The Consolation Prize

There was a time when someone who didn’t get the big prize got something called a consolation prize. An idea has become prevalent in elementary and secondary schools that children will be damaged if they don’t all achieve the same outcomes – get first prize. Instead of providing equal opportunity for all children to succeed and naturally find that some excel, it has become necessary for all children to believe they are excellent. Necessarily, this has resulted in the lowering of standards of excellence. One example of this is the travesty of “invented spelling.” Students need not learn how to spell words properly; they are allowed to make up their own spelling for difficult words. The idea that children cannot be told they are wrong is disastrous.

This tragedy is compounded by the fact that most children spend much of their “free time” in front of one device or another getting little or no exercise, mental or physical. The explosion of cable networks catering to children assures that they have endless hours of drivel, both animated and live, that repeats the mantra that everyone always wins. Computer games allow unlimited retries to achieve whatever passes as success on the screen. This too is reflective of an academic disease: several years ago I was told that a high school teacher allowed students to retake a test as many times as necessary until they could pass. No wonder high school graduates are attaining such high GPA’s.

As a composition instructor of college freshman, I saw the results of this misguided philosophy every term. Being from the cruel old school era where standards existed that must be met, I was forced to give some students less than a perfect score. I remember one young lady who was virtually in tears because I gave her a C on her composition. She whined that she was an honor student in her high school English classes and could not believe I dared to mark her writing so poorly. I still believe a C means average, and to be truthful, her work was actually below what I would call average, but I wanted to soften the blow. Reality bites, they say.

Another result of the school systems’ failure to properly educate is even more distressing. As a composition teacher, I felt it was my duty to teach not just proper writing but critical thinking as well. Rhetoric, as it used to be called, requires the ability to communicate effectively having built a strong case for the chosen position. The ever-increasing pressure to have students achieve high scores on state tests has devolved “teaching” into the process of providing the “right” answer on a test. I found very few students who could reason their way to a logical conclusion and many who simply wanted to know “the answer.”

I was further troubled by the fact that often a student who made a reasonable argument was often challenged by other students who had no support for their argument. To believe something because you have been told it is true is not altogether a bad thing. However, at some point, everyone must examine what they have been told to see if it can stand the test of reality. For example, many of my students were in favor of the “free” college education a certain political candidate was proposing. When asked who would pay for the “free” schooling, none could answer. When informed that taxes would have to be levied that would eventually come out of their paychecks many were forced to rethink the meaning of “free.”

But enough of my college teaching days. What has this to do with Heaven (WHAMM.)? The same sloppy reasoning has infected the church. Rather than studying to show themselves approved, too many Christians are swallowing whatever they are told about the Bible. Some of the misapprehensions are insignificant, but some are not. (See “The Lies We Have Been Told”) Sentimentality, which I believe drives the everyone-is-a-winner philosophy in schools, has caused many to take the pain out of the flip side of the gospel coin.

The good side of the good news is that people can be saved; the other side is that people can be lost. What some have tried to do is remove the painful part of the truth by denying that hell exists (See “Answering Rob Bell” 1-6). Others develop a theology of universal salvation from a desire to make God seem less prickly. Neither of these positions can be supported with proper biblical interpretation. Here again, using standards and applying logic are skills not frequently taught these days. It is much more comfortable to think that everyone goes to heaven (gets the prize) than to believe that some people will suffer eternal separation from God.

Unfortunately, hell is a reality that cannot be wished away. Jesus spent a good share of His teaching time warning about the consequences of unbelief. Logic requires us to believe that there is a penalty for sin; otherwise, God played a cruel joke on His Son by making Him suffer the agony of the crucifixion needlessly. If sin and unbelief have no dire consequences, why take such great pains to educate Israel through centuries of sacrificial worship culminating in the ultimate Sacrifice once for all?

There is one prize available to everyone. In 2 Thessalonians 2:16 Paul tells us that Christ is our eternal consolation (KJV). God so loved the world that He gave us a way to have eternal life with Him, but that life is available only to “whosoever believes on [His Son].” While it is true that God is not willing that any should perish, it is also true that some will perish by their own choice. I don’t know exactly how that will all work out; it is up to God to see that it does.* I do know that in this case, the “consolation prize” is to be desired above all else.

*For more an how this works see “God’s Choice or Man’s” and “Election: God’s Choice”