“The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. Your children will be shepherds here for forty years, suffering for your unfaithfulness, until the last of your bodies lies in the desert. For forty years – one years for each of the forty days you explored the land – you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have Me against you. I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will surely do these things to this whole wicked community, which has banded together against Me. They will meet their end in this desert; here they will die.” (Numbers 14:18, 33-35)
We are blessed to live in a nation that has developed a system of public education with teachers that are, for the most part, dedicated to teaching our young people and that understand that every child is valuable, independent of whether they have parents, rich or poor, regardless of cultural or other differences. We are now putting our children and their parents and guardians at risk by not allowing this system to continue. The current system would teach parents to not send their child to school if they are sick or they would be sent home if it were discovered that they were in any way, in harm’s way or could jeopardize the health and safety of others. Many children do not have parents that are equipped to teach from home. Many of them only maintain their home by being able to work. Many don’t have the knowledge, aptitude, administrative skills or technical ability to successfully “home” school. Long term, this inequity, even with everyone doing their best, will become a factor in making it even more difficult for our young people to not become more inward focused and judgmental for those that are “different”.
Every year, when the school year starts, even at the lower grades, more children drop out because of the choices of their parents, guardians or of their own, and we start the school year without them getting the teaching and training they need to interact with other people and have the living skills to care for themselves, much less others. So our children will be raised without the equity that they have available by interacting with other young people of their age and those in classes younger and older than they are and with the teachers and school that teaches them about fairness and discrimination of any kind. Our family structure has grown accustomed to the public school system taking some of that responsibility that we now support and which allows many families to have the time to provide the income and meet the other responsibilities of caring for their families. If one of their children is not able to attend school, they must adjust their priorities to care for the child, but not necessarily become their teacher, along with their other responsibilities.
I urge each of you to prayerfully consider the consequences of our choices and how they will affect our young people and the future generation. And for all you fathers and future fathers that will stand for your right to own a gun and be able to golf, fish and hunt. The education of your children is not the sole responsibility of your wife or their mother. Neither will you get to call your president, governor or even school board when we face the God who entrusted us with responsibility for the children that He allows us to bring into this world.
“Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4)
The last verse of the Old Testament – Prior to the New Testament and the life of Jesus being given to us.
“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5-6)
Comments