When I was growing up, my family, especially my mother, raised me according to the strict guidelines of our Pentecostal Holiness church. It was not to get me into heaven, because going to church was impossible according to that church’s doctrine because they did not preach or teach grace or faith in that what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross was necessary and sufficient, could not be added to, and should not be attempted. Rather, it was to create within me an overpowering sense of fear and experiental deprivation based on false religious doctrines and excessive discipline that had nothing to do with the love and purpose of Jesus Christ. Why? To control me. They wanted to control my actions and my thoughts as much as they could, and they wanted this control over me to continue even after they died.
Let me give you an example. There is this European fable about a woman and her daughter who lived alone, and the daughter showed an incredible about of devotion and self – sacrifice in taking care of her mother. When her mother took ill and was on her deathbed, it appeared that the daughter was finally free from fulfilling her responsibility. But no! The mother asked the daughter to grant her one dying wish. The daughter, unaware of the wickedness that lurked in the heart of her mother, promised anything. So the mother said “Promise me that you will never marry, so that that nothing will come between us and what we have, even after I am gone.” And the old woman died and the daughter lived out her life in loneliness and sorrow, turning down suitors, and of course when she was old and alone and frail there was no one to take care of her as she did for her mother. Understand: her mother raised her daughter, conditioned her, to where not only would this woman lack free will to understand, love, obey, and enjoy the true Tri – Une God in during the life of the mother, but so that her evil would continue to oppress this woman even after she was gone. It was that sort of insidious evil that my own parents attempted to inflict on me, and I promised myself that if God ever blessed me with children I would do my best to raise them not according to the bondage of legalism, selfishness, and false religion but to know and love the liberty that exists in Jesus Christ that comes from sacrificing and dying to self so that they could freely choose to know, worship, love, and be loved by God in the manner that God wants. And yes, God did make the decision to bless me by making me a husband and a father. It is a tall order, because at almost every turn on one hand I both have to reject what comes naturally – which is to follow the example of my parents and the learned tendencies from my background that are still in my flesh – while simultaneously acknowledging that NOT EVERYTHING that they did was wrong and that I cannot take the “if they did one thing I will do the opposite” knee jerk reaction out of resentment, hate, and revenge, and also recognizing I cannot play the victim or blame them: I am solely responsible for my own sins and the fact that my life was a complete mess and failure until I finally submitted myself to Jesus Christ less than three years ago. A great help to me in this regard has been prayer, the examples of the men of faith in the Bible (virtually no explicit parenting advice is in the Bible, but the concepts of obedience, patience, mercy, trust, and faith are there), and the exceptionally wise counsel of my wife and my mother – in – law (contrary to the popular stereotypes, my CHRISTIAN mother – in – law and I have an excellent relationship, and she played a vital role in helping my wife lead me to Jesus Christ and convincing my wife not to give up on me) and sister – in – law. So my wife, who grew up without an actively involved father, and my mother – in – law, who grew up with a physically, emotionally, and verbally abusive one, have been exceedingly effective in opposing and mitigating my often strange, ineffective, counterproductive, and harmful notions of discipline. I still have much to learn and a long ways to go, but I have come quite far, progressing from reflexive reactionary spankings followed by guilt – induced indulging to simply explaining to my kids that Jesus Christ was at one point a little boy that had parents, attended school, and had homework just like they do (you could have attended the church that I grew up in for a billion years and never once heard anything pertaining to Christ’s humanity and how He is the perfect example and role model for us because of it), and if He had to be obedient so do they.
