August 9, 2008
Good News from California!
Those of you who listen to my radio broadcast know that I interviewed HSLDA President Mike Smith on the recent California case on homeschooling. The decision came down yesterday, and thank God, homeschool freedoms were sustained!
What follows is the HLSDA update on the case.
In a unanimous decision, the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District today ruled that "California statutes permit home schooling as a species of private school education."
Today's decision stands in stark contrast to the opinion this same three-judge panel issued in February, which would have made California the only state in the union to outlaw home education had it remained in effect.
"It is unusual for an appellate court to grant a petition for rehearing as this court did in March," said HSLDA Chairman Mike Farris, "but it is truly remarkable for a court to completely reverse its own earlier opinion. We thank you for your prayers and give God the glory for this great victory."
When the court vacated its earlier decision on March 25, 2008, it invited interested organizations to file friend-of-the-court briefs. "I have never seen such an impressive array of people and organizations coming to the defense of homeschooling," said Farris, who was one of the attorneys who argued the case on rehearing along with Alliance Defense Fund attorney Jeff Shafer, who represented the father. The father was also represented by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation.
California's three largest homeschool organizations, California Homeschool Network, Homeschool Association of California and Christian Home Education Association joined together in one brief to defend the right of all parents to homeschool. HSLDA, Family Protection Ministries and Focus on the Family also joined in a separate brief. Numerous other private organizations came to the defense of home education as did California's governor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction.
We are extremely grateful to all of the organizations who worked tirelessly to protect and preserve homeschooling freedom in California. We are also thankful for you, our members, for your prayers and support during this trying season.
The freedom to homeschool is a precious gift from God. But keeping it free requires vigilance and perseverance. We must continue to work together diligently to preserve this precious freedom in California and elsewhere.
Michael Smith
HSLDA President
August 5, 2008
"It's the Christians, Stupid"
How could a Lutheran nation like Germany have tolerated the rise of Hitler? How many times have you heard that question? Of course, the tacit assumption underlying such questioning is that "it could never happen here."
I can see how a faith that refused to look to the law of God as the standard for human ethics, a faith that put radical separation between the "spiritual" kingdom and the "worldly" kingdom could lay the red carpet down for the rise of statism. Sound familiar? Sadly, the same theological milieu that led to the statism of the late 19th century and 20th century is still firmly entrenched in both reformed and evangelical thinking today.
We will interact with this acerbic editorial from Fox News.com on Friday's edition of Generations -
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,395101,00.html "It's the Christians stupid." For a more thorough review of the dualist-kingdom error and the fatal results of such thinking, listen to my Sunday sermon found here: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?sermonID=84081234545. Could an Adolf Hitler be waiting in the wings for a theologically-ungrounded, worldview-ignorant Christian population?
July 24, 2008
A Tale of Two Women
I must tell you the tale of two women. There was the first woman who was very neatly put together. She had inherited three generations of faith. Her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother were Christians. She had a very neat life. The furniture was covered, and she hardly ever sinned. The children were placed in boarding schools and she never yelled at them, even once. The pastor never had to deal with her problems. In fact, once or twice he commended her from the pulpit.
But this is a tale of two women, and I must tell you about the other. She had no godly mother or grandmother. Her father was an alcoholic, and, to tell you the truth, she was not so neatly put together.
One day, she brought her children home from school and engaged in a real relationship with them, and let me tell you, it was messy. She yelled at her children, too much. She was afraid they would be permanently damaged by her yelling. At times, she thought maybe they were a little too close to observe her ways.
Her house was often disorganized... although the stacks were neat. She still practiced hospitality. It was new to her, but her husband thought it would be a good idea. Loving strangers? It was hard enough loving her own children! But she did anyway and she did it badly.
Her children gave her their hearts and they did observe her ways. They observed her yelling, her tears of repentance. Yes. They observed her fears that they might pick up her sinful habits. They observed her struggles to overcome her anger, the time she ran into the [bedroom because she was afraid she might say something ugly. They saw it all. They saw it all. And, trust me folks, it was a big mess.
The pastor was not very happy with this woman and her family. They seemed to require more prayer and counsel than anybody else in the church. "VDP's" he called them. "Very Demanding People."
She would bring the big mess to church with her... and fall on her face and say, "God have mercy on me, a sinner." But, let me tell you, that woman went home justified!
The moral of the story is simple. God is good. He does really well with big messes, but He doesn't do as much with those who are so neatly put together.
As Jesus taught us in His parable, it is not how many talents you start with that matters. It is what you do with the 0.2 talents you have received. What really matters are the risks you take, the sacrifice you lay on the altar, the heart molding done by His Spirit, and your willingness to uncover the mess and to remove the layers of plastic, sterile, institutionalized, white-coated plaster. If you would try risking your furniture, your relationships, and your otherwise neat life for Jesus; if you would bring the whole mess to the cross everyday, there you will find indescribable blessing and peace!
July 22, 2008
The Nihilistic State of Darwinism
Evolution is the juggernaut of the new Humanist revolution that has captured modern societies, laying waste education, science, reason, and faith.
This is my thesis for my talk at the Beginning of the World conference taking place in the Springs this weekend.
To make my case, I will draw heavily on the most influential man who set the course for American education and thought at the turn of the 20th century. John Dewey provides the content for my presentation in his essay, "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy."
