Jun. 21, 2006 Wafers and Wine
I am a missionary to an island which is to remain nameless for various reasons. My family and I have journeyed thousands of miles and many heartaches to be here. We have come only in the hopes of converting even some of these destitute, impoverished, indigenous natives to the love and salvation of Christ.
Over the first few months of getting to know these mostly bare and barbaric peoples, we had become quite bewildered. They really caught onto the concept of Salvation and the Holy Spirit quite well. But they kept looking for the Body of Christ.
So we took a few days and performed a few teaching seminars on the sacraments. Unfortunately, at this stage in their Christian development, they just couldn't grasp the concept of wafers and wine. (We were sort of relieved for now because of how they produce their wine.)
Not too long after we held these mini-conventions, one of the natives came to us (we renamed him John) and asked to become a true convert, but told us that he needed to eat the Body of Christ for this to happen.
After much prayer and deliberation we finally realized that this poor jungle dweller didn't have a problem with the sacraments, but had grown up a cannibal, and that in this culture the spirit transfers through the eating of the body. Hence the incurable search for the Body of Christ.
Now, you must realize that we love these people with all of our heart, some of them even as a brother, (hoping that they had learned a new definition of loving us as brothers and sisters after we learned of their cannibalism), but to be able to bring the true salvation of Christ to them, this is such a great joy, and our love has grown so much more because of it.
We ended up leading the villager who asked, through the prayer of salvation and the Lord's Prayer, and discussed with him the lack of necessity for his cannibalistic upbringing. Can you even imagine our further joy when through all of this we had discovered that he was one of the elders of this small town. Oh, to have that kind of influence on our side; this must be God.
All of this is wonderful, I'm sure that you agree. It has been a few weeks now and the Elder is fervently and unceasingly helping to bring his villagers to the saving Knowledge of Christ. What a joy to be in such a time.
Alas, we have one quandary. We have become ever closer and oh, so much more loving of these people and are enjoying our stay here very much. We have gotten to know the elder and his wife (we named her Kathy) a little better and have discussed having a celebration in honor of their new religion. This is wonderful you say. Yes it is. The quandary is that they would like to help with the menu.
What should we do?
Bewildered
written by Andrew G. Eppler on june 21, 2006
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Jun. 1, 2006 We are not an Exclusive Club
I used [Milton] Friedman and vouchers as my subject in college three years ago. My professor didn't agree with me very often, and her big complaint was that vouchers detract from the schools budget. Well that would be correct if vouchers were actually used, although, I have to say that the competition may actually do some good for those in the public schools, if the agenda makers could see past something being taken away from them and into the idea that to stay alive they need to do something better. My point is that as we stand, we are either required to succumb to some form of subversive effort on the part of NEA and the likes or be taxed without representation. i.e. my children are home schooled, which is my choice that I pay for, but am also taxed as if my children were going to public school. I guess that you could call it representation in that I am negatively represented as unqualified, unsocialized and heading for corporate disaster, if my children aren't in public school. La Shawn has some very good ideas in her rebuttals here, but her thoughts are fragmented, she uses pieces of one arguement to make a point in a completely irrelavent arguement, or just decides to make ideological outbursts. But then she is entitled. It is her page and well, she is a social-conservative oozing Libertarian.
I have kept up with the CATO institute since 1998 and have paid particular attention recently (for the past 1 1/2 years), and there seems to be a contingent of think-tank directors that seems to think that they are "qualified" to manage public as well as private affairs. I have to say that the best I had seen was when the director of Cato and a few others were absolutely buried in their own stupidity by a former director of the CIA. I have to say that she is a very active advocate, and has the right heart behind her ideas, which makes for a great homeschool activist. What we need are more like her that can also play enough of the diplomat to actually get the jobs at the CATO institute or NEA or wherever and make a seething attempt at change from the inside. Which is done by believing in who we are in God, and realizing that America, whether we like it or not, is run around everybody's ideas, not just ours. A maxim that I have seen over and over again that the conservative Christian community just quite doesn't get is that whatever the issue is, it is just an issue. What we take will be taken from us in return. We are not going to change hearts by fighting "issues" and taking other peoples "issues" away from them. And the larger part, we have absolutely no ability to change hearts. What we have is a story of salvation that is to be carried to all parts of the world. Everything else is baggage. I also seem to remember an awful lot of strong christians growing up and coming out of the public schools that I was in. A case in point. When I was fourteen I went to an evening sermon that just happened to be on the Holy Spirit, and guess what happened to me that night... I'll only give you one. The next day, at public school, everywhere I went somebody was talking about what happened last night and how when they had seen me go up there, somebody with everything in life that I detested and made very public, they followed. There were over three-hundred people that followed me up on that stage. The preacher evidently had never seen anything like it before. I guess that I forgot to mention that the auditoreum in my public junior high school was where the sermon was held, and three hundred public school children out of 650 were saved that night. I'm sorry folks, but I will always hold that fear is only where we decide to put it, and God will always uphold his word, wherever we are. Again, we can eat meat or we don't have to.
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May. 31, 2006 Heritage article
A friend at A Pilgrims Journey had sent me an interesting article: The Peer Effect on Academic Achievement Among Public Elementary School Students.
A few thoughts...
It is a good article from a scientific standpoint. It does neglect
the effects that God can have on an individual and seems to be coming
from a perspective that there may be those that don't have peers, but
only if dug into deeply. I would like to take their first graph
further. I have an idea that if ~23% of fifth graders have friends
that make fun of those that want to do well, the actual number of
those making fun could be extremely high. They did make a good
observation though with the idea that children need to find good peers
at a young age. And they do have a case for conflict resolution and
trust building. I think that we as homeschoolers carry the onus for
proving that everybody is loved by God and that trust-building can
happen anywhere with almost anyone and that through this is shown the
redemptive love and grace of Christ. The point is for our children to
be stronger "In God" than they are without Him. |
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