Social Engineering

My good friend and collegeague Chris Ortiz has a penchant for finding useful and informative video explanations of much of the double-speak that permeates our media, government, universities, and social discourse. Check out his latest blog entry, “Social Engineering” on the Chalcedon Blog.

It is helpful to be warned that those of us who hold to an absolute standard (The Holy Word of God) are the targets for ridicule and behavior modificiation.

"Wise People"

Thanks to a good friend, and sister in the Lord, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, I was interviewed recently for a weekly radio program called Wise People. Although we had hoped it would air prior to the homeschooling event she organized in Fort Worth, the interview was a great opportunity to discuss the many advantages of Christian homeschooling.

Jim Norman, the host, explained, “Wise People is a weekly radio program featuring conversations with Christians who are walking in the wisdom of the Lord and reflecting God in their daily lives.” Jim describes his guests as “everyday Christians who simply want to be obedient to the Lord's instruction and be available for His use.” The interviews he conducts reflect the powerful way God moves in the lives of His children who seek to please Him.

I am honored to be considered in this category.

For those in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, my interview will air this Sunday morning (March 29, 2009) at 8:30am, Central time at 91.3 FM. Others can listen live on the internet by clicking the "Listen Live" link. An archive site is available should you want to listen at a later time or date.

If any of my readers have contacts with radio stations in their areas and would like to do the legwork of setting up possible interviews, I would be happy to accommodate with a candid discussion on the benefits of Christian homeschooling.

An Endless Monologue in an Empty Room

I highly recommend the newly released book, The Sermon on the Mount. My family is using it as our daily devotional. This commentary by RJ Rushdoony rightly identifies this most famous sermon as a covenantal declaration from Jesus Christ as to who will reign in history. Here is a sampling from the chapter on hell.

Hell is not a popular subject; few people like to remember that it is mentioned even in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:22, our Lord speaks of “hell fire,” or, literally, the hell of fire. What does hell mean?

There are several references to hell by our Lord in the Gospels, and one by James (3:6). The word translated as hell is Gehenna, the Greek form of the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, or the Valley of Hinnom. Gehenna was notorious from Old Testament times; it was a valley where the sacrifice of children took place. King Josiah formally desecrated the place, to make it polluted for any such pagan religious practices (2 Kings 23:10). It was known also as Tophet. As a result, it became Jerusalem’s city dump; trash, dead animals, filth, and refuse were cast into the valley. The burning trash piles sent up a constant cloud of smoke, and the valley became a type of the life of the reprobate or damned.

To understand what hell is, therefore, we must see the meaning of Gehenna. A trash dump is the place of irrelevant and meaningless items. What cannot be used because it is useless is consigned to a refuse pile. Hell is thus the habitation of all who are determined to be useless to God. Whatever their opinion of themselves, if they are useless to God, they go into His cosmic trash pile. God’s righteousness or justice is the criterion of usefulness to God, and God’s righteousness is incarnate in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Things in a trash pile have no meaningful relationship one to another. In a normal house, all things have a place and a relationship in terms of the over-all life of the home. In a refuse dump, all things are meaningless; they are discarded because they are useless and meaningless. There is no common meaning, nor any meaning. There is no communication in hell, because there is no community of meaning. Every man, as his own god, lives in his own private universe; each speaks his own language of egocentricity and self-deification, and hence every man is all alone in hell. Hell is an endless monologue in an empty room by legions of empty men.

Our Lord speaks of “the hell of fire.” Fire burns and consumes. The Valley of Hinnom was a place of corruption, worms, rats, and fire; each of these in its own way meant the destruction of trash.

The inhabitants of hell are in the heaven of their own choosing. Each is his own god and universe. For them, there are none now to contradict their will: they can say eternally, My will be done! No fire, however, burns more bitterly than the fires of guilt and egocentricity. Man in the isolation of hell cannot grow: he consumes himself endlessly. The redeemed, however, both in this world and in the world to come, have community and growth. Because they know themselves to be God’s creatures, saved by His grace, they know the truth of Paul’s words:

7. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.
8. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the
Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. (Rom. 14:7–8)

We then have God’s plenty to grow on, and His law-word to live by. The denizens of hell have the paltry and stinking world of their own soul.

The reprobate want themselves and their will, and hell gives it to them eternally. This is their judgment.*

* RJ Rushdoony, The Sermon on the Mount (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2009), 49.

Shining in Texas

Years ago, my husband decided to involve our children in golf, a sport he had played recreationally as a child. He thought it would be a great sport for a homeschooled child since it was an individual sport. He has observed more than once that golf is an activity that helps develop patience, diligence, and control of one’s temper. It is very consistent with the fruits of the Spirit as outlined in Galatians 5:22. Golf is a game of rules, rarely played with a referee present. It is a game of honor; players are expected to know the rules, obey them, and call penalties on themselves for infractions. This, too, is consistent with the biblical perspective that one is responsible to govern oneself according to God’s law-word.

