Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychology at Harvard University made this shocking statement at the Childhood International Education Seminar in 1973.
“Every child who enters school at age 5 is mentally ill because he enters school with an allegiance toward our elected officials, our founding fathers, our institutions, the preservation of this form of government we have, patriotism, nationalism, sovereignty… All this proves that the children are sick, because a truly well individual is one who has rejected all those things and is what I would call the international child of the future.”
For any parent who is paying the slightest attention to what’s happening in schools and society in general, it is obvious that we are in a war on a global scale.
The forces of darkness – the enemies of our souls – have our families and nation in their sites, and their aim is to take us down – one child, one family, one community at a time. They are using a weapon that is often invisible and undetectable to trusting parents and citizens.
That weapon is propaganda.
Defined as, “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view,” propaganda has been most effectively used in the public school system for over 75 years. Slipped into all grades under the guise of “modern methods of teaching for the sake of the children”, the social engineers (private foundations with an agenda, textbook developers, and “woke” administrators) have been progressively concealing, deceiving, and outright lying to us as they deliver false, damaging, even deadly information into the minds of the youngest children, K-12. And when the graduate enters college, the process goes into overdrive.
Otherwise termed “psychological manipulation”, this is probably one of the most critical subjects for Christians to study. Why? Because psychology is concerned with the health of the mind – a topic that the Bible addresses more than twice as often as it does love.
The Proverb says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” [i] Romans 12:2 warns us, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
The way we think affects our behavior, therefore we need to be very aware of the ideas we’re taking in so that we aren’t deceived and misled. For several generations, ALL students in America have been increasingly taught radical ideas coming from the most godless minds in history, breeding catastrophic results. Here are a few examples.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1933)
“Freud’s agenda for many years was to demolish religion with psychoanalytic weapons. Freud hated God and Christianity.”[ii] Freud believed that it is the people who reject a Biblical worldview and follow their “natural” desires who are truly ‘sane’. “His rebellion took the form of baptizing as natural the most hideously unnatural sins, …sins condemned by every society as the most unholy and unthinkable, such as incest, cannibalism, lust for killing, homosexuality, pedophilia (sex with children), sex with animals, etc.”[iii]
John Dewey (1859-1952) – Father of the Modern American Public Education System
“There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, immutable truth is also dead and buried.”[iv]
Dr. G. Brock Chisholm – 1st Director-General of the World Health Organization of the U N
“To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family tradition, national patriotism, and religious dogmas.” [v]
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) – Philosopher, Educator and Atheist
“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda….
Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class [the intellectual elite]… and the populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.”
“Where all children go to school, and all schools are controlled by the government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to everything contrary to official orthodoxy. Education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished”[vi]
An Orchestrated Plan
These were not carefully selected quotes that do not truly reflect the general thinking of most educated people in the 1950’s. Bertrand Russel won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952 for his various literary and philosophical works, and he voiced a theory of education that had been steadily gaining momentum among the educational elite since the early 1900s.
The results of implementing this philosophy of psychological manipulation in the public education system came to powerful fruition by the 1960s, yet most people are entirely unaware of its existence, and much less aware of its radical purpose and transformational influence. Through the use of propaganda weapons such as intimidation, humiliation, alienation and cancellation, young people learn to “behave as their schoolmasters would have wished.” They learn to be afraid to even consider an opposing viewpoint! That’s how propaganda works – don’t allow an opposing viewpoint to see the light of day, and the students will have only one viewpoint to believe in. They will be unable to think for themselves, and only trust those they are told to trust.
If you want to know why everything seems to be chaotic, or more correctly stated – insane – this is the reason:
God has been eliminated from American culture and we’re suffering from the Romans 1 syndrome — we’ve rejected God’s law and the nation has been given over to debased minds!
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
1. Return to Scripture
Colossians 2:8 – “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.“ It is every individual’s responsibility to keep watch over their mind – which requires reasoning through opposing ideas.
1 Peter 5:8 – “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” He is always “messing with our head.”
Knowing the Christian doctrine concerning psychology – the study of the mind – is vastly important in today’s world where we are bombarded daily with propaganda of all kinds and from every direction; and it is equally important to be aware of the tactics of the enemy of our souls, who seeks to take us captive by deceiving us through carefully-crafted, repackaged lies doused with a spray of perfume and painted with fresh make-up.
2. Boldly Enter into the Battle of Ideas
Hebrews 5:14 states, “Solid food is for the mature, who by constant practice have their senses [or powers of discernment] trained to distinguish between good and evil.”
The ideas we are being inundated with today are more than radical – they are evil to the core. Our goal, then, should be to train our senses to discern good from evil. In other words, to exercise our minds – parents first, then our children – to compare and contrastbiblical principles against those which oppose the thoughts of God[vii]so that (1) we will not be taken captive by the enemy’s deception, and (2) we will become well-trained to demolish those strongholds.
But this principle has been undermined over the last two centuries by a catastrophic false doctrine that has crept into the church.
We are warned by Christ of this danger in His repudiation of the Pharisees when He states, “This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men”.[viii]
3. Confront the “Commandment of Men” that is taking us captive
It is time in God’s providential history for the people who make up the Body of the church to humbly, but firmly, call our church leadership to account if they are absent in the battle of ideas. We can no longer hide from our responsibility to contend for the faith.[ix]
The False Doctrine of Pietism – the Commandment of Men that must be addressed
“Pietism” is the false doctrine which emphasizes personal holiness, devotion, and godliness (which, in and of themselves are desirous characteristics), but preached at the expense of calling Christians to the duty of affecting society for the good. It is a false doctrine because it not only cannot be found in Scripture, but it works contrary to direct commands given throughout the Bible.There is no closet on earth that God does not call us to enter with His light of truth to chase out the darkness! We are to make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all Christ’s commands.[x] By neglecting or contradicting this teaching, churches in effect promote a lukewarm Christianity that trains us to close our ears and eyes to the issues of the world. So, while our houses are burning, we just don’t pick up the water hose.
