Mountain Streams

There Are Absolutes! was first published December, 1975. Vol.1, No. 12. 1993, Mountain Streams.

THERE ARE ABSOLUTES!

--Contrary to the Teachings of Modern Education!

By David Brandt Berg

I've been thinking about the state of the World's youth and how so many of them have lost respect for God and Mankind. I believe that modern education is largely responsible for this downward trend. Young people today are taught that there are no absolutes. For example, back in the '50s and '60s my children were taught what was called "new math", which was based on set theory and numeration systems, but was so confusing, nothing was absolute, and few teachers could even understand it, let alone students and parents. The whole idea of new math was: "There are no absolutes!" I'm sure its whole purpose was to destroy confidence in God, the Absolute! True mathematics proves the order of the Universe. Math proves there is rhyme and reason to things. Math was the one thing you could be sure of, but then they started teaching kids you can't even be sure of that! That's the whole principle of modern godless education: There are no absolutes, nothing is certain!

Just like they've destroyed faith in the Bible, God, and His Creation, they had to destroy faith in math. Math is a form of perfection, and they had to destroy faith in the perfect because if there's anything perfect, then there must be a God, so they had to try to prove that math itself was imperfect. They say there are no absolutes in math as we used to think, therefore there are not necessarily any rights and wrongs in math. You see, if there are no absolute quantities, then there are no answers, and things are not necessarily either right or wrong.

The same idea is behind their attempts to destroy faith in God. If they destroy faith in God, that there is a God, then how can there be any right or wrong because there's nobody to make the rules. If there's no God, there's no Ruler, and if there's no Ruler, there are no rules, and if there are no rules or laws, then nothing is either right or wrong! In other words, if there are no absolutes in math, then they have destroyed another whole field of laws and order. If there are now no laws of math, then there's another whole field in which nothing is either right or wrong.

Look how they've attacked each major field that proves the evidence of a perfect God: The first thing they attacked was religion itself. The attack on the religion of the churches came first, and of course it wasn't hard to prove there was plenty wrong with them! But the subtlety of the attack on religion was that there was no religion that was necessarily right, therefore there was no religion that was necessarily wrong. Various religions were just religions, probably fabrications of Man anyway, so how could you say which was right or wrong?

In other words, there were no religious absolutes. The whole idea was aimed, of course, at destroying faith in God. And since there is no God, there is no really right religion or wrong religion, and therefore, no religion can make laws for anybody else.

I'd say the next attack probably was on philosophy, which in a way is really the religion of the love of Man--the brotherhood of Man. Having gotten rid of God and religion, then they had to work on philosophy, too, because that contained love. So they had to debunk philosophy, to try to prove there was no perfect philosophy, that no particular philosophy was either right or wrong.

It all goes back to the godless premise that if there is no Ruler, there are no rules, and if they can prove there are no rules, then they can debunk God and prove there is no Ruler. If they can prove each of these fields is imperfect, then they claim they can prove that the perfect doesn't exist--therefore God doesn't exist!

History is another thing which really proves the existence of God--God's laws of retribution, the rise and fall of empires because of either righteousness or wickedness. This is one of the surest proofs there is of the existence of God and His rules, including fulfilled prophecy. So what did they have to do with history?

They had to debunk history. For example, with American history, it is now very popular to say that George Washington was some kind of crook and other great men and women were really reprobate, debunking all the historical heroic characters. This is still a favourite occupation of reprobate historians, to claim that "it ain't necessarily so," that what we thought and heard all our lives about what these characters were really like was untrue, they weren't like that at all.

They even did the same with music, to the point that music was no longer music, it was just noise! It didn't have to be harmonious, it didn't have to be pleasant, so that there was no such thing as good or bad music, because there were no more rules!

Look at art: Modernistic art is total confusion--no rules, no beauty, no nothing! Just absolute confusion! It doesn't even have to mean anything. It doesn't have to have any sense or meaning or order. See, if you can destroy the meaning, if you can prove to people there's no meaning to a thing, then there's no order, no purpose and there's no plan, therefore, there's no Planner.

Both art and music used to follow very strict laws to produce real beauty, but both art and music have abandoned the rules, they've thrown away the laws, and the result has been total ugly confusion--noise, chaos, bedlam, ugliness, crudity! Music is no longer music, it's just sound, noise, bedlam! Art is no longer art--it's just chaotic splotches of colour and meaningless ugly forms!

They attacked Creation in the same way: They had to try to prove there was no order to things, no laws, no plan, no purpose. Therefore, there was no Planner or Anybody that gave orders! Therefore Creation just became a meaningless chaotic evolution: "It all just happened by accident!" Everything which had any rules or order or plan or purpose, proving that there is some kind of Ruler who makes the rules and gives orders and plans things with a purpose, had to be attacked by the diabolical to destroy any faith in the Absolute and therefore in God!

