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Online Magazine: Edition 9

February/March 2006

Welcome to the Ninth Edition of the Online Magazine of the Thornleigh Seventh-day Adventist Church

Articles

Editorial

Growing better or sliding back?

by Norman Tew

On ABC local radio this morning (25 January 2006) they were discussing the apparent trend back to government schools and away from private education The first figures for enrolment in government high schools this term appear to show an upward trend. While talking the commentator slipped in the word "college" as an alternative to "high school". This started a train of thought.

There are now many more universities and colleges in Australia than there used to be. Not because Australia is becoming more educated, but because colleges are being renamed universities and high schools are being renamed colleges. This does not indicate a higher standard of education but a debasing of the terms.

There was a time when there was only one Queen per country. Then a wife became queen of the home. Now any male who is dissatisfied with his gender and bounces around in female clothing is called a queen! Perhaps this is trivialising the argument, but I do not think so.

The word charity once upon a time indicated love, compassion, caring. Now it brings to mind expressions like "As cold as charity."

At the beginning of the 20th Century the exponents of evolution had convinced us that everything was getting better. The 1914-1918 war was a "war to end all wars". Science was improving the lot of man, and man was getting better and better. Then fifty years ago, the atom bomb was perfected, people started to be aware of global pollution, then came global warming.

The Biblical idea of a man made in the image of God and placed in a world where everything was very good only to experience a terrible fall is now beginning to seem more plausible than the idea that man is still gradually advancing to a glorious future. Interesting isn't it?

The Bible portrays man and all his works as going in a downward trend, requiring God to step in to lift man back up to the glorious state in which he was originally created. The Biblical concept of God having to step in to "destroy them which destroy the earth" (Revelation 11:18) is not such a strange concept after all.

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