Chapter Two

Divine Agenda

NEWS 135

QUENCHING SCHOOLS
Misapplication of the Government Fire Brigade

Reported in New Life in a recent issue, near the end of our great A.D. 2000

 Introduction

This material and news below, provides some of the undergirding to the undoubted phenomenon of increased and more readily extreme miscreancy in youth,
increasing use of violence - even a major problem in New York schools,

associated with decreased respect,
soaring sense of self-importance,
with much of it wrought into contorted and twisted shards,
in many cases,

with the full co-operation of sociological philosophy and educational practice.
(Cf. SMR Ch.4, Part II, Scoop of the Universe 40, Barbs, Arrows and Balms, Appendix 1, Lead us Not into Educational Temptation)

We noted in News 134, that part of the Divine Agenda, provides for this: that Children will become notably disobedient to parents and presumption, arrogance and implacability generally will become common (II Timothy 3).

Let us then examine a recent news item, being duly prepared!
 
 

THE NEWS

It is without doubt amazing, what can be done in this democratic country with its free expression.
Teachers and students may of course be denied this freedom.

Not that it is entirely free. A few little things like governmental orders as to what or how the children may be taught, in a supermarket choice by government officials, who not being Einstein, and not being sufficient even if they were, tend often to make a muddled medley of will, and fizzy fervours of long discarded academic follies, anomalously and at times, anachronistically, de rigueur. They may be FORCED on the unwilling school, parents, like a panzer march.

This we have seen in That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 8, to be read in conjunction with its Ch. 1. The excited trend towards the same was examined in great detail, likewise, in Lead Us Not into Educational Temptation!

The total horror of these subterranean governmental dabblings notwithstanding, it is still quite a splash of sovereignty in another of our States, which calls itself on registration plates, the Premier State, New South Wales.

This however is not the sort of premiere which one would attend.

• In short, we have here an exhibit. There has long been a Primary and Secondary school of some apparent distinction, in the Sutherland Shire of the city of Sydney, that harbinger and herald of hope, in the Olympic Games (although its closing ceremony, by report, had some elements as near to hope as hell to heaven - perhaps however not more than one or two). This particular College faces, through the pleasurable kindness of the Government, despite what is deemed an outstanding record and test result, a closure, a removal, a return to nothing:  because it does not share the secular dismissals of discipline, REQUIRED by the Government. That at least was the status quo, in the news given in New Life as above.

This private school has, or had, it seems has, some 70 Staff, so that it was not a place for a governmental peccadillo, statistically speaking.  Quite a few hundred people in our liberated democratic midst, were involved. Now this school was religious. In fact, it espoused a particular religion. According to the UN work on the topic of avoiding discrimination in religion, this is all right. The UN being the nearest approach to a big brother with which our nation is afflicted, this is interesting. Indeed, in its work on this topic, the UN assures us, rather nicely it seems, that it is concerned, to use the formal title of its words, with

• THE DECLARATION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF INTOLERANCE AND OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RELIGION OR BELIEF (proclaimed in this land, Nov. 25, 1981).

Of course the Commonwealth Constitution in Section 116 prohibits the Commonwealth from making "ANY LAW FOR ESTABLISHING ANY RELIGION, OR FOR IMPOSING ANY RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE, OR FOR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE OF ANY RELIGION, AND NO RELIGIOUS TEST SHALL BE REQUIRED AS A QUALIFICATION..." (Emphasis added.)
 

• However, this liberty,
• so kindly donated from the international disunity, often misculled as the international community, though it does often become rather more unified when its dictates divide in some cases, as here:
• it is more verbal than actual, more virtual than virtuous.

As  noted in The Mystery of Iniquity, in The Other News, which deals with this topic, there is a strangely esoteric insistence, and in fact one which amounts to tyranny, in this international document. What does it divulge to the stunned reader, the awed observer watching the mouth of the nations ? This:

• " THE CHILD SHALL BE PROTECTED FROM ANY FORM OF DISCRIMINATION ON THE GROUND OF RELIGION OR BELIEF. HE (sic) SHALL BE BROUGHT UP IN A SPIRIT OF... UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, RESPECT FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF OF OTHERS, AND IN FULL CONSCIOUSNESS THAT HIS (sic) ENERGY AND TALENTS SHOULD BE DEVOTED TO THE SERVICE OF HIS FELLOWMAN."

