Truth My Kids Will Know - Newer Isn't Always Better

 Lie #24 - "The Current Popular Opinion..."

People often talk about change as if it were a virtue in and of itself. Many times, the "fresh new ideas" are pitted against the "tired old ways" in a way that assumes newer is always better. But whenever you hear politicians, activists, teachers and other leaders bragging about how they want to change things up, please remember this point: Change is neither inherently good or inherently bad.

Change is like money - it's the details that make it good or evil.

The argument that new ideas are better than the old ones they were replacing is an intellectual fallacy known as "argumentum ad novitatem" - the appeal to novelty. It's commonly referred to as "chronological snobbery". It's an opinion that is especially popular during ages of advancing technology and scientific discovery. After all, when each version of smart phone, television and vehicle is more advanced than the last, it'd be easy to assume that newer always equals better.

But many new ideas through history have been terrible:

 - Darwin's new idea about the evolution of man led some 19th century naturalists to obtain African natives and Australian Aborigines as "scientific specimens" for their latest version of natural history.

 - Hitler built on Darwin's idea with an even newer idea about racial evolution and a perfect Arian man.

 - The new idea of eugenics that came out of Nazi Germany was adopted around the world, leading to forced sterilizations and harsh discrimination against so-called "lower races".

 - A woman named Margaret Sanger embraced the new concept of eugenics and went on to found Planned Parenthood, intentionally targeting minority neighborhoods to set up her "state-of-the-art" abortion clinics.

Let me ask you, was the "newness" of these ideas enough to make them good?

Can you imagine people in the next century looking back on our modern ideologies today and saying things like:

 - "Can you believe they actually thought that babies in the womb weren't people and just killed them?"

 - "Can you believe they actually thought that car exhaust and cow farts were changing the weather?"

 - "What it must've been like to live in a time when people thought that genders were based on how someone felt at the moment!"

Bad ideas that are new are still bad ideas!

Don't Dump An Idea Just Because It's Old

Proverbs 22:28 - "Don't remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set."

Granted, there were also a lot of bad ideas in the past.

 - People used to believe that sickness was caused by bad blood, and believed that their recovery depended on getting the bad blood out. 

 - People used to believe that it was perfectly acceptable to own another person like property due to debt. This eventually morphed into an even newer idea of slavery based on race.

 - There was a time when people used to believe that someone could sail off the edge of the earth.

But there are also a lot of GOOD OLD ideas.

 - Honoring your elders.

 - Society's chivalrous care for women.

 - Respect for those who have authority.

 - Holding to God's standard in the Ten Commandments.

 - Knowing that your life is better or worse depending on the effort you put into it.

 - Showing good manners.

These ideas weren't about technological advances and discovery. Rather, they were timeless concepts that are still superior to any of their modern-day replacements.

Before you can rightfully discard an old idea, you need to understand how it was formed in the first place. G.K. Chesterton said it this way, "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up." Ignorant people have no right to get rid of old ideas, or to adopt new ones - that right belongs only to those who have a good understanding of the old ways. (Ironically, it's the people that understand them the most that are the least likely to abandon them.)

Let me illustrate this with a recent example:

When a certain political party lost power in 2016, they began to denounce the Electoral College as old fashioned, out of date, and an obstacle of true democracy. "Why should we put a particular president in office when the majority of the population didn't vote for him?" We started hearing calls to discard the College and replace it with a strict nationwide popular vote. We were told that it would be a change from the old and outdated into the new and relevant! 

But I challenge you to talk to someone that isin favor of dismantling the Electoral College. If you do, you'd notice one major flaw with their argument: Very few of them know why the College was set up in the first place. They want to get rid of a fence, without knowing why it was set up.

 - They don't know that America is great primarily because it's not a pure democracy.

 - They don't know that the entire country would be at the mercy of a handful of metropolitan areas without the Electoral College.

 - They don't understand that most of the rural populations and smaller towns would never see another local politician again once the ruling class saw that all the votes were coming from a few major cities.

 - They don't understand the tyranny that comes with a strict majority rule.

The very idea of "representative government" demands that every state has a voice in the lawmaking process, not just the same three states with the most population. To take the classic idea of equal state representation and replace it with "whoever gets the most individual votes" is not only a bad change...it's a dangerous one.

How To Fix Bad Ideas

All of history's bad ideologies have been fixed the same way, by returning to even older, timeless concepts. My opinion is this: The oldest ideas are still the best. (By "oldest", I mean the original ideas...those that came from God Himself.) Sadly, holding onto God's original ideas and intent - as they are revealed in His Word - would've prevented a lot of bad ideas over the centuries.

 - God said that "the life of the flesh is in the blood". That old-fashioned idea disagreed with the newer idea of blood-letting to get rid of bad blood. 

 - God spoke of the "circle of the earth" that was "hung on nothing". This original idea starkly disagreed with the newer concept of a flat earth that sat on the back of a giant turtle.

 - God told us that humanity was created in God's image, and that we've all been made "from one blood." That old idea leaves little room for the newer practice of racism that started after the Tower of Babel - about 1,800 years after Adam sinned.

Here's the bottom line: God's ways are obviously the oldest, right? And yet, He had it right at the very beginning! So whenever we see a bad idea pop up, the only way we can fix it is by going back to what's considered "outdated" and "old-fashioned."

While the rest of the world is mesmerized by the "new" and the "latest", my kids will know this truth: Newer Is Not Always Better. The best ideas are timeless.