Small shifts and time. These are the 2 biggest weapons, I believe, that Satan uses against us. When things shift just slightly, if we notice, we think, ‘well that’s not too bad.’ And most times we don’t even notice. This is no more evident to me than if you look back at compulsory educational history. Something I have never done until we started homeschooling. We began homeschooling because the Lord led us there, but since I’ve found a thick book’s worth of reasons we should have done it all along.
When you go back and look at the history of government schools you see they didn’t start out by yanking God out, or speaking directly against His teachings. As a matter of fact those in authority said we need to teach them to read so they can follow God by reading His word. But I believe that was step one to a bigger devised plan that would slowly and subtly change the values and conscience of this nation.
Satan doesn’t come in the form of a scary devil, he comes in the form of “helpful change” or “fulfillment” (sound familiar?). The first compulsory schools were inducted over 300 years ago. That seems like a long time to us, but subtly they have gone from their first philosophy…to educate children so that they could read scripture to, no scripture allowed. From a desire that seemed “good,” to a desire that is no less than wicked. We excuse it because out of urgency we need our kids to learn to read while we do other things. It has so subtly been introduced that we don’t even recognize the evil in it. But with days like last week and the terrible killing of children the evil is seeping out.
Yes, we can tell ourselves that it could have happened anywhere, and that is true. But when we subtly tell God to “stay out,” what can we expect? Is there any other place in this world that Christians would send our young children that daily introduces them to sex, violence, anti-God teachings, idolatry, mental abuse with the authority over them being forbid to use the Lord in correcting? We don’t let them watch R rated movies, and they only last a couple of hours, but we will send them for 8 hours a day for 12 years to watch an R rated life.
Ok, let’s move on from school. Let’s look at marriage. When did marriage go from parents with years of wisdom choosing spouses for their children to “get drunk in Vegas and marry the guy you just met” wisdom? Now I know that arranged marriage sounds horrific to a nation that is all about having their choice be #1 priority. And I’m not saying that we should return to arranged marriages bc that got abused also, but I see a lot of wisdom in it if parents are true followers of Christ.
First of all you don’t enter in with the ridiculous idea that you’ve found the perfect man/woman for you. You don’t quit the second it gets hard or feels uncomfortable…because you expect that from the beginning! You learn early to work through your differences and apply God’s principals to trials (assuming you had wise parents led by God in arranging your spouse). And the only thing to govern your house is God’s teachings, because you have no preconceived notions of what to expect from Mr or Mrs Wonderful. Now all that being said I do believe we could pick our own, if we were raised to value godly qualities and in the realization that marriage doesn’t save you, Jesus does. But the wisdom of godly parents will still far outweigh our own, especially if we are emotionally engaged. The problem today is our overwhelming culture (especially the 12 formidable years thru that R rated life) teaches them subtly that their is an urgency to please self.
My point is that subtly we went from one extreme to another. And the extreme we are in now wrecks families hourly and creates selfishness beyond imagination. And the urgency to marry that “perfect spouse” has priority over wisdom. The subtly of the change makes it so that we can’t even really pinpoint in history where it all changed, yet it changed drastically! It went from God ordained qualities to a big ol’ heaping help of self-service.
You don’t like my thoughts on marriage, look at child raising. When did we go from training them to live godly to training them to be selfish, disrespectful non-empathetic me-pleasers? Oh maybe the subtly in their education helped here. Parents are too busy, too self-involved and too weak because they have already been thru the indoctrination experiment and follow whatever whim seems good to them. See how this all ties in nicely?
What about the very thing we say is our foundation… Christianity? When did we change from a Christianity that stirs sacrifice and service from its deep indwelling of agape love to Me-anity? A faith based on what feels good to me? Again, two extremes and nobody really knows where it started to shift. As a matter of fact you can’t even convince the subscribers of Me-antiy to believe they have embraces heresies! They think it’s the faith of the apostles. Can you imagine how Satan laughs?
My point here is not to change your view on school as much as it is to awaken in you a desire to open your eyes to the changes and take a hard look at what you live for…is it for God’s approval, or your own that gets tampered with through Satan’s lies of fulfillment? And what are you teaching our next generation?
The generation we live in now is apparent all around us. Look at our choice for presidential candidates or any other leadership roles, our values in what we will tolerate for education for our kids (perpetuating all of this), the feel good, easy Me-anity that runs rampant in our churches, the lack of work ethic, the lack of sacrifice, the lack of service to others, the inability to live for something bigger than self. All qualities of the father of lies, none are qualities of Jesus.
So don’t look and think…it’s not that bad, because if you are honest you have to see that it is! And if we want to have “change” we need to change back to the time before we embraced the subtle urgency to only please ourselves. And do the hard work to re-teach the next generation that “easy” and “me” are not what it’s all about, nor will it make you happy or fulfilled.
Calling sin, sin, and pure good old hard work and sacrifice rooted in the true education of God will avail much…anything less is the subtle urgency of Satan.
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