Their whole theme song is: "It ain't necessarily so; the things that you read in that Bible, they ain't necessarily so! Beginning with the Bible, that ain't necessarily so; and history, it ain't necessarily so; religion, it ain't necessarily so; and philosophy ain't necessarily so!" They've gone right on down the line through everything--"Creation ain't necessarily so; music, art, none of them are necessarily so, because there ain't no so! There's nothing that's true, so there is no truth," in other words.

Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" Jesus had already said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6). So if nothing is so, then nothing is true, as some would have you believe, then there is no truth--and no Christ! Nothing is right. Do you understand? So to disprove the existence of God they had to disprove the existence of truth and rhyme and reason, order, plan, laws, rules, etc.

In modern so-called "progressive education" or the new education, along with the new math, they've even tried to have new reading, that you didn't necessarily have to follow the rules to learn to read. In the U.S., they had a whole generation who grew up under progressive education in the big cities who were taught the progressive way of learning to read in which they used no phonics, no phonetics, no alphabet. You didn't even necessarily have to learn how to pronounce the word. All you had to know was what it meant, if it meant anything, and of course, according to them, it didn't necessarily mean that. So a whole generation of high school students arrived in college and couldn't read or write yet!

To abandon the Ruler they had to throw away all the rules, and the result is total anarchy! To abandon the One Who gives the orders they had to abandon order, and the result is total chaos! To get rid of God they had to get rid of the absolutes--the right and the wrong and the meaning and reason for things, and the result is total insanity, madness! Of course, the perpetrators of this crime against Humanity would disagree with me on that, too.

Because the most modern line of psychology is that nobody is really sane or necessarily really insane--he's just different from you or me! Because to be insane there have to be those who are sane, and who is to judge who is sane or who is insane? They've gotten rid of the Judge, so there are no laws of sanity or insanity either, so the mad are simply "different". Since nobody is actually sane, therefore nobody is really insane.

Drunkenness is no longer drunkenness--it's now a mere disease called alcoholism. Violations of sexual laws are no longer sins, they're mere perversions or aberrations. Some people simply like to be different, they say, and therefore they're not really wrong.

So it's no wonder that the politically anti-God and anti-Christ wind up in the ultimate anti-God political position of total anarchy, so that you can't even have rules of politics or government! Because to have government you must have laws and rules; and to have laws and rules, the ones who make them have to believe that some things are right and some things are wrong; and if some things are right and some things are wrong, then there must be some ultimate Lawmaker or Rule-Giver, which would have to be God!

So therefore the godless must eventually and ultimately become total anarchists who obey no rules, no laws, recognise no order, no meaning, no plan, no purpose, no nothing--and all is total chaos!--Which, therefore, accomplishes the Devil's ultimate purpose of total chaos, total confusion and total destruction of God's Creation! If you destroy the rules and abandon the Ruler, the result is nothing but total chaotic destruction of all things.

Therefore, a revolutionary education today would be a back-to-God education, and that's really revolutionary in this modern day and age! We must go back to real faith in religion, back to Creation in science, back to genuine love in philosophy, back to a plan in history, back to truth in language, beauty in art, harmony in music, rules in math, laws in learning to read, right and wrong in behaviour, order in government, and God in everything, the Creator of all things, the Designer of everything, the Planner, so that life again means something!

For God is the only One Who can give real meaning to living! So let's get back to God in our education, in every subject and every field. I taught school for years and I brought out God in everything, showing there was perfection in all things and that the Perfect One had a hand in the Creation of all, and there was a reason for everything.

Let's get back to sanity and reasoning, back to a pattern for existence made by a Divine Designer Who makes the plans according to rules. He brings about order with government in the place of lawlessness and disorder. He gives meaning to the Universe and purpose to the planets. He brings love to our hearts and peace to our minds and health to our bodies and rest to our spirits and happiness to our lives and joy to our souls and the wisdom to know that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). Mere knowledge is not enough, but how to use it for the glory of God is more important.

We must see God in everything to give it meaning, reason, purpose, plan, design and a goal, the perfection of the Kingdom of God! The godless would bring us to chaos and total destruction! But we, the faithful, must try to bring peace and order and a design for living given us by the Great Designer in His rules and laws, rights and wrongs and absolutes, without which there can be no peace and no order and no happiness!

Thank God for the absolutes and the rules of the Ruler, that we may know the difference between right and wrong and therefore find happiness through His Love and His loving laws and reasonable rules. Thank You Jesus! May God help you to "know Him, Whom to know is Life Eternal!" --And Absolute! (See John 17:3.)

Would you like to be forgiven for all of your sins and be absolutely sure of Salvation and Eternal Life? If so, simply open your heart to Jesus now by praying the following prayer:

Dear Jesus, please forgive me for my sins, and come into my heart and give me Your free gift of Eternal Life that I might find peace of mind and heart and purpose in life. Amen.

Jesus said, "And this is Life Eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3).