Knowledge is not like a bowl of porridge at room temperature, with no milk and no sugar. But I suppose this beginning requires further explanation.
One of the most pernicious myths circulating within the Christian church today is the myth of neutrality. We have come to believe, slowly, through a series of agonizing compromises, that there is such a thing as “bare facts” knowledge, the kind of knowledge that is not dependent upon any antecedent worldview commitments.
Surely, we say to ourselves, two plus two will equal four regardless of whether or not we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Surely that sort of thing is just “common sense,” and is not worldview dependent. The problem with this false understanding is that, well, it is false. The reason it seems plausible is that it was a lie that circulated in a society that had been largely influenced by Christianity, and so many people mistook this Christian legacy for something else. Something like common sense.
The Hindus believe that all is one. How can two and two make four when two and four (and all the other numbers) are just maya, illusion? Or suppose you find yourself employed by a dishonest accounting firm. What do two and two make? “Well, what would you like them to equal?” Wink. Or say your child is being educated by a postmodern relativist who denies the very possibility of truth. That being the case, how can the answer four be true? And then there is the radical teacher, just back from her BLM conference, and she is giving the kids to understand that the idea that there is just one right answer, that answer being four, is a surefire mark of white supremacy. You may think that my examples are far-fetched, but no, I don’t think that they are. We are at least two/thirds of the way down the wormhole.
Many years ago (maybe thirty?), I was speaking at an education conference on the East Coast. This particular event was a panel discussion. One of the other teachers on the panel was a math teacher from Canada. I told a story about the look/say method of reading instruction, narrating how we were once interviewing a young man (a Christian) who had just graduated from a nearby university with a teaching degree. I asked what he would do if he had written the letters H O R S E on the board, and asked a student to read it. What would he do if the student said pony? The answer was “I would praise him.” In the ballpark, right? An equine quadruped, to be sure.
On that panel, I followed this up with some kind of a joke, saying that the time would come when this mentality would be on display in our math classes. “What does two and two equal, Johnny?” What would you like it to equal? This got a laugh, as it should have, but our merriment was cut short by the Canadian math guy. He said, in all seriousness, that this was already the case at his school.
If there is no such thing as truth, then you cannot have true answers. And if Jesus did not rise from the dead, there is no such thing as truth.
The myth of neutrality operates in this way. It assumes that the basics of knowledge are common to all worldviews. That would be the cold porridge. All the students come to the government schools with their empty bowls. They get these bowls filled up with porridge, and then they go home to have all the worldview condiments applied. The Christians mix in brown sugar, the Hindus mayonnaise, the Muslims mustard, and the atheists cocaine. However, the theory goes, everybody gets the same basic, underlying stuff.
The problem is that this is simply not true.
And if there is no neutrality when it comes to something as open and shut as a math class, then what do you do when you get to history? History is a story, and stories must have protagonists and antagonists. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys?
There is no school in the world that simply gives out a bare recital of facts. Luther was either a good guy or he wasn’t. Columbus was either a genocidal harbinger or he wasn’t. The American Founding was either a very good thing, or it was not a very good thing. Every narration of historical events will inevitably take sides. That is what story tellers do.
This is why all the statues are being pulled down. This is why the 1619 Project is so pernicious. This is why high schools are being renamed. There is no such thing as a neutral history. It makes a difference whether Moses or Jeroboam writes the history curriculum. Which god brought us up out of the land of Egypt?
There is such a thing as honest historical narrative, but there is no such thing as “objective” historical narrative.
As has been observed over the years, it is easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled. In order to fool them, all you have to do is flatter them. In order to convince them that they were foolish enough to have been taken in, you have to begin by “insulting” them. You have to persuade them that they were not nearly so wise as they believed themselves to be.
As encouraged as we should be by the fact that millions of American Christians have pulled their kids out of the government school system, the stark fact remains that most American Christians have not done anything of the kind. They are still being fooled by the myth of neutrality.
And it is astonishing how the force of that myth lingers, doing so long after the mask has been removed. There is no neutrality. There can be no neutrality. What will it take to persuade all Christian parents that this is in fact the case? Mandatory weekly chapel services in which satanic rites are performed? Mandatory pole dancing lessons for the cheer-leading squad? Sacrificing a white heifer to Aphrodite at half time?