Newsletter 95

 

Contents.

 

Freedom of choice.

Teaching tip 68 – God’s love.

Testimony. God loves you – pass it on.

Answering the five reasons why Christian Religious Education should not be allowed in state schools.

Funnies.

 

 

 

 

Freedom of choice.

 

Humanist / Naturalist groups have often criticised Christians for opposing their "freedom of choice." Examples are their freedom to abort an unwanted foetus, their freedom to have a same-sex marriage and their freedom to practice euthanasia. In general their philosophy is "I am not answerable to anybody. Therefore, I have freedom of choice, and so anything is permissible - as long as nobody gets hurt."

 

I find it rather ironic that these humanists / naturalists, and the "Secular Education Network" in particular, are vigorously opposing the rights of New Zealand primary schools to offer Religious education (RE) programmes, and to give parents the right to choose to let their children attend them.

 

All parents have the right to choose to withdraw their children from these classes, so why does anybody wish to remove the rights of schools to offer the RE programmes and parents to allow their children to attend them if they wish?

 

Perhaps the humanists / naturalists should amend their philosophy to include something like "We believe in freedom of choice for us, but not for anybody who disagrees with us."

 

 

 

T.T. 68. God’s love.

 

An old song entitled “More than yesterday” is about a girl who asks a boy “How much do you love me?” His answer is “I love you more than yesterday, but less than tomorrow.” In other words he was telling the girl that his love for her was increasing every day.

 

I wondered if God loves us in a similar way. Is His love for us growing stronger every day?

 

The answer to the question is “No”. The reason is that God already loves us to the maximum extent. He can never love us any more than He does today, or any less than He does today. God may not like some of the things we do, especially if we ignore Him or are nasty to other people, but He will still love us to the maximum because “God is love.”

 

If anyone asks “How much does God love me?” Point them to the cross.  You cannot love anyone more than giving up your life for them.

 

 

 

Testimony – God loves you – pass it on.

 

A number of years ago a fellow “Bible in school” teacher (I will call her “Pat”) felt led by the Lord to help another woman in her church (I will call her “Jean”). Jean’s husband had deserted her, leaving her to bring up two young children on her own. Pat decided to help out with Jean’s financial burden. Therefore, every month for a number of years, Pat anonymously paid a sum of money into Jean’s Bank account.

 

When Jean’s children were older, she was able to go out and get a job. Upon doing so, she was now in a position to pass on God’s love to someone else. Because someone helped her in her time of need, she found another lady who was struggling financially, and started giving money to her regularly.

 

We are all recipients of God’s love. Let us keep on passing it on, especially to those in greatest need.

 

 

 

Answering the five reasons why Christian Religious Education should not be allowed in state schools.

 

 

A vigorous campaign is being conducted with the objective of making all New Zealand state schools completely secular. There are five main arguments that are used as to why these Christian Religious Education (CRE) programmes should stop. These are :-

 

1. The closing of schools for 30 minutes per week is illegal.

 

An amendment to the Education act in 1964 allowed schools, if they wished, to officially close for half an hour a week to allow Religious teaching to take place. In this way the schools remained "Secular". Parents who did not wish their children to participate had the right to withdraw them from such classes. Thus, such an arrangement is, and always has been, completely legal. 

  

As a way of compromise, some have suggested that the CRE classes should take place outside normal school hours i.e. at lunchtime or after school. As schools are officially closed while CRE classes are taught, they already take place outside school hours. CRE classes held at lunchtime or after school would have to take place in a hall, without access to basic teaching aids such as desks, chairs, whiteboards, pens, pencils, etc. Also, whether the classes meet during lunchtime or after normal school hours, they would be competing with eating time, playtime, and various other activities that the children would have to give up if they wished to attend the Religious Education class.

   

2. Christian Religious Education is just a means of indoctrinating children.

 

There is a world of difference between indoctrination and passing on knowledge about a subject. The purpose of CRE is to teach the basics of the Christian faith and show the important role it has played both historically and culturally in the development of New Zealand's society. It is taught as a Belief system with such phrases as "Christians believe that - - - - " or "The Bible teaches that - - - - " commonly being used.

 

The religious education teachers are drawn from all the main Christian (still by far the main religion in NZ) denominations and teach from an agreed syllabus that deliberately avoids any controversial subjects or anything that may offend people of different beliefs.

 

3. Schools are discriminating against the children that are withdrawn from CRE classes.

 

Because schools are officially closed during CRE lessons, children are not obliged to attend them. All parents need to do if they do not wish their child to attend such classes is notify the school. The school will then provide suitable alternative activities for such children. Some schools run their own non-religious "values" programme at the same time so as to give parents a choice of which one for their children to attend. However, most parents still opt to send their children to the "Christian" programme.

 

Really it is those who oppose Christian education who are doing the discriminating. Because maybe one parent doesn't want their child to attend the CRE class, they seem to think they have the right to force its closure against the wishes of the thirty or so other parents who support it.

