The World and Everything in It - April 7, 2022

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Homeschooling enjoyed a surge of interest during the pandemic and not just in America.

NICK EICHER, HOST: But not in Boston, where a city committee is trying to stop a Christian school from opening. We’ll tell you why.

Plus a recent archeological discovery supports the Biblical account of the conquest of Canaan.

And the increasingly rare concept of redemption.

BROWN: It’s Thursday, April 7th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covingotn has today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden, West announce more sanctions against Russia » President Biden says the United States and Western allies continue to turn up the heat on Russia with more new sanctions.

BIDEN: With our allies and our partners, we’re going to keep raising the economic cost and ratchet up the pain on Putin and further increase Russia’s economic isolation.

The new penalties will include a ban on all new investment in Russia.

And the West is ramping up sanctions on Russia’s financial institutions and state-owned enterprises. The U.S. and its allies also announced Wednesday that they’re sanctioning the family members of top government officials, including Vladimir Putin’s daughters.

That came one day after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined new penalties, including …

LEYEN: A full transaction ban on four key Russian banks. These four banks represent 23 percent of market share in the Russian banking sector.

Also on Wednesday, the Treasury Department moved to block the Russian government from making any debt payments in U.S. dollars from accounts at U.S. financial institutions.

Biden extends federal student loan repayment pause » President Biden announced Wednesday that his administration is extending the freeze on federal student loan payments through the end of August.

BIDEN: This continued pause will help Americans breathe a little easier as we recover and rebuild from the pandemic.

Student loan payments were scheduled to resume on May 1st.

The action applies to more than 43 million Americans who owe a combined $1.6 trillion in federal student debt.

Senate GOP demands Democrats address border crisis » GOP lawmakers are trying to block the Biden administration from lifting the Title 42 immigration measure. Republicans say lifting it would further throw open the floodgates for migrants crossing the southern border.

Senate dealmakers thought they had reached an agreement late Monday on $10 billion dollars in funds to fight COVID-19.

But many Republicans said they would withhold support unless Democrats agreed to vote on an amendment preventing President Biden from lifting Title 42. That’s a pandemic measure that limits who can cross the U.S. southern border.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki criticized the GOP maneuver:

PSAKI: Decisions on Title 42 should remain independent of the urgently needed funding for COVID aid. This is a decision made by the CDC. It’s a public health decision. It’s not one that should be wrapped up, of course, in politics.

Each month, more than 150,000 migrants are either crossing illegally or showing up without documents at ports of entry. The CDC said last week that it will revoke the Title 42 restrictions on May 23rd. That could trigger an even greater surge of asylum-seekers with border officials and the immigration system already overwhelmed.

Police: At least 5 gunmen involved in Sacramento shooting » Police in Sacramento now say that at least five gunmen were involved in a deadly shooting early Sunday morning. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Investigators have identified at least five gunmen but there may have been even more. Police say it now appears the incident was a shootout between rival gangs.

As of Wednesday evening, authorities had arrested only two men in connection with the shooting. They are siblings in their late 20’s. At the moment, they only face firearms charges.

Authorities credited witnesses who contributed nearly 200 videos, photos and tips with helping the investigation, which is ongoing.

More than 100 gunshots echoed through the streets in California’s capital … as bars closed down around 2 a.m. Sunday morning.

Investigators have been trying to determine if a street fight outside a nightclub may have sparked the shooting.

Six people died from gunshot wounds. Twelve others were wounded.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Severe weather kills 3 in south » After violent storms and tornadoes ripped through several states, many residents in the south are still picking up debris and clearing fallen trees from roadways.

The storms are blamed for killing at least three people.

In Bryan County, Georgia, west of Savannah, a woman was found dead Tuesday night amid the shredded wreckage of her mobile home.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp toured the destruction Wednesday.

KEMP: Directly across the street, there is nothing left of that house. It looks like a bomb hit that house. I mean, we’re lucky that there wasn’t more loss of life.

Officials also reported storm-related deaths in Louisiana and Texas.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: homeschooling halfway around the world.

Plus, rejecting the human tendency toward condemnation.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 7th of April, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up today: homeschooling in Nigeria.

