Homeschool News & Views

Issue 34, August 10, 2007

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers.

At this time of year, Missouri has a sales tax free day on back to school supplies. That means that the summer vacation will soon be over. When 90% of America’s youth go back to the public schools, what will they go back to?

This past week a new movie was released. The name of the movie is The Ten, and the purpose of the movie is to ridicule the Ten Commandments.

The Ten is ten different stories, each mocking one of the Ten Commandments. For example, in one of the vignettes a virgin librarian takes a trip to Mexico and commits adultery with a long haired man named Jesus H. Christ, who looks like a lot of pictures which are supposed to be Christ.

Now I am confident that this man does not really look like the Messiah. The book of Isaiah indicates that the Messiah was not a handsome man, and there is no reason to think He had long hair. A Nazarite took a vow not to cut his hair or touch anything from the grape for the length of the vow. But Christ was a Nazarene, from the town of Nazareth. He was not a Nazarite, so His hair would not have been long. I have no idea how those long haired Jesus pictures got started, when God the Father made sure that we had no physical likenesses of Yahshua the Son.

But the point is that the makers of the movie The Ten intended to blaspheme and mock the Messiah and His law. In answer to the protests, the producers said that it was all just a comedy and didn’t really matter. Of course, they thought it mattered enough to spend an awful lot of money making this movie.

What were the writers of this script thinking? What was their purpose in coming up with this concept? “Aha!” they surely must have thought. Wouldn’t it be great to make a whole movie, just making fun of the Ten Commandments and the crazy people who believe in them? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

This is total spiritual war we are in. We Christians have heard that repeatedly, and it is worth repeating. We are in an all out spiritual war, a fight for the minds and hearts of America. A movie like The Ten is just one belch from the aft gun.

We have an audio message-- What God Said—about the giving of the Ten Commandments.

http://homeschool-helpers.info/messages/moresermons/whatgodsaid.mp3

In that message we don’t go into each commandment specifically, but we discuss in detail how God gave the Ten Commandments. That is the only time when God in spirit form taught the whole assembly. The Ten Commandments are the only part of the Bible which God personally wrote with His own finger. The Ten Commandments are not something you want to mock.

Now we ask the question: what if this movie had made such fun of Islam? What if this movie showed Mohammed adulterizing with a librarian? What would be the reaction?

The liberals would be up in arms over such a movie, accusing it of being insensitive and biased. Over the last year, the Public Broadcasting System has had a number of programs promoting Islam, since Islam is suffering such bad press because so many Muslims go around the world looking blowing up innocent people. But this hypothetical question is not realistic, because the liberals who are Hollywood would never make a movie mocking Islam. They would only make a movie mocking Christ.

What if they had made a movie mocking American Indian beliefs? Again those are always depicted on PBS and the commercial networks as having some kind of superior spiritual quality, in tune with nature. They teach that the white people came over and raped the land which the Indians lovingly protected. If fact, when the Europeans came to America some of the natives were cannibals, which was part of their sun worship religion with human sacrifices. Any mocking or even accurate rendering of Indian religious beliefs would be fiercely attacked by the left wing media. But again, this question is not realistic, because the left wing is not going to make a movie attacking Indian religious beliefs. They will only make a movie attacking Christian beliefs.

The Bible, Christ and Christians are now constantly being ridiculed in the left wing media. This is similar to Germany in the 1930’s, when the Jews were mocked before they were persecuted. First came the mocking, the ridicule, to reduce them to less than a noble people. Then when most everyone’s opinion of them had become slanted, persecution was possible. That persecution took the form of official persecution by the state, in the form of highly prejudiced laws and restrictions. It also took the form of unofficial, person to person harassment by the common people.

Christians are now in the mocking stage in America. The Ten is part of that.

In the last issue of Homeschool News and Views, we cited the story of a young man who was popular enough to be student body president at a university. In a speech to that student body, he referred to Christ as the prime example of morality. After that, he was the most unpopular person on campus.

Again, what if he had cited Mohammed as an example of morality? Would that have gotten him popular disfavor on that university campus? Surely not. What if he had cited Cochise the Indian chief as a great moral example? His fellow students would surely have acclaimed the young man as a visionary beyond his years.

But he cited Christ as the prime example of morality, and they shunned the young man. That is an unofficial persecution by the students, which is based on what they are taught by the faculties in these universities. Studies have repeatedly shown that university professors are overwhelmingly left wing in their voting and political beliefs. They are not discrete in their ridiculing of Christians, and therefore the students they teach act likewise.

This popular peer pressure is very hard to resist. Most young Christians who attend a secular left wing university are not Christians when they leave. Christians have to ask themselves if attending such an immoral place is wise and what God wants them to do.

I remember when Hollywood made movies like The Ten Commandments. They weren’t all that great, because the producers could never stay with the script, that is the Bible. They always had a screenwriter who could come up with a better plot than God. Still, the purpose of those movies was certainly not to mock God, and they were impressive and popular. We can never forget when the death angel was passing over in Egypt and the green goo came out and went from house to house. I don’t really think God used green goo, but it was gooey enough to stick in my mind all these years. Also when the waters of the Red Sea parted, that was quite impressive movie magic for the time and told a most impressive story.

So we have gone from movies like The Ten Commandments, which praised God, to movies like The Ten, which mock Him.

