Somehow, I have gotten a lot of a certain kind of video recommended to me on YouTube. They have been videos from Bill O’ Reily’s Watters’ World segment and videos from Jay Leno’s Jaywalking (from years past). You know, the kind of videos where they walk up to someone on the street and ask them questions like, “Name a country that begins with the letter U” or “Who did the United States fight in the War of 1812?” or “Where is the West Bank?” And from the videos, we Americans display how ignorant we are of basic current events, what is going on,  where countries are in the world, history, and just about everything else.

Here is an example of one of those videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Url1HL6oExk.

The video link given says that students from prestigious universities like Harvard and Stanford scored very low on some of the American history questions asked. The video shows Leno interviewing a history teacher and even she has trouble answering basic questions!

For me, this video and other videos like it are true signs that we need civics education. The famous Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was concerned about civics education too and started a great website and resource center for this. Icivics.org. There are premade lesson plans, interactive games, just about anything you can think of to help teachers get students out of ignorance. According to the website, more than 100,000 educators and over 3 million students have used the site.

“iCivics is a non-profit organization dedicated to reinvigorating civic learning through interactive and engaging learning resources. Our educational resources empower teachers and prepare the next generation of students to become knowledgeable and engaged citizens”. (https://www.icivics.org/our-story)

It got me thinking a lot about how important it is to be people of faith who use their heads as well as our hearts in this world.

Here is how most of the world sees us and our faith:

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

The above is an infamous quote by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. It has been tattooed on the minds of agnostics and atheists all over the world.

Mr. Dawkins’ perspective is definitely supported in the media. How many times have you seen the Christian on TV portrayed as a slack-jawed yokel whose needs the atheist for support in getting things done? Meanwhile, the person of faith just sits there and prays! Well, I am all for prayer. I think we need more prayer! I think we need more communion with the Lord to help us address the problems in the world when I consider the mistakes that the church has been responsible for. But many may consider people of faith stupid just because they are people of faith. So to them, as soon as we say we want to honor the Lord, we have been labeled stupid.

However,  our forefathers established churches, hospitals, schools, and universities. And there are many men of faith, living and dead, who are excellent scientists, artists, businessmen, engineers, and in other fields. But having them is not enough. We need to be always studying, learning, and growing in knowledge of the world the Lord has given us.

A search at openBible.info gave 100 verses in the Bible about education and getting wisdom and knowledge. This tells me it is something that the Lord is concerned about.

As people of faith, there should be NO EXCUSE for looking like a silly and stupid person like the ones on Watter’s World or on a program like Jaywalking.

Ecclesiastics 7:12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.

———————————————————————————W.