CBS News recently
reported on the remarkable arrest of William Baer, the father of a fourteen
daughter and student at Gilford High School in Gilford, New Hampshire, whose
required reading in an English class included what Baer described as being
“like a transcript for a triple-X porno movie.”[1]
The controversial reading assignment, which served as the grounds of Baer’s
complaint, is Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen
Minutes, which includes an explicit, or perhaps better illicit, description
of a sexual encounter between two teens as part of the book’s narrative. In
addition to his daughter’s personal exposure to the material, Baer complained,
“We had no notice of it whatsoever, no written notice, no verbal, nothing.”
Baer took his
understandable complaints to a meeting of the Gilford School Board. The meeting
policy allocated a mere two minutes per person for public comments. Pressing
for answers and a response from school board members, Baer exceeded the two
minute limit; he was repeatedly asked to stop talking. Lt. James Leach, Gilford
Police Department’s acting chief, approached Baer, who told Leach, “Arrest me
or I’m not going to [i.e., stop talking].” Baer continued, and Leach arrested
and booked Baer for disorderly conduct, which could result in an additional $1200
fine.
Beyond the prima facie absurdity of the
circumstances surrounding Baer’s arrest, and even deeper than the state
compulsorily exposing fourteen year olds to pornographic material, which school
officials deemed “thought-provoking and appropriate for the ninth graders,” is
the heart of the issue—the state’s gross transgression of God’s institution of
sphere sovereignty. Ray Sutton explains, “Sphere sovereignty says that there
are three spheres of covenantal government in society: Family, Church, and State.”[2]
This plurality of authorities is by God’s ordering of society. And such
ordering preserves the necessary “checks and balances,” as we say, to prevent
the absolutization of any one sphere’s authority over the others and thereby
averts tyranny, which is the most constant threat east of Eden. In terms of
sphere sovereignty, the only one which possesses it absolutely and universally
over all spheres is the Lord God. This is biblical sociology; this is the
divine design for society.[3]
While there are
obvious overlaps between these spheres, wherein members of one sphere are also
members of the others, the sovereignty, that is, authority, of each sphere is
self-contained. Each sphere has certain authority and responsibilities which
are mutually exclusive of one another.[4]
Concerning children, which are members of both the family and the state, by
means of their commitment to government schools, the family possesses the
exclusive and moral authority in all matters by God’s ordinance. All legitimate
school/teacher authority, then, is derivative from the parents, as
schools/teachers stand loco parentis,
in the place of the parents, not the state.
In fact, “it may be said that the Bible in speaking of the duties of the
state never mentions the work of educating the children of the nation (cf. Ex.
18:22—26; Deut. 1:16, 17; Matt. 22:17—21; Rom. 13:1—7; 1 Pet. 2:13—15).”[5]
Therefore, as in the considered case, when the state, through any one of its
nearly infinite number of agencies, seeks to hyperextend its sovereignty and
transgress its proper divinely ordered boundary, it finds itself in an
illegitimate struggle against the invaded sphere, the family, for the crown
rights and authority over its members, its children. In our context, “Authority
has shifted away from the parent to the state.”[6]
More than that, the state is found to be at war with Lord of Hosts, the Holy
One of Israel, as their breech of boundary is at once a violation of God’s law-ordinance
and the futile attempt to usurp God’s absolute authority over all spheres. It
is an expression to the original satanic temptation for man to strive to be
like God—absolute autonomy—to be a god unto himself (Gen. 3:5).
At stake, then, is
the issue of sovereignty and authority, the divine ordering of society and a
state attack right at the very heart of all society, the family. Sutton is
therefore well-justified in contending, “the government is privately and
publically at war with the family...[the family] is being attacked from all
sides. The greatest enemy is the government itself.”[7]
In the reported story concerning Baer we have a clear case of the state seizing
by force (literally) the authority of the family, and this in the area of
sexual morality regarding the children. Correctly, then, Sutton highlights that
in the state’s war against the family “sex is one of the areas being attacked,”
since the family has a fundamental monopoly on this area.
Baer’s story is
simply one example of a powerful and dark force surging through the
undercurrent of our culture. It is an illustration of the secular humanist
coup, which is using devious litigation and illegitimate state power and
control to destroy the remnants of the once profoundly Christian culture and
worldview that nurtured American society for centuries. This present-day
assault bears the original subtlety of its source, which knew that in order to control
the world one must begin with the destruction of the family (Gen. 3; 2 Cor.
11:3; 1 Tim. 2:11—15).
