BOOT CAMP: Back to the Basics

"I hope I didn't humiliate you, letting you beat me only two out of three
games," Ron gasped as Greg and he sat in the sauna at the racquetball club
following their match. After a few moments of sitting in that pine-covered
"frying pan," the conversation turned to a discussion about leadership, a
favorite topic of theirs.

In the middle of this interaction, Russ, a third man in the sauna, commented
from his sprawled-out position on the bench, "The best way to get back at a
leader is to dig around in his garbage."

Ron and Greg glanced bewilderedly at one another, and Ron responded,
"Why do you want to look in a guy's garbage can?"

"Not garbage can, but garbage. You know, dirty linen, problems, dirt... you
know!" retorted Russ.

Having learned many years before that this kind of "off the wall" discussion
was a prime introduction into spiritual issues, Ron turned the discussion that
way and said, "I have enough problems with my own dirt and it doesn't excite
me to try to exploit anyone else's."

"I guess I know what you mean," Russ concurred half-heartedly.

THINK BIBLICALLY: The Strategic Command Center

The late Martin Neimoller painted a stark picture of what happened in
Germany with the rise of Hitler and the subsequent holocaust in which more
than eleven million people (Jews, Gypsies, aged, mentally ill) were
exterminated:

In Germany

they first came for the Communists

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me...

and by that time there was no one left to speak up.?1?

KINGDOMS AT WAR: Seeing the Unseen

It's a scene repeated thousands of times daily. A businessman boards a plane,
removes his coat and leans back in his seat for a moment of reprieve from the
pressures of work. He pulls out the airline magazine from the seat pocket in
front of him. As he leafs through the publication, he passes a full-color picture
of a sensuous woman in a bathing suit. He flips back for a closer look.

The alluring woman, with a rich suntan, is reclining on a sun-drenched beach
in front of a resort hotel. "When you're in Miami," she says, "here's where
you'll find me."

Now, why does he want to find her? She's not suggesting a game of
checkers. She's suggesting sex. Such advertisements, filled with sexual
overtones and other kinds of subliminal seduction, pervade nearly every form
of mass media. And the media experts know that catering to the sexual drive
is one of the most potent forms of selling anything.

Why are such advertisements so dangerous? They usually bypass our rational
minds and appeal subliminally to our emotions. They reflect a deeper, more
dangerous battle that rages around us, unseen by our eyes, yet every bit as
real. Unless we recognize that battle, we will never succeed in seeing a moral
and spiritual revolution in our country.

EDUCATION: Brainwashed or Informed?

In April of 1983, an eighteen-member panel appointed by then Education
Secretary Terrel H. Bell revealed the results of a year-and-a-half-long study by
the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Its report, entitled "A
Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform," stated:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the
mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have
viewed it as an act of war.?1?

We have every reason to be outraged concerning the quality of public
education in the United States. In 1910 the U.S. Bureau of Education stated
that public schools would "in a short time practically eliminate illiteracy."?2?
Today, according to Department of Education statistics, there are "24 million
functional illiterates in the United States, virtually all of whom have had from
eight to twelve years of compulsory public schooling," says historian and
educator, Samuel Blumenfeld.?3? Time magazine reports that 13 percent of all
seventeen-year-olds are functionally illiterate. ?4?

By almost any means of evaluation, our system of public education is in trouble.
As "A Nation at Risk" states:

THE BATTLE OF WORLD VIEWS

These are a few of the catchy phrases that reflect what many in our society
believe:

"Do your own thing." "Let's get physical."

"Just use common sense."

"Whatever will be, will be."

"You can't legislate morality." "Don't be so narrow-minded."

"How could anything be wrong when it feels so right?" "Look out for number
one."

The world views represented by these phrases are often accepted without
biblical evaluation by many Christians. They have been, as J. B. Phillips puts
it, squeezed into the world's mold.?1? Satan seeks to have us think that these
phrases are harmless. But as we use them, the assumptions underlying them
subtly become ours and thereby dull our spiritual vitality and impact.

The fact is, your world view is a life and death issue. Why? Because ideas
have consequences. Our world view either consciously or unconsciously
shapes our ideas, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and values. Ideas produce
preferences and convictions which lead to action, or to inaction. That can
have dramatic consequences.