Yet, as the threat of my following the negative example of my own parents – or being as bad or worse by trying to reject and get back at them – is diminishing, I am becoming aware of a new threat. One thing that my background taught me was the importance of the freedom of each individual. It is not the perversion of that concept that our corrupt society convinces you of: the freedom to be selfish, craven, immoral, and destructive to yourself and others. Freedom without responsibility is merely another form of bondage. Instead, I am speaking of a spiritual liberty: the freedom to choose God or to reject Him by knowledge of and obedience to Him. The state has always sought to deny such to mankind, and through state religions in particular. One does not need to be a Christian state, a Hindu state, or a Muslim state to be a theocracy. No, a state can be organized around idolatries of atheism, secularism, humanism, capitalism … you name it.Now go back to the example of the mother and daughter. The mother did not lock her daughter in her bedroom in order to prevent her freedom of choice and movement, as did the witch in Rapunzel and the other varied fairy tales. Instead, hers was worse, for in cases like this once the captive is set free, she is free to act according to her liberty. No, the mother conditioned the child over time during her upbringing in such a manner to where her daughter would live the life that her evil mother imposed upon her long after she was gone. And that brings me to thinking of what the government is doing to our children. It makes you look at the right wing term “the nanny state” in a whole new way, does it not?
I could imagine that just a generation ago, when young boys and girls were playing and going about their business, they enjoyed an amazing amount of personal choice and freedom, and as a result they almost certainly had the mindset that they could accomplish virtually anything. Of course, they would run up against the facts of life with its varied disappointments as they got older, but the basic mental and emotional structure of the freedom that was instilled in them when they were free, running about, playing outside, etc. remained, and influenced them for the rest of their lives. But today? It is illegal for your child to so much as ride in a car without a safety seat. Do you know that it is recommended that your child stay in a booster seat until they are twelve years old? And bicycles: illegal to ride one without a helmet! Can kids walk across town or so much as across down the street to go visit friends, play, or just explore? No, because the state no longer even attempts to keep our streets free of predators and criminals. So our kids are trapped inside with their heads being filled with the often demonic influences of cartoons, video games, and popular music. With the latter, small children learn the very same sexually explicit and violent lyrics that Tipper Gore was excoriated for causing the music industry to put warning labels on. How do I know this? Because I hear them reciting said lyrics – and doing the “dances” that accompany them – whenever I so much as go to a park, grocery store, or church.
And that is the home lives of our children. What about our schools? Now I am not among these political right wingers who claims that the downfall of public education was precipitated by taking prayer out of schools, because I question the spiritual value of someone who may well be a homosexual drug addict New Age pagan witch coercing minors into reciting a corporate general prayer that is not even in the Name of Jesus Christ. People who pretend otherwise have no true interest in our children developing a true personal relationship with Jesus Christ (who taught us in scripture to pray in private) but rather in using state power to impose themselves on the whole of society, including those of other religions. That was what these people’s trying to force U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison to take his oath of office on the Bible instead of the Koran was all about.
No, the real danger in our schools has come from their refusal to impose any discipline or order whatsoever in the children that are in them. In the absence of this, they have had to institute “zero tolerance” policies. Because of their abject refusal to deal with the behavioral problems of the minority, the kids who lack such problems are subjected to a continual climate of fear and unnatural control. The child that commits a violent assault on a teacher? His parents will sue to have that child placed not only back in school but in that very same classroom and win 9 times out of 10. But let a boy hug his female classmate, give her a peck on the cheek, and perhaps a Valentine’s Day card. If he does it to another BOY, then all is well, but if the female is the object of his affection, the boy is branded a sexual harasser and is expelled. And a boy that doodles a picture of a space alien’s laser cannon on his piece of paper during class? Such a child will be suspended and handed over for mandatory counseling.
Of course, people that have grown up in this environment and/or have willingly subjected their children to it are going to accept it in other facets of life. I am not a smoker, and I find the practice repulsive, dangerous, and selfish. But do you not realize how just 25 years ago the very thought of banning smoking not only in restaurants but entire towns would have been completely absurd? People have become conditioned to the notion that the state should make decisions for and take care of not only them, but everyone else. Let me give you a scary example of it. I find radio talk show host Neal Boortz a loathsome example of anti – Christianity (he mocks fundamentalist Christians, is pro – abortion, and hates Ron Paul), but his stopped clock was right twice a day on the Virginia Tech shooting incident. How was it that all of those kids allowed themselves to be lined up against the wall and shot execution style one after another without not one person attempting to intervene, oppose, distract, or resist this fellow at any point? His answer was that they had been conditioned by the state not to protect themselves but to wait for the state to save them. (He applied the same analysis to Hurricane Katrina victims). My agreement with one such as Boortz, of course, is not total. My theory is that these children, the overwhelming majority of which were recent products of our public schools, merely have been conditioned by the state and the society that it has created by punishing the good and rewarding the wicked to simply do as they are told no matter what. They had been systematically denied and deprived the freedom to make the simple choices that go with daily living all of their lives: to take even small risks and thereby reaping the rewards or paying the price.