Teaching children at home is not just an American phenomenon. All over the world, parents are discovering the joy of directing their students’ education.

WORLD’s Onize Ohikere reports on the homeschool movement in her own backyard.

ADENIYI: Do you know that this is a caterpillar/does it sting?

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: That’s Linda Adeniyi, a homeschooling mom out on a nature study with her four children. One of her sons excitedly holds the caterpillar of an elephant hawk moth on a leaf.

Adeniyi’s homeschooling journey in Nigeria’s Lagos state started five years ago, when her eldest son started having trouble in school.

ADENIYI: Each time he would just struggle. I really didn’t understand why it was like that until he came back home one day and told his father his teacher didn’t think he was smart.

The family decided to pull the 5-year-old out of school to help him catch up before the next school year began. That’s when Adeniyi decided to explore homeschooling.

She pored over blog posts, YouTube videos, and live streams of homeschooling activities. Adeniyi found the formal home education curriculum expensive, so she created her own. And her son flourished.

ADENIYI: He became bright, he became alive in learning. Because of the love I have for him, I wanted him to succeed.

Adeniyi is part of a growing group of homeschooling parents across Nigeria. They include parents searching for higher quality or tailored education and missionaries often on the move.

Olumuyiwa Okunlola is the Nigerian consultant for the curriculum provider Accelerated Christian Education, or ACE. He says about 80 homeschool parents in the country use the ACE curriculum.

Three homeschool academies also use the program. One of them is the Saros Home Education center in Abuja.

CHILD: In science I’m learning about force, friction, sliding friction, and energy.

All the students in the two-story building are busy. Some of the younger kids read aloud. Upstairs, children in seventh-grade wear headphones as they study French and English.

Rosemary Udo-Imeh is the founder of the Saros center.

She describes it as more of a co-op: The students don’t wear uniforms—a rarity here in Nigeria. Parents are also directly involved in the decisions about their children’s education. For instance, the parents consented before she introduced a new online learning platform for older children.

She sees such decisions as critical in a country where students are trained to be more obedient and less critical, and education is more theoretical and less of an experience.

UDO-IMEH: We dot our I’s and we cross our T’s and we obey all the rules when it comes to learning, but we’re not critical in our thinking. We don’t question. You know how a child knows all the laws in physics and then you drop a ball on the floor and the ball bounces, and you ask him which law is at play, and the child says they didn’t teach us that one [laughs].

The center grew naturally from Udo-Imeh homeschooling her own children. She began in 2017, when her family faced a financial crisis. They had to withdraw their four children from the international school they attended. But Udo-Imeh knew she didn’t want to send them to a conventional Nigerian school.

UDO-IMEH: I don’t like the fact that children have to look the same way, talk the same way, dress the same way. I believe every child is different and every child learns different.

During her research, she listened to the children of a fellow church member talk about their homeschool experience. She was especially impressed with their ability to speak multiple languages, including Mandarin.

UDO-IMEH: They were going into the university, they had graduated but they were homeschooled and they had never been to school before. I went hunting to find out who their mother was.

The woman introduced her to the ACE curriculum. Udo-Imeh also invested in her children’s interests in art, animation, and swimming.

The small gathering around her dining table grew quickly as more people learned about her efforts.

Nigeria has no legal provisions for homeschooling, but parents can register their children independently for national exams.

By 2019, Udo-Imeh sought a unique approach to register and formalize her growing center.

UDO-IMEH: We got the approval from the Ministry of Education, but we got an approval as an international school, not a Nigerian school.

The arrangement allows her to prepare students for national exams and also international tests, such as the SATs.

Pandemic restrictions brought even more parents to the center, some seeking help to set up home schools. Some have returned to conventional schools, but Udo-Imeh is hopeful parents learned a vital lesson.

UDO-IMEH: Education should not be restricted to four walls. Learning can be done anywhere.

[CHILDREN CHATTING]

Back in Lagos, Adeniyi’s oldest son is now 10. Next year, he will sit for a national exam required to advance to the Nigerian equivalent of seventh grade.

Adeniyi said she and her husband are still praying over whether to continue with homeschooling.

