Stumbling Over the Bread Crumbs

Like in the ancient story of Hansel and Gretel, crumbs were used to mark the trail into the forest so that they could find their way out again. The first time they were taken into forest at the behest of their evil stepmother, Hansel used little white stones to mark the way back to their Father's house, but the next time all he had left was bread crumbs, and the crumbs were eaten by the birds in the forest, so they were hopelessly lost.

The importance of the lesson that this old story contains cannot be overstated, especially in this present time. The world is like a dark, dangerous, scary forest that can get you turned around so that you cannot find your way out, like the forest of Mirkwood in the stories by J.R.Tolkien, that forest was dark and angry, and would purposely change to trick you off of the path and doom you to forever wandering the forest to find the path that leads out.

Truth is like bread crumbs, in the sense that it helps us to see where we are, and how we can find our way back when we stray into the dark forest of the world. Some of the paths into the world are wealth, sexual immorality, selfish ambition, materialism, false religion, and science, just to name a few. While all of these paths are extremely dangerous, none of them are as insidious as false religion, and by saying false religion we mean: religious organizations that appear to be genuine, but are in reality false, and corrupt. So for now we will focus on the path of false religion.

Lets talk about some of the bread crumbs that can help us see where we are. The first one is 'Money'. This is a very good one, because the Lord Himself had much to say about it, which helps us to see this one clearly, if we keep an open mind and heart. Money is a neutral thing, which means it can be used for good or evil, it all depends on how you use it, but when does it become evil? 

Money becomes evil when we serve it, which means we are controlled by it, or rather it causes us to compromise our convictions. For example: if my boss wants me to do something that is wrong, I will have to chose between my devotion to what's right, and my need for the money that my boss gives me. The right choice in this example would be to disobey your boss in order to do what is right regardless of the consequences. Even though we need the money to survive, doing whats right is more important, if we would have given in to the boss and done what is wrong, then we would have succumbed to the fear of not getting the money, ergo: we would have been controlled by our need for the money.

That's why the Lord tells us to abandon our love for money, because it can control us. The World, and False Religion will try to convince us that we need lots of money to do lots of good, but is this really true? No it is not true, in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Creating a financial agenda (the need for money) is not scriptural, and the Bible teaches us to go the opposite direction, and practice self reduction in a material and financial sense, in order to focus us closer to what is really important in life. False Religions have always been centered around financial agenda, this is how they get there power, which happens to be the only power they possess, other than the mystique of religiosity, and people's innate desire for sociality.

The propensity for compromise is deeply embedded in the false religious system that is very old. It is found not only with the Pharisaical types , but also the Romans with their Temple Priestcraft paganism. Both were syncretized, or rather blended with the Original Christianity to create the Emperical hybrid, which was prophesied. Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots. All of the religious organizations are false in both form and practice, because the architype (or basic structure) is the Catholic Church, which was the original result of Empirical Syncretism.

The ancient Pagan practice (hundreds of years before Christ) was to build temples to the gods, and train the pontiffs (priests) in colleges so that they could run the temples, and all of the social gatherings, holidays, and financial resources were focused around the temple. The only difference now is that we have Judeo-Christian-Pagan hybrids that still practice priestcraft with hierarchical clergy, temple buildings and pontiffs (pastors) trained in priestcraft at the colleges to encourage people to worship their particular false version of Christ. This is called Polychrist Syncretism, or rather "Priestcraft" and it is very very old, and it is definately not Christ.

Have you ever sat in a religious organization's worship service and felt alone or have you ever sat in one of those services and felt like there was something seriously wrong but you couldn't put your finger on it? Well, I know exactly what you were feeling, and I can tell you now that you were feeling the Spirit of the Lord speaking to your heart telling you that it was wrong for you to be there, and you should leave.

If we mention all of the Bread Crumbs like Temple Building, Pastors trained in Colleges, huge financial agendas, hierarchical clergyism, Peddling the Gospel, compromising like: cultural relitivism, marrying divorced women (adultery), mothers working outside the home (feminism), materlialism, disregard of God's Order: Men not making their homes their ministry, and women working outside the home with men, being a bad example to the younger women, also not practicing purity in courting, and living together before marriage.

