The Null Curriculum : The Business of Christian Education LIX

¹“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, ² that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. ³ Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

⁴ “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. ⁶ And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:1-9

           

            When Moses gave that command to the people, he pointed out the entire book of the covenant as the curriculum for their education of life.  The entire historical account from the beginning which started with God creating the whole world until all the law governing how people should live must be taught without exception.  Moses asserted that all those ought to be taught diligently to the children.  Not only in passing on the information, but also in everyday life activities, including things that people commonly do habitually.  Even in trivial things such as waking up, walking, sitting, and sleeping people ought to carry with them the word of God and teach them to their younglings.  God’s word must be visible for all the children and the entire community to observe, access, and learn from.  The entire set up of the societal life of Israel was commanded to reflect
the word of the holy God.  With it Moses set up for Israel the explicit curriculum for all Israelites to follow.  Together with it, God already structured the entire community in such a way to carry with it the implicit curriculum for the education of God’s people.

            Then in Deuteronomy 20:16-18 Moses laid the ground for the null curriculum of the education of God’s people.  Listen to his command:

¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.

The command is to completely destroy all the people of the land.  To the modern ears, this command sounds very cruel.  Many people, even Christians, in their misunderstanding judge God, especially the God of the OT, as the wicked God who was the bloodthirsty tyrant.  And thus with their broken and depraved minds they rejected the holy God without truly understanding the justice of the creator of the universe.  They think that they are holier than God and thus sentence God unjustly.  To these kind of people, God will show them his holiness and when that day comes, they will have no defense on their mouth.  All they will do is bow down and regret their evil deed for eternity.  Now, going back to Moses’ command to completely destroy the inhabitants of the land.  This command is clear from the perspective of God that Israel was God’s instrument in carrying out his judgment against the evil deeds these people did (cf. Genesis 15:13-16).  And God intended that the command’s full effect when it is carried out would be to provide Israel a space, both the physical and the spiritual/educational, for the curriculum of the education of God’s people to thrive.  Moses gave the reasoning for Israel why they ought to completely destroy people of Canaan.  In verse 18 of our passage, Moses said: Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.  This is the plan for the null curriculum for the education of God’s people.  That no evil teachings in whatever forms may thrive in the life of the people.  With the complete destruction of the life of Canaan, the way of life of the Canaanites would also be obliterated fully.  And thus only the word of God may be taught and lived out in the lives of the people of Israel.  The null curriculum is for Israel not to allow any other kind of teachings and ways of life to be learned and taught to the people of Israel, especially to the easily impressionable, to children.  God in his infinite wisdom knows about this long before any modern discussion on education ever surfaced.  Humans only know about this secret after thousands of years of research.  Similar to the command of God to circumcise children on the eighth day.  People at that time did not know why eighth, why not nine, or seven, or twelve.  But modern medical research found out the genius of God’s command, which on the eighth day for some reason the wound heals faster without the loss of too much blood.

            This platform for the education of God’s people is important to be understood.  For this wisdom is eternal.  This does not only apply for the people of Israel thousands of years ago.  But this truth is also relevant for us today.  Compromising the word of God is always a mistake in the eyes of God.  Israel learned it the hard way.  They did not obey God’s command, but instead they made covenant with the people of the land, and thus they learned their evil way of life and taught their younglings the evil way of life.  They compromised the purity of the word of God and mixed them with the broken words of man.  This is exactly what brought down Adam and Eve in the first place.  Adam and Eve mixed God’s word and the serpent’s words and then judged for them what they thought to be true for them.  Then they sinned.  The same thing happened to Israel.  They mixed God’s word with the word of man, and thus they began practicing the obscure way of life.  They sinned against the Lord.  If we read the book of Judges, the recurring pattern is that Israel quickly forgets the way of the Lord, and follows the evil way.  In the same way, in our modern life, people mixed the word of God with the words of man.  The saddest part is when they call such mixing as wise.  And they grant PhD to those who are able to pull it off.  Therefore the world of education has come crumbling down.  People are confused nowadays as what is right and what is not.  With the current god of this age is “Love” people even dare to excommunicate God because for them God does not follow the way of love.  The problem is on their understanding of love.  For these people, love is everything is permissible. Even sin must be tolerated for them.  Soon, every evil and unethical way of life is defensible in the name of love.  When children disobey their parents, in the name of love these children ought not to be disciplined.  Those who dare to discipline such children would be considered love-less and thus must be put in jail.  The whole world is currently infatuated with the idea of puppy love, especially the world of education.  Soon we will see an image of children barking at their parents while at the same time the parents can’t do anything but crying.  The world talks about bullying and apply such idea to parents who discipline their children, but in the end they just create a conducive learning environment where children are permitted to bully their parents.  The impact of mixing God’s word with the words of man is devastating.  God knew it beforehand, and that’s why he commanded Moses to instruct Israel to destroy completely any potential threat to the transfer of the pure word of God.

