Have We Reached the Cultural, Moral, and Political Tipping Point of No Return?

By Gary DeMar

In the 1980s, I wrote a three-volume book series titled God and Government. It has sold nearly 250,000 copies. A better title would have been God and Governments (plural) since the series attempted to show that in biblical and historical terms there are three governments — family, church, and civil. Underpinning these three institutional governments is the necessary requirement of self-government under God.
Today, we’re repeatedly told that when the word “government” is used, it refers to civil government – the State. It’s gotten so bad that there isn’t any room for self-government. The State has subsumed them all. Even the individual has given up his individuality and has become part of the collective.
Joel Belz’s article “Tipping Point?” that appears in the December 1, 2012 issue of World magazine states the issue well:

“Elections tell us what voters believe about important matters. And the evidence of the 2012 election is pretty overwhelming that most Americans have now become practical secularists. Their second nature is to believe that government is there to be their helper and provider. Anything that messes with that secularist assumption these days is messing with a root belief of at least 51 percent of American voters. These are folks who got John Kennedy exactly backward: ‘Always ask,’ they say, ‘what it is that your country can do for you.’ These folks are now dominant — and these are the voters who elect presidents. The American public has been going through a massive change — and the evidence grows that that ‘belief’ change has now passed a tipping point, beyond which it may be very difficult to go back.”

Mr. Belz is no defeatist. Like me, he believes that the solution to this national problem is not found in politics. Of course, this very clear observation does not mean that we should not be involved in the governmental process at the civil level, as long as we understand the biblical and historical definitions of government. That’s why I wrote the God and Government series. Government is not a synonym for politics.
Let me ask you two questions: Where do your children go to school? Who’s educating them? The fact that 51 percent of the voters in America see the State as their parent does not absolve us of the responsibility and the freedom to do the right thing in the areas of self-, family, and church government. Education is not the domain of the State, either at the national or state level. As parents, we are responsible.
Right now we can make a difference in the future of our nation by getting our children out of the hands of the one institution that fills their minds with Statist propaganda six or more hours a day, five days a week, ten months every year for at least twelve years. We don’t have to wait until 2014 or 2016 to change America; we can do it tomorrow.
I know some of your will say that your school is different, that it’s all those other schools that are the problem. The parents of those other schools are saying the same thing – about your school!
I received the following email from a parent who is a pastor regarding a school board meeting that will take place this evening (Nov. 29, 2012):

“There is an attempt to establish gender ID confusion laws to bathrooms permitting children from elementary school and up to use the bathroom with the opposite sex because another child may get his/her feelings hurt. I have an idea and want to see if you can help me. The Civil rights act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in employment based upon race, ethnicity and sex. Was the definition of ‘sex’ simply male and female?”

Conservatives have been trying to save the public (government) schools for more than 50 years. We’ve been on defense for 50 years while educational budgets have grown, the schools have gotten more statist, and the graduates (when they do graduate) become spokesmen for the State. Yes, I know there are exceptions. But there aren’t enough of them, and there never will be.
Can you imagine where we would be today as a nation if parents had removed their children from government schools in the early 1960s before prayer and Bible reading had been prohibited?
What parents didn’t do 50 years ago must be done today — before we are told we can’t do it.