We can see that the organizations foster an atmosphere of compromise and licentiousness that they are trained to maintain, although outwardly seeming to be righteous, they are not, and are completely corrupt.

Men, your ministry is your home, and you should include your family in all your interests, passions, and recreations. Your home IS your ministry, and your neighborhood IS your mission field. You must work hard and be a good example to your neighbors, this IS God's will for you. The Orgs would have you believe that THEY are your focus of ministry, but that is a lie, and now you know it.

Women, work at home, be a professional homemaker, and be satisfied with the money that your husband makes, homeschool and home church your children, and protect them without being influenced by the fear of deprivation. The Lord will provide for all your needs if you trust and obey. Be a Pro 31.

What else can be said, we have been decieved, used, conditioned, abused, confused, and brainwashed. For hundreds of years people have accepted the status quo simply because it was ancient and practiced in their families, but what does the Lord say: Who IS your family? Those who DO God's will.

Come out, come out, come out, come out, come out. It is time. Remember our Lord warned us about people who would say that you have to go here and there to find Christ, and this is also a Bread Crumb, be lead by them, and do not stumble over them. May the Lord help you see the path.

stoneless temple

Cracks in the Foundation

Our bodies were originally designed to live forever, never to die, always renewing and repairing itself but after the Fall and leaving of the Garden, not only thorns and thistles were brought into the plant kingdom but thorns and thistles were brought into our physical bodies.  Our body would now not wear out but would slowly stop being able to repair itself.  This disrepair is like cracks in a foundation.  Once the cracks become so large, the building can not stand anymore and it crumbles and falls to the ground just as our bodies fall into the grave.  We have all lost loved ones due to these cracks, as none of us will escape physical death.  Some have developed serious cracks sooner than others and their buildings, physical temples, have fallen sooner that others.

These last few months have been an incredible journey for me going back through the past in the writings of my mother, whose physical body failed at the age of 58.  The writings were a personal journal recording events that happen to her from 1949 when she met my dad until the finishing of the building of their home in 1964.  The other writings were lists that she made and short accounts of God's love and mercy to her through out her life.  My mother struggled with health issues most of her adult life, odd infections, sensativety to medication, weakness at times, a miscarriage, and some birth defects in her children.  She also was seriously ill for 3 years before she died, but most of her illness was a mystery to the doctors.  The doctors could see the cracks in her foundation of health but they didn't know what caused them and the damage was so severe at the end of her life, that there was no repairing it.

About a year ago one of the mysteries of my mom's health was revealed to me.  I found out there were clues in us, her children, her grandchildren and my dad.  Gene mapping was done and it revealed that both of my parents carried a defect in the gene that produces an enzyme necessary for life.  It is the enzyme that makes methylation possible.  Simply put, methylation allows your cells to repair itself and also allows detoxification of harmful elements in the body to be gotten rid of.   If the enzyme didn't work at all, you would die immediately.  Instead it was damaged so that it did not work as well, limiting methylation.  Some people can live a long time with this gene defect as in my father's case where he is 87 years old, but my mom only lived until 58.  The difference is what happened to them and other genetic factors.

When methylation does not happen at full speed, it damages your red blood cell production.  My mom suffered with some level of anemia all her adult life so she was more susceptible to infections.  When she was 25 years old she found out she was allergic to Penicillian, the hard way.  Instead of the doctor giving her a small dose to see how she reacted to it, because she hadn't had it before, he gave her a large dose to combat a bad sinus infection that she had been struggling with.  The result was a horrible allergic reaction that caused her to break out in hives.  My mom said they were the size of hen eggs on her legs and bright red that turned black blotches that stayed for a long time.  Also she experience weakness so that she could not climb a flight of stairs without resting on each step for about a year.  This so worried my mom as she had my two sisters and they were only 2 1/2 years and 1 year old.   She feared this illness would take her life and she would not be able to raise them.  My dad prayed for her and told her not to fear, that God would take care of her.  She eventually recovered.  My folks were poor and did not have health insurance, so they never had the money to have her weakness researched to find out the cause.  I just read recently in an article about Penicillin.  It said that a high dose of Penicillin can cause a drug induced anemia.  The body is adversly affected to destroy it's own red blood cells.  Sometimes this condition is permanent and sometimes temporary.  My mom had quite a struggle because she already had issues with anemia and her body had a hard time building her red blood cell amount.