ADENIYI: The thing is it’s different from teaching a primary school-aged child. The curriculums are not the same.

But she says the progress he has made so far has been drastic.

Regardless of what choice they make, Adeniyi says the priority remains giving the children their best.

ADENIYI: My main focus now is on them first and then, with time, every other thing would fall in place.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a religious liberty fight in Massachusetts.

A large church outside Boston wants to open a new school, but it is facing off with a local government committee it says is hostile to its religious beliefs. The Vida Real church in Somerville, Massachusetts, says the committee is prepared to reject its proposal for a Christian school because of its views on creationism, among other things.

Joining us now to fill us in on this case is Steve West. He’s an attorney and writes about religious liberty issues for WORLD Digital.

BROWN: Good morning to you, Steve!

STEVE WEST, REPORTER: Good morning, Myrna!

BROWN: First of all, why is this government committee involved in approving the formation of a private school?

WEST: School committee, at least in Massachusetts, is what is called the school board in many other states. These are elected officials, not employed educators, that oversee the schools in the district. And as in many states, they have a role in ensuring that certain basic subjects are taught in all schools and that certain standards are met. So, much as states may have to approve home schools, they do so with private schools, but their role is limited. In Massachusetts, a state law that provides for this review also says that in considering an application, the state may not consider the school’s religious views.

BROWN: Alright, now at a meeting on Monday evening, the school committee did not take a vote on the matter, but it requested additional material from Vida Real. What’s going on here?

WEST: This process started back in September when the church indicated it wanted to apply for a new school and made an application. This a large church, with a multi-site campus and largely Hispanic congregation. Many parents had expressed interest in having a school, and the church already had a facility to accommodate it. They planned on using the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum used by many Christian schools and homeschools. That's when they ran into a problem.

BROWN: Now, a lawyer says the council has shown evidence of anti-religious bias. Why does he say that?

WEST: Because of what the church encountered when their application was referred to a programs subcommittee. That subcommittee presented the church with a battery of 35 questions to be answered at a February 2022 meeting. That’s where the church said several members expressed hostility to its religious beliefs.

BROWN: And what are the issues, exactly, on which the schools subcommittee disagreed with the church or with Christian teachings more broadly?

WEST: Here’s a sample from the report issued by the subcommittee. They said, “The school’s position on homosexuality and creationism make it difficult to see how a thorough science and health curriculum is possible.” They also faulted the school over its counseling of students, saying its approach “devalues evidence-based psychology, and its emphasis on approaches rooted in the belief that mental illness is caused by sin and demons is unscientific and harmful”--in other words, Biblical counseling is inadequate.

BROWN: Where do you see this case heading from here?

WEST: The full schools committee met Monday evening. They discussed the application for a full 90 minutes. A couple of members expressed similar concerns. Yet the school district’s attorney cautioned them against considering the way in which the school taught subjects or in considering religious views. The assistant superintendent of the district, who at one time was tasked with approving applications for homeschools, indicated that were it his decision, he would approve the school. I suspect that when a vote is taken on April 25th, this application will be approved, over some dissent.

BROWN: As you are watching this process unfold, any takeaways?

WEST: Yes. In many disputes like this, there can be open hostility to religion and religious people, but more often, in an increasingly secular society, people are just uniformed. They may not know any religious people well. Their opinions are shaped by the media which often portrays religious people as backwards or worse, as bigots. It’s a good reminder to Christians to know our neighbors and let ourselves be known–as Christians. We may be the only Christian they know.

BROWN: Steve West writes about religious liberties for WORLD Digital. You can read his work at WNG.org. You can also subscribe to his free weekly newsletter on First Amendment issues, called Liberties. Steve, always good to have you on. Thank you!

WEST: Always a pleasure to be with you, Myrna.

NICK EICHER, HOST: As tight as security is at the Capitol these days, it’s not tight enough, apparently.

An assailant attacked Congressman Ami Bera of California on Monday evening as he was walking to the Capitol for votes.

The attacker is now in custody but will likely be released without charges!

And Congressman Bera says he has not even been asked to help identify his attacker.

BERA: I don’t think there’s going to be a lineup where they’re going to have me look at several foxes to identify that.