In the 1920’s there was a code for movie makers. The Hays Code committed Hollywood filmmakers to produce films that would be “directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct moral thinking.” Today there seems to be an unwritten code to do just the opposite.

As America’s youth go back to the public schools, they will take the movie The Ten with them in their minds. They will mock anyone who is foolish enough to really stand up for the Ten Commandments.

Another movie out currently is I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. This is supposed to be a comedy about two men who get married so that one can get benefits from his job. Back in the old days, I Love Lucy could make you laugh until you choked just watching Lucy choke down candies on a fast assembly line. Today most of what is called comedy uses sex for its laugh lines. Chuck and Larry is full of all sorts of sinful, destructive sex, and is a left handed promotion of homosexuality. The movie has favorable depictions of homosexuality and unfavorable reflections on “hate speech Christians.”

Chuck and Larry will go to school with many public school students. Chuck and Larry will be cool in the school halls. Christians will not be cool there.

In addition, as all these millions of American kids go back to public school, recently the National Education Association took some noteworthy actions.

The NEA executive committee voted to put the support of the NEA behind the liberal effort to pass federal hate crimes legislation. Exactly what does that have to do with teachers teaching school? Why does the NEA stick its NOSE in that? Who on earth do these teachers think they are?

The NEA executive committee voted to strengthen their web site to include all resources in support of homosexuality. Again, why are the local teachers to be involved in spreading sodomy across America?

The NEA executive committee also passed a resolution urging NEA members to push to make sexual orientation training a requirement for teachers getting certification to teach. That’s an interesting proposition. A Republican state representative in Missouri said recently that he wanted all homeschool teachers to be certified. This is also interesting for all those Christians who are public school teachers. Would they accept homosexual training so they can teach in the left wing schools? Probably so. They have accepted everything else.

The NEA has long been known as a radical left wing organization, but they are the most powerful force in American public education, are they not? They get that power from the thousands of public school teachers who comprise their membership. They do have an effect on the public schools nationwide, not just from their national positions, but from all their left wing members being on the front lines in indoctrinating on a personal basis the nine of every ten kids who attend public schools.

So as all these kids go back to the public schools, they will carry with them the lesson that the Ten Commandments are something to be made fun of; that homosexuality is something to be chuckled at; and they will face teachers whose strong religious conviction is to teach them all of the above.

Kids are just kids. They are not evangelists. They are not apostles, sent out to suffer persecution. They’re just kids, and they hate to be mocked, so they usually conform to the popular culture. Christian parents should not purposely send their kids into such a situation. Give them a Christian education, where Christ is praised instead of mocked. Your kids will spend the rest of their lives thanking you.

Eph 6:4, Modern KJV

(4) And fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Notice the phrase “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” What does that mean? Does that mean you send your kids to school with Chuck and Larry, where Christians are despised and homosexuals are praised? Does that mean you put them in a culture where the Ten Commandments are mocked? Is that bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

Geneva Bible notes on that phrase: “Such information and precepts which are taken out of God's book, and are holy and acceptable to him.”

Gill Bible Commentary: “instructing them in the knowledge of divine things, setting them good examples, taking care to prevent their falling into bad company.”

The admonition of the Lord means you give them God’s teachings all day. God mocking is not allowed in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

As America’s children – 90% of them – head back into these classrooms, the American Family Association sent out an email saying that perhaps the time has come for school vouchers to allow parents to choose an education system for their children. They are conducting a survey, to see how many AFA supporters favor vouchers.

Almost none of these most visible Christian organizations, such as the American Family Association and Focus on the Family, have come out explicitly opposing the government schools. They repeatedly and profusely point out the huge problems in the public schools, and they point out the good in Christian education, but they have not explicitly taught that Christian parents should get their children out of these left wing controlled schools as a matter of Christian conduct. I assume that most of the supporters of these groups are also supporters of the public schools, admitting the system’s problems but not willing to make the effort to come out of that system.

The big reason that parents don’t leave the public schools is money. When scholarships to private Christian schools are offered, they are massively oversubscribed. That means it’s only money which is keeping those parents from giving their children a Christian education instead of an anti-Christian education. That also means that if the Baptists go ahead with a Baptist school system which gives scholarships to all students who want them, they are going to have a big need in supporting their schools. They are going to have many takers. If they do take that bold step, however, God may very well meet that need.

A voucher system gives parents money to choose their children’s education. AFA reaches into millions of Christian families. When they call for a boycott of Disney or Ford or Wal-Mart because of those corporations’ conduct, it does have an effect. AFA must now be exploring the support of vouchers as a way to get Christians out of the public schools without explicitly opposing the public schools. Instead of telling Christians to get their children out of the public schools right now, regardless of the cost, they will support a system that will pay parents to leave the public schools.

If AFA does promote vouchers, then that will have an effect throughout the country. Vouchers will not be easily put in place, because the left wing protects their control over the public schools as vigorously as they defend anything. The public schools are their home base of operations.

Some Christians who are already involved in Christian education oppose vouchers because they say that will ultimately give the government control over the Christian education which is presently independent. That is a certain danger, but that is a naïve view. The liberals are going to try to control all Christian education, anyway, and they will use the 90% of the country’s youth which they are now training to do that. We just haven’t reached the tipping point yet. And how many of those kids now in the public schools would grow up to be Christians of whatever kind if they are given a Christian education, instead of growing up to be anti-Christian liberals, because of their Chuck and Larry education?