If, then, the child, or his parents, or church, or religious body, or belief unit or corps, should consider that this world is not a site of universal brotherhood, that brotherhood is not gained by a sort of lowest common or even uncommon denominator of flesh, of human items, of mankind, or some sort of reading into them of an invisible imprint which controls to the long-sighted who see beyond it all in the manner of mystics; and if it deems this international doctrine nothing less than spiritual subterfuge, scientific disorder and political invasion, what then ? Then too bad! The UN is of this other opinion. You cannot, nay, you MUST NOT have liberty. This, after all it seems, is what the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief is all about: ensuring that there will be plenty of it, but only of the kind they prefer.

The UN Declaration adopted in this land ? Yes, this is so, along with the Child Rights which tends to make parents unpaid servants of the State, should they not happen to share the implicit religion of that document (cf. The Other News, Appendix I).

It is, then, rather strangely named. AGAINST discrimination ? Decidedly odd, for it seems rather to intimate the one which it desires.
 

 

WHO IS CANING WHOM ?

Thus can come the discrimination so monumentally appearing in NSW, where the Minister of Education appears even unwilling - not disposed - to SEE the school in question, since, he reportedly affirms, there is no other school given the privilege of (manifesting its religion by) being at liberty to CANE, in his jurisdiction.

Stop it or shut! appears to be this undiscriminating doctrine of de-licensed liberty, in this case.

That certainly is reminiscent of Communism. No! says the Commissar, there is no one in this entire country who has such privileges accorded, and neither shall you!

Why not ? Because they don't! How profound...

This leaves perfectly open the anterior question: By what right, on what ground is no other school permitted this liberty ?

Perhaps it is that no one, repeat, no one, should be allowed to imbibe alcoholic beverages at a pub, because someone, or some ones managed to get drunk. Actually, one would not be at all perturbed at such a RESULT, were it legal; it is however the MEANS of achieving it democratically which are to the point here in the analogy. Is abuse of some by others a ground for removing from all the liberty, which, if abused, would add to it ? Is swimming to be banned because some drown ? Is walking to become outré because some are run over, and indeed, even are careless is crossing streets ? Are hundreds of years of caning practice to be annulled because some one finds that he has not allowed anyone recently to use the cane, and thus sees no reason to break this astonishingly profound practice of prohibition ?

Good schools have often not hesitated to have restraints on the practice. Thus in some, the Headmaster or Principal ONLY gives the cane. In some, there is an extreme reluctance to use it, and it is considered only when all else fails. In others, doubtless its use is and has long been, too ready. In others again, its use is so rarefied that many problem aristocrats of disorder, wags and wasters are allowed to waylay the ears and concentration time of others, in order to dramatise their wares.

If they need psychiatric, moral, spiritual help, that is a different question. Here, we are dealing with what is short of that, where students do not need to be withdrawn for treatment, and actually continue, full-blast like a ship's siren, in the class-room. Pity is not co-extensive only with some; there are others. Needs if sufficiently individual, can temporarily at least, disqualify from group work. This is like an infectious disease. In practice, however, in the author's own not entirely small experience, this is a relatively rare phenomenon, compared with the wilfully wayward, whose licence is often little more, and whose actual need is not far beyond an exhibition of foolishness in categorical terms.

If there is, on the other hand, some principle, well let it judiciously be examined. That is what class and group teachers, counsellors and chaplains are for, in part, and indeed Principals. Frequently the principle is little more than this: that no notoriety is available academically on the present program of the wrong-doer, that some relief is desired in an easier way than in work, that perhaps no impression is adequate without disruption, and that where there is room for such a regimen, it is seized and used. Removal of some of the means of exposure of folly, rebuke to evil, is not the best way, whether in medical treatment of disease, or class-room treatment of malaise or even malice, to secure the best overall result.

As  to the cane, or if you will, duly administered corporal punishment: one well remembers in Victoria, as part of what Paul calls 'tent-making', that is, use of a secondary professional practice to help support the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, coming to a technical school. At that time, these were in general the less academic, more trade-orientated schools for teen-agers. This school, unlike some others met, was notable for courtesy, respect and attention. It was a change so impressive that one naturally sought some distinctive. Yes, in this school, rather exceptionally in that sort of setting at the time, the cane was used. There was a limit; there was a place where the buck stopped, and the bucking was disallowed. There was no obvious NEED for it, one might remark; but its presence was felt in its absence, when the more notorious forms of invasion of the peace might be considered by juvenile mavericks.

• Prevention is often better than cure; and the knowledge of justice can remove the desire to exploit it.

In Scotch College, Melbourne, the use of the cane in the days of my eldest brother, and perhaps in my own time, though it never was my concern, was the work of the Principal - much loved, tender-hearted but by no means soft-headed. Justice existed; weakness could co-exist, but this more readily than misused strength. Enterprise could be shown in disorder; and enterprise in meeting it. There were limits.

