Permission to be a parent

Wow - just wow. A stunning new development in the UK government's progressively more Orwellian plans to take-over the rights of parents:

The government body OFSTED is now proposing that parents who wish to teach their own children must be cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau and obtain an appropriate document of clearance:

Parents face criminal checks before teaching own children
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/parents-face-criminal-checks-before-teaching-own-children/

As Normal Wells, cited in that report states, the logical implication of this is that if parents require such permissions before being with their own children during the hours when state schools (which these children don't attend) are open, they should also require the same permission to be with the same children out of school hours, at weekends and during holidays. This issue is not a home-schooling issue; it's a parenting issue. The government is progressively taking to itself the right to be the parent, and to delegate permission to today's parents to be involved as and when it sees fit.

Love hurts

I love (amongst many other more important things!) running. Running hurts. Ergo, love hurts. You can stop rolling on the floor now, thanks.

Today I ran 20 miles for the first time in Kenya - aided a little by it being overcast and drizzly, which is a bit rare. I blogged two years ago that the way to really enjoy a bath is to run 20-odd miles before getting into it - it's still true!

When running such a long distance the temptation to give up comes most strongly when you've already gone a long way, and then you contemplate the whole way still to go. "There's that painful climb coming - and it's still 2 miles until I even get there - and it really hurts before I've even got to the bottom... then after that there's running into the wind... oh boy, oh boy."

And here cometh the application to the Christian life: don't do this. One day at a time, one challenge at a time, one bend at a time. God never promised to give us strength today for the rest of our lives. He promised to give us today's strength today (as long as we ask him for it!) - and then commanded us not to worry anxiously about tomorrow, because the problems of tomorrow can wait until they come.

If you ask, "have I strength for this" and look beyond today, the answer is "No", and unless you remember why the answer is "No", you might be tempted to give up. Even the biggest, most painful hills can be climbed as long as you just pick a point that's reasonably near and head towards that - and then rinse, lather, repeat. And somehow, rather surprisingly, eventually, you'll find yourself heading across the finish line - hopefully more comfortably than I did!

Wearing gradually out

Mark 6:30-31 - "And the apostles gathered themselves together to Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. And he said unto them, “Come apart into a desert place, and rest a while,” for there were many coming and going, and they had no freedom even to eat."

Some Christians rarely or never seem to do any kind of service for the Lord that is likely to put them in any danger of needing any period of rest and refreshment from it.

Others think that exhausting oneself beyond the point of usefulness and being able to operate properly is a work of special merit and that rest is only for the weak and lazy.

Jesus teaches us a happy medium between these two errors. Our commission is not to spare ourselves and bury our talent in the ground whilst doing nothing to advance the Lord's kingdom; neither is it to burn out in a flash like a firework. It is to gradually wear out, according to the years given to us, giving our strength for Christ and pacing ourselves to run the race with perseverance until we finish and receive the crown.

Forgot the link

Ooops. On that last story, I forgot to supply the link: http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21550

Government to parents: thanks, but we come first

The UK government has published its response to the petition on its website which protested against the new right it is seeking to award itself - namely the right to interview your children, without you present, and decide whether on that basis whether you should be allowed to choose how to educate your child or not or whether that choice should be taken out of your hands.

The government's reply is basically, "sorry, but government's opinions about a child's best interests must ultimately trump the parents'." Oh, and other countries do it this way, therefore it must be right.

The petition raised the legitimate question of who is the "parent of first resort". It's a zero sum game - either government has got to trump parents, or parents trump government. You can't have a tie. Either parents have the right to decide that they need to protect their children from the bad education being offered by the state; or governments have the right to decide that they need to protect children from the non-state-approved education that parents are giving them at home. One or the other must win. (This has nothing to do with the question of child abuse which is already a criminal offence).

Until now the status quo has been that parents trump government. The government is now attempting a legislative reversal. The difference is that before the disagreeing party just had to deal with it (if the LEA officer doesn't really like home-schooling, they'll just have to put up with it); but when governments trump parents, if you disagree they confiscate your child or cart you off to the slammer. Not really a level playing field, is it?

As for other countries doing it this way.... this response totally ignores the history of the countries at question, presuming we're talking about Europe. Home-schooling became illegal in Germany under the Nazis because the Nazis didn't wish children to learn any ideology from their parents that contradicted Nazism. It was outlawed in the 1930s by the National Socialist party, and its that same ban which has remained on the books. Likewise, home-schooling is illegal in Spain, which has only emerged from fascism in living memory. Home-schooling is suppressed in other countries because of those countries totalitarian histories, and has been a right of parents without the threat of government take-over in the UK because of the UK's heritage of freedom, based on its Christian past.

