http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6905543.ece

The laws are changing to remove parental ability to opt their children out of sex education in public schools. This means that every kid in public schools, regardless of religious background or the parents’ wishes, will be taught the school’s version of sex education at 15 years old. This goes into effect in September of 2011. Thankfully, this is in Britain, not here in the US. Still, it’s a big deal.

What’s so wrong with that? Perhaps little, assuming that children will be taught responsibly. My childhood sex education experience, however, was anything but responsible. I was lucky enough to have to go through sex education at three different public schools across junior high and high school. Looking back, all three of these experiences were damaging to my health.

My first experience in junior high was perhaps the most damaging. I was taught how to masturbate from a cartoon video. I won’t get into the moral or spiritual issues or non-issues with masturbation, but personally, I very much wish I had not been taught this at that point in my life.

Obviously, sex education is important, and I do believe it is necessary from a very young age. But the way I will choose to educate my children will be vastly different from the haphazard approaches used in public schools. Public school teachers cannot be trusted with such a delicate and dangerous subject; the potential for damage is tremendous, and assuming parents are doing their job, the potential for any kind of a benefit is extremely minimal.

What are your thoughts on mandatory sex education in public schools? Have you chosen to opt-out your children in the past? Why or why not? Are you concerned with this new decision?

As I’ve been regularly corrected that “jail” is not “prison”, I will state that this applies to our “jail” systems as well.

I’ve come by this perspective through first hand experience. Not by going to prison or jail myself, but by watching a close friend make steady progress only to throw it all away because of the jail time he was required to serve. This particular friend of mine struggles with alcohol abuse, and unfortunately seems to get in petty trouble with the law every time he gets intoxicated. He’s been in and out of jail at least four times for various alcohol-related crimes, and can’t seem to ever get back on track before being set right back at square one after coming out of a long and destructive jail term.

This friend of mine has tried and tried HARD to stop drinking. In fact, he’s been clean for months at a time, only to take up drinking again after being released from jail. The typical cycle that I’ve seen goes something like this:

1. After serving a month’s time, he’s finally released from jail.
2. It may be several days; it may be several weeks; but eventually, he gets drunk. He’s been sheltered for so long that he simply doesn’t know how to behave himself, and he’s still ticked off at the world from his jail time.
3. In his drunken state he does something stupid and gets arrested.
4. He gets scared, can’t believe how stupid he was (again), and vows to never drink again. He doesn’t, for the time being.
5. The judge sentences him something like one or two months of jail time for his actions, to be served two months in the future.
6. He gets help, doesn’t drink, and lives life as a responsible and sober human being for the next two months.
7. He humbly turns himself in for his jail time (literally walking to the jail).
8. Slowly but surely his anger builds and his opinion of himself lowers. When he gets out, all of his previous progress is ruined, and the whole process starts all over again.

I’ve seen this whole damned process happen, in full, at least three times. Pieces of it have happened many more times. He’s stuck in a society that refuses to allow him to improve. It’s been extremely frustrating for my wife and I because we have been largely responsible for his past progress (he’s lived with us twice). And yet, by the end we knew full well what the next jail term would do. And sure enough, it never fails to destroy any progress that was made.

Think for a second what the reasons behind this behavior might be. How would you respond to being locked in a cage for the vast majority of your days? Without any respectful human interaction? Without any decent amenities? I know I would turn into a bitter, angry, and troubled human being. Would this really do any good for anyone?

I realize that there are occasional “I turned my life around” stories that we hear about from time to time, but they are few and far between. For most people, confinement and a lack of love have a very negative affect. They generate hatred, not humility and respect for others. Hating on criminals only makes them haters. It’s no secret that hate breeds hate. The few positive outcomes are the result of some sort of external positive influence (be it a particularly caring officer, volunteer, personal faith, or even possibly another inmate); these outcomes are never simply the result of the system.

I’ve had these views for a long while, but until now did not have what I believed to be a true or even a partial “fix” for the system. However, I read an article recently about Norway’s “open prison system” that opened my eyes:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/europe/091017/norway-open-prison

I would encourage you to read the above article, but in a nutshell, prisoners are sent to an island community where they work normal hours and live a normal (though humble) lifestyle. They can enjoy the community, pride themselves in their work, and enjoy enough freedom to at least keep themselves sane. I imagine there’s still plenty of discipline, and I’m sure I wouldn’t exactly enjoy my time there, but it’s a step toward encouraging growth, instead of labeling the down and out as permanent losers and never allowing them to improve.

Granted, the system isn’t perfect (no system would be), but it is certainly closer to a humane correctional system. I believe it’s our responsibility to speak up about our failed correctional system and do everything we can to improve it. This is the direction we need to take.

There’s lots of room for further discussion (from scare tactics to the cost of implementing such a system to the possible politics), but I’ll leave that wide open for the comments. Please share your thoughts. :)

The worldly freedoms that we are given by our country are beautiful things, yes, and I appreciate them every day. However, they will fail us. Happiness does not come from the ability to make decisions and choose for ourselves what we want to do. We will fail ourselves, and eventually seek out something more. Hopefully, we will seek out Christ instead of some other worldly endeavor.

I do believe that God would want us to live in and create countries that promote worldly freedom, but I do not believe that He would have us glorify it to the extent that we currently do. The glorification of worldly freedom that many Americans live by is dangerous; it leads to American pride and a “worship America” mindset that can blind us from accepting other countries and hinder our relationship with God.

War is murder on a massive scale. There are things that are worth fighting for, but I do not believe that worldly freedoms are always worth the murdering of thousands of people. I refuse to believe that anything other than eternal and spiritual matters are worth any kind of a death toll. And most often, I believe that there are better ways to resolve these matters than violence.

I am often presented with the argument that war is not murder. This is a sad justification that results from attempts to remove the natural guilt behind ending the lives of others. If one has the intention to kill, and proceeds to do so, it is murder, regardless of the reasons behind the decision they’ve made. Opposite arguments betray all forms of logic; the end result is the same whether the situation is war or domestic assault; the end result is death.

I do realize that there are worldly differences between murder on the battlefield and any form of government-penalized murder, but they are only worldly differences, and they are both murder. It seems much more brutal to murder someone’s mommy or daddy at home for hateful reasons than to murder them on the battlefield for some sort of governmental purpose (however pointless that purpose may be). It seems that we should not be guilty of murder for doing what we believe to be right. However, in God’s eyes, all sins are equal; all sins are the same. Murder is sin. And I believe that though we can train ourselves to ignore the guilt we have from murder on the battlefield, we cannot completely remove the God-given sense all of us have that killing others is wrong.

Venturing back to freedom, I am reminded of the false hope that justice often brings us. Many Americans (often those who believe worldly freedom is worth killing and dying for) believe that justice is the best way to handle all situations, and can sometimes end up worshiping justice in the same way some Americans tend to worship freedom. Justice fails us all in much the same way that freedom fails us; none of us are responsible or righteous enough to not make the mistakes that constitute us as guilty. We are all guilty, and we are all the same. Thus, none of us has the right to condemn others for their sins.

Jesus came to forgive us for this guilt that we have, so that we don’t have to live by justice. I am already guilty of murder; I murder Christ on the cross for every sin I commit. But it is through God’s gift of His son that we are free from the burden of our sins, and free from spiritual justice. God will judge us in the end, but we need only a relationship with His son to be pleasing to God.

It is by Christ that I am free, and I am free in a deeper way than my country can ever provide or take away. This is freedom that cannot be purchased through justice or soldiers’ lives, because it was already given through Christ’s death on the cross.