The Homeschool Dad’s Role
American Christians have a blind spot. There is no understanding of The Ethical Foundation of Free-Market Economics and Its Relation To Public Policy. As Christian Homeschool dads, we are responsible to train our children to understand Biblical ethics. We can take this a step further and apply these ethics to economics to help pull the blinders off. This can affect real change in public policy. We can create the future leaders of industry and government grounded in Biblical ethics. They will produce ethical well-run service-oriented businesses, while those in government will conscientiously limit its growth with a goal of returning the national government to its constitutional constraints. This will take time. Generations. Let’s get the ball rolling.
Civil Government
The civil government in the United States is supposed to perform five functions according to The Constitution. These functions are spelled out in the preamble. I have numbered them :
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, 1establish justice, 2insure domestic tranquility, 3provide for the common defense, 4promote the general welfare, and 5secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for The United States of America.
The founders understood the shortcomings of government and the risk for tyranny, so they wrote the body of the constitution to spell out what institutions and their assigned responsibilities should exist to accomplish these functions. This is different from anything that ever was before it. Truly groundbreaking. What is not different, is that everything the government is tasked to do is paid for through debt, inflation, or taxation.
The national government has nothing but what it gets through one of these three strategies. Anything done by the government, outside of its jurisdiction defined by The Constitution is done through theft. Tragically, the number, size, and scope of government institutions have grown far beyond anything that was outlined in The Constitution.
The Constitution failed to stop politicians and bureaucrats from expanding government. Fidelity to The Constitution takes conscientious leaders grounded in Biblical ethics. Therefore, it is incumbent upon Homeschool Dads to train their children according to Biblical ethics. This will produce the necessary type of leadership in all areas, including government.
Ethics As foundation For Public Policy
Americans know the eighth commandment: Thou Shalt not Steal. This is a command from God to respect private property rights. We teach it to our kids when they’re young and we reinforce it throughout their lives. We generally have a healthy respect for private property rights. We have a criminal justice system that fines or imprisons thousands of American citizens for stealing. This commandment is built into our civil code, and it’s certainly part of Biblical law.
Dr. Gary North points out in Christian Economics In One Lesson, a property owner :
“has legal immunity from other people’s theft or destruction of his property. He has legal sovereignty. The owner also has a legal right to defend his own property. Society grants him this right. More important for my discussion, God grants him this right. The owner is not alone (autonomous). He is not a lone wolf attempting to defend territory. Ownership is a social function. Therefore, he has a moral right to the property and this moral right is established by law: God’s Law, society’s customary law, civil law, and the individual’s law.”
It’s quite clear. We are the sovereign owners of our property. The good Lord has entrusted us individually with the resources necessary to further His will. This commandment is entrenched in the psyche of Americans and is one of the cornerstones of western civilization until it comes to public policy through voting.
Christian voters are ignorant of the Biblical Ethics that underlie free-market economic principles. It is a major blind spot that affects the very ability to have a consistent worldview. Thou shalt not steal, is a command from God to leave His resources in the hands of those to whom He has entrusted them.
God’s distribution of property is not a pot of money from which all are welcomed to partake. They are individually distributed resources as a reward for obedience to His law and commandments. They are attached to responsibility. It is His property, and when He delegates this property to individuals, it is to remain with the chosen steward. We as those stewards are individually accountable for what we do with what He has provided us. There is no other authority that can legally claim ownership of these resources.
Christian voters have a major ethics disconnect. The ethics a Christian holds dear that deters the theft of property between persons is jettisoned the second theft is proposed through public policy. Theft is theft. It’s wrong when people steal from one another, and it is just as wrong when people use government as the tool of theft.
Christians, you are wrong in claiming the moral high ground in taking from the public til to promote your cause with other people’s money. You are wrong to demand of the government to take by force, resources from one group of people to give to another. You are culpable in allowing others to do it through the consent of your vote. Your intentions to “help” are intentions to steal. God said Thou shalt not steal. He did not qualify the commandment by adding “except by majority vote”. Stealing is stealing, whether done by individuals or through the power of government. When you vote to create a new government program or transfer wealth from one group to another, it was not yours to give.
