SCHOOL DAYS---CHARLES WOODRUFF

As a follow-up to my recent article, Redeeming the Time, once again we are very time conscious as a new school year has started in our area. The students have to make so many adjustments to get back in the groove for school after a summer vacation all too short (or so it seems). Well, their vacations are shorter than many years ago when I was in high school. We got out of school about the last of May or first part of June at the latest, and didn’t usually go back until after Labor Day. Now it is so much shorter. (There is word that the government is out to cut summer vacation even shorter. This is understandable if you know anything about socialism. They want to have the kids in their hands as much as possible to indoctrinate them in socialism).

Anyway, there is much activity going on every year at this season. People are seemingly anxious for a new start, wiping the old slate clean in their minds, and preparing for new classes, new child care, school supplies and other new things. It is almost like New Years Day. But, it sort of reminds me of the old Chuck Berry song of my early high school years (also the title of this article; School Days). The song rocked out in Berry’s signature guitar riffs:

Up in the mornin’ and out to school

The teacher is teachin’ the Golden Rule

American history and practical math

You study‘em hard and hopin’ to pass

Workin’ your fingers right down to the bone

And the guy behind you won’t leave you alone

Ring ring goes the bell
The cook in the lunchroom's ready to sell
You're lucky if you can find a seat
You're fortunate if you have time to eat
Back in the classroom open your books
Gee but the teacher don't know
How mean she looks

Simple, uncomplicated misery, er uh, music—but we poor rock and roll infused lemmings loved it, just as we did Heartbreak Hotel, Be Bop A Lula, That’ll Be the Day, Peggy Sue, I Walk the Line, and hundreds of other tunes to occupy our soft, putty minds and raging hormones. This was the beginning of rebellion against authority in America. Yet, these songs and attitudes seem so mild compared to later stuff like Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown, I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, A Little Help From My Friends, Shake Your Booty, Strawberry Fields Forever, and other later mind numbing, drug and sex related songs. They were the beginning of what became much, much, worse in the way of popular music. It began to rapidly change the culture. What began with Chuck Berry and Elvis, and was accelerated by the Beatles and Rolling Stones, was later rocket fueled by The Doors, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, and the acid rockers and later, rap and other variations. (One major reason for today’s drug culture, don’t you think?) Now, in school, and many other places “the inmates are running the asylum.”

The promotion of illicit sex and homosexuality, androgynous dress, and disrespect of authority is part of today’s 21^st century culture. It is no wonder that babies are being aborted by the millions each year around the world, and that demands for sodomite marriage are being loudly proclaimed, as well as many other amoral and ungodly trends. Most nations have lost their way morally, including America and Britain; once Christian nations. (Christian in the sense of their early foundations). Conservative radio talk show host Michael Medved (himself an Orthodox Jew), has said many times on his program, as I have personally heard; “The United States was founded as a Christian nation.” As French diplomat Alexis DeTocqueville (1805-1859) once said: “I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.”

“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.”

“America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” (From Democracy in America; DeTocqueville, 1835).

With most “evangelical” churches now forsaking the “old paths” of scripture for an “emergent church” idea, or another post modernist theology, Mr.DeTocqueville, if he were here today, would say “That day has arrived.” May God help us-- for only He in His Sovereign mercy can help us. “The wicked shall be tuned into hell, and all the nations that forget God”(Psalm 9:17), “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance”(Psalm 33:12.

A new start is usually a good thing, for instance in a new year, because it is a new start. The average person will get about 70 of these “new starts” in a lifetime. As we all should know, some will get more, and some a lot less. Nothing really changes with most just because there is a new year, or you moved to a new city, started a new school year, or got married or got divorced. Real change must come from elsewhere. To be changed from sinner to saint must occur within. The heart of a man or woman must be changed by the all-powerful Creator, the triune God that inhabits eternity. He is the only being that is not affected by time. He has always been, and always will be. He is eternal. He is the Christ “the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending”. Jesus is He “that was, and is, and is to come” (see Revelation 1:8 for the full context). He is the One that will instruct the angel one day in the future to declare “there should be time no longer” (see Revelation 10:6). Are you ready for that day, dear friend?

“Sin may open bright as the morning, but it will end dark as the night.” T.DeWitt Talmadge as quoted by R.G. Lee in Bread from Bellevue Oven; Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, TN.