Homeschool News & Views

Issue 92, November 2, 2008

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

By Dan L. White

Listen to this article.

The recent financial catastrophe has brought changes to America that were not even thought of a few months ago. These changes have greatly expanded the role of government in the lives of all US citizens. That also happened during the last depression, when Franklin Roosevelt greatly expanded the role of government.

When the Berlin wall fell and the Iron Curtain crumbled, we thought we were through with the leftist communist types, for the most part. However, it turns out that which could not be accomplished externally is now accomplished internally.

Remember that the United States form of government was set up to protect its people from their own government. Our government, which the founding fathers considered the greatest danger to our liberties, has vastly expanded its influence in our lives by its recent moves in response to the financial crisis. America has gone farther into socialism in the last few weeks than it had in its previous two centuries.

At the same time, the US seems prepared to elect a man as its president who is the most socialistic candidate ever.

Put those two things together and there is the potential to make enormous changes in the everyday lives of Americans.

Socialism is by its very nature against God. It puts government in place of God as the savior of mankind. Socialism always stands in the way of people connecting directly with God.

In its history, America has shunned socialism in almost all areas, except for the one, most critical area.

What is that one most critical area?

World Magazine founder Joel Belz wrote about this in his latest editorial in that magazine. World Magazine is a Christian news magazine, similar to Time or Newsweek, except pro-God instead of anti-God.

Mr. Belz said:

“[Y]ou find a newly muscled Uncle Sam these days shutting down big investment brokers, buying huge equity clout in traditional banks, and rumored to be ready to buy similar shares of Ford, Chrysler, and GM.

All that under a supposed pro-free market Republican administration! So nobody’s going to be very surprised if under an Obama presidency there will be a redoubling of Sarbanes-Oxley, re-regulation of the airlines (and just about everyone else), universal health care, a new budget line for carbon and energy, restrictions on talk radio, and increased taxes to pay the staggeringly high bills.

Much of that has happened, may I suggest, because we also long ago conceded the most critical territory of all. While strenuously wrestling over business and banking and health care and energy and a dozen other issues, we cavalierly handed over to the state a perpetual 90 percent share of the nation’s educational interests…

Socialized medicine? Most of us recoil at the idea. Socialized airlines? Reminds us of Aeroflot. Socialized banks? When it happened last month, it terrified us.

But socialized schools? Nine out of ten of us patronize them regularly.

And we do so with na’ry a thought or concern about how such an arrangement affects next week’s election, or the election after that, of the lifetime of elections to come…

That’s why, if I were ever forced to become a one-issue person on the political front, my single issue would be freedom of choice in education. With a nine-to-one edge in value shaping influence, why shouldn’t the government be producing products who think government sponsored everything is best?”

People schooled by a socialist system have to favor more socialism more than those educated in other ways. You cannot be in a socialist institution for 12 or more years and not have it affect you. Ultimately a socialist education system has to create a socialist society.

90% of America’s youth go through the bumbling, numbing, left wing controlled public school system. They come out with inferior knowledge in language, science and math, to be sure, but the one thing they learn best is to expect the government to do things for them. That the public schools teach very well.

Really, the Obama phenomenon is a direct result of public school education. This is a man who has advocated killing babies who survive abortions. Although he used doublespeak on many controversial issues in which he has been involved, he has never retracted his baby-kill position. He still stands for killing any babies who might survive an abortion.

In spite of that, he has been embraced as an icon by the nation. This is a direct result of public school education. Morals don’t matter. Image is everything. You see, Christian school graduates and Christian homeschool graduates won’t touch Obama with a ten foot pole. Obama’s supporters are overwhelmingly graduates from the public school culture.

Belz said that if he were to become a one issue person, that one issue would be freedom of choice in education. I quite agree, not merely politically, but religiously. I have heard and read and joined in a lot of theological debates. Generally these do not do much to change people’s lives. George Barna has repeatedly found that Christians usually do not make major changes in their lives, even when they become Christians. They go to church but still act and think like the world.

However, when a family commits to the Christian homeschool lifestyle, major changes occur in that family. Their chance of staying together as a family doubles. The chance that their children will be involved in drugs, fights, sexual diseases, or unwed pregnancies goes down drastically. The chance that their children will totally reject Christ himself goes down by about 75%.

You see, if lifestyle doesn’t change, lives don’t change. Christian homeschooling is a change in lifestyle. And when a family commits to be Christian homeschoolers, lives change. For thirty years I have seen the fruits. There is nothing like Christian homeschooling.

With this editorial statement by World magazine, it seems that more and more evangelical leaders are supporting getting out of the left wing schools. They are finally coming to the position that Christians should teach their children about God, instead of letting them be taught against God. But the 90% of Christian parents who aren’t doing it do not have to wait for some government program to pay them to teach their children about God. They can do it right now. The pay will come later.

Homeschooling, with all its success stories, has now become more socially acceptable. The California high court decreed that homeschooling is a constitutional right, and legally it is secure. So the biggest challenge homeschooling faces now is not political or social, but economic. Ultimately that is the biggest reason that Christian parents choose the public schools, anyway – just money. These hard times financially will surely convince some parents to give up on homeschooling and go with the cheap, easy public schools. Any parent who does that, though, will almost surely pay a high price for that trade. You are risking the spiritual life of your child, and your nation.

The one most important factor in this nation is to teach its children about God. That has been abandoned and we are now seeing the results. In your family, if there is one issue you will not budge on, let that issue be the teaching of your children.