German Homeschool Case May Impact U.S. Homeschool Freedom, by Michael Farris:
Michael Farris and I go way back. We worked shoulder to shoulder together in the ’80s on many issues – and have the battle scars to prove it.
For the last several decades, he has been on the forefront of homeschool and religious liberty issues. We would do well to heed his warning.
So much of our “theology” (and we all have “theology”!) is forged these days by hurts.
The Bible has been used as a club to beat us into conformity, so we reject its plenary authority.
Our need for mercy has been abused, so we latch onto a concept of grace that excludes the Lord’s occasional rebuke and discipline.
We have suffered from authoritarian leadership or a controlling church, so we become autonomous and discount the need for healthy, accountable community.
We realize that some pet doctrines were wrong, so we seek a purely existential Jesus and cringe at objective truth.
In our fellowships, we have found that balance and maturity comes from a two step process: We must fully expose our hurts to the Lord, and then explicitly offer to turn them – and the associated beliefs our hurts have caused us to hold about ourselves, the Lord and others – over to Him. This involves confession, and often even forgiveness (both giving and receiving).
Only when we take possession of our hurts by fully and transparently owning up to them as we expose them to the Lord, can we then release them to Jesus.
When we are willing to do this, time and again I have seen Him give something wonderful in return – wholeness and freedom!
In that wholeness and freedom, we finally start to know His fulness and can embrace all that He’s provided for us to find authentic life in Him.
The choice is always ours.
Bondage or freedom?
Hurt or life?
Us and our “stuff”, or Christ and His magnificence?
You tell me how in Christ love is everything.
How it transcends morality, truth and even scripture itself…
How if we just expressed your concept of love, the world will beat a path to Jesus…
Yet you recoil at basic truth, like the reality of sin and moral precepts.
And you reject much that God has revealed in His Word to help us understand His own nature and thus the parameters of authentic love – for the good not just of individuals, but whole societies.
Somehow, you have been deceived into thinking that authentic love is freedom from truth, when actually it is truth set free.
In return for a little less freedom, civil government ever seeks to solve problems we should be solving on our own through individual responsibility, family support, personal charity or voluntary associations. As we’ve continued to trade liberty for government “solutions” (which never in reality actually solve much, but often make things worse), little by little we’ve become increasingly enslaved.
Every American should watch this cartoon from 1948 and heed its warning about Utopian promises to fix all of our problems. It is more relevant today than ever before.
May we once again find the courage, and the common sense, to stand tall as free men and free women.