Foolishness, in much of current education - and one speaks as having dipped into the bags of the rich and the poor, the mighty and the remote, the technical and the academic, the secondary and the tertiary - is positively encouraged by useless contrivances of quasi-adulthood, such as 'student contracts', in which, like suppliants, adults deal with bargaining 'teens, in order to see if they might both be pleased in some compromise to be worked out. It is allowed in the name of originality, self-esteem, self-advancement, teachers being resource-persons instead of resourceful imparters and educational stimulants if not, sources of inspiration. The educational affair, in such ways, readily becomes more and more a glaze over the surface of the electronic, the impersonal. Morals are not to be taught, unless they are necessary for the survival of other students. Self-indulgence is an imperative not to be negatively addressed. Character is a luxury not to be warranted in the building trade of education, for after all, some character might want character to be ostentatious, outrageous, egregiously defined, and who is to limit!

Debasement is approaching that of Sodom, while counter-constructional, anti-design activity is also given juvenile resource aid, before Aids.

The cane in this un-succulent situation ? Outrageous. Why, the student might not want it.

Thus, the propaganda line appears to go: to protect the degeneration generation^*1 from redress, it is essential to protect the cane from use.

Now had the point been to ensure that sadistic, rough-handled substitutes for real teaching skill were not the modus operandi, that the cane was not the protection barrier for the ineptly frustrated teacher, one could more than sympathise: one would even endorse the restriction in such a case. If moreover, protections such as outlined above, were in force, it could be wise. If sanctions below this level were the norm, if necessary, and caning were embarked upon only on a persistent and foolish scenario of abutment into the beauty of educational peace and prosperity: then one could well concur. But banning!
 

 

A MORAL ARBITER AND PITSTOP FOR PRINCIPLE ?

Precisely who does this Minister of Education consider that he is ? A moral arbiter, a social engineer, a prison officer who liberates the oppressors ? What does he consider he is ? A king who does not give audience ? What are the principles to be used in DENYING A RELIGIOUS COMMAND COMMON IN OUR SOCIETY FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS (as found in Proverbs 29:17, 19:18, 13:24, wherein the use is endorsed), so that religious freedom might be as total as alleged ? Is liberty of religion or belief to occur because someone has a religion or belief, and is Minister of Education, which excludes the liberty of others ? Or is it the whole government of which the Minister is merely authorised mouth-piece in this matter ? Possibly, very possibly.

Yet this merely aggravates this extraordinary presumption, tending to establish the tenets of one religious option, against those of another, disallowing altogether those who are not only professedly Bible believing Christians, but those who implement what they believe,  from the principles and precepts of their religion, in the field of education.

That it is a strange testimony to the ensuring of no discrimination in the field of religion. It means that EVEN IF parents are willing by tax to help government schools implement so socially engineered a policy in State schools, they STILL may not, even at ADDITIONAL EXPENSE, execute the policy of the Bible in those they support. This tyranny is perhaps - after that in South Australia, as a rebuke to the liberty which this country bought so high, at the political level, in two world wars: a negative hard to surpass!
It is discriminatory, undisciplined, authoritarian relativism without even possible logical support as the truth^*2, a function of a decadent morality in the world, and a prop for the permissive equation in the hearts of the young.

One well remembers a young lady talking to her mother, or report of the same. I did not discipline you, the Mother reportedly had said. I wish you had! came the reply. The squalor of self-indulgence is by no means the only mood which can seek amplification in the straying human heart, or the unguided naïveté of life in the young. There is also a yen, desire for the peace of propriety, the wisdom of justice, the relish of righteousness, the love of adept skill which however muted by sin and society, yearns in the very midst of debasement, for that fineness of expression which can tame the evil and realise the good. Conscience, even now, is not automatically shut down (cf. Galatians 5:17, Romans 2:14).
 
 

LIFE DISCIPLINES

Life DISCIPLINES. That the upbringing for it should omit this form of actual, sharp, clean and sure rebuke when the case is certain, even at the limit before expulsion, is mere dereliction. It fails through weakness to show what WILL be shown in strength.

The Commonwealth Constitution in Section 116 FORBIDS "any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion". To be sure, this is a Commonwealth law, but does NSW education then receive PRECISELY NO Commonwealth funds ? and is the character of the law relative to religion for the whole, to be rampantly, selectively and with the harshest of pressures, to be denied in the State ? Is it to be the LIBERTY LAND which is, however, far from free in some of its States ? Is this to be the defalcation in this nation, where words of statuesque principles are to echo in blind confusion and profusion, while deeds mock them ?

