How True!
I have a feeling I am going to get long-winded again. My grandmother always wanted a preacher in the family and while I trained for it and presented a few sermons it's for a person who is quite hard of hearing to communicate with the hearing world on a verbal level. I can't even use ASL well enough to converse with the deaf world at more than the speed of an extremely slow snail.
Up until the end of last year I played with the worship band at church. The main reason I quit was because I felt that I was doing for the wrong reason but the other reason is that is sure is hard to play when you have to wear the monitor in order to hear what is going on.
Maybe the written world is where it is for me.
I am guilty of passing on those crude jokes to get a laugh. I sometimes even have to "clean" them up in order to pass them along.
I guess I don't set a very good example of how a Christian should behave.
My wife grew up in a home where church was a pretty much a foreign idea. Both parents came from families that were fairly "religious". He was Presbyterian. She was Catholic. Together they were nothing. The only time my wife saw the inside of a Church, let alone heard anything spiritual/inspirational before she began hanging around me and some of my friends was when my Mother-in-law went to mass so that she could be blessed in order to win at Bingo. - My wife puts me to shame sometimes. To be sure she has her moments like all of who are human but to her credit she calls me on it when I have mine.
I can't remember exactly what is written in somebody's signature line but it says something about.... not being founded on religions but rather on the Gospel of Jesus Christ....
You know the philosophical question about whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if there is no to hear it?
Here is food for thought. This was part of my Youth Ministries training.
Four blind wisemen had never experienced an elephant and had no concept of what an elephant was shaped like or felt like. They decided that each would independantly examine the elephant and then when each had done so they would pool their knowledge.
The first was brought to the elephant and the first thing he felt was the leg. He had had experience with a tree trunk and that is what the elephant's leg reminded him of so he decided an elephant was like a tree trunk.
The second was brought to the elephant and he immediately felt the elephant's trunk. He had had experience with huge snakes and so he decided that an elephant was like a huge snake.
The third came into the elephant and felt it's side. It felt solid like a wall.
The last one came in and got ahold of the elephant's tail. He decided the elephant was like a rope.
When the four came together to compare their notes they had a huge argument because each of them had only experienced one part of the elephant and could not grasp how there could be any other truth than the one each had experienced.
Now this illustration can be molded to fit any number of lessons but what I am focusing on right now is the fact that each wiseman only saw one aspect of the elephant.
The people that want God out of schools and other public places are missing the forest for the sake of a few trees.
When I was coming up if I lipped off to my folks not only did I get my mouth washed out with lifebouy I got to pick my own green switch off the Maple tree in the back yard... and if I didn't pick a good one... well let's just say I didn't want my Dad to pick one. If that were to happen today the first thing that would happen is your kid would run to the school resource officer or school counselor and calmly say my Dad beats me or my Mom abuses me. The next thing that would happen is that is that DHS would be on your doorstep 15 minutes after your kid gets off the school bus. You can let your imagination go from there.
The Liberals have spouted all this self actualization garbage until the adult population has soaked up all it can and it is now being squeezed into the younger set. Sure, they have a point to a certain extent but not to the point where it interferes the way I raise my kids. The Bible tells parents to discipline... Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child is written in Proverbs. Another passage tells us to "train up a child in the way he should go and when he is older he will not depart from it." It also tells children to honor their parents and to obey them. On the flip side it tells parents not to provoke their children to anger.
Hebrews 11:1 says ... Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. As Christians we depend on our Heavenly Father to meet our needs just as our children should depend on us as parents to meet their needs. We have faith that the rain will fall. My kids have faith that I will make sure that they have shelter from that rain.
Lots of times kids push the envelope into bad behavior because they want to know that Mom and Dad will pull back on the reigns, that they care about what they are up to. If Mom and Dad don't know when or how to react or turn a blind eye or are cowed into non-action by the threat of repercussion the kids can turn apathetic. Once that happens they can search outside the safety of the family/church family for something to believe in and then it is incredibly hard to regain that bond.
If it sounds like first hand experience.... Let's just say that the remaining kids are being taught very stringently about family loyalty and to lean on each other and not to listen to the mumbo jumbo of the establishment. That is incredibly hard as well.