You caught that—a lineup of foxes, hard to imagine given the well-earned reputation of the fox—that sly fox.

Apparently he’s not just sly. He took a bite out of that congressman. Bera said he had to take a series of rabies shots just to be on the safe side.

The animal will likely be released into the wild.

He broke no law.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 7th, 2022. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In 2019, a team of archeologists began meticulously sifting a pile of rubble. It was the cast-off from a 1980’s dig site on Israel’s Mount Ebal—a location mentioned by name in Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8 at the time of the conquest.

BROWN: For years, critics have argued that the first five books of the Old Testament couldn't have been written down until centuries after Moses and Joshua lived: Arguing that written Hebrew didn’t exist at the time. Therefore—they claim—the Biblical account of the conquest is unreliable, mythological.

EICHER: But a small piece of lead found at the Mount Ebal site two years ago suggests that Hebrew writing is much older than many skeptics want to believe. WORLD’s Paul Butler is here to sift the details of the story.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: It’s hard to believe that a small, folded sheet of lead—no bigger than a first-class postage stamp—could cause so much excitement.

STRIPLING: On a scale of one to 10, this is a 10. It doesn't get any bigger than this.

That’s Scott Stripling, director of excavations for the Associates of Biblical Research - or ABR. He’s speaking here at a March 25th, 2022, press conference.

STRIPLING: We talk about verisimilitude or a consistency between what we read in a text and what we find in the material culture, that correlation. It doesn't get any better than this. If the text were true, this is what you would anticipate finding. And indeed it is what we found.

Stripling is referring to a lead tablet, or amulet, that is just over three quarters of an inch square. It’s what’s called a “defixio” or curse tablet. Scott Lanser is ABR director.

LANSER: They would take a small sliver of lead and take an iron pen and they would etch into that lead that curses will follow if they do not follow through on this binding commitment and they understand the consequences of that.

The defixio is not a charm, or talisman, or written incantation. It’s actually a legally binding document that holds the person who wrote it to the terms of the agreement.

LANSER: Then the amulet is folded in half and is sealed at that point and then placed into the altar area there.

This curse tablet came from inside Joshua’s altar on Mt. Ebal. The team of archeologists and volunteers discovered this defixio through a process called “wet sifting.”

LANSER: There are two processes that have been followed. More traditionally is dry sifting which of course you take grates and you shake the dirt and what’s left is maybe small artifacts—and again that’s common to be done—but we have really strongly emphasized the use of wet sifting, so that we can pass all of our material through that wet sifting station and wash everything down and through. Of course much of the effort—you’re just washing dirt away but then these artifacts come to the surface after the washing…and that’s always exciting.

In 1982 archeologist Adam Zertal began a seven year excavation of the Mt. Ebal site. As he uncovered the altar, he piled the unwanted material in two dump sites nearby. That’s what the ABR team began re-sifting—with water.

Again, Scott Stripling from the March 2022 press conference.

STRIPLING: With our new process, having gone back and checked old dump piles from the 1980s, we knew that they were full of scarabs, bullae, and other glyptic material. And so it was not a shock to us that we did recover something of this importance.

When the team discovered the curse tablet, they knew almost immediately what it was. But the lead was so hard and brittle, they couldn’t pry it open to read the inscription inside.

Since the tablet was found in a refuse pile—and not in context with other buried finds—it’s more difficult to date. So the team sent a piece from the tablet to be analyzed by a metallurgy expert. He concluded that it was consistent with other Late Bronze 2 samples: placing it easily within the date range of the conquest.

So Stripling collaborated with four scientists in Prague at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic to scan the interior of the defixio.

STRIPLING: So our hope was that we would be able to topographically scan it which we were in addition to the two outer surfaces, you also have two inner surfaces, which we have now been able to read.

Two epigraphers then began deciphering the ancient text. After months of analysis, the Associates for Biblical Research announced the results two weeks ago:

STRIPLING: On the inside of the tablet, we recovered 40 Hebrew letters. And this is in a script that we would call proto-alphabetic script.

In other words, early Hebrew script that includes both figures and symbols. It predates pure representative letters, and thus, proto-alphabetic.