I find the rest of the government's response nauseating in the extreme. The home-ed community is up in arms about these appalling proposals; but the response keeps banging on about how helpful they're being by providing these new "services". The home-ed community doesn't want them; people choose to home-ed because they've looked at what happens when the government takes over education, and they'd rather not, thank you. It's no coincedence that this "review" with its proposals was cooked up by someone whom the government hand-picked from outside the home-ed community, who was a state education system insider. And lo and behold, his proposals were to make home-edders conform more to the state system - exactly what they're trying to avoid. To have these new "blessings" enforced by law unasked-for is one thing and bad enough; to be lectured about how wonderful the government is to condescend to grant you them when you suck so much at the same time is beyond the point of extreme nausea that my constitution can stand.

I have no idea what the government's timetable is, or what happens to such reviews if there's a change of government. Will it run out of parliamentary time and come to nothing? Here's praying!

Kenyan churches according to Kenyans

I've so far marked about 15 essays on 1 Corinthians. In these, I asked my 2nd year students to apply the teaching of chapters 1-5 to Kenyan churches. Very interesting, though not very encouraging. It ties in with the same story we hear from many others.

The following refrains were heard in their essays again and again:

• That 1 Corinthians would fit pretty closely as an epistle to the Kenyan churches!
  
  
• Pastors aim to gain followings for themselves, build personal empires and personality cults, demand personal loyalty, openly rubbish other pastors. They are insecure and authoritarian. In preaching, the aim is to impress with one's skills rather than to communicate truth. (The sign of being filled with the Spirit is that you work yourself up into a real lather).
  
  
• Church discipline is a means exercised unilaterally by pastors to get rid of their enemies. The aim is not to lovingly restore with "tough love", but to punish and humiliate. The rich and influential are not disciplined because the pastor/church committee doesn't want to lose the income.
  
  
• Sexual immorality is so rampant - including pastors preying on young girls - that it's thought nothing of, and laughed at.
  

I was chatting with a church member yesterday at his place of work. He told me that at a nearby "church" they collected (over a period of time) 3 million shillings from the congregation - about £27,000 - for the pastor to have a flash car. (In Kenya the average daily earnings are somewhere about 150 shillings, or £1.20; only the tiny middle class can afford to own any kind of banger, let alone such a vehicle). The pastor rejected it, demanding 6 million. For a new Mercedes Benz - which in Kenya is considered the ultimate status symbol; these are what cabinet ministers get allocated. The church then raised the rest. About 110 years of average earnings. Why do people give to such collections, I asked? It's because of the "miracles" - desperate and ignorant people believe these well-dressed charlatans' claims to be able to bring the Holy Spirit to heal, and hear them promise/threaten that God will honour their gift/curse their refusal.

Another day, the same member told me that a few years ago a friend had invited him to the weekly all-night prayer meeting at his church. At about midnight, various (including the friend who'd invited him) started "pairing up" with members of the opposite sex, heading off for a quiet spot and... you can work it out. Apparently this is one of the regular functions of all-night religious meetings; to provide such a meeting point.

Are those stories shocking? Here they're fairly run of the mill. Do pray for Christ's kingdom in Kenya!

A few good men/women/churches

Here's another observation from my short time as an overseas "missionary".

A few good people / good churches do a lot of work. Time and again, we'll see something worthwhile going on somewhere in the world - and later find out that it was being helped/supported by church X or had in the past been greatly influenced by preacher Y. The same Xs and Ys keep coming up again and again.

What has struck me is that often these people and churches are obscure - in the sense that the church is small and struggling, or the individual has no particular profile beyond his own backyard. And yet, their works are at the same time known and appreciated in far-away places.

God's work depends on no man - the graveyards are full of people who used to be linchpins. And yet God uses means, and on the last day God will reward his people according to their works. Our aim is not to become famous, an Internet celebrity or conference darling (we do thank God for those who have useful ministries in these areas), but to be useful. And when that's the aim, God always finds a way for us, a little at a time as our faithfulness is proved. It does seem to me that a few good people and churches do a great deal - but are there on the other hand large numbers of believers and churches, even larger ones, actually doing very little?