Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Going camping

THis weekend will be our first camping trip of the year! I am not an outdoors kind of person, but I LOVE camping. Maybe because it feels like life slows down and is simple again. Maybe because of the uninterrupted time with my family. Whatever it is, I have the fever. At night my 4 year old and I have been laying on the swing and looking at the stars until he falls asleep. It just makes me even more anxious to hit the campsite! I can't wait :)

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Sexual Purity

Our youth are having a speaker the next couple of weeks. SHe will be talking about purity. Coincidentally I have been reading Pure Excitement-A Godly Look at Sex, Love, and Dating by Joe White. He doesn't necessarily promote saving your first kiss for your wedding day, but some of the youth in his book have made this decision. There is one story in the book where the author asks the girl he is counseling "How much of your husband's wedding gift are you going to give away to the guy you are dating now?" Of course she answered "zero", but that is easier said than done, especially in society today.

I do believe we are seeing a "purity revival" in the church. I pray that it will continue. I wish there was more tolerance for the kids who are choosing a different way than the way of standard recreational dating. I know in my family (extended and immediate) there are a couple of teens who are planning to wait until their wedding day for their first kiss. They get a lot of pressure from their friends, who are Christians. We have flip-flopped from where we were 60 years ago, when promiscuity received ridicule and purity was the norm.

I think of it like this: If your spouse was doing ___________ would that be considered adultery? If the answer is yes, then it must be if we are doing the same thing with someone's future spouse. That may be oversimplified a bit, but maybe we should err on the side of caution. I wish I had.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

feminists

This is an example of the true feminist agenda. It is also representative of what they think of children and families. It is very sad that so many Christians will believe this stuff rather than searching the bible for what God has said.

Linda says:
"it is, infact, a post industrial society. One in which women can work and should work, for the honor, for the power, for the variety to use their capacities in a larger context."


Regarding women, young and older God's Word says:

Titus 2:3-5 (American Standard Version)

3 that aged women likewise be reverent in demeanor, not slanderers nor enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which is good;
4 that they may train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,
5 to be sober-minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed:




Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Food Inc.

My husband and I watched Food Inc. recently. It was a very eye opening documentary. It disturbed me so much that the next day I couldn't eat anything. (If you know me, you know that is huge.)

What kept coming into my mind through the whole movie were thoughts like "no wonder we have so much cancer" and "no wonder there are so many allergies" and "why are we eating things created by man instead of the things created by God?"

We immediately started looking for raw cow milk (which we have been unable to find) and someone to share the cost of a pasture-raised cow from a local farmer. It is a little more out of pocket, but if you are buying a whole cow I think the cost is probably cheaper than buying things separately (unless you only eat ground beef.) We already stock the freezer with deer that the hunters don't want from the processor, which is about $75 for about 40 lbs. of meat. I don't know what to do about chicken exactly, but we have to do something.

In the past year, as I have gotten busier, I have stopped making as many "homemade" foods and fallen into the habit of buying processed. When we saw this movie, it just strengthened my resolve that no amount of time is worth putting that kind of garbage into my children, my husband, or myself.

In my area, you can rent it from Celebrity Video on 119 in Alabaster.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Voddie Baucham

This is the first part of an awesome presentation by Dr. Baucham. "Why I Believe the Bible"




Thursday, March 18, 2010

download Pilgrims Progress

Download audio from Christianaudio.com of a reading of Pilgrims Progress. Unfortunately, it is an abridged addition. They have the original also, but not for free. It may be worth listening to. JOseph is required to read this for school this year and I may let him listen instead. It has been such a long time since I read this and I am looking forward to getting a refresher! The coupon code is PROG103 (expires Mach 31) if anyone is interested in downloading it. You do have to sign up with them, but it is quick and easy. This site has free downloads every month.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Prochoice Christians?

The article posted on this blog elicited almost 300 comments. It is long, but I think worthwhile to read. It is indeed intresting to me that there is one particular woman on here who is a Christian and is pro-choice. Her comments are very telling about some Christians today and the worldviews they hold. I laughed and cried while reading these. It is worth the time to get to the end where a poster "ycw" shares part of the struggles she has had.

http://www.generationcedar.com/main/2010/03/america-after-50-years-of-the-pill.html

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

indoctrinating our children

What is indoctrination?

