Check out this recent article on The Federalist which has a fantastic monologue by Ben Domenech on the importance of children and families.
The Parlous State of Media in New Zealand
Recently in a short post entitled Department of Truth, we noted that more and more, the mainstream media seems to be transforming into a department of government: the Department of Propaganda Truth. Karl du Fresne has written an excellent article highlighting this, and in this post we will pick out some of the important points he makes.
He notes that of the $55 million ‘Public Interest Journalism Fund’ more than $2.4 million is being spent in the training and development and training of 25 cadet Maori, Pasifika and “diverse” journalists. As du Fresne points out, the “latter category will presumably include those who identify as transgender or non-binary and other aggrieved minorities that we haven’t got names for yet.” Then there is the ominous $300,000 given to Stuff to produce a cultural competency course which is promised to “to fundamentally shift representation in NZ media”
What benefit is there to the public in any of this? As du Fresne rightly points out, “our money will end up being spent on advocacy journalism.” In applying for this public money, “media organisations must commit to a set of requirements that include, among other things, actively promoting the Maori language and ‘the principles of Partnership, Participation and Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi’“. Our mainstream media have been bought with our money like tacky whores with no principles. What is our answer to this? Stop consuming their products. Stop subscribing to them! Turn to other sources of news that are not being bought off by the government to be their propaganda wing.
Barbarians or Idiots
Whatever is good about democracy rests upon a simple assumption. It is that ordinary people are capable of managing their ordinary affairs, as individuals, as families, as members of a neighbourhood or a parish, as local businesses, and as citizens of a village or town. If they are not permitted to do so, they have been reduced to what the Greeks called barbarism. If they are unwilling to do so, they have reduced themselves to what the Greeks called idiocy.
Anthony Esolen in Out of the Ashes
Shepherds! Protect the Lambs
One of the most frustrating things I have found in over two decades of working with youth in both a church and Christian school context has been the response of Christian pastors to Christian education. It ranges from apathy to antipathy. Few have the courage to call their congregations to obedience to Christ in this area. This despite the very real danger state education presents to the little lambs in their flock.
My experience has been that many young adults from Christian homes are either incapacitated and rendered impotent by the secular worldview they imbibe during their 17-year secular discipleship programme, or they leave the faith. And a lot of them do leave the faith.
Just this week, I was chatting with a friend who spoke of two young people he knew, both attending secular schools. One no longer attends youth group or church and has decided he is not a Christian any longer. The other, a young woman, has been so indoctrinated by feminism and humanism that she looks up to feminist icons who are responsible for the liberalisation of abortion.
Can pastors continue to look the other way? A pastor is a shepherd. When a lion or a bear came to attack and kill David’s sheep, he would seize them by the hair and kill them ( I Samuel 17:35). That takes manly courage and the ability to face risk and danger. This is the need of our hour. We need pastors who are willing to be courageous men. They must stand between the lambs and the wild animals out to devour them.
Jesus himself warned of the danger posed to little ones. After calling a child to himself and showing his disciples that they must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven, he gave one of his starkest warnings. He said, with this little child and perhaps others next to him, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
We know, without a shadow of a doubt that the 17-year anti-Christian state discipleship programme is in a large part responsible for many little lambs being torn to pieces. Any Christian leader worth their salt should be aware of this. Teaching a child that God is irrelevant to the world he has made by never mentioning him in 17 years of education is likely to cause him to stumble. Teaching a child that Christ is Lord of his heart, but that he isn’t too interested in the rest of life is causing our children to stumble. Flawed teaching on gender and sexuality is causing our children to sin.
So about that millstone…Does it belong to our secular officials who desire to control the future by discipling our children into their faith? Does it belong to the teachers who abuse their positions to poison the minds of children with depravity? Does it belong to parents who fail to follow God’s law to impress God’s laws on their children day and night (Deuteronomy 6:6-9), or does it belong to the shepherds who see the children in their flock falling away from the faith but say nothing?
What will it take for Christian leaders to wake up, grab their weapons and start protecting the flock? When will we hear a sermon about the importance of training our children in the Christian faith and protecting them from the evil one? When will we hear our pastors calling all families to remove their children from the perils of secular education?
Will the recent news of the proposed Conversion Therapy ban wake our pastors up from their slumber? Will pulpits throughout the land warn parents that they are in danger of losing their children? Kris Faafoi on Newstalk ZB was asked whether it was ‘cool with him’ for parents to tell their children they can’t go on hormone blockers. He said, “No it’s not.” Of this law, Family First writes, “Shockingly, parents would be criminalised and potentially liable up to five years in jail simply for affirming that their sons are boys and their daughters are girls. These bans will lock children into transgenderism.” As a teacher with knowledge of the school system in New Zealand, I can assure my readers that this degeneracy is already being promoted by many schools and teachers. Too many naive parents think secular schools are only there to teach Maths and English. Unfortunately, that is about the only thing they are not getting. These must make way for the all-important secular indoctrination programme you see. A law like this is only going to make things worse. Godless teachers will turn children against parents and make them aware of their ‘rights’. The only protection will be removing our children from these godless pagans. Will pastors protect their sheep by saying this? That remains to be seen. If not, God help us.