A year after this struggle with weakness, my mother became pregnant and she miscarried the baby boy at 3 months, but the doctors didn't know why.  Anemia and not enough folate assimilation (yes a methylation issue) can cause the baby to have life threatening defects and die in the womb.  I also learned recently that in the early 1940's the government began to require food to be fortified.  All the wheat products were fortified with artificial folate which is folic acid.  They wanted to help curb birth defects and miscarriage. If a woman gets enough folate in the early weeks of pregnancy the baby will form correctly.  

The food being fortified was great for the people without the enzyme problem, but about 30 to 40 percent of the people would not be benefited by this.  With the enzyme defect, folic acid would be hard to metabolize as it is an artificial form of folate and would take extra steps to make it bioavailable.  Not only would the natural folate metabolization be slowed down even further but the unmetabolized folic acid would have a greater attraction to the folate receptors in the cells and block the folate absorption.  As time goes on the more folic acid a person has the more anemia will increase and homocysteines will build up in the body.  The higher the homocysteine levels in the blood the more inflammation, more prone to infection, the more chance of heart and blood vessel problems, more occurrence of autoimmune diseases, cancer and neurological disorders.  Homocysteines are hard to test for in the blood, as they begin to break down within minutes after the blood is drawn.  So regular lab tests don't show the accurate amount that is present.  A special test has to be done, that is fairly new.  They do know that high levels of homocysteine in the blood cause you to have a high SED rate.  My mom had a high SED rate but never had it researched.  But, back then they would not of known of her genetic problem as this has only been known in the last 10 to 15 years.

Two years after mom miscarried her first baby boy, she gave birth to my brother.  He was healthy but she didn't realized until he was a year old that he was tongue tied.  The thin web of tissue under the tongue knits all the way to the tip of the tongue.  My brother's tongue was tied down behind his lower front teeth.  So he had to have it clipped.  It broke my mother's heart to see his little tongue swollen and he could no longer drink from his bottle.  He just sat and held it and cried.  This is  an easily repaired birth defect that is caused by low folate.  There are more severe birth defects that can occur. 

Fourteen months later she gave birth to me.  Having kids close together is also a drain on your folate supplies.  A year after I was born, my folks began a building project.  They had bought land and lived on it for a couple of years.  They had a very hard time financially as my dad could not find steady work.  So when I was a year old he got a good job working in a plywood mill.  They began saving their money and then got a loan and began building the house that I was raised in.  They did all the work themselves and had a few men help them on some heavy projects that my mom couldn't do and my dad couldn't do by himself.  So my dad worked full time, sometimes over time and worked in the evening and weekends building the house.  Here is a little excerpt from her journal during those years: 

"While Dad was building the main part of the house he worked all the time and lots of the time, six days a week at the mill.  I would say we probably put in 5000 hours on building the main part of the house.  It cost us $7000.00 to build it.  We had never built any thing before in our life.  It was a real challenge and lots of persistent hard work. I averaged putting in about 6 hours a day working on the house.  I had 4 children to care for and we had no fences.  The yard was full of kids from the neighborhood most of the time.  We had a big garden.  I took entire care of the garden and yards.  I canned 900 to 1000 quarts of food each year.  I sewed all of the children's clothing.  I was a very, very busy mother working most of the time about 15 hours a day."

I was so amazed and blessed in my heart when I read this.  My parents worked so very hard to provide a home for us 4 children to grow up in.  My mom worked many long hours and I know did not get her rest like she needed.  For if you do not rest, your body does not have the chance to repair itself and rebuild blood cells.  Anemia gets worse when you don't get rest.  On the tails of one of my parent's greatest joy, a home for their family, they experienced the greatest sorrow, the death of a child.  My mother became pregnant soon after moving into our new home.  During her pregnancy she was diagnosed with very serious anemia.  She went to work eating chicken livers and iron rich food and brought her red blood count up but the damage had already been done.  Before 8 weeks of development the baby's diaphragm did not knit closed and his intestines came up and crowded his lungs.  At birth the doctor discovered that mom had an infection in her placenta (anemia makes you prone to infections).  So the little guy was at about 5 lbs at birth.  This was the days before sonogram and he was not breathing.  So they tried to get him to breath and then discovered his defect of an unclosed diaphragm.  This required surgery, which they performed but they didn't know that a small hole had been made in his lung when trying to get him to breath and it was too much for him to recover from, having low birth weight, surgery for the diaphragm and now the hole in his lung.  So he died the next day.  The diaphragm not being closed is another mid-line birth defect caused by low folate.