This past week my daughter and I flew to Texas for a prestigious golf tournament, combining it with a homeschool gathering where I was the guest speaker and she sang. I expected that our opportunity to let our light shine had more to do with this event than the tournament. God had something else in mind.

In round one of the two-day tournament, I was present as a spectator, following her, cheering her on, and enjoying a nice walk in a very pretty place. Usually, I walk ahead of her group so that I can spot errant shots to help the golfers find their balls, thus helping the pace of play. In most tournaments, parents are not allowed to speak to their children either giving advice or conversing in general. The rules state that parent-spectators are only to acknowledge good shots and point to where a ball has landed – nothing more. On the eighth hole of this 18 hole round, I saw my daughter inadvertently break a clearly defined rule of competition. I could see that she had no idea that she had breached the rule and neither of the girls in her group brought it to her attention. I knew this meant that she would be disqualified as soon as she began the next hole.

I was devastated. We had flown 1700 miles to compete, and I knew that I was going to have to “blow the whistle” on my daughter. I wish I could tell you that I immediately dismissed all the tempting thoughts that rushed through my head as to how I was justified to keep this information to myself. But one thought kept repeating over and over, “The Truth will set you free.”

Since I was close to the parking lot where I had left my cell phone, I called my husband in California and explained my dilemma. We agreed that I needed to make this known, but decided to wait until the end of the round so that our daughter would have a chance to explain to an official what had happened, as there was a chance I was reading the situation incorrectly.

I went back on the course and immediately ran into a very friendly official. I explained the situation and he agreed to let her finish the round, and then he would have another official drive her back to the hole in question and settle the matter. He told me how impressed he was that a mom would call a penalty on her own child, especially since no one else might have discovered the infraction.

Another very familiar passage of Scripture ran through my head:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:28-32)

With God as my model, I knew that as difficult as it was going to be, that I could not spare my own daughter.

When all was said and done, my daughter WAS disqualified, although the folks were very kind because they knew she did not intentionally sidestep a rule. After all the tears were over (from both of us), we agreed that in order to be true to our faith there really had been no other option.

Since we had come such a distance, the tournament officials let her play the course the following day, although not as a competitor. This lessened the blow but additionally gave us the opportunity to see how God would use the situation. Every official and most of the volunteer members had heard our story and congratulated me for my honesty and my daughter for the character she showed when confronted with the reality that she was no longer in the tournament. She was told it was evidence that she had been raised well. Rules officials handed us business cards letting us know that if we ever needed anything to call them and that they were honored to have met us. I had the chance every time they applauded my integrity to point out that it was because of my faith in God and His rules that I acted as I did.

For years, I always prayed that as Christian homeschoolers we would be bright lights for the Kingdom of God when it came to the golfing arena. I must admit that I imagined and hoped this would happen because of my daughter producing good golf scores and winning her share of tournaments. Truth be told, I never intended nor wanted the spotlight on us for a situation like this. However, as I am continually learning, God’s ways are not always our ways!

Parental Consent

Parents today claim they face issues that earlier generations did not have to deal with. Consider the plight of parents who desire their daughters to dress in a modest, God-honoring fashion to preserve their virtue in preparation for covenantal marriage, only to be silenced because the children of pastors and elders sport tattoos, body piercings, and revealing and/or provocative clothing without comment or correction from their Christian parents. Or, the dilemma of a Christian homeschooling mom when she discovers that her preadolescent son has been exploring hard-core pornography websites, only to be told that, “Boys will be boys.” (read more)

Library Stories

Every now and then I get some feedback on one of my blog posts. I thought I would share this one from a woman in the United Kingdom.

I have found it quite interesting lately that I have been reading more and more on the Christian's home library. Just the other day I had been reading up on Charles Spurgeon's library and saw a picture of it online and had commented to my husband that that was what I wanted one day, to have a huge library filled with God honouring books where I could spend hours reading and where my sons could too when they are older, studying from the books of the many great men and women who have gone before us and even some of those from this generation. So imagine my surprise when I saw two of the blogs I subscribe to talking on exactly that subject in the last week. The one obviously being Andrea's homeschool blog on the Chalcedon website and the other being Doug Phillips of Vision Forum. Both these articles have just confirmed my desire to build the library I have spoken of in the years to come, as and when God enables me to do so.

On Thursday this week I decided to take a trip with my boys to the local library as I had decided to look for some books to read to my boys in my bid to cultivate a love of reading in them. I know how difficult it is to find good Christian literature in the UK and so went armed with a list of some classic novels and books for kids that are not Christian as such but which are recommended by Vision Forum (for example Around the World in 80 Days and Gulliver's Travels).