The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #10
In recent months, I had a young man come to our house and we got talking on some of the spiritual disciplines that took place in our household. I mentioned to him that our family eats breakfast together and there I read the Word to our children and pray as we begin our daily labours. In the evening, after dinner, while we are still at the dinner table we do the same thing. He was surprised at this activity. Despite growing up in a Christian family, this had never been a habit in his family. Today’s direction from the directory for private worship is helpful in this regard.
X. These exercises ought to be performed in great sincerity, without delay, laying aside all exercises of worldly business or hinderances, not withstanding the mockings of atheists and profane men; in respect of the great mercies of God to this land, and of his severe corrections wherewith lately he hath exercised us. And, to this effect, persons of eminency (and all elders of the kirk) not only ought to stir up themselves and families to diligence herein, but also to concur effectually, that in all other families, where they have power and charge, the said exercises be conscionably performed.
In simple English, we are charged to regularly perform the duties expressed in the previous directions and ensure that the day to day busyness of life nor the mocking of those who do not love God do not put us off from fulfilling these duties. The writers of the directory mention both the mercy of God, and recent corrections from God as factors highlighting the importance of private worship. They complete this direction by arguing for the elders or spiritual leaders of the church to ensure they are diligent in exercising themselves in the fulfilment of the rules previously cited, and additionally that they encourage other families to perform them too.
Of great encouragement to me is the fact that in visiting a church recently the pastor made a big deal about the importance of family worship and even provided free books for families seeking to develop in this discipline. Let us encourage each other as brothers and sisters to be faithful in this all important spiritual discipline.
A Culture of Life vs A Culture of Death
One of the fascinating but predictable things about rebellion against the true and living God is the way it always devolves into lies and death. Since Satan is the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning, this should not surprise us. We see the rebellion of our father Adam was founded on Satan’s lies and ultimately caused the slow murder of Adam and all his progeny. Those in Satan’s kingdom employ his methods. Thus very early on we have Cain murdering his brother in envy and Lamech murdering a young man for insulting him. Yet Satan’s influence is not limited to individuals. Cultures that embrace rebellion against the living God grow more and more like their father the devil. They too embrace lies and death. The Pharaoh of Moses’ day embraced the lie of his own divinity and murdered countless young Hebrew boys. The Canaanites embraced Molech and sacrificed their own children to their ultimate ruin.
Our secular culture in its haste towards the abyss more and more manifests its diabolical nature. Its language is full of lies. We have transwomen, marriage equality, antiracism, gender affirmation, social justice and economic equality. A transwoman is a man. Marriage equality? A homosexual union can never be a true marriage. Anti-racism is actual racism. Gender affirmation is the attempted destruction of the image of God in an individual as male or female. Social justice is injustice. Economic equality is stealing. You get the idea. Our secular culture only lies when it speaks.
Then we have secular culture’s embrace of death. Abortion is our euphemistic term for child sacrifice. In New Zealand, 18% of known pregnancies in 2019 ended in an abortion. We’ve also introduced euthanasia. And our suicide rate amongst youth is horrendous, but surely given the culture of death celebrated, and our nihilistic outlook, unsurprising. Secular culture is killing itself off. They see children as a threat to the environment. Recently Meghan and Harry won an award for their decision to have only two children. Environment worshipping secularists even promise to have no children for the sake of the planet. In this, the secularists plant the seeds of their own destruction.
The secularist trumpets their rebellion with slogans such as ‘a woman’s right to choose’, and ‘I was born in the wrong body’, but their embrace of this culture of lies and death is actually evidence of God handing them over to wrath and judgment. They will not be fruitful. Their culture will dwindle and decline. In contrast, this world will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. Fruitfulness and blessing come to those who love the Lord their God. They will inherit the earth. Those who love God, for whom Christ is king produce a culture of life. Having children for us is part of the calling to dominion under Christ. That is why faithful Christians tend to have more children than nihilistic secularists. We are hopeful. This world belongs to our Lord. It will be restored and we will reign with him over his creation.
Wasted Potential
Recently I read an article by Don Brash on benefit numbers. The numbers were shocking. As of June 2021, there were 354,744 receiving a main benefit from the government. This represents 11.3% of the working-age population. Part of this (2.1%) is made up of people receiving sole-parent support. A massive 6.1% are people receiving jobseeker support. These are people (supposedly) looking for work, or temporarily unable to work due to a health condition or injury. There are just over 190,000 or 6.1% of the working-age population in this category. As Brash rightly points out, this number has not reduced in any significant way despite the fact that employers are screaming out for even unskilled workers. He writes, “Clearly having more than a third of a million adults dependent on a benefit at a time when employers are desperate for staff shows that there is something fundamentally wrong.“
Brash goes on to make some interesting points, and I’d encourage you to read the full article. What I wanted to do was reflect very briefly on the way that the religion of Statism gets things wrong. Forcibly taking other people’s money and giving it to unproductive members of society might seem like a nice thing to do. After all, none of us wants another person to starve. Yet the problem is that in providing assistance like this, and then in the creation of perverse incentives not to work (like minimum wage laws), the State actually causes a percentage of the population to be unable or unwilling to work. This is not good for them, and it is not good for society. Once again we see that the mercies of the wicked are cruel. For a country to have a full 6.1% of people who could work not working is an incredible waste of a society’s potential. Furthermore, the encouragement of family breakup through rampant sexual immorality has led to more sole-parent (i.e. economically unviable) family structures that require government (read unwilling other people) to support.