After our baby brother's death my mom began to diet as she was the heaviest she had ever been in her whole life.  She slowly cut down, taking out a lot of carbs out of her diet, which meant less folic acid and had lots of natural folate with lots of home grown vegetables and fruits.  We had friends that owned a dairy and would give us the organ meat, liver, heart and tongue.  We had these meals fairly often as I remember them well through my early childhood.  With my mom dropping the weight, eating more natural folate, she got healthy and strong again.  She would have occasional odd infections and some digestion issues but nothing super serious until after we were grown.

She slowed down quite a bit in her mid-40's.  She had trouble with inflammation in her body which lead to her feet and ankles swelling.  She had some serious varicous veins from genetics and having 5 babies.  So we just chalked it up to that.  But knowing what I know now, the folic acid in her diet slowed down the detoxification in her body and when you body has trouble with detoxifying in causes inflammation.  She had to spend lots of time with her feet elevated and walked much slower and couldn't do a lot of activities that required lots of standing or walking.

  

When mom was 56 she got a really bad cold that turned out to be bronchitis.  One night she told my father that she felt like she couldn't get her breath.  He took her to the doctor immediately and the doctor gave her antibiotics but it didn't faze the infection.  They sent her to a lung specialist and he did a biopsy on her lungs and discovered that she had a viral bronchial infection that had gone down into her lungs.  He said he had never seen that before.

  

My mom's immune system and liver had been weaken by the years of consuming the folic acid in her food, slowing down the red blood cell production and the toxins building in her body because he body could not detoxify like is was designed to do.  Since antibiotics would not work on the infection that would take her life, they gave her steroids to stop the inflammation and she could breath again.  The down side was the steroids caused cirrhosis in her liver.  Her already weakened liver could not sustain the damage and my mother lost her strength.   She had to be in a wheel chair a lot if any walking was required.  She developed a calcium spur in her hip and the doctor gave her Advil for the pain and inflammation that it caused.  Also a diuretic to help with the swelling in her legs.  These drugs damaged her liver even more and she went into a coma about 6 weeks before she died.  In the hospital they were able to bring her out of the coma and then a liver specialist examined her and interviewed her.  He pin pointed the reason for her coma was her liver.  He was amazed how this happened when my mother recounted her life to him.  She had never smoked or drank and how she had a very good diet of lots of home grown vegetables and fruits.  He said she must of had a genetic weak liver and she lived as long as she did because she ate so well.  Well, he had the genetic part right, but I don't believe it was her liver to begin with.  As a child she was strong and breezed by her childhood diseases with only slight symptoms.  She was born before World War 2 on a farm, so she had great home grown food, lots of unfortified wheat that her mom made into homemade bread, noodles and many other things.  She was a teenager when the government started fortifying wheat.  Then the there was the Penicillian episode which I am sure weakened her liver too.

One month after her hospitalization for the hepatic coma my mom was back in the hospital with kidney failure.  The doctor said because mom's liver was functioning very poorly, she was not getting the nutrition she needed and she was starving to death.  When someone is starving their kidney's shut down.  So medically her case was hopeless and she died in a few days.  That was the end of mom's struggle with anemia that had caused her many health problems in her life.  Anemia can be like a snowball rolling down a hill, one thing leading to another.

  