When a church preaches “We just teach the Gospel. We don’t discuss politics or cultural issues,” they, in essence, are teaching as doctrine a false principle that says Christians aren’t to mingle with social battles over education, economics, sexuality, law, history, and so on. This implies that “Christians are always to be quiet and submissive to the government” – even if that government has taken possession over these moral issues that Christ commands Christians to go to battle for.
We’re losing the war because we’ve deserted the battleground.
However, Judges 3:1-2 presents the principle that God’s people are always to be warriors in His army. It says that the Lord left nations in the Promised Land “to test Israel by them, to test all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. So that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before.”
Without addressing an opposing idea we battle against, we’ll never learn how to do battle; without a critical thought to wrestle with, we’ll never learn to critically think. Therefore, the churches need to lead the way in equipping their congregants to compare and contrast the ideas of the world against God’s principles in the Bible. This is not rocket science.
Pietism teaches that we are holier (more righteous) when we avoid the dirty issues of the world. But the scriptures continuously emphasize that we are to take God’s light and truth into the whole world… to a world that hates God and teach them to “obey all My commands.” How can we escape getting dirty when we are called to wrestle with the enemy in his own territory?
The Effects of Pietism on Church Leadership Today[xi]
- Only 37% of church leadership have a biblical worldview today
- 62%—possess a “hybrid” worldview: a combination of biblical principles, personal life experiences, and peculiar ideas adopted from other religions (Humanism, Eastern ideologies, etc.), cultural mores, and more.
- Among pastors, the percentage who possess a biblical worldview is anemic:
Title % with a Biblical Worldview
Senior Pastors 41%
Associate Pastors 28%
Teaching Pastors 13%
Children/Youth Pastors 12%
With this in mind, is there any wonder we’re losing our families to the strange philosophies of the world? With the leadership of most churches disengaged from and disinterested in the culturally moral issues confronting civilization, a huge segment of the church is taught by example to stay out of the affairs of the world. Thus, we are led to believe (on the most part) that the Bible does not address these divisive and dangerous ideas.
Therefore, for those clear-thinking Christians who understand what’s at stake when the church is absent from the battleground of ideas, it is “for a time such as this” that we are to hold our church leadership to account. No pastor is perfect, and the vast majority have the best of intentions. They simply are caught up in the models they were trained to follow. But it is our moral responsibility to bring our concerns and questions before our leaders – in a spirit of meekness and humility – and with a group of likeminded others have them answer a few basic questions, such as:
- Where in Scripture are God’s churches or His people called to send our most precious gifts from God – our children – to the godless state to disciple them for the most formative years of their lives? We find dozens of scriptures to the contrary.[xii] Therefore, shouldn’t the church be looking for ways to help Christian parents take their children back from the state education system?
- Where in Scripture are God’s churches or His people called to never engage in the moral issues of our culture? Again, we find many to the contrary.[xiii]
- Can you name a prophet or apostle in Scripture who wasn’t involved in counseling or criticizing a political figure? If not, then why are most of our pulpits silent? Where else can God’s people go to get the truth if the church is quiet? And if Christians are not being equipped to enter into the world as leaders in politics, law, economics, science, and medicine, how could we not expect to see evil continue to metastasize throughout this world?
My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.[xiv]
The important point is that we’re all in this together. We can help our pastors if they want to help us. I’ve spoken to dozens of homeschooling families, and everyone sees this issue as the “elephant in the room” that everyone is afraid to speak about, yet that’s exactly what our enemies want. We must not continue to be intimidated into silence. Our children’s future is in the balance.
[i] Proverbs 23:7 (KJV, NKJV, ASV, NASV, ESV)
[ii] Peter Gray, “Freud, A Life for Our Times” (New York: W.W.Norton, 1998)
[iii] Dr. Benjamin Wiker, author of Ten Books That Screwed Up the World
[iv] The New Republic, Dec. 5, 1928
[v] From a Speech given at the Conference on Education, California, September 11, 1954
[vi] Bertrand Russel, The Impact of Science on Society (1952), Unwin Hyman; New edition (November 1988))
[vii] 2 Cor. 10:4-5
[viii] Matthew 15:1-9 – especially verses 8-9
[ix] Jude 1:3, Ephesians 5:11
[x] Matthew 28:19-20, Hebrews 2:8, Psalm 8:4-6, among others
[xi] Taken from “American Worldview Inventory 2021-22: The Annual Report on the State of Worldview in the United States”
by George Barna | Apr 21, 2022
[xii] Scriptures teaching parent/church responsibility to disciple/teach: Deuteronomy 4:9-10, 6:7, 7:3-4, 11:18-19; Psalm 1:1-2; Ephesians 6:4; Isaiah 54:13; 2 Timothy 3:14-15; Proverbs 1:8-9; Matthew 19:14: Isaiah 28:9-10; Scriptures teaching being separate in marriage, religion, doctrines, philosophies, and lifestyles: Amos 3:3; 2 Corinthians 6:14-17; Ephesians 5:5-7; Isaiah 52:11; 1 Corinthians 6:16-17, 7:17; Matthew 6:33; Proverbs 6:27-28; and many more
[xiii] Matthew 5:13-16; Ezekiel 33:1-9; Mark 12:30-31; to name just a few
[xiv] James 3:1-12