A Severe Conviction
by Jonathan Daugherty

We take so many things for granted. There are courageous men who fought bitter battles before us and for us. They held their front against heavy oppositions. They were brave men who fought for the peace and freedom we now enjoy. My own father is one of these veterans.

There was a time when it was not quite as easy, as it is now, to teach your own children "as you walk by the way." In fact, it wasn't all that long ago. My parents homeschooled their children back when homeschooling wasn't cool. They were faithfully committed to raising and teaching their own children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And they did it out of severe conviction. It was a very different world back then.

It is because of my father, and other courageous men like him, that home schooling is as established today as it is. The word homeschool did not roll off the tongue as easily as it does now. For one thing, back then homeschool was two words. And it was nearly always followed by, "Well, that means we teach them at home," and "No, they don't go to school." Bitter legal battles were being fought all around and that spawned tense and cautious times. We couldn't answer the telephone or the door and all of us children knew exactly what to do if anyone suspiciously questioned us. Today, everyone has heard of homeschooling and it is much more socially understood. I don't have any doubt that every one of my father's grandchildren will also be trained at home.

Not so much as I should be, but I am very grateful for my own dad and his faithful commitment to raise our family to serve the Lord. Now, when I pray that Our Father would grant my son more courage than I have, what I mean is that I ask that my son would be like his grandfather. I hope that my son will be like my dad and have the wisdom and responsibility to do what is right.

Thank you, Dad.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."
by Laurence Windham

I got a call last week from a representative of some senator or evangelical alarmist group or something like that. The solicitor, umm, I mean caller, asked me to please hold as there was an important message from some guy regarding the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance and how that he was going to fight for the Pledge's reinstatement in public schools.

"Whoa!" said I, before the person on the other end subjected me to 7 minutes of recorded rhetoric. "I am not interested in the propagating or the preserving the Pledge. The Pledge of Allegiance," I continued, "was written by a liberal Baptist minister who was Unitarian in his thinking and was defrocked by his denomination for his socialism. He wrote the pledge for public school children to make them become blindly patriotic."

I also told her that not only did I consider the Pledge to be unconstitutional but that government involvement in education was also unconstitutional. So the urgent message they wanted me to hear was not a point of urgency with me. There was a short silence followed by, "Well...thank you sir for your time."

Being against the Pledge of Allegiance, to many, is equal with being anti-America. Being against government schools means being against the best interests for children. When actually, the exact opposite is true. True patriotism works toward what is best not what is popular. Modern evangelicalism in all too often "stirred up" by the wrong things. Many are more sentimental than mental in their understanding of true patriotism. Any questioning of flags in the sanctuary, of sending covenant children to public schools or of the supporting of independent candidates and suddenly you are viewed a traitor. The reason for this is that most Americans, including Christian Americans, are too comfortable with the way things are to think. They have become lazy and lethargic and numb. When they do get riled up, they usually are carrying the wrong banners with the wrong messages and are marching the wrong way.

Duke Nuke'm
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Suppose, for a moment, that there is a nation out there with weapons of mass destruction. Suppose also that they have, in the not too distant past waged a war in the middle east with questionable motives. Now suppose that the leader of this country has been known to not cooperate with government investigators who are trying to verify that he is playing by the rules. Instead he argues that his position makes him immune from such vindictive intrusions. This same leader stands idly by while others in positions of power in the country assault their own citizens. What, I ask you, should be done with this nation? Should we seek to build a coalition to take out the leadership of this nation? Should we bomb it into the stone age? Now before you answer please keep in mind that the nation of which I speak is the first nation ever to have weapons of mass destruction, and so far, the only nation to actually use them.

The drumbeat for going to war against Saddam Hussein is getting boringly repetitious—"He has weapons of mass destruction, he has weapons of mass destruction, he has weapons of mass destruction." Well, sure he does. Lots of countries have weapons of mass destruction. The Chinese have them. The Russians have them. The Ukranians have them. The Pakistani's have them. So do the French and the English. You see, it's a pretty normal thing. Nations like to have and to keep weapons. Some of them, no doubt, wish to use them for nefarious ends. Others, presumably, keep them around for defense. But when you go and attack one of these nations because you think they might go on the offensive, who is going on the offensive? I'm not arguing for moral equivalency. I'm certainly not arguing that Saddam is a sweetheart. I'm just suggesting that the call of the state is to protect its borders. The call of the Christian is to call them to do the same.