Homeschool News & Views

Issue 23, May 25, 2007

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool News & Views, issue 23, for May 25, 2007.

Things can look pretty bleak sometimes. Like now. The liberals are running the country, the ACLU is running the schools, and gas prices are ruining your budget.

A Hate Crimes bill recently was passed by the liberals in the House of Representatives, and is now being considered in the Senate. An amendment was introduced to the Hate Crimes Bill in the House of Representatives to specifically protect religious freedom.

That amendment was rejected by the liberals.

Why did they reject that amendment?

Because they don’t want to protect religious freedom.

In fact, the bill is actually put forth to specifically prevent Christian freedom and expression, by supporting in codified law teachings and practices which are directly condemned by the Bible. But they don’t say that in such a blatant form. In fact, the left wing may say that such laws will not restrict religious teaching, but when given the chance to put that into their law, they refused.

This whole concept of some crimes being worse than others because the criminal hates the victim is ridiculously absurd. With hate crimes law, if I knock you in the head, then I get a certain penalty. But if I knock you in the head because I hate you, then I get a worse penalty. Look, liberals – how many people knock somebody in the head because they love them?

That’s just a farce. It is a direct attack on Christianity and on Bible teachings disguised as liberal do-goodism.

This bill is a Trojan horse. If the good looking horse is allowed within the fortified walls, the enemy soldiers will come out from inside the horse.

With activist judges, the question is not just “What does the law say?” but “What will the judges say the law says?”

James Madison was a homeschooled Christian who is called the Father of the United States Constitution. He had more influence on that document than any other man. How could he have thought two centuries ago that the US constitution, which was written to guarantee individual life and liberty, would be said by liberal judges to allow a woman to kill her baby at birth by stabbing it in the back of the neck with scissors and then sucking its brains out?

Any law that is passed must be looked at not just for what it says, but for what it might be interpreted to say. What precedent does it set? What legal decisions will be built on that base?

Missouri passed a state constitutional amendment at the last election allowing embryonic stem cell research. That election victory was bought by one entity, which supplied almost all the millions for the advertising which won the day. Now the liberals are trying to get embryonic stem cell legislation passed in the US Congress. Most people don’t know much about it. As with abortion, the reality is cloaked in purposely deceitful language. Embryonic stem cell research is simply cloning humans to kill them.

Right now in Missouri they say they will kill these little people – embryos -- at 15 days of age for their research. But where will that lead? Will I someday be able to clone a full grown me to get spare parts for the old me?

You see, once you eliminate the basis of all reality, God and His law, you wind up in intelligent insanity.

Once the liberals establish in federal law that those who practice homosexuality are a special protected class, how far will the liberal judges take that? A hate crimes law establishes the principle that a thought can be criminal. When someone commits a so-called hate crime, they will punish him not just for the crime, but for the thought. Once that principal is established in law, then it can be built upon. The first step is to establish that thinking that homosexual conduct is wrong is a criminal offense. Then they will work from that legal precedent.

Of course, that has to put somebody in the place of God. When Samuel was looking to anoint a king to replace Saul, David’s oldest brother Eliab looked awfully good to Samuel.

1Sa 16:6-7, World English Bible

(6) It happened, when they had come, that he looked at Eliab, and said, Surely Yahweh's anointed is before him.

(7) But Yahweh said to Samuel, "Don't look on his face, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for Yahweh sees not as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart."

The liberals are claiming for themselves the ability of God Almighty, to look on the heart, to be able to know a person’s thoughts and motives, and to punish him for those.

These are extremely critical times in our country. Sometimes Christian homeschool families can get very involved in their work and trying to accumulate property. How valuable will your property be to you if it is sitting in the middle of Sodom? Location, location, location, you know.

The next presidential and congressional election should be a vote on gay marriage. One party is for homosexual marriage. The other party is against homosexual marriage. One party is for turning totally against the country’s Christian heritage. The other is for retaining it, to whatever degree.

The media will not portray the election that way. Even most of the conservatives will not portray the election in that way, because most of them are too afraid of being criticized by the liberal media. But the whole election may be just a yes or no vote on gay marriage, and a yes or no vote on keeping any trace of the Bible in the country.

Supporting the public schools is the same way, a very clear cut decision. Since the judiciary is forcing homosexuality into the curriculum and into the culture of the government schools, the choice is simple. If you support the public schools, you are supporting the teaching and spreading of homosexuality. If you oppose the teaching and spreading of homosexuality, then you must not support the schools which do that.

That’s clear, isn’t it?

Now certainly most of the parents who send their children to the public schools and most of the teachers who teach in the public schools do not want to teach and spread sodomy, but they do not control those schools. The judges do. Therefore a Christian parent or teacher needs to exercise the control he or she does have, and that is the choice to withdraw from that institution which is being used to spread sodomy.

