The “Dangers” of Homeschooling–Part Two

  

Last week I relayed to you some of the Mallard Fillmore comic strip’s backhanded swipes at the monolithic government education system. It seeks to be a monopoly, but a hardy group of private schools and homeschoolers are keeping it from achieving its goal. Homeschooling, in particular, has been a burgeoning movement over the past decade, and its success has bred both anger and fear from the “system.” The artist, Bruce Tinsley, offers some of the “benefits” of a government education… Read more »

Finney: Break Up the Fallow Ground

  

One of Charles Finney’s themes in speaking and writing was the need for everyone to undergo a merciless self-examination. By this, he didn’t mean some self-centered ego trip, but an honest assessment of where we stand before God. Those outside the family of God have to start there, of course, but he believed it is just as essential for those who have entered into the faith. He called it “breaking up the fallow ground” of the heart. In his Revival… Read more »

Lewis, Space Travel, & the Existence of God

  

C. S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963, one week before his 65th birthday. Most people didn’t notice his death since that was also the day of the JFK assassination. Lewis probably would have liked the anonymity of his passing. In those 65 years, which spanned from just before the beginning of the 20th century to the dawn of the space age, he saw society transformed. One of his final essays, written in the year of his death, showed he… Read more »

Our Presidential Embarrassment

  

Make no mistake; I’m glad President Obama pulled back from the brink on Syria. First, he didn’t have the authority to act without Congress, yet he was preparing to do so anyway. Second, support for the Syrian rebels would be a colossal blunder, since they are now dominated by enemies of the United States. I said it before and will say it again: neither side in that conflict deserves our backing. Yet the entire episode has been a disaster for… Read more »

Unbelievably Small Leaders

  

President Obama spoke to the nation last night about the Syrian crisis. It wasn’t the speech that was anticipated earlier in the week. Russia threw him a lifeline by saying Syria is open to the idea of turning over its chemical weapons to the UN. This will now lead us . . . where? Promises, delays, more promises, more delays, weapons inspections that go nowhere, etc., etc., etc. Haven’t we seen all this before? So after more than a week… Read more »

The “Dangers” of Homeschooling–Part One

  

The Mallard Fillmore comic strip is consistently in tune philosophically with Biblical and conservative values. It’s not often you can find cartoonists with a message that extols the positive traits of a practice such as homeschooling. In the past week, the artist, Bruce Tinsley, has taken aim at the public education system with backhanded swipes at its failures via comparison with homeschooling. He has begun a countdown of the Top Ten Reasons Not to Home-School Your Children. He begins with:… Read more »

“Public” Education: Time to Take Off the Blinders

  

It’s not that Americans don’t have faith; they just trust in the wrong things. While we, as a nation, drift away from our Biblical roots, we provide substitute gods that we hope will save our society. I spend a lot of time and space commenting on our misplaced confidence in the government to give meaning to life and to ensure we are all taken care of. A corollary to our supposed omnipotent government is our vaunted education system. Despite all… Read more »