Exam for High School Teachers

Paper No. OCCG-035

Benton F. Baugh, Ph.D., P.E., Memorial Church of Christ, Houston, TX.

Download the PDF version HERE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A set of questions to provoke planning to equip our kids to be prepared for what is coming when they leave high school and consider for the rest of us.

KEY WORDS

High School graduation

Atheistic Evolution

REPORT

When our kids graduate from high school, we are losing a majority of them to the world.  A component of this is that they will go off into hostile university environments where God is made fun of and secular myths are taught as facts.  Historically, we have left them unprepared to meet the challenges they will face, hoping instead that the faith they inherited from us will get them through.

To whatever extent we lose them because they are unprepared after sitting in our classes for 16-18 years, we are at least partially to blame for them being lost.

Following is a set of questions which do not ask for the typical or obvious answers, but rather are specifically constructed to help us equip them for the challenges many of them will face.

This is not a test to give the kids although you may want to survey some for their understandings.  The questions are for us teachers to make sure we are doing our job and not just being the social leader.

IF GOD:

  1. Why do you have a personal belief in God?

WHICH GOD:

  1. Why do you believe Jehovah is the one and only God?
  2. Why do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God?
  3. Can you respond to the claim that Jesus’ virgin birth was simply a common claim among emperors at the time and so it made him seem like a king?

THE BIBLE:

  1. Why do you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God?
  2. Why do you believe that the New Testament is our complete revelation and that no organization, council, or person is authorized by God to add to it or take away from it?
  3. Do you believe we continue to get revelations from God today?
  4. Why do you believe that we should be obedient to whatever the New Testament says?
  5. To be in rebellion to God, how many personal religious preferences do you need to follow instead of what the New Testament teaches?
  6. Why do you believe that we are not subject to the Old Testament?

THE CHURCH:

  1. Do you know what the New Testament requires for salvation?
  2. Why are we baptized for the remission of sins?
  3. Why are we baptized by immersion?
  4. Why is instrumental music not acceptable in worship?
  5. Why does God allow pain and suffering to exist?
  6. What does the New Testament say about the organization of congregations?
  7. What does the New Testament say about being homosexual?
  8. What does the New Testament say about homosexual conduct?
  9. If I join the church, does it mean I am saying my mother is going to Hell?

EVOLUTION:

  1. Name an example of something we see which is impossible to achieve through atheistic evolution.
  2. Do you believe small horses can evolve into a large horse?
  3. If you believe some things can evolve but other things can’t, how do you distinguish between the two?
  4. How much scientific proof is there for the theory of evolution of species?
  5. Is evolution of species possible?
  6. If there is a single thing we see which atheistic evolution cannot achieve, is atheistic evolution disproven?
  7. Were the heavens and the earth created in 144 hours?
CONCLUSION

If you are unclear on any of these subjects, just think of the kid’s you are teaching.  If the kids are unclear and are confronted by an ardent atheistic evolutionist full of “facts”, what do you think is going to happen?

Can we afford to send our kids out into the world without being prepared to answer questions like these?  Maybe even more to the question, can we send our adults out without their having ready answers to these questions?

There are numerous places where answers to the preceding questions can be found.  The most convenient place will be on the occginstitute.org website under the Short Answers tab or cell phone menu item.

***The objective of this paper is not to get our teachers or kids to memorize this data.  It is to acquaint them with the answers and let them know it is as handy as their cell phone or computer in a quick to access location.