STRIPLING: 11 of these letters are ‘alefs’—the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet—and they are all the archaic form…And so you have an ox head that is morphing…into an aleph. And in the 23-word English translation, the word curse appears 10 times. And ladies and gentlemen, the name Yahweh appears twice.

The inscription is a chiastic parallelism—found frequently in Hebrew poetry:

STRIPLING: And so what it reads is this:

Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.

Stripling believes this is a self-imprecatory curse—similar to what we read in Deuteronomy 27 and 28. In the Biblical account, the Israelites gathered on Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim for a covenant renewal ceremony:

STRIPLING: So if you go back and read those portions of the biblical text, you are saying I accept the blessings that come by keeping the covenant and I accept the curses that will come upon me if I break this covenant.

We don’t know who wrote the tablet. We don’t know if it was from the covenant renewal ceremony or something created afterwards. But even with the many remaining questions, this once discarded curse tablet is a significant find.

STRIPLILNG: The implications of this are enormous. And they will echo on and reverberate for many, many years to come. We now have the name Yahweh, the biblical God of Israel, in an inscription dating from earlier than many skeptics would argue that the Bible existed or that there was even the ability to write down a sacred text.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 7th . Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

The second episode of Lawless drops today! If you haven’t subscribed to the Lawless feed, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts—whether it’s Apple or Spotify or any number of other platforms. We do plan to post each episode on The World and Everything in It feed on Saturdays. But why wait? And one other thing, we are planning some bonus content during the season available only on the Lawless feed. It’s really just a couple of clicks on your device and you’re set. So subscribe to Lawless today—our true crime podcast—and catch the next installment of this riveting story, the Schiavo case. Episode two today.

BROWN: Do not miss it!

Up next: Cal Thomas with some thoughts on grace.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Actor Denzel Washington has done something increasingly rare these days. He sought redemption for someone who’d made a serious mistake.

I am, of course, talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the Academy Awards ceremony. After the incident, Washington and actor/director Tyler Perry reportedly put their arms around Smith and prayed with him during a commercial break.

Why? During an interview, Washington said, “But for the grace of God go any of us. Who are we to condemn?”

It appeared that most of the rest of Hollywood, after first giving Smith a standing ovation when he won “Best Actor” for his role in the film “King Richard,” quickly turned on him and condemned his behavior. Smith apologized to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and later apologized to Rock. But the Academy is contemplating disciplinary action against Smith. They should follow Denzel Washington’s example instead.

The goal should be redemption. Is that best accomplished by increasing levels of humiliation and condemnation, or reaching out to help him as Washington and Perry did?

Condemnation seems to be the norm in our politics and culture these days, but it never produces lasting change. Instead, it has the effect of hardening hearts, both of the one who condemns and the one on the receiving end.

Some examples that have caused the world to pause and consider a better way.

The first happened in 2007 in an Amish community in Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania. A man shot 10 young girls in a school room, killing five and then himself. The community offered the man forgiveness and donated money to his widow and her three young children.

The second was when Pope John Paul II forgave Mahmet Ali Aqca, who stabbed and nearly killed him in 2008.

The third was in 2014 when white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine people during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof was convicted and sentenced to death. But survivors and relatives of the victims extended grace and forgiveness to him, his wife and his children, shocking the nation.

The fourth was a model on which the others might have been based. It’s recorded in the eighth chapter of the Book of John. The Pharisees and teachers of the law were trying to trap Jesus by bringing to him a “woman caught in adultery.” They said the law of Moses required such a woman to be stoned to death. Jesus replied, “Let those without sin cast the first stone.” After all silently walked away, Jesus said to the woman: “Does no one condemn you?” She replied, “No one, Lord.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Jesus didn’t justify her sin. But he offered her grace over condemnation and urged her to change her behavior.

As Easter approaches, Christians have an opportunity to practice and preach that grace and redemption offered on the cross. It’s as radical today as it was two thousand years ago. And it’s still the only thing the world really needs.

I’m Cal Thomas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Culture Friday. John Stonestreet will join us as he does most Fridays.

And, grassroots journalism. We’ll tell you about two documentaries that showcase the importance of local reporting.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Ninth Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Go now in grace and peace.

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