To them, taking a risk meant trying a new move in their video games. The only consequence of failure was seeing the “game over” message when it did not work, and even if they succeeded it was only to perish a few minutes later in that same game. An experience totally unlike wandering to a new part of town and having a conversation with a new child or kind elderly person, climbing a tree as high as you can go, or doing whatever you can to keep that kite of yours in the air instead of getting entangled by that same tree (and when it inevitably happens having to make the decision whether to climb that tree to get it out, or deciding that it is not worth it and going kiteless … the risk/reward ratio)! Or something as simple as a boy having to decide whether to risk humiliation and rejection by hugging the girl next to him that he likes, and the girl having to decide whether it was better to risk further unwanted attention or hurting his feelings. It is daily things such as these that condition our children how to appreciate personal freedom and responsible choice and act in the presence of it, particularly when someone or something is trying to usurp and deprive you of the freedom that God wants you to have so that you can use it to worship Him. And as such, when it was time to apply the risk/reward ratio to a critical situation, those Virginia Tech victims were incapable of doing so, because they were reared in a society that systematically deprived them of the ability to by limiting their exposure to freedom, choice, and responsibility.
An example that is less extreme in one sense but actually more disturbing on a larger scale is this item on police brutality from LewRockwell.com lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts224.html (which like me has undergone a huge ideological change in response to the George W. Bush administration). It has a link to this article blog.totalinjury.com/archives/personal-injury-cases-in-the-news-police-brutality-updates-chicago-police-brutality-video-tough-to-stomach.html, which describes a 251 lb. police officer brutally beating a 110 lb. female bartender because she followed the law and refused to stop serving him drinks when he became drunk. It happened right in front of an establishment filled with male patrons, and not a single one intervened! Why? Because such people were so thoroughly brainwashed by, in fear of, and under the control of the state that they would not rise up to do righteousness. Here is the video of this horrific assault: video.nbc5.com/player/?id=83968.
And that is what it is all about. People wonder about the great tribulation, how it will be possible to round up all the Christians and chop their heads off without any popular resistance. Oh, we see how that could happen in one of “those places” like China, Russia, or in any African nation, but in America? Land of the free? A Christian nation founded on Christian principles (I guess that explains all of the masonic symbols all over the place, not to mention the enlightenment humanism, deism, and rationalism all over our founding documents but hey who cares)? Noooh! That is why so many of us believe that there will HAVE to be a pre – tribulation rapture to set the stage for this awfulness. Well, I look more and more at our society at large and I see the same system of unnatural control developing that will create, for lack of a better term “sheeple.” I am not talking about the born – again righteous martyrs that will give their lives for the testimony and reign with Christ during that horrible time, but rather the people who will be consenting to it, participate in it, and let it happen even though they know it is wrong.
You want to know one of the reasons why I have decided to cast in my lot with Ron Paul and the like – minded libertarians despite their many flaws, which includes how a great many of them idolize (and I do mean in the actual spiritual sinful idolatry sense) free market capitalism? This is it. Ron Paul is talking about freedom precisely at the very time that people of both parties are supporting the leviathan that is our government … a government that is making it harder and harder for law – abiding moral people to live their lives, raise their kids, and worship their gods (no, America is NOT a Christian nation founded by God that coerces people under penalty of death to worship only him; that was Old Testament Israel, people, and LewRockwell.com has another great item on that here lewrockwell.com/orig8/horn1.html). They are talking about freedom, and the American people – the church! – needs to hear that message. But the people do not even want freedom, and that is why the completely immoral fascist Rudolph Giuliani and his (or should I say her in case he decides to dress up in women’s clothing anytime soon) counterpart on the other side Hillary Clinton would easily trounce Ron Paul among even born again Christian voters. People that have ostensibly accepted freedom through Jesus Christ are actually scared of having to use the freedom that Christ has given them in their own lives and want to run to the state. Why? Because they are unwilling to put their trust in Christ for their protection and their daily bread, and they want to look to the government and to big business.
