HEY KID, WANNA GO TO CAMP?

A modern phenomenon is the "camp." Harried parents pay big bucks to shuttle their children to various camps throughout the summer and even the year. I'm not talking about the traditional camping trip of going to the mountains for a miserable week and roughing it in miserable tents and miserable bedrolls whose discomfort level reaches Procrustean proportions. No, these are more indulgent and sophisticated camps, catering to various "needs."

I'm talking about horseback riding camps, frisbee camps, snowboarding camps, music camps, surfing camps, hunting camps, all kinds of camps to grab week after week of the youth's time. I await the day when a parent may have the opportunity to choose a "camp- camp," for their young ward, but that's down the road awhile.

WHAT KIND OF CAMP DID YOU SAY?

But, get this: "Hey kid, wanna go to evolution camp?" Say what? Yes, you read correctly; there is such a thing as an evolution camp. The First Unitarian Unitarian Church (I use the word "church" advisedly) in Springfield, Missouri, hosted an evolution camp whose goal is to teach kids to defend the evolutionary theory from iany and all critics.  It's a five-day experience for kids ages 5-11. 

I AM WHO?

Jennifer Lara, (Director of Religious Education at the First Unitarian group) is the organizer of he camp and one of the teachers for the week. She begins her indoctrination of the children with, "I am the universe. Like you, I started as a speck about 13 billion years ago. I was smaller than than a piece of dust under your bed. It was bursting with wild and dazzling dreams of galaxies, stars, and planets in radiant colors--bright yellow, molten red, and piercing blue."(I wonder if any child raises a hand to ask, "Is that speck eternal? Where did it come from? How do you know all this? How does a speck dream of galaxies, stars and planets?")

WHO ATTENDS?

Who takes their kid to such a camp? You'd be surprised. Unitarians aren't the only ones who came that week of July 7-11, 2014. According to Lara, Christian parents brought their children too. One such parent was Brandy Clory who brought her five-year old son. Her rationale for bringing him was so that he "could be around open-minded children learning science."[The minds of open-minded children are like those of open-minded, immature adults--garbage cans for anything and everything; this is the kind of a mind that Proverbs calls "simple."] 

The First Unitarian group of Springfield has a website on which they explain, "Our members "identify and draw inspiration from Christianity, Humanism, Paganism, Judaism and other religious and philosophical traditions." These are truly "open" minds, minds open to everything in a dismal mix.

Mrs. Clory believes her duty as a parent is "to expose him" to the evolution camp so that he he can "grow up knowing both paths [creation and evolution] so he can make his own decision." 

We might paraphrase Brandy Clory with, "I want to expose my child so that he can learn he started as a speck about 13 billion years ago and was smaller than than a piece of dust under his bed."

JUST LIKE ERIC?

Later, will her five-year old come to realize  the implications of the "speck theory," the implications that he has no purpose, no meaning, no destiny? Will he come to believe that because of the workings of the survival of the fittest, he too should put on a shirt that says, "NATURAL SELECTION," just like Eric Harris wore on April 20, 1999, that day at Columbine High when he went on a survival of the fittest rampage? Later, will that five-year old, like Eric, write in his school planner and in the yearbooks of several high school friends, "Ich bin Gott," "I am God"?

Dr. Peter Langman who has spent ten years studying Eric Harris and the Columbine massacre has proved that the reported cause of Eric's rage (bullying) is bogus, a fabrication. His research shows that Eric didn't murder people because the athletes used him as a punching bag or for verbal sport, as the popular theory goes. 

Writing in "Psychology Today Online," Dr. Langman cites the fact that Harris was fascinated by Hitler and natural selection, the survival of the fittest. He, Eric, was one of the "fittest" and he would do the "selecting" so as to help evolution along. There was no bullying of young Eric to produce the Columbine horror.

Interesting isn't it? Jennifer Lara begins her teaching of the children with "I am the universe," and Eric Harris writes, "I am God."

ALL THIS TO SAY

Recently, I had a conversation with Jerry, a friend from days long ago, a friend with whom I'd lost touch. I learned that he'd graduated from a fine school, Texas Tech University, to be specific, and had gotten a graduate degree that enabled him to get a job in Colorado as a high school principal. His goal was altruistic; he wanted to make a difference in kids' lives. (Along the way, he invented a type of software that revolutionized educational administration. Jerry is no dummy.)

THE EARLY DAYS IN ACADEME`

But after serving in that high school for a while, he realized that he was in the wrong place. If he wanted to make a difference, he concluded, high school wasn't the place to do it. So he resigned and became the principal of an elementary school, and it's there that Jerry has impacted lives because he figured out that children needed to be trained up (not indoctrinated like so many unthinking little Manchurian Candidates) in the way they should go. The earlier this training begins, the better, was Jerry's idea, and he has been just the man to do it.

AN ATHEIST

There's this atheist who was writing about the factors that led to his defection from the faith. It was saddening to learn that one of his reasons was "those silly Sunday school lessons" he heard growing up. He didn't elaborate, but I can imagine his teachers presented Noah's Ark as a cartoon boat, David as a six-year old boy with a toy defeating the giant, Samson as having magic hair, and God's killing little children with bears. That's not "Bible."

TEACHERS

What we need is good, solid, and accurate biblical teaching of children that is of such caliber that, whatever they learn, they won't have to unlearn silliness later. What we need is teaching that enables children (and adults) to see the Bible for what it is, a connected Big Story, not scores and scores of isolated little morality tales. Maybe we also need to rethink separating children in church from their parents and teach them both together. Who is your child's SS teacher, anyway? What do you know about him/her and what they teach?

WRITERS

We need Christian authors who can write solid works on the child's level that he wouldn't later say were little silly books with silly pictures. We need solid authors who know and can tell the Big Story with captivating words.  

ARTISTS

We need a mindset that warns us to be careful with pictures, if we're going to have them, because pictures are worth thousand words.  

We need artists to picture David as what he was, a young adult with a military weapon invented for killing, which is what a slingshot was in his day. We need Noah's ark drawn to scale, and the narrative of Samson's strength which traces it to its true source, the Holy Spirit, not hair, not muscles. We need teachers who take the time to study and learn that Elisha was confronted by young adults, a mob intent on taking his life, coming at him.

And, all in all, we need more Jerrys.