Public Policy
There is a legitimate purpose for civil government. To protect Life, Liberty, and Property. If we look at the original 5 reasons stated in the Preamble to The Constitution, these are good reasons, however, it’s going to take a few generations of Americans to receive the proper Biblical ethics and economics training necessary to understand the arbitrary nature of man’s policies, and that the separation of Gods ethics from the institutions of government are what have led us to this rife abuse of The Constitution. The secular establishment at the helm must be defeated. This must start at home, with Homeschool Dads who understand Biblical ethics and economics; teaching the wisdom to their children.
If you do not get at least a familiarity with these principles, you and your children will continually contribute votes to politicians whose main objective is to pacify voting blocks with stolen loot to receive future votes. The promises they made to your group are different than the promises they made to another’s group. All of these promises are paid off with other people’s money and resources. This contributes to the continual degradation of liberties and reduced quality of life for your victims. You are culpable in this. Your ignorance of the ethical and Biblical foundations of economics allows politicians to make unethical promises pandering to your desires. These are the same moral temptations Jesus faced from Satan in the wilderness. You are constantly deceived because of your own ignorance of the ethics you claim are mandated by God. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Every level of government produces public policies. The consequences are far-reaching, but none so far-reaching as policies extended from the national level. Voter consent is formally transferred to politicians through votes. This is how we consent to their policies. Politicians exchange promises and favors for votes. Along with these votes come consent and legitimacy. Through voting, you are consenting to the policies the politician ultimately implements. These are often different from their stump speeches. Also, on the ballot, are bond issues. When you vote in favor of ballot bond issues, you are voting in favor of theft.
Compulsory Public Education
Homeschool dads help pay for public schools with no allowance to opt-out. In any other segment of the economy, we can vote with our feet [leave] or with our wallet [We don’t buy the product or support the business]. We do not have this option. We are stuck paying for it.
The Public School System is an established poorly run institution and is the face of education in the United States. This is an old issue, but an important one.
In the free market, poor service with extraneous costs generally destroys your business. Customers will not buy your product. Consumers can impose negative sanctions on businesses that operate this way. No profits. The business fails.
Americans intuitively understand this, yet when it comes to our school system, simple standard Christian American ethics and principles as they relate to the free market, completely escape us. Compulsory education has become a time-honored tradition of failure. We continue to throw good money after bad. What’s worse, is we are forced to do so through government theft. Many have recognized the folly of compulsory public education and have made the appropriate decision to teach our children at home, yet we still pay to run and maintain public schools.
No one should be taking the God-given resources we use to educate our children, in order to throw it into the black hole of public education. Most Homeschool dads would at least tacitly accept this arrangement as a questionable injustice. I say it’s outright theft. I say it is a direct attack on God’s plan for the resources he’s distributed to families, for use in accomplishing his will for us on earth. Christians must learn government has no resource other than what it steals through debt, inflation, or direct taxation. Christians must also take their hands out of the public til and stop being enablers.
Conclusion
Homeschool Dads have made the break with public schooling. This shows an above-average understanding of the threat to your children posed by compulsory public schools.
Take it one step further and educate yourself on Biblical Ethics and economics and you will soon realize, the notion of “separation of church and state” doesn’t exist. Then teach the principles to your children. We are where we are in this country because Christians do not understand the source of our problems. There is no separation of church and state. The state is the church. Our public institutions are run according to man’s arbitrary ever-changing ethics and not the steadfast, unmoveable ethics of God. This creates conflict. This creates distortions in the economy. This creates unhappy people whose liberty to use their God-given resources as they’ve been led, has been severely limited. We are living in an era where groups of voters continually compete for loot distributed by the government that comes from the stolen resources of other individuals.
I challenge you to read one book on this topic that is written by a Christian for the Christian Layman. Christian Economics In One Lesson by Dr. Gary North.
You can purchase the book by clicking the link in the “Suggested Reading” column on the right side of this page. I get no commission for any sales of this book. I simply link it because there IS NO OTHER author with a complete economic commentary based on biblical exegesis. Christian Economics in One Lesson takes Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics In One Lesson and puts ethics at the forefront. Ownership. Thou shalt not steal.
Biblical ethics are applicable everywhere, in everything you do, and in all of your dealings. You must hold yourself and leaders accountable for their lack of ethics, and do not support their politics of theft. Ultimately politicians are nothing more than wind veins, their campaigns are nothing but testing which way the political winds are blowing. In order to fix a problem, we must first understand the source of the problem. Our problems come from not applying biblical ethics to every area of life.