Just a line to let you know what is happening in the recent case of Venessa Mills .
For those of you less inclined to be involved in this case because of the fact that it involves divorce proceedings between Mrs. Mills and her estranged husband, I wanted to include a little information that will help clarify the situation.
First, it is true that there are always to sides to all divorce proceedings. This one is no different. Mr. Mills has admitted in a court of law that he is currently involved in an adulterous relationship and this is a primary reason for the divorce and his desire to change the educational direction of the children.
Please note that we have no desire to slander any person, as this is a sin, but this is public, civil testimony. Mr. Mills has been granted the right to continue living in the household while continuing the 'relationship' with his mistress because it is a direct challenge to the Christian teaching which the mother has reared them in. This is revolting and should not be overlooked when considering the Judges anti-christian motive.
Second, the children have been homeschooling for over 4 years and the father has not raised objections until he began his adulterous relationship. We are speculating, but it seems to be a case of his conscience being condemned. Please pray that this condemnation becomes unbearable and confounding to the purpose of Mr. Mills and his legal team. While we certainly are praying that he will repent and be reconciled to his wife and children, we also pray that God's people will be protected no matter what.
The judge in question has stated that the reason HE wants the children to go to public school is because HE thinks it is important to 'challenge' their christian teaching! This is not allowable under our form of government. Further, while we hold that normally it would be the fathers place to decide these matters, he has confessed to being in sin and is active in seeking to 'convert' his children to the way of Satan. This is morally wrong and the Church has a duty to countenance the mother as the spiritual head of these children, until the father has repented of his ways. The civil branch has a moral and historical duty to uphold the general equity of God's Law, even while maintaining their own sphere of power. This is at the root of all legislative troubles in our land over the last many years. There is a terrible lack of knowledge of the proper roles of Church/State relations that have resulted in the demise of our civil government. It is my opinion that this is the fault of the church. We have not taught the whole counsel of God on this matter. Neither have we adhered to the teachings of our Puritan ancestors who wrote so clearly on this subject. We have simply given up this realm of life as 'worldly' and therefore not fit for a christian study and practice. On the other side we have embraced the politics of a morally corrupt 'right-wing' agenda, thus forfeiting the spiritual heritage that our forefathers gave us.
Perhaps I will write more on this soon. There are many better qualified men to do this, but it must be done. If we fail, there will be no practical alternative left other than going underground.
Please pray for this case. It will effect all of us if allowed to continue as it is. This is NOT about divorce. It IS about the right to train up our children in the way of the Lord. Being set apart from this world system will not be an option in this country much longer if we do not implore the Lord to defend his people.
4 comments:
While I don't feel at all comfortable with the judge's comments on homeschooling, I think perhaps the way the story has been spun is a little too one-sided.
Imagine, for example, that the situation was reversed. Imagine the mother was an atheist, and the father had converted to Christianity, which led to a breakup of the marriage.
Suppose, then, that the father asked that children could at least be exposed to his faith, perhaps in the form of church attendance or sunday school, or private christian schools.
Would you support that?
The issue, at least in part, is that there are two parents involved. The father believes the wife is in a cult, and at the very least we can say she is in a fundamentalist Christian church that believes that adultery is evil, and unrepentant adulterers are hellbound.
And so long as she is the sole arbiter of the information going into her children's minds, then basically her children are going to believe that he, their father, is evil, satanic, going to hell, etc.
Doesn't he have the right to at least hope that he can expose them to his belief system, whether that be via public school or some other venue, where he's not cast in an evil role?
Perhaps a better solution would have been if the father accepted homeschooling, but only with a secular curriculum or mutually agreeable tutor.
But face it, there's probably no educational alternative in which they both win in this case. Which means, no matter what, the kids lose.
And that's why it became an issue in the divorce, and that's why the judge ended up making a ruling. While some of his comments make it seem like he's attacking homeschooling, a more generous view might just be that he's trying to find an alternative that will at least let the father keep some sort of relationship with his children.
Sorry for rambling.
Wendy,
Thank you for the comment.
There are a few areas that I am in disagreement with you on. To be fair, I will say that my answers are predicated on my belief in the Bible as the only authoritative rule for the life of man.
Because of this, I find that the 'role reversal' you suggest is not a reversal at all. If the father were the one that was trying to train these chilgren up in the way of the Lord then yes, I would be in support of him. The parents are not the issue. The written word og God is the issue. deuteronomy chapter 6 is clear that children are to be trained only in a christian framework.
This means that your "better solution", would not be better at all. Secular humanism is a religious attempt to inject humanism as a viable alternative to christianity. This is not an option for a christian, and contrary to modern revisionism, is not constituational. As my favorite Supreme Court Justice once said, the establishment clause was in no way intended to 'level the playing field' or to even countenance the idea that Islam, or any other religion, or lack thereof, are on the same legal plane as Christianity. They are not.
A more realistic view would be that this Judge has failed to understand his moral and constitutional duty, to uphold the moral raising of these children. The father is guilty of adultery, that is why he doesn't want the children raised as christians. The word of God offends the person who hates Jesus Christ. Loving Jesus Christ entails keeping his commandments.