From Merriam-Webster Online

Main Entry: in·doc·tri·nate
Pronunciation: \in-ˈdäk-trə-ˌnāt\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): in·doc·tri·nat·ed; in·doc·tri·nat·ing
Etymology: probably from Middle English endoctrinen, from Anglo-French endoctriner, from en- + doctrine doctrine
Date: 1626
1 : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments : teach
2 : to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle

— in·doc·tri·na·tion \(ˌ)in-ˌdäk-trə-ˈnā-shən\ noun

— in·doc·tri·na·tor \in-ˈdäk-trə-ˌnā-tər\ noun

Main Entry: 2sectarian
Function: noun
Date: 1819
1 : an adherent of a sect
2 : a narrow or bigoted person


Main Entry: 1par·ti·san
Variant(s): also par·ti·zan \ˈpär-tə-zən, -sən, -ˌzan, chiefly British ˌpär-tə-ˈzan\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French partisan, from north Italian dial. partiźan, from part part, party, from Latin part-, pars part
Date: 1555
1 : a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance

The following quotes are some examples of founders of the public education system. Is there any doubt that they had an anti-God agenda. How hard is it to reteach each child every day? Do we even try? If we (Christians) are going to continue to send our children to a secular school, we MUST erase the indoctrination everyday. Remember Baptists, one of the reasons we send them there is to be salt and light, but if we aren't teaching them the difference between the dark secular education they are recieving and a Godly education, they cease to be salt and light. All day, every day they are taught about the world with people at the center, with people in control of their own destiny, about a world that created itself. Until the secular schools start teaching from a God-centered viewpoint, we must make extra, extra effort to teach them a biblical worldview. This might be particularly hard for the parents that were in school after 1973, when the US government took over and public schools ceased to be community schools. Many of us don't have a biblical worldview and we don't even know it! I know some people think the problem is that we took prayer out of schools. I think the problem started way before that, when we started teaching math, science and history without making God the center of it all.

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

– C.F. Potter, signer of Humanist Manifesto 1930


“… [E]very child in American entering schools at the age of 5 is insane because he comes to schools with certain allegiances toward our Founding Fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. …”

– Chester Pierce, professor of education at Harvard (1970)


“I believe that … [public] education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform … this conception has due regard for … socialistic ideals.” and “There is no God and there is no soul. … There is no room for fixed … or moral absolutes.”

– John Dewey, father of modern public education and signer of Humanist Manifesto 1930

However, Gresham Machen made a good point in his fight AGAINST government-run public schools. His predictions seem to have come true. I was "given" to the public education system and feel as though I was brainwashed with a feminist and anti-God and secular humanist education. Granted, my parents did very little, if anything, to counter the culture from school and society.

“If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might as well give them everything else as well.” -Machen

“Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.” -Machen

It seems in the early 20th century Mr. Machen saw the future of government controlled schools. I am afraid to see the next future.

*excerpted from http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/j-gresham-machen-a-forgotten-libertarian/

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Homeschooling

After MUCH praying, my husband and I have decided to homeschool the 7 year old next year. He is currently in a private Christian school that I absolutely LOVE. However, the responsibility for educating him is ours, and even though we have delegated it to wonderful people with a strong Christian worldview and the teaching is Christ-centered, is it OK to get someone else to do our job? I have been praying for 2 years that my husband would let me homeschool Daniel. So this is certainly an answered prayer. Now I am really scared! When I pulled my then 5th grader out of public school and started homeschooling I was not intimidated at all. Now I am very intimidated. I am so thrilled with the education that Daniel was getting and now I am worried I won't do as well as they did. BUT incompetence is no excuse for disobedience. I will just be praying for competence.

I am very grateful that Daniel has attended this school and we may even let the little one go for a year or two. I am especially grateful that I got to see a classical model in motion. A classical education is something I had read about, but didn't have a clear picture of it in my head. Now that I have seen it work I am SOLD. We probably will end up somewhere between classical and Charlotte Mason. I think they are similar in many ways. I do like the memorization in the classical model and am daily amazed at what Daniel can memorize.

A new adventure for our family is in the making. I am truly excited. God is good!