"I arrived at the library brimming with excitement at being able to pick up some of these classic treasures to read to my boys. I mean, surely such classics would HAVE to be in every library. Boy was I wrong. First, I searched in vain through the tiny section of our library allocated to young children and teens, but all I found there were stacks of Harry Potter books, horror stories about all sorts of demonic and scary characters and picture books about fairies and goblins. After giving up there, I moved on to the Children's Reference Section (also very small) out of curiosity as to what they may have there. There, I found two books on Christianity in amongst the other children's reference books on various religions. One of these books was supposedly about the history of Christianity but a quick flip through both these books left my blood running cold and a knot in the pit of stomach at how wrong the depiction was and how detached the authors were.

"Then the thought struck me, 'I am looking in the wrong place! I should be looking under the classics section!' So I spent another few minutes trying to locate the classics section and eventually found it -- one small, bottom shelf of books and none of them were what I was looking for. So, feeling rather disappointed I decided to try one last place for something worth while to read to my kids, the Adult Religion section of the library. I could not believe my eyes! There was not one Christian book, not even a Bible!!! All the books were of the humanistic, self-help kind or about other religions but not one on Christianity.

"This should not be a surprise when children are being trained in humanism in schools! Why would the government libraries stock material which would contradict their training and threaten to undo all that they have worked for. It so sad that a country so rich in Godly heritage, where so many men have penned amazing sermons and books on God's law, that you cannot find even one of those books in the library. It really opened my eyes to, and made me more aware of, the battle that is on in this country and just how important it is to train up my children in God's ways, doing everything I can to make available to them the precious resources that are not obtainable from these assistant government training facilities.

This made me recall my own "library story."

Years ago we were studying about the influential people that shaped the thinking of colonial America. Sir William Blackstone's name kept coming up in reading and lectures so I thought it would be a good idea to check his writings out first-hand. My children and I went to the local library and went looking for Blackstone's Commentaries. I wasn't able to locate them so I asked the librarian for assistance. She came back with a big smile on her face and handed me Blackstone's Magic Tricks for Children. I told her I was looking for Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. She told me that she got what I asked for. I was dumbfounded. I pointed out that what I was looking for was an important part of English and American history. Indignantly, she asked me, "Do you want this book or not?"

At this local branch of a major city's public library we couldn't get Blackstone, but we COULD get biographies of Cher, Elton John, Prince, and Blackstone the Magician!

What’s in Your Library?

There is a commercial for a well-known credit card company that asks, what’s in your wallet? As someone who exhorts and encourages homeschooling families I ask, what’s in your library? The books and materials that you and your students have at your disposal will be instrumental in shaping the sort of education that emerges from your homeschool.

I have made it a practice over the years to purchase books, CD lectures, and DVDs for our library. Some I devour immediately, others get a quick perusal before finding their home on our bookshelf, while others go right to a designated slot in the library for future use. I keep my sensors up for subject matter and material that will be useful in the application of the Christian faith to all of life.

Just today as I was reading one of my daily emails from an organization I respect, mention was made of a book that I purchased over 5 years ago and never explored. The article was pointing out the current Marxist overtones and undertones of our present political scene. I took a short stroll down the hall and made my morning reading the introduction to The Black Book of Communism. My reasoning in purchasing the book years earlier proved beneficial today. Now, when I am eager to pursue this subject matter fully, the book is there, ready to read. (Today I would be hard-pressed to find this book at my local public library!)

In order for Christians to be ready to lead and guide when the humanistic house of cards falls, we need to be well versed in the law-word of God. We need to be very capable of teaching and educating those seeking insight about the propsoed political, social, and economic solutions of our day, with the perspective as to how they conform to or defy Biblical standards and practices.

What’s in your library?

A Victorious Vision for Homeschooling

* Do you want to raise covenantally faithful, godly children, who will leave a legacy and impact future generations?

* Are you a homeschool parent who feels overwhelmed or ill-equipped for the huge task of educating your children?

* Are you torn between whether to send your children to a Christian school or whether to homeschool them yourself?

* Do you have questions about homeschooling your children through high school?

If your answer is YES to any of the above questions here is an exciting announcement. I will be the guest speaker at a homeschooling event hosted by TCC (The Connection Church) in the Fort Worth, Texas area in mid-March entitled A Victorious Vision for Homeschooling.

Whether you're considering homeschooling, are new to the homeschooling scene, or are a seasoned veteran, the evening promises to be enriching and uplifting. There will be special music, and an extensive time for questions and discussion.

March 13, 2009
7:00pm
at the facilities of
Grace Church
4740 Western Center Blvd
Haltom City, TX 76137

For more information about the event please contact:
Nicki O'Donovan (co-ordinator)
nicki@teamgc.org
Phone: 817-718-3527



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