Hey hooks. This is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. Sure to appreciate you joining me. Giving me a little bit of your time and attention. I know y'all have other things vying for your attention, so I appreciate you spending it here. We'll try and use it wisely. For those of y'all who continue to share the podcast, tell others about it. Thank you. For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your forgiveness, Father. Even when we mess up. Even when we sin. I guess that's the reason we need it. Thank you for the grace and the mercy that you offer. Help us to act justly. To walk humbly before you. Help us to get our priorities in the right order, Father, in your order. To focus on you and your Son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Not on the shiny things of this world. Help us to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven that last for all of eternity. Not the things here in this life that are temporary. And help us to remember that too, Father, that because of your Son Jesus Christ and your grace grace and mercy. That we have eternal life with you in heaven. Help us to do your will here, Father, please. Help us to save those who are perishing, to lead them to you and your son. Help us to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Thank you for those listening to the podcast. Be with them and their families. And be with our leaders in the pulpit and in the state. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Guide my word to your father, please. Your son's family prayed. How have you spent your last 24 hours? What have you done? Are you pleased with it? I got sucked into a movie or part of a movie yesterday. And oh, it was just a waste of time. It was an absolute waste of time. There's nothing wrong with watching a movie every once in a while, folks. The problem is that we start to make it part of our daily routine. We start to give not an hour or two hours once every couple weeks. We start to give an hour to every day, three hours. Whether you're talking about the phone, scrolling your phone or Netflix or Amazon or Hulu, you know, everything's just right there. YouTube, TikTok. It's right at the tip of our fingers. All we have to do is literally punch a screen and we can watch however much we want. And we trade things. One of the ways my mother tried her best when I was a kid to instill financial discipline in me. A little bit of it stuck and not enough of it, probably, certainly. She said, when you want to buy something, take out, you know, she was talking obviously to a kid, take out that dollar bill or$5 or$10 or whatever, and hold it in your hand and look at that and see if you actually want to trade that five or$10 for whatever it is that you're thinking about buying. And as I started, as I got a little older and I started to work for my money, you use that term loosely, uh she would say, you know, however long it took you to work to earn that amount of money, are you willing to trade that amount of time? Because that's what everything really boils down to, right? Time. My mother-in-law says that if you really want to know what's important to a person, just look at how they spend their time and their money, which really go to go together. So every time we give 30 minutes an hour to our phone, to our TV, to sports. That ought to be the question in the back of our mind. Are we willing to trade this for whatever else that's better? Right? As an individual, maybe it's working on ourselves. Maybe it is going out and training physically. You know, maybe it's going for a run, a workout, maybe it's shooting, maybe it's learning a new language, maybe it's reading literature that actually increases your vocabulary, or biography that teaches you history, or, you know, whatever else makes you a better person. Maybe for all of us, right? Reading the Bible, praying. And then in our relationships, you know, our relationship with our spouse, first and foremost, way before anything else. But then our relationship with our kids, our parents, our friends. Every time we give a chunk of time to a TV screen, social media, our phones, our iPads, our computer screen, sports, right? We're trading it for something else. And so when I ask these questions, how did you spend your last 24 hours? Think about that. And are you glad about whatever trades that you've made? Are you pleased with that? It's kind of like it's kind of like a sports team making trades for players, right? You're just trading your time. I think for a lot of us, most days in America today, we would, if we were being honest, we would be pretty upset at the trades that we're making. Or at least we should be. Marriage verse for today, Hebrews 13 4. Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. Kind of goes in a lot of ways, folks, some of the stuff we watch. Have to really question. Sometimes I'm watching a movie or something, and there's some things on there I really shouldn't be watching, folks. And I think we kind of joke about it, we make light of it today, but I don't think God does. And that's not asking you to be perfect, folks, because none of us are going to be, even on a day-to-day basis. And if anybody tells you that there's a human being out there that's ever been perfect, including Mary and Joseph and the disciples, they're teaching you something, but it's not in the Bible. But the point is to strive for perfection, to strive for Christ. And so we have to be willing to look at those areas in our life, even areas where we we feel like we're doing just as good a job as anybody else, and kind of question whether we really are or not. Bible verses for today. Where are we going? Going to 1 Peter verses 1 through 12. This letter is from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to God's chosen people who are living as foreigners in the provinces of Pontius, Galatia, Capadocia Cappadocia, that's not right, Asia and Bithynia. God the Father knew you and chose you long ago, and his spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. May God give you more and more grace and peace. All praise to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is by His great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance, an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith God is protecting you by His power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. So be truly glad, there is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold, though your faith is far more precious than gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now you trust him, and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls. This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about when they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you. They wondered what time or situation the Spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ's suffering and his great glory afterward. They were told that their messages were not for themselves but for you. And now this good news has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is also wonderful that even the angels are eager eagerly watching these things happen. Psalm one nineteen seventeen through thirty two. Be good to your servant that I may live and obey your word. Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths and your instructions. I am a foreigner in the land, don't hide your commands from me. I am always overwhelmed with a desire for your regulations. You rebuke the arrogant, those who wander from your commands are cursed. Don't let them scorn and insult me, for I have obeyed your laws. Even princes sit and speak against me, but I will meditate on your decrees. Your laws please me, they give me wise advice. I live in the dust, revive me by your word. I told you my plans and you answered, now teach me your decrees. Help me understand the meaning of your commandments, and I will meditate on your wonderful deeds. I weep with sorrow, encourage me by your word. Keep me from lying to myself, give me the privilege of knowing your instructions. I have chosen to be faithful, I have determined to live by your regulations. I cling to your laws, Lord, don't let me be put to shame. I will pursue your commands, for you expand my understanding. Proverbs twenty eight verses eight through ten. Income from charging high interest rates will end up in the pocket of someone who is kind to the poor. God detests the prayers of a person who ignores the law. Those who lead good people along an evil path will fall into their own trap, but the honest will inherit good things. Really quickly, we could delve into this a lot more. I think Proverbs 9, God detests the prayers of a person who ignores the law. We need to remember that when we're praying. There's also for husbands when we're treating our wives, we need to remember not to be bitter, right? Because that hinders our prayers. And then you go back to one Peter trials, right? Trials test your faith. And it's a choice. We've never seen God. You look at verses six through nine, right? But we trust him. We choose to believe in him, and that leads to the salvation of our souls. And then these trials that test our faith, they're gonna bring praise and honor and glory someday, folks. And I think we need to remember that. All right. We're gonna forgo, and I apologize. I got the listening to the sound of my own voice and enjoying it too much. We're gonna go into this article again out of the Epic Times. We're gonna forgo the Medal of Honor for today. This is the hidden crisis in our classrooms, why education without character is failing, America, by the complete education working group at Faye Tan College Northern Campus in Middleton, New York. This is out of the Epic Times. We're gonna pick up where we left off. So they they talk about John Dewey in this article that we've talked about often. And one of the comments here is his broader impact contributed to our culture's tendency to treat values as socially constructed and relative rather than objectively discernible truths worth pursuing. Truth isn't relative, folks. You know, as Lincoln said in one of his addresses talking about the Civil War, the North and the South, when you have a disagreement, both people can be wrong or one person can be right, but both people can't be right. You cannot have someone say abortion is murder and someone say abortion isn't murder and both of them be right. You can't have somebody say that homosexuality is a sin, homosexuality isn't a sin, and both of them be right. You can't have, you know, we try this socially liberal but fiscally conservative nonsense, and it doesn't work, folks, because eventually that social liberalism is going to bleed over into the fiscal conservatism. And you see that with a lot of Republican politicians today, actually is a pretty good example. You know, they talk, and really this is true of both sides, but you expect it from the left. They whine and complain about raising the debt ceiling when the Democratic Party wants to do it, when the left wants to do it. But then when we want to do it, when the when the right side, the conservative side, supposedly, it's not very conservative these days, Christian side wants to do it, then it's okay. Well, that's just being hypocritical. You can't have it both ways, folks. And I know that's a generalized example, but Dewey, you know, he was in his 1929 book, Impressions on Soviet Russia, he made it clear that two of the main goals of education were to separate children from God and their families. He said it as church and their family, but that's that's what he meant was God and Jesus Christ. And part of that was so that you could make truth subjective, relative, as opposed to objective. One of the questions here in this article is what kind of people are our graduates becoming, right? When education and material pursuit become detached from character formation, the consequences ripple through society. Declining trust, ethical failures in leadership, and a generation that, while professionally competent, often lacks the moral compass needed to navigate complex challenges and contribute meaningfully to the common good. And that just that quote right there absolutely smacks to me of Omar Bradley and his quote. This was from an address he gave on Armistice Day in 1948. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved rebellion without conscience. Bradley, if you don't know, was a general in World War II, command of the Second Army Corps in North Africa throughout the Tunzanian and Sicilian campaigns. Later command of the United States Ground Forces for the invasion of France, and then commanded the 12th Army Group in France and Germany in August of 1944. Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1949. Anyway, that that's the point, folks, is we're we're producing graduates today that are they might be really good at quantum mechanics and nuclear science and everything else, but ethically, they're just babies. Traditionally, academic academia was designed to help human beings comprehend what is true, good, and beautiful. Right? And that's what are we doing today? We're not doing that. You have to remember a couple things here that struck me. One is the Bible verse, Philippians 4 8. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute. If there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. And that kind of gets back to what we were talking about with TV screens and social media, folks. We ought to kind of ask ourselves that as we're watching things, scrolling things, are we really focused on what's honorable, right, pure, lovely, good repute? Right? And that time trade, shouldn't we be focusing on our spouse, God, our kids, our parents? The next was a comment that we've read out of America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotes quite a few times. It's worthy to note that 106 of the first 108 schools in America were founded on the Christian faith, right? The founders of Harvard, all knowledge without Christ was vain, which is echoed by Noah Webster. Education is useless without the Bible. And today we have both of those problems. We have education without Christ, without the Bible, and we're definitely not focused on what is pure, noble, and right often. There's a higher reason for school to become a human being of intellectual wisdom and rationality whose mind is unstoppable before any problem. It's to become an intelligent, thoughtful, and interesting person whose success nurtures a sense of completion in the heart. You can't do that without God and Jesus Christ. I'm a huge fan of the epic times. Uh, but they push something from China, a religious practice called Bulangong, I think, or something like that. Uh and I think it's got some positives, folks. Some religions do, but they they always, those positives are always in line with Jesus Christ because that's the foundation. Like that's God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. You can't be doing something. I know we're going over today, folks. I'm sorry. I'm going to finish this article up. You can't be doing something good or positive and not be in line with Christ. You can't be doing something wrong or bad and be in line with Christ. In America, it doesn't matter at the end of the day, if the school is founded on anything other than God and Jesus Christ in the Bible, in the long run, it's not going to produce citizens that make our nation better. It might in the short term. But as a whole, it's not. It doesn't matter whether it's Fulan, Gong, or whatever from China, it doesn't matter if it's Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mother Naturism, Satanism. If our education system is not based on God and Jesus Christ, it's impossible to produce a citizen whose success nurtures a sense of a completion in the heart, who has a complete heart. Interesting quote in this article by Confucius. If a person can recite 300 poems but is incapable of performing an entrusted official duty and exercising one's initiative when sent abroad, what good are the many poems to that person? It doesn't matter how smart we are, folks, if we don't have that virtue, that morality, that foundation in God and Jesus Christ, what good are we? What good is our knowledge? One more quote out of here, and we'll move on, I promise. But true freedom is autonomy from the Greek word autonomous, meaning self-law. The capacity to develop personal goals and standards that exceed those expected by society, possessing an inner law of the heart connected to self-control and mindful decision making. And this, of course, led me right back to Robert Charles Winthrop speaking at the I think he was the Speaker of the House maybe for a little while, and he was definitely a legislature of some kind. The Bible Society in Boston meeting at Massachusetts, may twenty eighth, eighteen forty-nine. The voice of experience and the voice of our own reason speak but one language, both united in teaching us that men may as well build their houses upon the sand and expect to see them stand when the rains fall and the winds blow and the floods come, as to found free institutions upon any other basis than that of morality and virtue, of which the word of God is the only authoritative rule and the only adequate sanction. All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or a power without them, either by the word of God or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the state supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is religion which must support the state. A lot of truth in Mr. Winthrop's quote right there. It's a great article. There's quite a bit more here that I didn't go over. The Hidden Crisis in Our Classrooms, Why Education Without Character is Failing America by the Complete Education Working Group at Fay Tan Northern Campus, located in Middleton, New York. If you get a chance, check it out. If you get a chance to check the Epic Times out, I would highly recommend that as well. The bottom line again is without God and the Bible and Jesus Christ, and it doesn't matter how good the intentions are, we can't really have education in America that's going to produce productive citizens for our nation in the long term. And we see that. If you're looking for a family fund, middle grade read, if you would check out Countryside, I would greatly appreciate that. And if you enjoyed, if you'd leave a review, those help immensely. And if you have three or four or five bucks, if you can skip coffee one day a month or something like that and donate to the podcast, that would help immensely as well. There's a donation page on the Buzz Sprout website where you can do that. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

God bless y'all. God bless your families. God bless your marriages if you're married. Sorry we went over today. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, we'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.