At the heart of the modern state is its desire for freedom. But the freedom they pursue is far from the perfect freedom offered in the Holy Word, it is the freedom of enslavement. When the state offers freedom they mean bondage; when they say they give you freedom from debt they will impose a subtle financial chain that will strangle your very soul. Rushdoony said that “the only freedom desired by the modern state is its own.” They want freedom to spend your money the way they so please. If it entails rebuilding a nation that we are destroying, protecting borders not our own, or supporting a humanistic educational system, whatever it may be they want that freedom. Our current allegiance to freedom means less for us and more to the state. What’s wrong with this picture?
Christianity Today on Children
Leslie fields has written a marvelous piece in defense of large families though she admits: ” I am not a proselytizer for large families…” I am not so sure how that is possible, nevertheless this is a fantastic article. Here are a few sample quotes:
When large families make it to the movies and television screen, in shows like Yours, Mine, and Ours, Cheaper by the Dozen, and the Brady Bunch, children fare better. But comedy, it seems, is all that can be expected of a pack of kids. Chaos generally rules, with Disneyesque household destruction following in the wake of an errant animal or child, a riotous bedlam that miraculously concludes with everybody fed and dressed and out of the door each day looking nearly normal.
What happens in larger families? Children are more tolerant. They learn that they are part of a whole much larger than themselves and that the common good usually takes precedence over their particular desires.
So why do we have children at all? So much is against the whole enterprise. Children cost too much hmoney. They cost too much of ourselves. Children undo us. They show us how much and how little we’re made of. They come, it often seems, only to break our hearts. And we let them. We invite it all. We admit perfect strangers through our doors and decide before we even know who they are to love them wildly, without condition, for as long as we live.
Cal Thomas speaks out against public schools
Following my previous post on Intelligent Design in public schools, Cal Thomas has come with intensity on his new article in Townhall.com. He writes that we should welcome Judge Jones’ ruling to impede any idea of Intelligent Design to be taught at Dover, Pennsylvania’s public schools “on grounds it is a thinly veiled effort to introduce a religious view of the world’s origins.” Thomas correctly observes concerning the ruling:
It should awaken religious conservatives to the futility of trying to make a secular state reflect their beliefs. Too many people have wasted too much time and money since the 1960s, when prayer and Bible reading were outlawed in public schools, trying to get these and a lot of other things restored. The modern secular state should not be expected to teach Genesis 1, or any other book of the Bible, or any other religious text.
Anyone who has read this blog for any length of times realizes why this is so significant to me. Scriptures in no place gives the role of educating our children to the government. This is a distinctly Christian responsibility. Thankfully, Cal Thomas is on our side on this battle.
See Thomas’ post.
Intelligent Design in Public Schools?
The media has been replete with news on the Intelligent Design debate. This time however, the issues have taken a more serious nature. Intelligent Design advocates believe they can make a strong enough case for allowing certain features of design to be taught in Public Schools alongside the untouchable theory of evolution. Though I have much sympathy for the Intelligent Design Movement, I have maintained for the last three years that to attempt to implement a theistic world view into a system that is overwhelmingly pagan is an exercise in futility. Though not a popular view, my proposal as well as a growing consensus of evangelicals and confessional Christians (Presbyterians) is that children are entitled to a thoroughly Christian education.
The Chalcedon Foundation has recently published a small but telling approach to the Intelligent Design Controversy. I wholeheartedly support their commitment on this area. Here is the section from their discussion.
For Chalcedon, Intelligent Design (ID) is moot because we believe a Christian child should not participate in the humanistic institution of public education. Parents and churches must work together to raise godly children that can discount the theory of evolution as scientifically and philosophically untenable.
My prayer is that Christian parents will respond to the Dover case as a further confirmation that their child’s education is their responsibility, not that of the state. Groups like the Discovery Institute could be of great benefit to Christian parents by creating resources to be used by homeschoolers and Christian academies. Let the Christian community work to create alternatives.
The future prosperity of the Kingdom of God is not contingent upon public schools teaching ID. After all, were Judge Jones to rule in favor of ID would Christian families begin sending their children BACK to public schools?
The Christian world view is a system and must be taught as such. Prayer in school to the god of your choice, or science classes that grant equal time for ID as well as evolution, are not solutions. In fact, they are hindrances. Uninformed Christian parents may leave their children in the public school system simply because of 60 seconds of silent prayer to the “marvelous upstairs person.”
They will not be taught that the Triune God created the world by His powerful Word in the space of six days and declared all, very good. They will not be instructed in the application of God’s law to every area of life and thought. Even worse, they will grasp the ungodly concept of neutrality — that 2+2=4 even if God doesn’t exist.