It must be
granted, however, the anonymous CBS reporter that authored the story did a
reasonably good job at masking his or her biased bend toward the school board’s
decision, actions against Baer, and resulting policy changes. The bias is
nevertheless apparent.
The reporting of
the story was rather straight forward and seemingly objective. The reporter’s
input and details constituted 173 words of the story’s total word count of 306.
The school board’s comments were given 43 words; Leach, the arresting officer,
was given a mere 30 words, while Baer was allowed 60 words to express his
position in the controversy. Granting the allegedly long monologue that Baer
gave at the meeting, though, the reader can easily sense that the reporter
omitted the crux of Baer’s problems. The bulk of Baer’s account that the reporter
included consisted primarily of details surrounding the arrest, which
strategically diverts the reader’s attention from the heart of the matter, the
state’s tyrannizing of the parents.
Similarly, the
reporter shared that the Gilford School Board sent CBS a statement “explaining
it has revised its policy for letting parents know about books being read.”
With this the reader is postured to hear what so far seems like a reasonable
response and redress on the school board’s part. Thus the school board’s statement
begins, “The district will take immediate action to revise these policies to
include notification...” If honest, the average reader, which would be only
skimming the story, would admit that he has already jumped to the next
paragraph, believing that the board had made accommodations for parental
notification and participation options. The rest of the school board’s
statement is, for this writer, more shocking and controversial that the
prescribed book that started the struggle.
The statement goes
on to say, “...that requires parents to
accept controversial material rather than opt out” (!!). So, the school
board is taking immediate action to change its notification policies not to
allow parents to exercise their God-given authority and prerogative but to
notify them that the state has utterly ripped that authority from their hands,
leaving them no option but to shut up and obey—its tyranny! If the last several
decades have not made the point painfully obvious, Cornelius Van Til announces
it for those slow of heart: “If then we want a God-centered and truly Christian
education, we will have to break away completely from the education philosophy
that surrounds us [i.e., state education].”[8]
This radical—fascists—declaration of the Gilford School Board evidences that
American Christians are at an inflexible point in their history, which will
demand an absolute and exclusive decision: Who will be lord over my family,
Christ the Lord or Caesar as lord? Despite how subtly written, the CBS story
covering Baer’s situation sends a warning that this decision entails higher
stakes with every day that passes.
In a final stroke
of propagandizing prowess, the reporter concludes the story with two brief
sentences about Baer. Lest the reader walk away from the report confused who
the real “bad guy” is in this tale, we are told “Baer was charged with
disorderly conduct. If convicted, he could be fined up to $1200.” It is as if
the reporter said: Remember all you parents of even marginally traditional
families and values, it is a crime against the state to stand on your God-given
crown rights over your children’s moral education and sexual purity!
Christians,
who still allow the public education’s statecraft and humanistic religion to
indoctrinate their children, are often outraged to learn of the painfully
obvious attacks on their family’s values, which are ground into their kids’
minds daily. However, granting how overt and open the enemy is on this front,
it reminds me of the idiot that wants to sue R. J. Reynolds for his lung
cancer, after a lifetime of smoking no-filter cigarettes; like the lady who
screams “Look out!!” after she backs
into your car in Walmart’s parking lot! The point? It’s over-time to get our
children OUT—it’s time for an exodus!
Bibliography
Berkhof, Louis
and Cornelius Van Til. Foundations of
Christian Education: Addresses to Christian Teachers. Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1990.
CBS News. “Dad
Arrested for Complaining about Girl’s School Assignment.” CBS Interactive Inc.
(May 07, 2014). As found at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dad-arrested-for-complaining-about-daughters-school-assignment/
(accessed May 22, 2014).
Sutton, Ray. Who Owns the Family: God or State? Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1986.
[1]
CBS News, “Dad Arrested for Complaining about Girl’s School Assignment,” CBS
Interactive Inc. (May 07, 2014), as found at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dad-arrested-for-complaining-about-daughters-school-assignment/
(accessed May 22, 2014). Unless otherwise noted by citation, all quotes and
references to the story is taken from this article.
[2]
Ray Sutton, Who Owns the Family: God or
State? (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1986), 20.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Louis Berkhof and Cornelius Van Til, Foundations
of Christian Education: Addresses to Christian Teachers (Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1990), 29.
[6]
Sutton, Who Owns the Family?, 15.
[7]
Ibid., xxiii.
[8]
Berkhof and Van Til, Foundations of
Christian Education, 3.
