One of the reasons I support the Fair Tax is that it will remove gag on clergy, pastors, elders, etc. speaking out about candidates and politics in general. How will it do that? There will no longer be 501(c)(3)'s. The Fair Tax rips out the IRS code by the roots and along with it the 501(c)(3)s. There will be no IRS to check up on whether a church is "propagandizing". I think that churches, pastors, preachers, elders, deacons, and everyone is entitled to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In fact churches were only added to section 501(c)(3) because LBJ got tired of getting blasted from the pulpit. So in 1954, churches were offered the "benefit" of becoming a 501(c)(3) even though they were (and still are) automatically tax exempt and tax deductible. To read how this code is terrible for churches and the Church at large, click here.
There are many other reasons to be in favor of the Fair Tax, but this one is near to my heart. I think that the Church (as congregations and as individuals) need to be on the front lines of expanding the Kindgom of God. Part of that means taking part in the culture war that is exploding around us.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
For You Christians That Want "Someone That Can Win"
Rassmussen has Mike Huckabee listed at 13% nationally. He has more than doubled his support in just 1 month with almost no money. If you want to help him move past pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control Giuliani, please click on the counter above and contribute.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Educating Our Christian Children
I am reading the book The Harsh Truth About Public School. It is a good book and very well documented. This is what I have come away with so far. Christian children should be taken out of public schools for these reasons:
1. The Chrisitan worldview was taken out of public schools via legal action starting in the 1960's. There is no such thing as a worldview nuetral education system. So when the Christian worldview was taken out, it was slowly and subtly replaced with a Secular Humanist worldview. If you think that 2 hours a week of Bible school and 3 hours a week of family devotionals are going to counteract 30+ hours a week of anti-god, anti-chirstian thought, you are sadly mistaken. Take a look at this quote from page 50.
Even more telling was the response to the following statement: "Because human nature is constantly changing values and ethics will also change. Therefore each generation should be free to adopt moral standards appropriate to their preferences." Only 14.7% of Christian children attending government schools strongly disagreed with this statement, while 74.3% of children attending private Christain schools strongly disagreed.
2. Christian children are overtly taught immoral and anti-biblical information in government schools. Some examples of this include godless evolution, approval of homosexual "marriage", and that children should come up with their own values system. This values system stuff is called "values clarification". An example of values clarification is the DARE program. DARE officers are not supposed to tell children that it is wrong to do drugs. They are supposed to have the child list the "good" and bad points of drug use and decide for themselves. This system of teaching about moral topics like sexuality and drug use completely undermines the authority of God as the one that determines right and wrong.
3. The quality of education at public schools is not very high. I won't go into how far behind we are most "developed" countries in most subjects. I will just mention a couple of quotes from The Harsh Truth about Public Schools.
Page 127
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found in 2000 that 68% of all American fourth graders cannot read at a proficient level.
Page 150
Consequently, under the TAKS [the standarized test in Texas], a student can pass the high school exit exam, for example, by answering correctly only 25 of 56 math questions, 23 of 50 social studies questions, 41 of 73 reading and English questions, and 27 of 55 science questions."
Did anyone else notice that many of these "pass" scores are lower than 50%?
4. I don't know of a grown-up that would tolerate working in these conditions:
1. The Chrisitan worldview was taken out of public schools via legal action starting in the 1960's. There is no such thing as a worldview nuetral education system. So when the Christian worldview was taken out, it was slowly and subtly replaced with a Secular Humanist worldview. If you think that 2 hours a week of Bible school and 3 hours a week of family devotionals are going to counteract 30+ hours a week of anti-god, anti-chirstian thought, you are sadly mistaken. Take a look at this quote from page 50.
Even more telling was the response to the following statement: "Because human nature is constantly changing values and ethics will also change. Therefore each generation should be free to adopt moral standards appropriate to their preferences." Only 14.7% of Christian children attending government schools strongly disagreed with this statement, while 74.3% of children attending private Christain schools strongly disagreed.
2. Christian children are overtly taught immoral and anti-biblical information in government schools. Some examples of this include godless evolution, approval of homosexual "marriage", and that children should come up with their own values system. This values system stuff is called "values clarification". An example of values clarification is the DARE program. DARE officers are not supposed to tell children that it is wrong to do drugs. They are supposed to have the child list the "good" and bad points of drug use and decide for themselves. This system of teaching about moral topics like sexuality and drug use completely undermines the authority of God as the one that determines right and wrong.
3. The quality of education at public schools is not very high. I won't go into how far behind we are most "developed" countries in most subjects. I will just mention a couple of quotes from The Harsh Truth about Public Schools.
Page 127
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found in 2000 that 68% of all American fourth graders cannot read at a proficient level.
Page 150
Consequently, under the TAKS [the standarized test in Texas], a student can pass the high school exit exam, for example, by answering correctly only 25 of 56 math questions, 23 of 50 social studies questions, 41 of 73 reading and English questions, and 27 of 55 science questions."
Did anyone else notice that many of these "pass" scores are lower than 50%?
4. I don't know of a grown-up that would tolerate working in these conditions:
- 24-32% of the employees had been offered drugs by fellow employees
- 5-10% of the employees avoid one or more places at work for fear for their own safety
- 7-9% of the employees had been threatened with a deadly weapon at work this past year
Yet this is the "work environment" that children in government schools are expected to go to everyday. (The above statistics were taken from page 184.)
As I get through the rest of the book, I will write more on my findings.
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