Over the last 150 years, much of the civil government has believed that they own your children. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Don’t believe me? Read this:
“Meeting with a group of Christians in Austin, Texas on May 19, 1986, Attorney General James Mattox revealed his true colors when asked, “Is it true that the State of Texas owns our children?” Mattox retorted, “Yes, it is true…and not only your children, but you, too!”
Crazy right? Yet civil leaders have held this view for a long time. This goes back much further. John Swett, California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1863-1868, said this in his office’s first biennial report:
“Parents have no remedy against the teacher-As a general thing, the only persons who have a legal right to give orders to the teacher, are his employers-namely, the committee in some States, and in others the Director of Trustees. If his conduct is approved of by his employees, the parents have no remedy as against him or them…”
This was the 1860s! Those who think that the public-school system was thoroughly Christian at this time are sadly mistaken! Here’s another quote,
“On March 28, 1874, the California Legislature made it a penal offense for parents to send their children to private schools without the consent of the local state school trustees.”
Why did Christian parents go along with this? How could they support the public-school system? How can they continue to support it with their praises and money? Why haven’t they risen up against any politician who proposes the tax-dollar support of government education? Why haven’t they stood up to the public-school monopoly or the state imposing their agenda on Christian schools?
First of all, they have bought into the lie that the state is responsible for education. Second, they are cheap, and would prefer to have other tax payers subsidize their child’s education instead of paying for it themselves. Third, they believe Satan’s lie of moral neutrality.
The Hog Trap
In my spare time, I’ve been watching YouTube videos on feral hog trapping (strange I know) and there are some trappers who bring in an exceptionally large quantity of hogs to market. One trapper explains how he does it. After he makes a plan, he puts out a feeder and a large amount of feed a pen in the woods with the gate open. For a few days, the older sows don’t want anything to do with the pen, but the ignorant piglets enter in and begin to eat the food. The trapper lets this happen for about two weeks. Eventually, after seeing no harm, the older sows and even a few boars start dining with the younger ones. The hogs keep pouring in. Free food for everybody! When enough of them enter the pen for the free food, the trapper remotely drops the gate. Voila! Bacon for the takin’.
This is exactly what the humanists have done with Christian families. The free food is called free education. Come one, come all! But the humanists one-up the pig trapper. The humanists make the mommy and daddy Christian hogs pay for the pen, the feed, and the slaughter of their own piglets. They do this by imposing taxes. Any warning that the feed is being used as a trap for their piglets, and you get a lot of outraged squealing. You will not be looked upon kindly. You’ll be called an elitist or cruel for preventing those who cannot afford an education to have one. “Don’t you care about the poor and the underprivileged?” “Sure, the public school has its problems but at least the children are getting a basic education. It sure beats not having any education since the poor can’t afford to go to your private school.” They can learn the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic and parents can teach them about God at home.”
This is the lie of neutrality talking. This lie has been around for a long time and it has consistently kept Christians from developing thoroughly biblical answers to problems. Generation after generation, they keep returning to Greek, Roman, and modern philosophies with the belief that Christians and non-Christians share certain basic beliefs and worldviews, certain beliefs about right and wrong. But they don’t. Not even close. Even what we would think of as the brutest of brute facts must be interpreted. Satan and his followers interpret the world one way and God and His followers interpret it another. Satan believes he owns the world and God believes He owns it. There can be no reconciling these two views. There is no common ground. All attempts at finding common ground lead to Satan’s view by default and Satan says that God has no say-so in how we should interpret the world.
Neutrality doesn’t exist. You may not care but you can’t be neutral. You may not care if the Saints beat the Falcons but you can’t be neutral about whose creation made the game possible. This is Satan’s #1 trick. In the beginning, he used it on Eve. He wanted her to try out neutrality and test God’s Word. “Just see if you will die on the day that you eat the fruit. What’s there to lose?” Turns out: everything.
The lie of neutrality is the foundation of the public school. No religious or partisan views are to be taught in the government schools because people of many different religious beliefs are forced to pay into it via taxes. The spending of tax money is supposed to be neutral spending. This is foolishness. It is impossible to teach without ultimate standards of true and false, right and wrong.
Think about this: Say one idea is false like the evolution of the universe out of random preexistent matter that exploded with a big bang 15 billion years ago and you have violated some taxpayer’s deeply held religious conviction. Say that another idea is true like the evolution of mankind from animals and you attack a different taxpayer’s religious view. This is what is going on in the government schools. The taxpayer’s money is being used to indoctrinate his children with ideas he doesn’t believe, especially if that taxpayer is a Christian.
This has been going on with Christian taxpayer dollars over the last 100 years. It’s time for Christians to put a stop to this. It’s time for Christians to get their kids out of the public school and take personal responsibility for their discipleship. I’ll soon write about how we can begin to do this.