They will lose sight of the centrality of the church and the family; and will likely send their future children to the same godless institution. Education is the responsibility of parents. And parents do not control the public school system. The state controls education; and in doing so, they control the future. Let’s take that power back. Let’s use what’s left of our liberties and resign from this system. Millions of Christians have already done so. Millions more should. Choose ye this day whom you will serve, God or the state?
Government Schools = Government Granddads
German Homeschoolers to Flee to America?
By Lee Duigon
German Christians are trying to find a way to emigrate to the United
States to preserve their faith and their families from persecution by an
aggressively secular German government. Much of the curriculum is of a
pornographic nature. It is without norms. It is against human dignity.
Naturally, Christian parents try to remove their children from this
environment. But when they do, the state steps in to punish them. German
culture was already subservient to state authority, and socialism
reinforces this. Socialism makes people think in a box: everyone has to be
the same. If you think differently, you may be persecuted. Read the article
Economic Chaos?
FINANCIAL TERRORISM
by Dan Denning
Contrary to what you see in the press, though, the average Frenchman or woman is not that different from you, except, perhaps, at the dinner table. The French take their food seriously. A cup of coffee or a three hour dinner is not just about the quality of the food or the wine. Eating is a social experience in France. What’s more, serving food is a serious profession for which men and women go to school in France
Click to continue
The Sabbath and John Dewey
What on earth does Dewey have to do with the fourth commandment? The question should be rather: “What does God’s Holy Day have to do with the education of children?” In a certain sense, Dewey directed the attention of American education back to children (at least in public schools). John Dewey applied pragmatism (the idea that if it works then it must be good) to education. Hence, today there is a strong emphasis on the experimentation in children’ s education. Dewey is so influential in secular education that his pragmatism came to be understood as the American Philosophy of Education. He was so committed to this idea that he went so far as to say that we change the world by teaching our children. Let the child express himself/herself; let the child experiment and discover what is right and wrong whether it works or not.
The great pragmatist who died in 1952 understood one thing correctly: that the future of a nation depends on the education of the next generation. However, Dewey (perhaps an agnostic) never understood education in the context of the total depravity of man (which, by the way, includes infants and children). If totally depraved people are left to experiment with their totally depraved hearts then the end result is a totally depraved understanding of reality. Dewey’s children will grow up with a distorted worldview where there is no God and experimentation with all sorts of sins are a practical outworking of this philosophy. This is the reason why the consequences of ideas have killed a generation of fertile minds.
What is our hope? Our hope rests in special revelation and the general revelation of God. Special revelation determines that the focus of human nurture is Biblical not humanist pragmatism. Scriptures restore the broken world of Dewey to the new world of Christian education. General revelation* insists on applying the laws of education to reflect the principles and ontological brilliance of Scriptures in the realm of nurture and admonition. In Deuteronomy 6, the One true God is worshipped; but notice the context of this worship: it includes instruction to our children. God’s Holy law is to be a sign on your hand and shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
Notice the text:
4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Christianity is education. True Education is Christianity. There can never be a divorce of these two concepts. If one is devoid of the other, the future of education will be pure experimentation in the darkness of pragmatism.
What about the Sabbath? The Holy Day needs to be shaped by the instruction of God’s eternal words. Children must be reminded of God’s promises and their minds need to be restored to the world of Christ and His Lordship. Sunday Sermons need to be communicated to children in a way which is understood. Big concepts need to be taught in the context of general truths. If the Sabbath is restored and becomes familial in nature, then Dewey’s idea that we change the world by teaching our children will come true. Except in this case, the kingdom of God will crush Dewey and exalt Christ.
* By General Revelation I do not simply mean nature. I accept Richard Pratt’s definition of general revelation that says that this revelation encompasses all things within nature such as human ability to create, education, art, literature etc.
Gender – Neutral ?
Jim Brown from Agape Press writes that:
A growing number of schools are now providing student housing in which members of the opposite sex can live together and share a private bathroom. Oberlin College in Ohio and Sara Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, are making communal bathrooms available in resident halls. And schools like the University of Chicago and Beloit College in Wisconsin are designating gender-neutral restrooms in major areas of their campuses.
Breaking all the barriers of sexual distinction is seemingly the new agenda of sexual activists and leftists in American Universities and Colleges. This is reportedly a liberating experience to those who have felt intimidated by same sex oppression. This shameful act describes the incomprehensible urge of a small, but determined group to bring cultural and educational liberation to the “suppressed” minority in campuses today.
With the recent attacks on the institution of marriage, such gender-neutral housing and bathrooms may even increase. Such dreadful display of ungodliness should be an urgent cry for parents today. A distinctly Christian education will prepare the next generation of Orthodox young Christians to challenge the false premise of neutrality in the ethical arena.