I pray that the father will repent of his sin and become a leader in the spiritual care of his children. It is still a possibility.
Thanks for your reply. I understand you're speaking as a Christian, and I am not, but if you're willing to admit that you'd support the father in my alternative instance, then it seems like we agree that the issue that the courts were dealing with wasn't homeschooling, it was that the parents have two different faiths, and that each of those belief sets pretty much require holding a low opinion of the other.
I disagree with you (as you might have guessed) that the judge's main focus should be upholding the moral raising of the children.
Incidentally, in the faith I left, divorce was as much a sin as adultery. If the judge was of the same belief, should be take the children away from both parents and put them in a foster home where there has been neither divorce or adultery?
What about the cases involving muslims and atheists? Should the judge say it's in the best interest of the children to remove them from both parents and place them in Christian households?
Which version of morality trumps all others? I know you can say, "God's Morality", but each group that says it's following God puts their own emphasis on their own favorite sins. (Have you noticed that none seem to dwell too often on church-lady sins like gossip, though?) Is adultery worse than divorce, or the other way around? Is bearing false witness worse than pride? Is gossip worse than using the name of God in vain?
Are those really the kind of moral questions you want judges to be deciding?
Wendy,
You make many good arguments for the libertarian platform. I do not know your political persuasion, but it seems like your perspectives would dovetail with much of the thinking of the current libertarian party.
I had considered the libertarian party at one point in the past, but then felt compelled to decline the invitation due to my christian beliefs.
The problems that I found with libertarianism were centered in the same world-view as the one we are discussing. Your last paragraph sums up the idea well. You ask if we really want judges deciding these issues? That depends. Which issues?
If you mean the issue of which sin is the most heinous, then no. That issue is reserved for the Church to decide based on the canon of scripture. It has been dealt with quite well in the Westminster Confession of Faith. As a side note, I want to plug the WCF. So much of the problem with American right-wing political-religious problem would be solved by a careful reconsideration of applying the scripture to both the Civil and the moral spheres of life as outlined therein.
Anyway, as we were saying... what point should the judge be deciding on? I think that both of us agree that there must be a 'base line' of judgment. The problem, as you pointed out is WHICH base line? And, what about issues of morality? They are far too subjective to allow any one 'group' to have the final say. What we need is a completely independent judiciary that can decide without favoring any one group. Right?
That is exactly the problem that I ran into with libertarianism. How could I possibly place my allegiance in a group that was either 1. naive about human nature, 2. uneducated on the linguistic origin of "morality", or 3. an outright deceiver about their agenda. there must be a base-line for the base-line! We must choose to accept some code of morality. Either Islamic, Taoist, Animism, Nihilism, or....etc.
The very meaning of morality implies a code of Divine origin! Or, maybe we can just get together and decide to ditch the whole 'morality' thing and write our own code of 'values'. Kind of like the Humanist Manifesto Supreme Edition for the Enlightened Conscience, or conscious..which ever is less sectarian.
Thank you for letting me have a little rant.. My point is that there is only one true base line. In America it is supposed to be the christian base-line. That is what our Founders clearly intended from the hundreds of letters and memos left to us during the forming of our government. I know that there has been a broad move away from these documents and even an exclusion of them in Academic circles, but that is the sin of others, not are founders. Your question of a muslim divorcing an atheist is a tough one. But not impossible. Neither side would have a 'church' organized inside a christian nation, if we were still one, that would pose a threat of indoctrination. What the parents choose to teach in private is their business. Always has been in a christian nation. If they want a muslim, or atheistic upbringing they were always free to leave and go to one of those highly developed and respectful nations and live there. The only real problem the judge might have is if he had to decide between a Presbyterian education or a baptist education. That, after all was what Jefferson was really writing about in the infamous 'wall of separation' letter. He was never intending to say that Atheism, or Islam were legal within our Nation. How do we know this? Because he stated so a dozen times in his life. But even if the founders had intended to start a democracy, they would still get caught short on trying to define the base-line. Just like those who have worked so hard to bury the historical truth of our original intent.
I guess that leaves us in a dilemma... I have no eloquent words of persuasion to win you over. I am sure by now that it is clear that I am not much of a writer! The one thing that I am sure of is that this case is about a bigotry against religious zealotry. Not islamic zealotry, or LGBT zealotry, or atheistic zealotry. Nope. This case is about hatred of christianity in any devout form. It has not really happened in America too much in the past, but now that we have slipped so far in excusing our sin and forgetting the third world church persecution for so long, I think that it is here to stay for awhile. This is the pattern of history. Nothing new here. I am still going to fight until they make that illegal too, (for christians, not any other group...) And then I will do what my people have done for 6000 years or so... I will leave and start a new community where we can live in peace and morality without fear of persecution. And if the Lord allows, we will be able to start again this grand experiment of self- government. That is until we get fat and lazy, and full of hypocrisy again.
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