"THAT the publication of the "Origin of Species " marked an epoch in the development of the natural sciences is well known to the layman. That the combination of the very words origin and species embodied an intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect and unreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the "Origin of Species " introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion."
My point exactly.
For 2,000 years (since the time of Christ), says Dewey, "purposefulness accounted for the intelligibility of nature and the possibility of science, while the absolute or cosmic character of this purposefulness gave sanction and worth to the moral and religious endeavors of man."
But all praises be to Darwin, we are finally delivered from all these absolutes and "purposefulness!"
Dewey continues, "The Darwinian principle of natural selection cut straight under this philosophy. If all organic adaptations are due simply to constant variation and the elimination of those variations which are harmful in the struggle for existence that is brought about by excessive reproduction, there is no call for a prior intelligent causal force to plan and preordain them."
Now for Dewey, "God is a faded piece of metaphysical goods."
We are delivered from an Ultimate Originator, and an Ultimate Sustainer, and now we can live free of any ethical obligation to that one who might be the Ultimate in Ethics, and the Ultimate Judge of the earth, God forbid.
But read on, for the ultimate deliverance is a deliverance from all meaning, purpose and absolutes in human thought and predication. This new philosophy "forswears inquiry after absolute origins and absolute finalities in order to explore specific values and the specific conditions that generate them."
Stop asking the ultimate questions! There are no answers! For "intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together."
And this my friends is what brings us to where we are today. Philosophers have given up on the possibility for absolute truth, and the masses follow suit.
Pragmatism gave birth to existentialism and nihilism, and now men is very distant from God. He freely admits that he is without ultimate purpose, and his politics and economics clearly reflect this.
With God out of the metaphysic and the ethic, man quickly took his place. Of course, Dewey signed the Humanist Manifesto in 1912, placing man at the center of his universe in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Darwin cleared the path for man to define himself in his meaningless, materialist world - based upon a theory propounding a elusive mechanism never substantiated in the fossil record. The shrill defenders of the faith obtained trillions of dollars of government funding to maintain the facade of a theory, and silence all potential detractors.
So for a moment in history man became his own god. First he pretends to define his own truth, and then he builds his towers upon it. But then he is forced to dismantle his truth (because all truth demands an absolute), and his Babel collapses. Plainly, we are already seeing the breakdown of philosophy, education, and science. The family, the economy, and the state are soon to follow.
July 16, 2008
Speaking at the CHEA Conference in Long Beach
We (My son Daniel, assistant Chad and I) were so encouraged to participate in the CHEA homeschool conference in Long Beach last weekend. The California home schooling movement is alive and well on planet earth! Despite recent judicial attacks and non-stop legislative assaults, homeschoolers in California persevere in what God has called them to do.
California is a state of many contradictions. The recent law signed by their Republican Governor under the cover of SB777, mandates homosexual indoctrination in all public schools. Yet, there are still some remnants of faith, family, and freedom left beating in the hearts of 10,000s of its citizens. Because the state is 10X the size of ours, the remnant is roughly 10X larger as well.
In all of our travels, we have never seen such enthusiastic reception of our presentations. These people resonate to a message of relationships, biblical worldview, and discipleship - in a lost and lonely world.
More than that, I have a strong sense of a growing commitment to biblical ideals among these folks, in the face of raw humanism, existentialism, and hedonism that has badly corrupted society around them.
We came away greatly encouraged from the CHEA conference. And thanks to the hard work of many great leaders like Susan Beatty, Harry Beeson, Roy Hanson, Mary Schofield, and Mike Smith (from HSLDA) who have given their lives up to nurture this vital movement. Thanks be to God for these good friends who have done so much!
July 7, 2008
Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt?
I am the Executive Director of a large homeschooling organization in Colorado, and our database of home schooling families would be among the largest in the country.
Several months ago, we contracted a single mom who home schools her son, to call a list of a sampling of 1000 families on the database (most of them, on the list for a few years).
Incredibly, she found that 86% of those families who started home schooling their children, have quit!
This means that for 100 families participating in a home school support group somewhere in America, only 14 will capture the vision and continue the mission 3, 5, or 8 years from now. Of the 2.4 million home educated students in America, barely 330,000 will survive. And of the 5,000 that attend a major conference, only 750 will finish the course. This means that the movement has a huge front door and a huge back door, not unlike most churches in a post-modern society. Few people stick around long enough to get a vision. A T-shirt maybe. But a deep-seated, long-standing vision that will actually make an impact on their families for future generations? I don't think so.
As leaders who are fighting valiantly against the massive failure of the national character, academic rigor, family solidarity, and the Christian faith itself, we press for radical change in the thinking and life of families. We want a radical world and life view change. We feel it's the only hope to stem the hemorrhaging flow of blood.
The reality of it, is that most families don't want to make much of a lifestyle change - and so they will just live with the rapidly-declining social, academic, and spiritual trends.
If any meaningful change will ever come about, it will come by the commitment of a principled few. The majority sits on the fulcrum of social change, while those who are most committed on the wrong side or the right side produce the real influence that changes society. It is always the 14% that bears the majority of the influence, and shifts the direction of social systems as human history unfolds. Therefore, the focus in our conferences, our support groups, our news magazines, and our radio broadcasts is not to water down the message for the 86% who are going to quit. We want to encourage the committed, and solidify the base of faithful men and women who embrace the vision, and will ensure a generational continuity that will yield even more fruit in future years.