The same principle is true with the media. You as a Christian do not control the content of the Jerry Springer TV show. That is totally out of your control, and there is nothing you can do about that. What is within your control is the ability to not support Jerry Springer. You don’t have to watch him. You can spring for the clicker and turn Springer off.

This proposed hate crimes law would elevate the followers of Sodom to a special class of people, and lower Biblical Christians to a legally inferior class of people. That is exactly what happened to the Jews in Germany in the 1930’s under Hitler. A series of laws was passed making the Jews a legally deprived underclass. Once the series of laws established legal persecution, social persecution followed. Once the Jews were legally deprived, they were socially despised. It was OK to pick on them. Christians are already seeing that in the US, and more so in other western countries. One poll said that a quarter of Americans today stated that they would absolutely not vote for an evangelical Christian for office, just because he is a Christian. Think about that! One in four Americans today would not vote for George Washington or James Madison for president, just because he was a Christian. In his day, George could have been crowned king if he had wanted. Has this country changed or what?

Again we ask – how has that astounding change come about? Where did all these anti-Christians come from in historically Christian America? The parents didn’t produce them. The churches didn’t produce them.

They came from the educational system: the public schools and the extremely liberal universities. But those institutions were not nearly so blatant and straight forward in their anti-Christian teachings in the past as they are now, so where do we go from here?

I’ll tell you where we go from here. This crop of liberals being produced today not only will not vote for a Christian – they won’t even allow any to be in the country. Just as a hate crimes bill focuses on thought more than action, so the public schools are now focusing on what the students think, actively trying to reprogram them away from their Christian parents’ teachings. Realistically a Christian parent’s only choice today is let his child be taught sodomy in the schools, or take him out of the public schools. There is no middle ground.

1Ki 18:21, World English Bible

(21) Elijah came near to all the people, and said, "How long will you waver between the two sides? If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." The people answered him not a word.

Things can look pretty bleak sometimes. Like now, with the liberals running the country, the ACLU running the schools, and the high gas prices ruining your budget. But a Christian is not called to take the easy way out.

The government will pay for your child’s education, his transportation to and from school, and maybe his food. Those who support Christian education are forced to pay for all that themselves. The US Constitution prevents a person from being tried twice for the same crime, but people who give their children Christian education have to pay for it twice. They have to pay tuition or expenses for the Christian schooling, and they have to pay taxes, usually property taxes, to pay for the left wing anti-Christian education, which they don’t use.

That’s not easy.

Homeschoolers face the very stiffest challenges. They have purposely chosen to have someone be a full time teacher in the family, meaning they only get about half the wages as most Americans. As I write this, gasoline prices are higher than they have ever been in America. I honestly remember when we used to pull in a gas station and get a dollar’s worth of gas. If I did that today, that would get me about a quart of gas. I can just see myself pulling into Blankenship’s full service gas station and saying, “I need a quart of gas, and check the tires, too.”

This gas price really hurts the homeschoool families. The public schools will simply raise your taxes to pay for the more expensive gas for their mostly empty busses. But the homeschool families will have to pay more out of their own pockets to get to activities and shared classes. So Christian educators will have to pay twice for this big gas price increase.

Sometimes homeschool families give up, surrender and just send their kids back to the public schools. This is particularly true with older teens, sending them back to the anti-Christian cesspool at the time when they are most vulnerable to the appeal of that cool pop hip-hop culture. Every year I hear of families who do that.

This gasoline price increase itself surely will cause some to give up the fight, send the kids to the government schools and go to work away from home to get more money.

Christian homeschooling is certainly not easy. Was Christ called to take the easy way?

Mat 26:36-39, MKJV

(36) Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane. And He said to the disciples, Sit here while I go and pray there.

(37) And He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee with Him, and He began to be sorrowful and very heavy.

(38) Then He said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Wait here and watch with Me.

(39) And He went a little further and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.

If He wasn’t called to take the easy road, are His followers supposed to have the easy road?

Mat 7:13-14, WEB

(13) "Enter in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter in by it.

(14) How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.

Christian homeschooling is a narrow road, and will always be.

When Abraham and Lot were going in different directions because of the size of their herds, Abraham let his nephew Lot have first choice of location. Lot left Abraham in the hills and chose the green grass of Sodom. But Peter later said that Lot was vexed from living in Sodom. Lot could have left at any time, but he just stayed there, and stayed vexed. Lot’s wife was a lot more than vexed and her name was changed to Morton. What looked like the easy road to Lot turned out to be a big gully.

When things get tough, we must remember the lesson of Job. Job was as obedient an ordinary man as there was, yet God gave him the chance to grow by putting him through tough times, and He used Satan to give Job that growth. God is today letting Satan turn this whole world, including our nation, into one big Sodom – just to give Christians a chance to grow and come out of that. “Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues,” Revelation 18 says. Never is that more true for Christians than with the public schools, where their children learn to partake of the sins of the world, and that brings terrible plagues to their lives. “Come out of her, my people.”

This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers. God bless the Christian homeschoolers.