Thus the Government is censor or morals, codes, practices and author of private school principles at will, despite the lip-service to liberty ! Is its power so great ? Is its knowledge so profound ? Is it the new ULTRA-BIBLICAL AUTHORITY which is to TELL its double-paying citizens how to deviate from the Bible and the past with an an extravaganza of majesty which does not even need to discuss it.

Is this the new Nebuchadnezzar attitude where all must bow or be burnt!

Certainly, unless there is a reversal on this theme (and one hopes as an Australian citizen that this brutality and imposition will be merely a temporary failure what is involved), we shall be having to realise  a new datum.

It is this:

• that even in this relatively free country,
• to which many would arrive to shed their tears of relief, and fears of those too common State 'divinities' elsewhere, who are anything but divine:
• there is now the horrid head of the State idol arising,
• like ash from the dust of earlier dictatorships on the part of others,
• in other lands, swept to our shores,
• and beginning to form here, here also, into the shape of a whip.

The cane ? is it not in this very matter being used on adults, who, having laboured and doubtless sacrificed much, and implementing the express wishes of parents who have not NECESSITY there to send their children, are with much pain and authority, debarred from the use of what they have
built ? Who would defile the Bible, among those who believe it, by bowing to this idol of State abuse ?  What then ?
It is a straight confrontation in the Australian Commonwealth, and in the State of NSW, between the LIFE and practice of Biblical Christianity, and State PROHIBITION.

Such a development may seem minimal; but the principles are profound. Implement further, then, and where do you end ? Caesar is to require obeisance, then at any level he shall choose. And Caesar, he has never really been God, merely a name with power which was raised from the dust whither it departs.

If there is a fire, to which the Government brigade has in NSW so addressed itself, it would seem in this regard at least, it is being found in the wrong place.

It is not in the school to be subverted or CLOSED for non-conformity to State-induced uniformity (as was the last report), but in the instruments of closure that the fire needs control.

It is strange fire indeed in this land, and its dangers, like other bush fires, of spreading need to be addressed, and the thing extinguished before its devastations rage unchecked.

Fires ? They do not know. That is often a chief characteristic. Often those who perpetrate such things imagine they do well. This however as with all such fires that encroach on the houses of the people, is not so regarded by bush fire victims, nor is it surprising that they would wish the fire brigade applied to the fire where it is, not its destructive jets to their ways of life, stable and intact, only to be attacked by this latter-day deluge.

After all, if you are going to fulfil the prophecies noted in News 134, there will doubtless be means.  These now proliferate.

We have seen numbers of these in SMR Chs. 4, 8 - 9, in earlier news items, including pp. 232ff., 664ff., in Lead us Not into Educational Temptation, in Youth in the High Seas, in The Generation of the Dispossessed, in philosophies such as those exposed in SMR Ch. 3.

Now we just look at the State glass window, as in the events of this news item, and see what is happening where the action is.

In association with the events noted in Appendix I of The Other News, we are seeing the resultant syndrome develop, in the closest parallel with the causative sin:

·       the devastating degeneration of morality and understanding in the young

(cf. Matthew 24:11, II Timothy 3 where the time for this development is put in its patterned parameters),  

·       misoriented, misdirected, 

·       increasingly turned to fables (as predicted in II Timothy 4:4, cf. SMR pp. 927, 422Aff., 983, 867, 989ff., 999, 1024ff, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-3,  9, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 9), 

·       immersed increasingly in the pressures of manipulation, politically, 

·       militarily, notably Arab and South East Asian, and especially in Iran in the not distant past, where the defilement of youth - even very young - in premature battle occurred, and in China where the Red Guard (SMR p. 929), the young were entrammelled and entrapped in the 1960s,  in political manoeuvring both infamous and notorious, with a relish of rudeness and disregard for human relationships bordering on and indeed reaching assassination being PROPOUNDED and PULSED into their desecratory and abused juvenile hearts, as if fulfilment of Biblical prophecy were the implicit program! ; 

·       academically even intensively in the Western democracies as seen in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8, biologically,  with combinations of AIDS epidemics and survival morality, 

·       pharmacologically (cf. pp. 667ff.), with ever new scenes and scenarios of profit-lunging new drugs, 

·       in the perpetual vision of TV horrors (fulfilling most amply Luke 21:11), 

·       in the self-contradiction of the promulgation of Communist a-morality AS a morality (cf. SMR pp. 965-966, 850 and cf. The Other News 19) 

·       and in the preaching of decadence (the contemporary Gentile equivalent of Isaiah 5:10, as it began the ruin of Israel in ancient times).

The divine agenda is being followed, as if the world were opera goers, and the program were in their hand. The marvel is, however, that without consulting it, for the most part, the world follows it with a precision that is literally miraculous.
 
