by Dr. Glen Schultz Reprinted with permission
Whether you watch the original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage released in 1980 or the sequel series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, that was released in 2014 you will hear the same daunting words of Carl Sagan.
The cosmos is all that is, or ever was or all ever will be!
This statement is the foundation of all secular education. The reason I say this is because secular education denies the existence of God. When God is taken out of the picture, evolution becomes the only alternative to trying to explain the existence of everything, including our own origin.
When Sagan made this statement, it would shape everything else that would be taught in the series. It still remains the defining statement of secular education. For example, Sagan went on to make the statements, “We will pursue the truth no matter where it leads and we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.” Unfortunately, neither of these two statements can be true. This is because Sagan had already denied that there is a God. So when the truth or facts leads to the existence of God, they will not go there because it would negate their foundational belief that the cosmos is the only thing that is eternal.
Richard Lewontin, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, reinforces this truth when he states, “We are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated…Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
There is another very bold statement that we need to consider. God, Himself, says,
“I am the Alpha and the Omega–the beginning and the end,” says the Lord God. “I am the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come–the Almighty One.” Revelation 1:8 (NLT)
God declares that He alone is eternal. He is and has always been and will always be! This truth stands in stark contrast to Sagan’s claim that the cosmos is eternal. The reality is that one must accept either Sagan’s or God’s statement as being true. You cannot accept both because one contradicts the other.
As I pointed out above, Sagan’s claim that the cosmos, not God, is eternal shapes everything that will be taught in a secular educational system. The same is true about God’s declaration that He is eternal and the creator of everything. This is the foundational cornerstone for kingdom education. This means that the debate cannot be about where Christians should send their children to school. The debate must be about what is the foundational belief statement undergirding the educational philosophy of the school. Is the school grounded on the belief that the cosmos is eternal or that God is eternal? Unfortunately, too many Christians do not even understand what the real battle is about.
If we are going to raise a generation of young people who will be devoted followers of Christ, they must be educated in schools that are founded on the reality that God is the one who is, who always was, and who is still to come — the Almighty One! If we don’t do this, we will continue to watch our youth leave the faith and live life from a completely secular worldview. The choice is ours. What will we choose?