Reaping the Harvest of Secularism

May 4, 1999

You've got to love Bill Bennett. Recently he was on one of the talking head shows discussing the tragedy in Littleton, Colorado. All of a sudden he turned directly to the television camera and said, "Hello?"

That was the attention getter. But what he said afterward should also get our attention. He pointed out that these kids were walking the halls in trench coats, and apparently that didn't really get the attention of the teachers and administrators. But, he said, if a kid walked the halls with a Bible, that would probably get their attention. Something is very wrong with a society and a school system that would admonish a school kid for carrying a Bible spreading the good news while ignoring a group of kids wearing trench coats and spreading hate.

Former presidential speech writer Peggy Noonan used a similar example in her Wall Street Journal (April 22) column. She said, "A man called into Christian radio this morning and said a true thing. He said, and I am paraphrasing: Those kids were sick and sad, and if a teacher had talked to one of them and said, ‘Listen, there's a way out, there really is love out there that will never stop loving you, there's a real God and I want to be able to talk to you about him'--if that teacher had intervened that way, he would have been hauled into court."

And you know, he's right. One high school teacher in Colorado was taken to court merely because he had a Bible on his desk. He lost the case and lost it again on appeal.

And so we wonder why. We throw God out of the classroom, we throw the Bible out of the classroom, we throw prayer out of the classroom, and we even throw the Ten Commandments out of the classroom. And we wonder why.

I'm Kerby Anderson of Probe Ministries, and that's my opinion.