So many Americans, including Christians, have gone the Esau route, of selling their birthright, which is the freedom and mindset to choose or reject God and obedience to His righteousness, for a bowl of pottage. What, Christian, will you give in exchange for your birthright? Social Security? MediCare? Universal healthcare? Affirmative action and civil rights? Government jobs? Protection from those oh so scary Muslims that were only able to so successfully attack us in the first place because Bill Clinton allowed them in this country to train and George W. Bush let them finish the job? And has one single person been prosecuted for that failure? No. Instead, that failure led to the creation of the very government agency that killed a woman because she got angry over missing her flight lewrockwell.com/akers/akers72.html. Everyone knows that you aren’t supposed to leave a prisoner – especially one in a questionable mental or emotional state – in handcuffs and alone and unmonitored in a cell! Now had some scary Muslim killed this woman, you’d all be up in arms. But because the state did it, it is OK?
So unwilling are Christians to challenge wicked rulers and reject them that it manifests itself in how they abide these false preachers, whose number and perversions are as they have never before been in history! Now I am very hard on Roman Catholicism (and the eastern Orthodox churches as well), but look at this slime and filth on Christian broadcasting and in your local Christian bookstore, and it was not this bad during the time of the Reformation! It is the people that speak out against and expose this wickedness that are resented and hated in Christendom even among the evangelicals and fundamentalists, and in Christianity at large the evangelicals and fundamentalists are rejected for daring to apply the Bible to modern society. You can have a church that has been Bible – based for 150 years just up and start performing gay marriages tomorrow, AND MOST OF THE MEMBERS WON’T EVEN LEAVE!
It is no surprise, because most parents won’t even pull their children out of public schools that doesn’t even protect their safety, let alone teach them how to read and write. You do know that parents could transform public education overnight simply by pulling their kids out en masse, do you not? The state would HAVE to respond to the needs and wishes of parents when confronted with the empty schoolhouses. But oh no. We have been so conditioned that our children CANNOT POSSIBLY SUCCEED IN LIFE without being certified as having been sufficiently deprived, depraved, and twisted by state conditioning as to earn state approval that we will not so much as allow our kids to miss a single week from school in a protest that would secure a better environment for them during the 12 years that they will spend in them. We are so fearful that if we miss that time from the very workplaces that refuse to do anything about these schools that are no longer producing people with the skills or mindset to work that they are turning to illegal immigrants as part of this collective protest that we will lose our jobs. We have not figured out that the state and big business need us more than we need them. We have been conditioned by the state schools and its mass media into believing that we need the state more than the state needs it. We do not trust God enough to think that He would take care of us even if we take a minor stand for His righteousness that is nothing compared to what civil rights marchers in this very country sacrificed just a generation ago, or what the countless Christians that have been crucified, burned at the stake, tossed to the lions, imprisoned, etc. have sacrificed throughout history.
Why? Because we have rejected the liberty that is in Christ Jesus in return for bondage to the state. We have sold our birthrights! So now, it is time for everyone that is on the Lord’s side, everyone who is not deluded into thinking that the state will secure them eternal life with God, to stand up. We have to count the cost, of course, as it will be a great sacrifice. But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to lose his soul? And realize this: you are not even losing the whole world. Instead, you are losing your prison cell and gaining freedom! So I urge you: if you have not already, accept freedom right now, this very instant, for tomorrow is not promised to you. If you have not made Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior, follow The Three Step Salvation Plan!
Like this:
Like Loading...
