Feature
Fool & Lie Makers
Public Education & the Secular Idols Replacing God
by Nicholas Nussen
St. Paul, passing through one of our public-school classrooms, would find his spirit stirred at a culture no less given to idolatry than that of the Athenians in his day. Only in place of the altar to the "Unknown God," he would find an altar to the all-too-familiar god of the Self; and among the "new things" on the lips of our adolescent sophists, he might hear something like, "Hey, you can't impose your morals on me!"
Such was the exclamation of one of my tenth-grade students two years ago in response to a "judgy" peer, expressing the one moral rule left in our culture, taken almost from the lips of our Savior: "Judge not." However, this is not, as in the Gospels, an admonition to remove the beam from one's own eye before plucking the mote from another's. Rather, it is a blanket prohibition of all judgment whatsoever, proceeding from what the shrewd apostle would recognize as a "strange doctrine" more dangerous than anything preached at the Areopagus: moral relativism, or the notion that all sincerely held beliefs, being neither right nor wrong in an objective moral sense, are immune to criticism.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Nicholas Nussen lives with his wife and infant son in Ohio, where he formerly taught in a public high school, and now works at a university and attends law school.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on education from the online archives
27.2—March/April 2014
Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
33.1—January/February 2020
Do You Know Your Child’s Doctor?
The Politicization of Pediatrics in America by Alexander F. C. Webster
22.6—July/August 2009
on a Noble Defense Doomed by Darwinian Materialism by John G. West
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
