Jeremiah 46-48

Jeremiah gives prophesies about the coming destruction of the land of Egypt, the Philistines, and Moab.  Their crime?  Worshiping idols and false gods.

It makes me wonder what kind of false gods we have in our society.  In who or what do we put our trust?

Our western culture does not fashion idols out of wood or stone.  We are fast becoming worse than an idol worshiping country: we are becoming a country where the people worship NO god other than themselves.  Humanity is the pinnacle of all there ever will be and of all there ever has been, according to these secularists who disbelieve in the existence of the Almighty.  Those nations that God destroyed angered him because they were making offerings to false gods.  But how does the Lord react when a nation does not make any offerings at all or even acknowledge His existence?  A nation whose public schools have become so secular that wearing  a t-shirt with the Name of Jesus on it can get a student kicked off campus for wearing “extremist” messages.

It makes me very afraid.

Thomas Paine criticized the secular nature of the French public education system back in 1797:

It has been the error of the schools to teach…sciences and subjects as accomplishments…whereas they should be taught…with reference to the Being who is the author of them:…When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well executed statue or a highly finished painting…our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talents of the artist.  When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How then is it, that when we study the works of God in the creation, we stop short and do not think of God?

…The evil that has resulted…has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of the creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence.”
(The Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, as quoted in David Barton’s Four Centuries of American Education)

Thomas Paine has been said to have been one of the least religious of America’s founding fathers…yet even he acknowledged the danger of secularizing public education.

Have we in America generated a species of atheism in our students by our deliberate omission of Him from our student’s studies?  Will the homeschooling movement help preserve a remnant of society who still believes and cries out to the Lord?

My thoughts have moved from Jeremiah to Egypt to the Philistines to Moab to America.  I pray that the Lord will search my heart and help me see any place where I have set up virtual idols so I can root them out and return again to Him, the Creator of all.