Who's your daddy!?!?

I currently work for a local middle school who practices a wonderful educational philosophy.  They believe that the responsibility for a  students education is something to be shared and taken ownership of by the parent.  The school week is three days a week in class and two days a week being taught at home, with an increasing emphasis on a university-type model of responsibility placed on the student as they enter highschool.

I believe this creates an amazing dynamic in the educating process where "ownership" lies not only on the teachers, but on the parents and eventually the students themselves. 

The result seems to be a more advanced level of overall maturity and internal concreteness.  To say it another way, I see an advanced level of maturity that effects not only the mind, but the heart and soul as well.  They seem to know what they know and why at a fairly young age.

It has brought about in me a deeper conviction that I must be diligent and intentional to create spiritual teaching situations along the lines of Deuteronomy 6:7-9.

I am convinced that this type of intentional outpouring would have dramatic effects on the next generation of believers in America. 

It seems as though parents (dads in particular) have become content to pass the burden of responsibility of learning to the teachers, athletics to coaches, spiritual growth to youth Pastors, and the investment of time to the Playstation or iPod.  How do we expect our children to develop into "healthy" adults with so many and often contradicting influences?  Thank God for medication?

The resulting consequence of not practicing Deut. 6:7-9 is found in Deuteronomy 6:12-15.  If we do not do these things, we will forget the Lord who is in our midst and He will "destroy you form off the face of the earth." 

We are weak and unable to meet such a task-- I see this clearly in my own heart.  May we say humbly with Thomas "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" so that we may say with Paul "My grace is sufficient for you...Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."

God and Freud

An article by Fox news, explains how this student (Julea) has been kicked out of her counseling program because she refused to provide counseling services to a co-student who was homosexual and seeking counsel for her relationship with her partner.

Julea sighted her religious beliefs as reason for referring her co-student to another therapist.  The University's rationale in removing Julea from their program was that they were follow the American Counseling Association's code of ethics.

This, in my opinion, is the real danger of seeking to counsel from a secular, state licensed position.  Apart from believeing that the secular theories are incompatible with Scripture, the ultimate concern is that you are placing yourself under the authority and guidelines of the state.

You are putting yourself in the position that Believers have been trying to seperate themselves from since the founding of our Country.  Counseling belongs where it began, in the church, not in the offices of the "professionals."   This point is forcefully driven home in the above article and is a clear definition of why, fundamentally, Freud and God cannot co-exist in the counseling world.

When those who dominate a discipline are largely secular humanisits, their influence will go beyond mere diagnostics and seek to also define a code of ethics.  The main rule of their code will be the freedom of the individual to do what is right in his own eyes....their is no code of ethics, except that you cannot discriminate.

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