            The null curriculum cannot be taken lightly.  But many educators do not think thoroughly and carefully about this and thus create mis-educative learning environment.  Children begin to learn what they should not learn in the first place.  Once they learn what they ought not to learn, it becomes difficult for them to unlearn it.  If it has become the habit to learn the way of the world, then for them to learn the way of the Lord afterward would be a great challenge.  For example, Halloween celebration has become a culture for the people of the west.  Not celebrating Halloween would feel awkward for most westerners.  Just like not celebrating Chinese New Year would be awkward for Chinese people.  Some Christians even, because they grew up in such culture that celebrates Halloween, try to Christianize Halloween.  And thus they participate and even encourage participation of Halloween celebration.  They even go so far as to chastise those who choose not to celebrate Halloween due to its evil aura.  They urge others to “redeem” Halloween for Christ.  This is where people got confused so badly.  After hundreds of years, the Halloween celebration which originated with Christianity, is currently owned by the world, and worse by the obscure world of wild imagination that many use to celebrate and worship demons, evils, witches, and all the abominable things.  How in the world would Christians “redeem” an evil celebration for Christ?  This counts as something to be eliminated altogether, not to be “redeemed.”  Halloween itself, even though it originated with Christianity, it did not start the right way.  The idea to disguise children using costumes of the demons in the belief that by doing so they would not be snatched by the wandering evil spirits in itself is not a Christian teaching.  It is pagan.  A pagan culture that got mixed up in Christian practice and after many centuries now back to its original owner.  And now some Christians think that they would want to take it back what they consider to be rightfully theirs?  Such people need to wake up and read the Scripture more carefully.

            Christianity is distinct from the world.  The church is not of the world as Jesus himself has said.  But we are sent to the world.  We are sent as salt and light of the world.  If the salt loses its saltiness, what good it will be?  The answer is, that kind of salt is worthless.  If Christians lost their distinctive Christianness, then what value would they have?  You can answer that one.  No!  We must not mix God’s word with the words of man.  We must not compromise.  Some Christians even consider to redefine the theology that has been preserved for centuries by God’s holy people since the beginning according to the current trend in science.  This is perversion.  This is an attempt to pervert the word of God.  Don’t you remember that that was what the serpent did to the word of God when it tempted Eve?  No!  Do not fall to such temptation.  The devil uses the same core temptation and decorates it with newer packaging.  In the business world, “smart” seller repackages old stuff and sells them with high price.  The shocking thing is that people still buy them.  In the end people buy the packaging not what is inside.  In Chinese tradition of Mooncake celebration, mooncake makers compete in creating the best packaging for their mooncakes.  The mooncakes taste more or less the same.  But the packaging is something else.  To the point that the packaging becomes more expensive than the mooncake itself.  But yet people are still buying them thinking that if they can buy mooncakes with the best packaging then they are honoring those to whom they send the mooncakes.  In the same way the devil is repackaging the old sinful trick and deceive many people, even Christians, so that they would continue to fall into the world of sin.  Our role as Christians is to expose such deception by the light of God’s word.  We are not to confuse God’s word with the words of man or with the beautiful package of the modern ideology that attempts to confuse the weak minds.

            Destroy them completely, Moses said.  Paul agreed with Moses and he said in 2 Corinthians 10:5: ”⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  We demolish those words of man and the beautiful packaging that deceives the minds.  We do not team up with them and mix them with the word of God when we teach our children.  God is clear when he instructed Moses that we are to teach our children all his words, and his words alone.  We teach them the truth and the truth alone.  Arthur Holmes’ famous book “All Truth is God’s Truth” sheds light for our understanding that this world belongs to God.  And so all truth belongs to God.  Including the truth in mathematics, in science, in sociology, etc.  However, bear in mind that this doesn’t mean that the Scripture as God’s special revelation is to be redefined according to new findings in the realm of general revelation.  On contrary the knowledge of the general revelation ought to be continuously redefined by the truth of God’s special revelation.  The argument that the Scripture is a thing in the past and thus is not relevant anymore in this modern world is absurd.  Just because things originated from the past doesn’t necessarily mean that it is irrelevant for today’s or even future world.  If all things from the past are considered obsolete, then even our humanity should be thrown out because it is obsolete by today’s standard.  It is a thing in the past, an antiquated life form and even an outdated identity.  The minds of the world is absurd and without sense.  So why in the world Christians follow them?  How many times those obscure people have tried to deconstruct God’s holy scripture and redefine it based on new findings in the world of science but in the end failed miserably?  When Rudolph Bultmann proposed his infamous demythologizing idea, many people embraced his idea as brilliant.  The bible became logical, not plagued anymore with all the “myths” of the dead world of the past.  They thought that with Bultmann’s approach, the bible became more acceptable to the people at that time.  Surprise surprise, the postmodern world embraces myths, mystics, supernaturals, etc.  And so what good is Bultmann’s demythologizing approach now to the postmodern world?  The modern world, the world when Bultmann lived, is now dying as it is replaced by the postmodern world.  All attempts to redefine the holy scripture according to the findings of the contemporary research is a futile attempt.  For the word of God in the Holy Scripture is eternal.  The finding of the research in the realm of general revelation is temporary.  Jesus, the Logos himself, said: “³⁵ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”  (Matthew 24:35).  As God’s people in this world, Moses’ command stands for it is actually God’s command through Moses.  His word is eternal.  We are to teach our children the word of God, the truth.  We ought not to mix them with the words of man.  The command is to destroy them completely, all the ways of life that do not line up according to God’s word must be completely obliterated without exception.  And then we can set up the null curriculum accordingly so that our children may grow and be nurtured in the right way of life.  In the end God desires that his children to worship him only, for it is what is fitting for us as we are originally designed and created.  We are not to follow the footsteps of the rebellious people who disobeyed God’s command thus in the end they worshipped other gods.  The null curriculum is commanded for our own good and safe life in the presence of the one true God.  Dare we not obey?

Soli Deo Gloria!!