 

NOTES

*1
See: The Generation of the Dispossessed, Appendix 1 in Barbs, Arrows and Balms.

ON this current NEWS topic, see also Joyful Jottings 13.
 

*2
When one's interest is in the truth, scientific method is not the adequate tool. This ferrets out relationships and discerns happenings, recording, tabulating, analysing, comparing, imagining possibilities operationally, applying them in mathematical or orderly mode, verifying or anti-verifying according to the situation, as it reveals itself to be in such probing. One then considers the inter-relationship of theories already held, their own status, novel hypothesis, theory, law, and seeks integration with these in the interstices of one's own attempt in the field of investigation, and so on.

When it is done, it is able to expose what is there, pending more intricate, elaborate, precise, adequate, all-situations performance criteria,  within the created universe. It then must be realised that this is for this universe at this time, with our time and space in place, as it has been created for the reasons shown in SMR Chs. 1-3,10, and for example, in A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, and as slightly reviewed in the last chapter of this present work.

How it was created is always another question. Why it was created is also, always another question. Quantification is not qualification, and even qualities of operation do not determine either desirable or mandatory ideals, purposes or duties. As is often stated, description cannot impart prescription. What is, is not what must be morally, ought to be; and the way the car works, if you want an analogy, is not the purpose of the journey.

As to that, the only possible source, recourse and resource is one. The Maker and Creator. It is true some things clearly are contrary to health, for example, but then it was not a matter of BODILY health for Christ to be crucified, was it ? Nor was it best for the health for soldiers to endure 4 years of trench warfare in unspeakable blood, pus and putrefaction, in 1914-1918, was it ? Physical sacrifice is never the best for the body. SO there is always the PURPOSE, the IDEAL, the DUTY, the point of life, both in general, and in one's own individual case.

For this, scientifically, one has to consult what is logically indicated, and it is here that the movement from the normal methods of science is not total, but considerable; for no longer can you verify in the material realm. You can however USE the material realm to explore the relationship between what logic requires (as in SMR, the Bible as the divine handbook showing the program of the Creator, His purpose and His consummation as planned, no less than His creation, where we erred, do err, should not err, what His remedy  is and how it is to be obtained).

When this is done, one can, then, simply explore the word of God and the work of God and consider the correlation, the testability of the correlation, the relevance, the rigour, any other options, and get a quite scientific read-out. This is shown in SMR Chs. 2,4-10. It is found likewise in the realm of logic itself (as in SMR Ch. 5) where the perspective so obtained is found readily to resolve all philosophical quagmires, as nothing else even begins to do. This is worked further in Predestination and Freewill and others of the library, now 30 works, on this site.

In general, moreover, what denies or defies logic, cannot regard its results as valid, so that as shown especially in SMR Ch. 3, with That Magnificent Rock, Ch. 5, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Chs. 6 -7, every approach in a priori invalid, which does not HAVE an absolute truth available, and have one ACCESSIBLE in such a way that one's own person does not, because it cannot, limit, harass or blind its impact by its own twistings, errors, or inadequacies, its own blinkers or controls. This requires a person who can IMPART it as the Bible makes it most clear God INSISTS on doing in His OWN words (I Cor. 2:9-13, and countless Old Testament cases such as Jeremiah 23). This solves the problem logically, and allows its testing scientifically, which is an inordinate, incomparable success which can only be called total triumph, isolable from all other endeavours.

THEN one can know the TRUTH. Logic has led to validity, instead of invalidity being a double acting falsity, making logic outlawed, because the preliminary secular or relativisitic theory excludes in advance the very possibility of the result being sought.

Rather then one must, not with self-contradiction, but with the implements of consistent reason, find the result which also validates what has so well begun.

THEN and not before finding this resource and this Personal Being, one may find out what is the true and correct and designed and beneficial way to treat mankind. To be sure, there are not lacking some indexes in any case, such as the desirability of not pretending to be what you are not (self-made in ANY sense, for example), since reality has edges, rather sharp, and payments are in the coin of life. Yet to be sure of the entire and ultimate purpose, which is NECESSARY before being able to propound HOW and for WHAT people are to be EDUCATED, one must know the only true and living God, and what He has said.

Hence to state that from some secular, relativistic viewpoint, THIS is the way, is impossible. It becomes a mere imposition from social engineers, ignoring for that matter much of the evidence of moderation and enterprise, who for some philosophical reason are wanting, for some electoral reason, for some political reason, but always for some inadequate reason relative to absolute truth, what they dictate, as in the case in this Chapter. To declare as absolutely what is required from a relativistic base, is to be absolutely wrong for it is absolutely impossible.