Paul’s rule with the Thessalonians was “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” It’s a good rule, and if charity was more personalised, it would force those who should be working to actually work to their own benefit, and the benefit of the community around them. God’s law is good and brings blessing to society. Statism pretends kindness but causes a spiral of societal degeneracy and destruction, which it then uses to argue for more of its ‘kindness’. Stop voting for it.
The Dignity of Unpaid Work
But where does it say that the dignity of work depends upon being paid for it? If that were the case, then a whore selling her wares on a seedy street corner would claim greater dignity than my grandmother could who stretched a poor income to clothe and feed and in innumerable unnamed ways to bless my parents and their fourteen siblings between them. That makes no sense.
Anthony Esolein in Out of the Ashes
Egalitarian Nonsense Meets the Real World
In our egalitarian world, we like to think men and women are exact replicas of each other, performing the same functions equally well. This is patently not true but is a lie we have been fed from childhood in our schools and popular culture. Girls can do anything boys can do!
And so we get to the stage where we have a police force that has frontline women officers. What happens when things get rough? This. A male policeman is overpowered and pushed to the ground by a violent young man. What does his female partner do? Does she get stuck in and help out? No. Instead she ‘could be heard repeatedly yelling “stop it” to the man attacking her colleague.’ Who could blame a woman for this reaction when faced with such an aggressive and strong man? We don’t expect our women to have to stand up to this sort of thing. But imagine if that police officer’s partner had been a 6 ft male. We might have seen a slightly different ending to that video.
Now I know, I’ve heard the argument before that women officers are helpful in a domestic violence situation. Fine. Maybe that’s true. But in frontline work, we’d be better off with men – and big strong ones at that. Men that crims are going to think twice before taking on.
The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #9
Over the last couple of months we have reviewed the directory for private worship point by point. One of the great encouragements has been to see the importance our ancestors placed on family worship. May this focus stir us up to be faithful to develop healthy spiritual patterns in our own families. Today we are looking at the ninth direction which pertains to prayer.
IX. So many as can conceive prayer, ought to make use of that gift of God; albeit those who are rude and weaker may begin at a set form of prayer, but so as they be not sluggish in stirring up in themselves (according to their daily necessities) the spirit of prayer, which is given to all the children of God in some measure: to which effect, they ought to be more fervent and frequent in secret prayer to God, for enabling of their hearts to conceive, and their tongues to express, convenient desires to God for their family. And, in the meantime, for their greater encouragement, let these materials of prayer be meditated upon, and made use of, as followeth.
Essentially the framers of this directory urge every person who can pray to pray, since it is a gift from God. Those who are not so used to praying perhaps because they are young may use set forms of prayer, but at the same time should develop their prayer so that they will more and more be able to express what they ought to in prayer for their family. Then the directory goes on to give some set pointers on what should be included in family prayer.
“Let them confess to God how unworthy they are to come in his presence, and how unfit to worship his Majesty; and therefore earnestly ask of God the spirit of prayer.
“They are to confess their sins, and the sins of the family; accusing, judging, and condemning themselves for them, till they bring their souls to some measure of true humiliation.
“They are to pour out their souls to God, in the name of Christ, by the Spirit, for forgiveness of sins; for grace to repent, to believe, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly; and that they may serve God with joy and delight, walking before him.
“They are to give thanks to God for his many mercies to his people, and to themselves, and especially for his love in Christ, and for the light of the gospel.
“They are to pray for such particular benefits, spiritual and temporal, as they stand in need of for the time, (whether it be morning or evening,) as anent health or sickness, prosperity or adversity.
“They ought to pray for the kirk of Christ in general, for all the reformed kirks, and for this kirk in particular, and for all that suffer for the name of Christ; for all our superiors, the king’s majesty, the queen, and their children; for the magistrates, ministers, and whole body of the congregation whereof they are members, as well for their neighbours absent in their lawful affairs, as for those that are at home.
“The prayer may be closed with an earnest desire that God may be glorified in the coming of the kingdom of his Son, and in doing of his will, and with assurance that themselves are accepted, and what they have asked according to his will shall be done.”
For modern readers, this prayer outline seems pretty serious, and many of us could wish for regular prayer of this nature in our own lives. Having a set outline that you teach your children is a helpful way to approach family prayer. At times we have used the ACTS acronym, which stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. This has encouraged me to think more carefully about training my children in prayer.