 

Over the last few years many schools have polled parents on this subject. However, I do not know of any school where the poll showed that the majority of parents favoured stopping these programmes - although some of the schools went ahead anyway and stopped the programmes to appease the vocal minority opposed to them. St. Heliers school is a recent example. Their poll found that 68% were in favour of the programmes, 19% were against and 13% didn't care either way.

 

4. If Christianity is taught in schools, then so should all religions.

 

It is estimated that there are about 4,200 religions in the world! It is generally agreed that there are twelve "major" world religions, but it would still be impracticable to teach them all. Someone may suggest that only the "important" religions are taught, but who would decide which religions were "important" and which were not?

 

Actually, if their are high numbers of people following a certain religion in one particular location, there is no reason why their representatives cannot approach the local school to ask them to allow teaching of their religion. In fact, I know of some schools that already allow this.

 

5. A better use of children's time would be in studying more of the normal school curriculum rather than having a CRE programme.

 

Let's put this in perspective. Schools vary in the amount of time that they allocate to CRE programmes. However, not many schools allocate as much as 15 hours per year, and many allocate considerably less than this. I am sure that each year most children will spend considerably more time than 15 hours absent from school for various reasons.

 

The CRE programme teach students about the importance of such virtues as respect, integrity, honesty, tolerance, discipline, acceptance, forgiveness etc. They are intended to help develop a safe and friendly environment in which the students will be more likely to develop good habits and be better equipped to make better life choices. They are thus designed to help maintain a safe and friendly school environment in which students thrive.

 

As well as making a difference to the moral standards of the students, these programmes would also be expected to result in them becoming more disciplined and conscientious towards their school work. This appears to be the case. National Standards results show that, far from diminishing the academic achievements of the children because of the less time spent studying the normal school curriculum, schools that allow Religious education actually perform better on average than those that don't (even though the average Decile values of the two groups were almost identical).

 

 

 

Funnies,

(Forwarded by Derek Sweetsur)

 

 

1. Two boys were walking home from Sunday school after hearing a strong sermon on the devil.

One said to the other, "What do you think about all this Satan stuff?"

The other boy replied, "Well, you know how Santa Claus turned out, it's probably just your dad.?

 

 

2. I decided to go to a mixed religion seminar for the first time.

 

I sat down and  the Catholic Priest came up to me, laid his hands on my hand, and said, "By the will of God the almighty and Jesus Christ, you will walk today.”

 

I told him I was not paralyzed. 

 

Then came the Jewish Rabbi, and he laid his hands on me and said, “By the will of God the almighty, you will walk today.”

 

Again, I told him there was nothing wrong with me. 

 

Then came The Muslim Imam, and he laid his hands on me and said, “By the will of Allah the almighty, you will walk today.”

 

Again, I told him there was nothing wrong with me.

 

Then came The Buddhist Monk, and he laid his hands on me and said, “By the will of Budda the almighty, you will walk today.”

 

Again, I told him there was nothing wrong with me. 

 

After the prayers and sermons, I stepped outside and it became clear to me what they had all been talking about: My car had been stolen!!

 

 

3. A minister tells of his first Sunday in a new parish and of presenting the children's message.
It seems the sanctuary in the new church had some magnificent stained glass windows.

 

So, his message centred on how each of us are called to help make up the whole picture of life (the family of God).

Like the pictures in the windows, it takes many little panels of glass to make the whole picture.
And then he said, "You see each one of you is a little pane."

And then pointing to each child, "You're a little pane. And you're a little pane. And you're a little pane. And..."
It took a few moments before he realized why everyone was laughing so hard.

 

4. During his sermon, our pastor quoted Matthew 19:19, "Love your neighbour as yourself."

To emphasize the point, he asked three times, with increasing intensity: "Who is my neighbour? WHO is my neighbour? WHO IS MY NEIGHBOUR?!"

Each time he asked a young boy behind us answered (mimicking the pastor’s intensity, but not quite as loud): "Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers!"   

 

 

 

5. A Sunday school teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages in the Bible - Psalm 23.  She gave the youngsters a month to learn the chapter.  Little Rick was excited about the task - but he just couldn't remember the Psalm.  After much practice, he could barely get past the first line.  
 
On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Ricky was so nervous.

When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly, "The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know." 
[forwarded by Larry Perry]

 

 

6. A pastor was giving the children's message during church. For this part of the service, he would gather all the children around him and give a brief lesson before dismissing them for children's church.

On this particular Sunday, he was using squirrels for an object lesson on industry and preparation. He started out by saying, "I'm going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what it is." The children nodded eagerly.

"This thing lives in trees (pause)   and eats nuts (pause)..." No hands went up.    "And it is grey (pause) and has a long bushy tail (pause)..."                  The children were looking at each other, but still no hands raised. "And it jumps from branch to branch (pause) and chatters and flips its tail when it's excited (pause)..."

Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand

The pastor breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. "Well...," said the boy, "I *know* the answer is Jesus...but is sure sounds like a squirrel to me."

 

Maurice Sweetsur.

 

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