March 13, 2015
Education and the Depths of the Sea
The proposed Ontario sex-ed curriculum is an attempt to rationalize and normalize sin, and is a scandal upon our children, leading them to stumble.
In the gospels Jesus makes clear the seriousness of misleading the young to their own ruin. Having set a child in front of the disciples and highlighting the need for childlike humility, he said, ‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea’ (Matt. 18:6). The term here translated ‘stumble’ is the Greek word skandalizo and it means to mislead and throw someone unawares into ruin. So, anything that deliberately misleads a child toward ruinous, sinful conduct is in Jesus’ assessment ‘scandalous’ and merits serious sanctions. At the very least Christians must therefore make their voice heard when the young and vulnerable are deliberately led astray.
Scandal is certainly an appropriate term, then, for events which in recent weeks have ignited controversy in Ontario regarding the efforts of the Ontario Provincial Government to re-introduce its lurid sex-education curriculum in public schools that includes, among other things, teaching six-year-olds sexual ‘consent’ and by twelve teaches them the intricacies of homosexual relations. The charge to enforce this culturally Marxist propaganda (and post-modern literary theory) on the ordinary lives of unsuspecting children in the province is being led by the openly lesbian premier, Kathleen Wynne, whose moral authority for guiding how children should understand family and human sexuality is non-existent from a Christian and biblical standpoint – her own life example should be clearly understood by Christians especially because human desires and ideas have real consequences for social and political life.[1] But the rabbit hole goes even deeper in this instance because the former deputy education minister (2004-2007), Benjamin Levin, who repeatedly acknowledged his role in overseeing the curriculum development, was recently charged with seven child porn-related offences.
This former University of Toronto professor and member of Kathleen Wynne’s transition team as she took office, has just recently pleaded guilty to three child porn-related charges, including making written child porn, counseling a person to commit sexual assault, and possession of child porn. According to Joe Warmington writing for a Toronto newspaper, it is now clear from newsletters, memos and other documents that Levin repeatedly insisted that he was ultimately responsible for the educational materials and the new approach. On April 6th 2009 he clearly stated in a memo, ‘This province-wide strategy has been a priority for our Minister of Education Kathleen Wynne and me.’ In short, a man guilty of serious sexual offenses against children has declared that he was brought in to ‘implement’ the new radical education policy. The ‘Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy’ of Levin in 2009 is clearly what is embedded in the 2015 versions of the program. These individuals, who have gladly walked out in front of the pride marches in Toronto, are those who have shaped what is to be taught to the little ones in school.
How are we to account for the widely accepted promotion of a ‘queer revolution?’ Such brazen efforts to rationalize moral degeneracy and sin within the social order actually find their roots in the theological reality of guilt. Political reality is, at root, theological in nature. People living in habitual and unrepentant sexual immorality and sin in contravention of God’s law, whoever they are and whatever their office, face persistent and gnawing guilt. This situation is intolerable without justification and there are only two ways in which men and women seek justification; it will either be in the atonement of Jesus Christ by repentance and faith, or by all manner of efforts at self-justification and self-atonement, for atonement means ‘covering.’ Outside of Christ, how can sin be covered up? The favored form of self-justification in our culture is the social rationalization of sin. This is attempted by the subversive process of calling evil good and good evil. Having then progressively redefined moral truth in a manner that condones, normalizes and supports sin, social justification is within reach.
However, what must be eliminated is any potential rebuke of the new morality, for to permit rebuke threatens the security of the rationalization which keeps personal and public guilt at bay. This is why the widespread practice of the media and ‘progressive’ cultural elite is to demonize all in opposition to the new morality as evincing mental phobias, psychological oppression and hatred. Consequently, those opposed to the new sex-education materials are condemned as ‘suspect’ subhuman violators of human rights. Despite the fact that the program wishes to teach grade 3 students the absurd contradiction of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, teach grade 7 students about oral and anal sex (without any mention of the dangerous risk of STIs), and normalise every form of aberrant sexual expression with six gender identities, it omits any reference to the scourge of Internet pornography. Yet parents or critics who object to any of this are objects of extreme vituperation and ridicule.
From the standpoint of the gospel, the only way to account for this determined desire to cause the little ones to stumble is the deep-seated need for self justification by the rationalization of sin. If even the children are made participants in the practice and social approval of sexual sin, guilt (which they falsely believe is only a result of social construction), it is imagined, will disappear. The God-defined family is a living and breathing rebuke to sexual perversion and so must be destroyed as the normative pattern.
The true church, being a purveyor of the old morality, must also be silenced, marginalised and forced to support the rationalization. To secure the space for sin and immorality to be supported and publically approved children must be re-programmed by state indoctrination away from the old morality and normative family model. Moreover, they must be indoctrinated to celebrate sexual perversion. It is for this reason that the new sex-education plans (which are but the tip of the iceberg for an inclusive curriculum) must be implemented, for what is the new normal (the good) must become a standard and what is a standard must be enforced.
If anything qualifies as skandalizo in the misleading of children toward their own ruin, this is it. And what compounds such evil is that the motivation is nothing more than justifying sin and securing space for depravity. The word of God is plain that such things do not alleviate guilt but only compound it. The scripture is clear, ‘Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isa. 5:20)!’ It is a dreadful thing to fall under the censure of the King of kings and Lord of lords, for it is not ‘liberation’ that follows skandalizo according to Christ, but only the fearful depths. The churches’ call must therefore remain, ‘repent and believe the gospel’ (Mark 1:15) and its mandate with children must once again become ‘teach them to observe all that I have commanded you’ (Matt. 28:20).
[1] See: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-heartbreaking-sex-ed-premier-wynne-gave-her-own-children