12 I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
13 However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.
14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.
15 All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.
We can exhibit reliance on the Spirit so that we will know the life-changing, freedom-inducing truth of Scripture - Jesus said that you will know the truth, which will set us free. We can experience confidence when faced with the world's ideologies that seek to hold us back from a productive Christian life and speak boldly in accordance with Christ's teachings. Our knowledge of Scripture equips us well to navigate the chaos and confusion that seems to characterize so much of our world today.
As Christ-followers, we have the calling to be truth-tellers, devoted to living out and speaking our convictions. In 2nd Timothy 2, we can find a passage that warns against ideology that doesn't line up with Scripture - it says:
15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
16 But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.
17 And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort,
18 who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some.
19 Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: "The Lord knows those who are His," and, "Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity."
It has been said that elections have consequences, and the policies that are embraced by our political leaders can dramatically affect our lives - for good or for harm. That is why Christians should be involved in the selection process, because, flawed as it may be, it is the system under our Constitution that we have in order to make a bold statement of our Christian ideals.
While we focus so often on our federal and statewide offices, we can also recognize that local races are also very important. That includes places on boards of education, especially with the spotlight shining on concepts that are being taught in schools that run contrary to our Christian beliefs.
The Daily Citizen ran an article recently on a shift in the ideological makeup of school boards across the country, reporting:
Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project Political Action Committee (PAC) are two new groups pushing back against schools that sexualize and confuse children and indoctrinate them into woke ideology.
Both organizations supported school board candidates who want to protect children and affirm parental rights. Both saw victories in races across the country on November 8.
The article stated:
Moms for Liberty was founded in January 2021 by Tiffany Justice, wife and mom with four school-aged children, and Tina Descovich, a wife and mother with five children. In less than two years, the group has grown to 240 chapters in 42 states, with more than 100,000 members.
Both women had served on school boards in Florida and grew concerned about parental rights in education, mask mandates, and inappropriate, explicit sexual materials in schools. They were also concerned about huge political spending by teachers unions, most of it going to leftist politicians and causes.
And, the track record, so far, seems to be exemplary; the Daily Citizen pointed out:
Moms for Liberty mobilized quickly, vetting and endorsing more than 500 school board candidates who support parental rights in 2022 elections. Before the November 8 midterm election, they’d already notched 105 wins.
For the midterms, the grassroots parents organization endorsed more than 270 candidates in 15 states. The Daily Caller reported that of “the seats open in Florida school board elections, Moms for Liberty candidates won 41 of the 67 seats available.”
In Berkeley County, South Carolina, not only did new school board members win their elections, they began to take action at the very first meeting. According to an NBC News article, six new members were sworn in and immediately replaced the school board chair, the superintendent and the school district's attorney. The article notes that the board also voted to "ban critical race theory and set up a committee to decide whether certain books and materials should be banned from schools."
Writing for WORLD Magazine, noted Christian speaker and podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey stated:
“We do not co-parent with the government” has become the rallying cry of a new generation of moms and dads committed to fighting for parental rights, better curriculum in public schools, and against the restrictive COVID policies hindering kids’ ability to learn and thrive.
In July, I had the pleasure of delivering the keynote speech at Moms for Liberty’s first national event in Tampa. They gathered to celebrate the work they’d done and to support each other in the face of the relentless pushback they receive from their opponents. The theme for the conference was “such a time as this,” inspired by Esther 4:14. These women are convicted by God’s calling on their lives to stand in the gap for their children and their communities, and I assured them that we would stop at nothing in our fight for what is good, right, and true.
In that August article, Stuckey noted some of the flashpoints which essentially have fueled the parents' rights movement, which has been joined by concerned Christians:
The Biden administration heeded a plea from the National School Board Association and labeled parents speaking up at school board meetings as potential domestic terrorists. At school board meetings, parents who attempt to read aloud the pornographic material available to students in their school libraries have been shouted down and removed. Moms for Liberty has been labeled a “fascist” group and “a threat to democracy.” Twitter just suspended the organization’s account for criticizing California’s radical “gender transition” bill, which removes the rights of parents who want to prevent their child from traveling to California for puberty blockers, mastectomies, or castration.
Speaking of California's gender transition bill, an article at the Washington Examiner noted this about the bill, signed by Governor Newsom in late September...
It’s not alarmist to say the new law is a twofold nightmare: first for how it affirms in law the idea that children need gender intervention by way of social transitioning, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and sex reassignment surgery, and second for its blatant effort to empower courts to unravel the fabric of families and the decision-making power of parents, particularly those parents who may be divorced or parents of children struggling with gender dysphoria, the idea that their gender and feelings don’t align.
Writer Nicole Russell notes:
Under S.B. 107, if a parent doesn’t agree with his or her child transitioning, that parent may be denied information about his or her own child’s health. The law gives courts the ability to strip parents who reside elsewhere, meaning in other states, of their parental rights if their children travel to California claiming they’ve been denied gender intervention healthcare and are seeking it there. The bill, by design, overrides the legal jurisdiction of a child’s home state, all in the name of radical gender theory and gender-intervention methods masquerading as healthcare.
We recognize that, according to the Scriptures, parents have been given the responsibility by the Lord to train their children. We may subcontract to schools, church ministries, sports leagues, and other entities, but ultimately, parents are called upon to direct their children's education.
But parents have to act responsibly. Where there are legitimate cases of abuse, negligence, or instance where laws have been broken, there should be a civil accountability structure that should be implemented - not executed in a spirit of harassment or the pursuit of political or ideological aims.
And, therein lies the problem: we are finding that "the state" has become so entangled in trying to raise children - as Moms for Liberty says, "co-parent" that the lines have been blurred. And, the end result of this chaos is typlified by the California law, which supersedes the rights of parents based on the dangerous LGBTQ+ ideology.
It is high time that parents, including Christian parents, not only seize their God-given responsibility, but participate in the process of making sound policy - of bringing sound, Biblical ideas into public forums, adhering to truth and devoted to protecting the hearts and minds of children from exposure to harmful ideology.
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