Ignorant Christians & the Texas GOP

In case you missed it, the Texas Republican Party has officially declared their opposition to critical thinking skills.  Their approved 2012 Platform Committee Report, detailing every plank of their political agenda, specifically calls for the prohibition of teaching such skills.

Oh, they later apologized, saying the language got left in the document “by mistake.”  But, hey, let me apply some of my own critical thinking skills to this issue: (a) If it was in the final document, it was in earlier drafts; (b) if it was in earlier drafts, it was written down by an education subcommittee; (c) if it was written down by an education subcommittee, they must have originally considered it a valuable idea, worthy of further discussion; and (d) all 32 platform writers read it through and voted to approve it, signaling that after many, many reviews, the words "[w]e oppose the teaching of ... critical thinking skills" didn't jump out as anything all that objectionable to anyone.

Cosmic, Is This about Christianity?

You wouldn't think so, would you?  I use this blog to record my ramblings about living as a Christian in the modern world, and this month the modern world includes the 2012 Republican Party of Texas Platform Committee Report.  It is, without dispute, a religious document.  The language of its six key planks is liberally seasoned with the terminology of believers: “God” (12 occurrences), “faith” (9), “Judeo-Christian” (5), “church” (4), “religion” (4), “religious” (21), and “biblical promise to bless those who bless Israel” (only 1 use, but it was in a really, really long paragraph).

So I reserve the right to make faith-based observations about government actions, left and right.  If they’re going to try to put my God into their politics, then I’m certainly going to put their politics under my microscope.  Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Theocracy.  I prefer America.

Okay, Go Back to That Inflammatory Title

Thank you, I’d almost forgotten.  Please notice that I purposely use the word “ignorant” rather than “stupid” in the title of this piece.  That’s because “ignorant” means lacking knowledge or awareness of a subject, while “stupid” means lacking intelligence or common sense.  The first has to do with experience of or access to information.  The second refers to an inability to process that information, accessible or not.  Therefore, if you did not know the difference between “ignorant” and “stupid,” you were simply ignorant of the meaning of ignorance, not stupid about the meaning of ignorance … and now that you know, you are no longer ignorant of “ignorance,” for ignorance is fleeting.  “Stupid” has a longer shelf life.

The desire of the Texas Republicans is to keep American students ignorant of critical thinking skills.  Many party members, it seems, feel that higher level thinking is incompatible with the Christianity they know and love.  And, surprisingly, they are right.  From an education and information standpoint, evangelical Christians are ignorant, uneducated, in many areas.  Those who become less ignorant by means of higher education and critical thinking tend to become less like what Texas Republicans are willing to recognize as Christian.

I’ll let the research assert it for me:

•  From June 2009 research in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion: “[Our] research shows that college students are more religiously engaged than has traditionally been thought, but that this interest appears to be more broad than deep.”  In other words, students who attended institutions of higher education are moved to investigate religions and faiths outside the experience of their upbringing.
• From a 2007 Baylor Religion Survey: “I have no doubt that God exists.”  High school graduates: 71% agree.  College graduates: 58% agree.
• From the 2010 Pew Forum on Religious & Public Life U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey: “Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.”
• From an article analyzing the Baylor survey: “And all respondents with college educations were less likely to view the Bible as the literal word of God, but Catholics, evangelicals and black Protestants with increased education were more likely to view the Bible as being inspired by God.”

Read that last bullet again, because it explains a lot.  Christians, including evangelicals, who experience a college education actually grow in their faith that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.  What diminishes is their acceptance of it as a 100% historical, scientific, literal text.

And in Republican Texas, that don’t fly.

God Hates Uncritical Thinking

What sins of man elicit the most condemnation from the holy Scriptures?  Turn on your cable channel TeleGospel, and you’re likely to learn it’s homosexuality, abortion, and not donating enough to television ministries.  And not necessarily in that order.  But should you turn to the Bible with that same question and read it for yourself, you’ll get a different picture.  Hundreds and hundreds of verses bemoan foolishness, and whole sections of the Bible (especially the “Wisdom Books”) are dedicating to combating it.  Sometimes “foolishness” in the Bible refers to ignorance; sometimes it refers to stupidity; still other times it’s used as a euphemism for other sins.  But clearly, God is down on dumb.  Even Paul’s celebrated opening to 1 Corinthians, railing against the “wisdom of this world,” is not a condemnation of learning.  It is a rebuke against the internal factions of Christians who were behaving in a manner no better than the fractious world.  It was instruction on how to access the right kind of wisdom, revealed through the cross, the foolishness of God.

As a believer, I begin with the premise that all true wisdom is from God, and that I begin to operate in wisdom when I fear Him.  But that is where the Texas Republican Party and I part ways.  I need the critical thinking skills they would withhold.  I need them to choose well, to argue well, to chasten others well, to rebuke well, to reason well, to maintain well, and even to hand out tasks well.

Arguing.  Choosing.  Chastening.  Rebuking.  Reasoning.  Maintaining.  Delegating.  All seven of those concepts are embodied in a single Hebrew word, yakach, a word so diversely translated in English versions of the Bible that it probably has never come up in one of your local word-study sermons.  Yakach-ing is what Abraham did with Abimelech when reproving him and making him less ignorant about the incident with the well water in Genesis 21.  Isaac yakach-ed in prayer with God when convincing him to reveal the perfect wife for him in Genesis 24.  The judges in Judges "judged" (yakach again) over Israel for many years each.  Job desired to yakach with God and got scolded for it; Isaiah, on the other hand, is directly invited to yakach with the Almighty in his first chapter.

That last one, Isaiah 1:18, intrigues me.  Lkuw-na', wniwakchah, yo'mar YHWH, it reads, “ Come on, let’s jointly yakach, says the I Am.”  But what is yakach?  Translations abound:

NIV: “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord.

KJV: Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord

CJB: “Come now,” says Adonai, “let’s talk this over together.”

CEV: I, the Lord, invite you to come and talk it over.

Douay-Rheims: And then come, and accuse me, saith the Lord.

ESV: “Come now, let us reason [note: or dispute] together, says the Lord.

New Century: The Lord says, "Come, let us talk about these things."

So, what is yakach?  Is it settling matters?  Disputing?  Reasoning?  Talking over things?  Exchanging accusations?  Yes.  It is all those things and more in Scripture.

Dare I, then, with so many translations out there, attempt to offer one that embodies most of their nuances?  Yeah, I dare.  I suggest yakach be translated “apply critical thinking skills.”  In the majority of its appearances in the Hebrew Scriptures, that translation would serve well.  I admit it isn’t pretty.  It’s just a touch more accurate.

A Plea to GOP Texas

Dear Texpublicans,

Come, let us yakach together about this.  I realize you fear the unchecked spread of thinking and the disease of knowledge, and I respect your right as a sovereign state to oppose pondering matters too deeply.  But I insist on using, and on teaching, the tools and wonders of reason.  The Lord has invited me to reason with Him, as long as I stay rooted in fear of the Lord and His ways.  For you to throw out critical thinking skills – to throw out yakach – is to throw out Aquinas, or Augustine, or Luther, Kierkegaard, Athanasius, Barth, and C.S. Lewis, all of whom were brilliant Christian critical thinkers and some of whom you guys may have even heard about.

Think of it the way the NRA thinks about firearms.  It's not critical thinking skills that kill people.  It's people who kill people, when they misuse those critical thinking skills.  The skills themselves are promoted by the Word of God.

Do you fear your children will lose their faith?  Then I say, teach them critical thinking skills.  Show them reason and enlighten them in the ways of debate and logic.  If you don’t, the world surely will … and not in ways you’ll like, I promise you.  Do you remember that verse in Proverbs 22 about training a child in the way he should go, so that when he is old he will never depart from it?  Now is the time to apply that verse, right at home.

So I correct you, Texas GOP.  The Lord rebukes you through His Word.  But be of good cheer.  As it says in Job 5:17: “Happy is he whom the Lord corrects.”

The word for “corrects” in that verse is yakach.

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx