It must be a very heady experience to be in a position to make decisions as if one is a god. Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and his colleagues wrote: "There is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for the panel, said "no such specific right can be found in the deep roots of the nation's history and tradition or implied in the concept of ordered liberty."

"We also hold," Reinhardt wrote, "that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students."

The judges in general and Reinhardt in particular have declared, that in essence, parents can’t stop the state from teaching anything to their children no matter how abhorrent it might be. The ruling slams the Bible shut on the moral values that many parents teach and instill in their children. First it was prayer, then Bibles were banned, and now every loathsome idea that perverted minds can find is taught to children with such deviant subjects now having the blessing of the god playing Circuit panel composed of 3 judges. Now let’s go to the Bible to expose how wrong the judges are about parental responsibility.  

The writer of Proverbs wrote in Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. The teaching is undeniably about teaching children the way of God and that through life they will remember that teaching and conduct themselves accordingly. Some unfortunately won’t follow the path of God, but that isn’t the issue here. It is that elders (parents and others) are charged with teaching the young the right pathway of life as they grow into adulthood.

Then in Ephesians 6:1-4 Paul gives the prescription for raising godly offspring: [1] Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. [2] Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) [3] That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. [4] And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Children are instructed to obey the godly teaching of parents and by so doing that is part of the honor of verse 2. The great blessing is that one will live a good life and enhance the chance, with all things being equal, of living a long time. Then Paul concludes with the teaching that parents aren’t to mistreat their children which will cause them to turn to become chafed and exasperated, but rather teach them the way of God.

With the ruling, the court has put the state into a position of superiority over parents who teach the way of God and into an obvious conflict with them. The court says it will now be the state who guides the children in matters of morality and that “Parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools .... The ruling must be overthrown and to use a popular phrase of the ungodly, for the sake of the children and by extension, of this nation as well. The court is not God, even through they make god like pronouncements, and it needs to understand that simple fact of life.

Without God and His morals the nation will flounder and we are seeing that happening now as the years go by. We must return to the way of God and take the mind of the people after Joshua spoke to them of God in Joshua 24:2: And the people said unto Joshua, Nay; but we will serve the Lord.

The time is now, and it has been now for many years, that the people must return to the simple truth of Joshua 24:15. but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

© 11-15-2005 DEC

                                     Next Lesson THE WAY

             The entire context of the verses used from Joshua follows:

[Josh 24:13] And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat.

[Josh 24:14] Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.

[Josh 24:15] And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

[Josh 24:16] And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods;

[Josh 24:17] For the Lord our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed:

[Josh 24:18] And the Lord drave out from before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land: therefore will we also serve the Lord; for he is our God.

[Josh 24:19] And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins.

[Josh 24:20] If ye forsake the Lord, and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you, after that he hath done you good.

[Josh 24:21] And the people said unto Joshua, Nay; but we will serve the Lord.

[Josh 24:22] And Joshua said unto the people, Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you the Lord, to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses.

[Josh 24:23] Now therefore put away, said he, the strange gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto the Lord God of Israel.

[Josh 24:24] And the people said unto Joshua, The Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey.