Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch and in today's episode, we're asking the question, whose morality will kids learn? And this is prompted by an article I read recently that was looking at what's happening in the state of Texas where some elected officials are seeking to get the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. And they're meeting opposition, familiar opposition from those who say that religion has no place in the school system. Uh, Texas actually passed laws in June of this year requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms and encouraging and allowing for daily voluntary prayer, including the Lord's Prayer. Now, legal pushback followed again, as you might imagine, and the law was actually found to be unconstitutional. It was seen as the establishment of religion, which of course, the state is prohibited from doing. And the article that I read was actually an opinion piece in the New York Times where the writer was saying, look, we clearly don't want religion in the schools, but we do need morality. We need civic education. Keep the religion out and just teach kids what is right. And I have to tell you, as you probably know by now, I find this whole conversation incredibly frustrating for two reasons. The first is that the Constitution bans the establishment of religion, not the influence of religion. One of the ways you know that is that the Constitution itself is influenced by religion. There are a number of concepts in the Constitution, in other governing documents of the United States that are informed by a Judeo Christian worldview. And I know it's popular these days, and secular thinkers to think that somehow they stumbled into the concept of equality or stumbled into the concept of freedom or a freedom of conscience on their own, like they were just wandering in the wilderness of ideas. And somehow Western thinkers thought, you know, it'd be good if everybody was equal. But of course, that's not what happened. Equality, freedom of conscience, freedom of ideas. Those are Christian concepts rooted in the idea that were made in the image of God, rooted in the idea that government has God given authority that it cannot exceed. Uh, and the second idea here that really frustrates me is that somehow it's possible to teach morality totally untethered from anyone's worldview. It isn't. Look, school systems are full of worldviews, especially the secular worldview. They're teaching our kids their version of sexuality, their version of gender, their version of morality. Only it's rooted in what? It's rooted in nothing. It's rooted in their own thinking. That is it. So if you can teach my children your morality on a number of topics just on the basis that you think it's right, then why can't I, through my elected officials and through legal processes, pursue a different kind of morality being taught? Because the second thing here is. And of course I understand, um, I'm partisan. Morality needs a transcendent source. If you're going to go around saying things, for example, like, people are equal, equality matters, on what basis do you make that claim? Some people are stronger, some people are faster, some people are smarter, some people are better looking. How are they equal? On what basis? You have to have some source that you're appealing to, and that's where you're gonna have to turn, to some transcendent source. And as Christians, of course, I think that transcendent source is the Bible. But if you don't have that, here's what happens. You end up with what we have in 2025, which is people on the far left and the far right saying horrific things, things like it's okay to kill someone you disagree with, returning to racist tropes that I thought we had outgrown as a society. Because what they're saying is we don't buy the idea that everyone is equal. Where does that come from? And an, uh, immorality untethered from anything transcendent, will always lead here. That's why when you look at countries that have gone with socialist regimes that have caused incredible amount of murder and violence, what's at their core? There is no God, There is no transcendent morality. So the strong simply eat the weak. Without transcendent morality, we always go there, read a history book. And for Christians, I'll say this. We do belong in the public square. Jesus says in Matthew 5, we're a city on a hill. We are meant to give light. And I'm not suggesting that's only political, but it is, at least in some sense political. Everywhere Christians go, those of us that engage in government, those of us that engage in entertainment, in the restaurant industry and education, we bring the light everywhere we go. We have to stop being the one group that is apologizing for holding out our morality to shape our society, Someone's morality is going to shape our, uh, society. And this idea that we can somehow find a few basic concepts on which we all agree is ridiculous. We can't, because it has to be rooted in something. The minute I say we're all equal because we're made in the image of God, that means the baby in the womb has to be protected. That means the elderly can't take their own lives because of their pain. And now we're engaging in political discourse. It's inevitable. We have to do it. Listen, true neutrality is a myth. There are no neutral people. There are no neutral institutions. That's why the apostles said in Acts 5 when they were told by their government to shut up, they said, listen, we must obey God rather than men. I'm not suggesting we criminalize non Christian thinking. I'm simply suggesting we belly up to the table and share our ideas on, um, morality. Which, by the way, have shaped Western civilization. I'm okay with everyone coming to the table with their own world views and may the best ideas win. But I'm tired. I have to tell you. I'm tired of being the one group told to sit out of the conversation simply because our worldview is based on a faith claim. Everyone's worldview is based on a faith claim. And I'm willing to go toe to toe with any other faith claim anytime. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. 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