Public Schools, Transgender Kids, and a Breakneck Run Toward Totalitarianism

"Have a nice weekend," Obama says to the world. "And here's my latest totalitarian manifesto for your reading pleasure."

What the Department of Justice and the Department of Education call "guidance," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calls "blackmail" and Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas "social engineering."

David French of National Review puts it bluntly: "You may not have realized it yet, but the Obama administration just destroyed the traditional American public school." The battle has come home. If you are a parent, it now affects your child. If you are a public school teacher, it now affects your workplace, your calling, your livelihood.

This isn't about what the Bible says about sex. (For biblical perspective on the transgender bathroom issue, I wouldn't steer you to the usual passages about sex just at this moment. Instead, check out Romans 9:20, and in the King James at that: "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?") Instead, this is about what the United States Constitution says about government interference in the daily lives of American citizens.

Even before legalized gay marriage, the Obama administration was passing off the word "sex" in Title IX for the word "sexual orientation." Now schools are told, under threat of being defunded, to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their sexual orientation. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Students and staff alike will have a new lexicon to learn.

The letter, while not legally binding, has Texas considering cutting ties with government-funded schooling altogether. And how will Christian parents respond? Will there be a mass exodus from public schools? As Christian parents, what is the right response?

The Christian citizen should not react by saying, "I believe homosexuality and sex changes are sinful, so this is an outrage." We're talking about a fallen world, a human-made government, and a government school system. Expecting that system or that government or that world to follow the laws of the Bible would be naive (or worse). America does have a Constitution, however. It's there to protect the citizen from tyranny by government.

I commend to you the words of Ronald Reagan: "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

Obama may be on his way out, but voters have bleak options at the polls this election cycle. The likely nominees of both major parties appear all too willing to issue Obama-like fiats guiding individual Americans toward more help from the Government. Is it time to lose hope?

God would not have us despair. Paul wrote to the Romans, "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." That's not just for when things are going well and the economy is good and there's a conservative President and Congress and Supreme Court doing things our way. It's for when we need hope the most. Paul certainly knew persecution for faith--he'd doled it out to others, and, after his conversion, endured it.

Teachers, let's continue in hope. And let's be praying.

New Pencils for Finals Week

At the end of the year, it seems like nobody has a pencil or notebook paper. Here my Mother's Day flowers dress up a supply station for students heading into finals.

A Call to Christian Teachers

'. . .your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, “Be gone!”'

Isaiah 30:20b-22

The headlines are bleak. The world is shifting. It's easy to be discouraged by the way Christians specifically and Conservatives generally are being actively targeted. The Left is stepping up its game. Where is God?

The passage from Isaiah 30 is a glimpse of God's heart for Israel, and by extension, for Gentile believers. The world can shift its values, but we are asked not to follow--not to turn to the right or to the left. In fact, we are to live lives that are purer and higher, defiling our own idols, scattering them, disowning them. In a time when the world has disowned the concept of Sin, we are asked to be iconoclasts, smashers of idols.

The idols we have allowed ourselves have to go. Whatever it is that takes our eyes off God and our God-given calling has to go. A big thing can be an idol--envy, lust, self. A little thing like an iPhone can make a very pretty idol, too.

The world doesn't know where it's going or what it's doing. It just wants to go anywhere, so long as it's away from God. It'll take us all with it if it can. We have to stand somewhere and draw a line. We have to walk a path that God has blessed: "This is the way, walk in it."

We have to make the decision for ourselves. I can't force you and you can't force me. I hope that when I'm no longer here and my children have to choose to live for God or live for idols, they'll choose the right path, the one Way.

And these are things I can't mull over with my students, since I am a public school teacher who abides by the law. If it means so much to me to light the way to God for others, how can I stay in this line of work? How can I be at peace when I have to hold my peace to keep my job?

The answer is faith. One of my heroes is Christian missionary martyr Jim Elliot, who said,

"Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

We must do all for the glory of God and do it diligently. Examples abound of Christians who said not a word but were lights for the Gospel.

Another missionary hero, Olympic athlete Eric Liddell, said,

“I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast! And when I run I feel his pleasure.”

Are you a writer? Write for God, every word, whether it be a grocery list or an editorial. Are you a teacher? Teach for Him. Your students may not hear you speak of your God, but they will learn of Him by knowing you. Faith makes it possible. Teachers, we can't see the path to its end, but there will be a voice behind us saying, "This is the way, walk in it."

And we do not walk by sight. We walk by faith.

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

Ronald Reagan