Our youngest, is a special needs child. As such and because he requires certain things to make life easier for all of us around him. We have monthly appointments with a Psychiatrist who happens to be a Christian. We have weekly appointments with a therapist. She and I don't share the same views on corporal discipline.
My son is 8. We have known that he has problems since we was about 30 months old. The clue was when we woke to find all the furniture in the living room turned over and the walls and part of the sofa covered in permanent black magic marker. He was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder. That was later changed to something else and then something else was added to it.
August 19 he starts 3rd grade. He reads and understands three grade levels above his age. Last year he had finished all the 2nd grade math and had moved onto 3rd grade math by the beginning of the 4th quarter. As a 1st grader when his sister was preparing to represent her class at the spelling bee he outspelled her during practices at home.... sounds a lot like a prodigy, right? Well, add this to the mix.
He has a tactile dysfunction. Touch him lightly and he screams, "Don't hurt me." Do you have any idea what it's like to be walking in the middle of WalMart or the mall or anywhere for that matter and have him scream that? If he looked like a down's child or wore protective head gear people would probably dimiss it but this kid looks normal. Grab him firmly and he will pull away. He won't usually scream and sometimes he will come back and hold your hand but it has to be him doing the holding not me. The tactile disorder also flows over into food textures. There are few restaurants that we can go into where he will eat the food. And ... you guessed it. We've been accused of not feeding him. Then couple it with this.
He is unable to tie his shoes, button a shirt, balance on one leg or ride a bicycle...even with training wheels. He also has a slight speech impediment.
Emotionally, he acts like a 4-5 year old when interacting with other kids. Because of this he has few friends at school or church and most acquaintances pick on him unceasingly because they know they can get a rise out of him.
The bright spot is that he loves animals. They calm him down and he loves to go to the barn with me when we do our chores and out to the pasture when I check my boss' cattle and fill the creep feeders
But I am getting off the point.
We have a progressive discipline plan.
When he pushes the envelope he has to sit down and take a 5 minute time out. For everytime he says "no" (and he usually does) we add a minute. We have gotten as high as 20 minutes.
If the bad behavior continues even after the time out or if the initial behavior warrants stronger discipline he loses access to the computer,playstation, or television or a combination of all three and his only entertainment initially is reading a book or working a puzzle. The loss of access is usually until the following day. Sometimes if we are in a store he loses an item we were planning on purchasing for him. Just last week I had to put a new backpack and lunchbox both for school back on the shelf because he couldn't keep his hands to himself.
If the bad behavior is so strong as to warrant more then he may get a paddling but we try to stay away from this if possible.
When I was explaining this to his therapist (the third in 3 years) she gave me this disaproving purse of her lips and informed me like I was a virus in the bloodstream of humanity that corporal punishment was just about the worst thing I could do and asked if my wife was in agreement with me when it came to discipline. I didn't answer and instead told her that she (the therapist) and I would have to agree to disagree.
We have been dealing with therapist for 5 years and have found that even though they say they are pro-family almost everything they do is calculated to pit family members against each other until without knowing it they agree with the therapist and come to want to do things the way that Anne Graham described in her report of cause and effect.
Now back to my question. If no one hears the tree fall did it actually fall? What do you think? The framework of this nation was founded on religious principals. The liberal judges want anything remotely connected to Christianity to be removed from public places. Do you realize that not only will there be a whole lot of buildings and monuments in Washington DC that will be altered if they succeed? But the total moral fabric of our society, the principals on which our nation was built will be cast aside.
Be you a professing Christian or not you must agree that before the advent of Madeline Murray O'Hare and other liberals, before the removal of prayer and God from the forefront of our society there was more community and less individuality, more accountability to each other for our actions and less apathy, most of all there was a code of ethics and the Golden Rule. Now the code of ethics has become the code of antics and the Golden Rule has been melted and recast as the Rule of Gold which is translated in any number of ways but basically comes down to one thing. A basic lack of respect for everything and everyone.
Well, I've probably managed a twenty minute tirade rather than a twenty minute sermon out of this but the truth is the truth regardless if you touched a leg, trunk, or tail or heard the tree fall.
For those that want to get involved in protecting your kids and supporting a more conservative view of things log into
http://www.afa.org ... that's the website for the American Family Association. From there you can get to sites like Stop Liberal Judges.com, One Million Teens.com, One Million Dads.com, and One Million Moms.com and some others.
