lecturing stage, the person asked the all-important, probing question: why? Why did this particular event happen? What shaped the thinking of this people group that led them to commit such atrocities? He went around the room asking those in attendance what they thought, and different ones gave their opinions. When the circular flow came back to him, I expected him to give an analysis of why the event happened, but he didn’t. I was left with an unsatisfied sense to the conclusion. There wasn’t a conclusion beyond the facts that occurred.
As I listened to the entire presentation, I was reminded of several things we do at Bethel when we teach history and why I like the way we teach history: 1) We try to represent the facts accurately; 2)We analyze the facts or the way of thinking to see how it compares to Scripture; 3) We evaluate what took place in light of what Scripture says (in other words, we decide based on Scripture if something is right or wrong); 4) We seek to change our lives based on the lesson we learn. All of this requires belief in absolute truth.
However, if a person does or school does not believe in absolute truth, then it cannot say that an event, a way of thinking, or a behavior is right or wrong. He cannot make a value judgment, in part because of the pressure not to offend anyone’s belief or way of life. (This, by the way, is where “political correctness” comes in.) As a result, people cannot correctly judge what took place in history; neither can they correctly judge what is taking place in the present. In the school setting, children, at best, only learn certain facts of history, but they do not learn lessons for life because they are not taught to evaluate the rightness or the wrongness of an event or way of thinking.
History is intended to teach us lessons for life based on the choices—good or bad—people have made in the past. Without the ability to judge those choices, people are unable to learn the lessons history has to offer. In other words, if a person is not learning history from the vantage of absolute truth, he is not truly learning history. He is held back in history.
Your children do have the opportunity to learn accurate lessons from history because they are learning history from the perspective of the Bible. As a result, they are gaining the potential to discern events of the past to decide if those events should be repeated or rejected.
Sincerely,
Pastor Sutton