Did you hear?

They’re at it again.

The public school curriculum board in Texas is changing their standards for the teaching of social studies. In more than 160 ways. This time they’re making them more politically conservative.

Since Texas buys so many textbooks, their standards influence the national publishers, and thus they influence the textbooks used in all the other states. There’s a lot of power and a lot of money, at stake.

As you can imagine, the liberals are furious. So they’re protesting. They’re outraged.

And that’s the way it is.

One of these days, there will be enough pressure, and name-calling, that the board will move left a bit. And then the conservatives will be outraged, and they’ll protest. And the circle—and the circus—will continue.

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody would write textbooks that didn’t change based on who was yelling the loudest?

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody based what he wrote on a standard that didn’t change every couple of years?

Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody simply told the truth?

As a Christian educator, you know that there is an unchanging standard of truth, the Scripture. And anybody who bases what he teaches on that unchanging standard will be producing a much more stable product, both in the curriculum and in the students.

By the grace of God, BJU Press works hard at basing its materials on the Scripture. We don’t always succeed—no one does, perfectly—but we’ve had some success over the past 35 or more years, and we’ve tried to improve steadily along the way. Thus, you’ll find that our Heritage Studies materials, for example, emphasize unchanging biblical principles:

• God’s ownership of all things, because He created them
  • Only what He wants matters. He decides who lives, who dies, and when, and how.
• The existence of absolute, unchanging truth, even when we don’t know it
  • There is right, and there is wrong.
  • God is great, and God is good.
• God’s directing of all of history in a meaningful way, toward a meaningful conclusion
  • History makes sense. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
• Mankind’s unique standing in the image of God
  • People—even evil people—can do admirable things. They can be heroes.
• Mankind’s fallenness and consequent failure
  • We’re busted. And we can’t be trusted.
• Moral causation—the fact of sowing and reaping in moral actions
  • What goes around, comes around. For better or for worse.
• God’s endorsement of mankind’s three key institutions: the home, the state, and the church
  • Family matters.
  • Your political leaders were placed there by God. Whether or not you voted for them.
  • You can’t survive spiritually without the grace ministered to you by fellow believers