I was so sad at my mother's death.  I was still in my twenties and single and felt like I needed her so much.  She was my friend and source of emotional support during the lonely years.  It was so hard to loose her but God helped me through it all.  I learned a lot from her death and it gave me a window into my own health.  In my 30's I began to have struggles with colds and bronchitis hanging on way to long.  So I began taking a garlic supplement and that helped a lot.  I tried to get my rest and I was not having kids, so that did not drain my system.  I did not take birth control pills as I was not married and I was following the Lord.  I found out that birth control pills blocks the assimilation of iron.  I did not drink alcohol which also inhibits iron and folate assimilation.  I ate good as my folks had made sure us kids ate well with a good balance of fruits and vegetables, good meat and carbs.  I didn't drink a lot of soda or coffee.  Soda robs your system of calcium and coffee blocks iron assimilation.  So I was doing pretty good but I was aging and consuming fortified foods with folic acid and taking multivitamins with artificial folate in it.  So I noticed how I got tired a lot easier.  After Rich and I married, I was 42 and I wanted to have a baby really bad.  For 2 years I kept hoping and at 44 1/2 I became pregnant and then miscarried 2 months later.  I was heart broken.  Fourteen months later I became pregnant with our Mary girl.  I was so very tired, diagnosed with anemia.  The iron they prescribed made me feel so horrible and even more tired, I took very little of it.  I did keep taking the garlic supplement though!  With the grace of God I made it through and Mary was born healthy with no defects.  What a miracle that was.  I will always be grateful for that.  I knew I wasn't just lucky, but God had helped me against all the odds.

Just in the last year, I have become aware of my genetic condition and am in awe of how God helped me through it all.  I have learned so much through all of this.  I share this story, to maybe help someone in some way.  If you have some trouble with your health maybe just tiredness, infertility, miscarriage or autoimmune disease or even cancer.  I would urge you first and foremost to serve and trust God with all your heart, secondly have a genetic test done to see if there is something foundational happening in your body make up.  If you have the MTHFR gene mutation as I have, do some diet changes.  Try to stay away from all the folic acid in food and vitamins.  Try making a lot of your own food with unfortified (organic) flour and grow a garden if you can.  Drink lots of water, take a garlic supplement if you can as it if helps with methylation.  Don't drink alcohol and limit your perscription drug intake if possible.  Make sure you get good rest and don't over do.  These things can make an big difference in your health and I can testify that in my own life.  I know the Lord holds our life in His hands and we will live as long as he determines.  So, I am not thinking that I will live to be 120 but I know I have a calling and that is to be a wife and mother and I am older now, 57.  So God has given me some knowledge to help me to accomplish His calling in my life.  All the things that are beyond me, I know He will help me with and even bring a miracle if necessary so that I can finish the race.  I pray that this will in some way help someone, not to beat themselves up with the past, but help them with a better quality of life in the future. 

A Mother's Day Tribute - A Box Full of Gold

The year after my mother died, I was going through a lot of her things. I was helping my dad pack some stuff to give away of my mom's as it was so very hard for my dad to do. I came across a box of papers, they were my mom's figuring, as she called it. My mother loved to make lists. That was one of her favorite pass times. She made lists of everything from all her weekly grocery lists to illnesses she had in her life, to clothes she made for us kids and what flowers she planted in the back yard. She also loved to right down family trees and when people were born and died and many times what they died of. Among her pages of lists on notebook paper was stories of faith, blessings she had and trials she experienced. Someone may have looked at these papers as a bunch of messy scribbling of thoughts quickly put down on paper of all sizes and some torn and written over, misspelled words and hurried script but to me they were a treasure.  

That box full of papers was a box full of gold to me. They were the thoughts, stories and events that formed my childhood and my beloved faith in a great God who cared about the big and small things of my life. Just yesterday evening I pulled this stack of papers out and began to read through them. I found several sheets of paper divided in half. On one side mom had written "Joys" and on the other she had written "Trials". My mother had a lot of hard things that happened to her in childhood and my folks struggled with very little money in the early years of their marriage. When the list started out it was "even steven" with the joys and trials but as the list went on the joys over took the trials and she had several pages of just joys. That was my mom, she was a hopeful and thankful person. That was the work of the Holy Spirit in her life. That is what she imparted to me and I never forgot. When I became down at times about things or even to the point of despair I would remember her example and I would look up and think about the Lord and all He has done for me and hope would begin to fill my heart. I would begin to think of what the Lord would want me to do as my heart yielded to the truth of His Word, what He said in the Bible. I would find strength to go on in whatever situation I was in. Hope in the LORD would fill my mind and my heart. In closing I will include some of my mother's list of joys and trials:

1. Trial: Mother and Father were unhappy in their marriage. Joy: They were faithful to each other and loved one another.

2. Trial: Very poor as far as money goes. Joy: We owned our own home, plenty to eat, always warm and enough to wear.

3. Trial: Father not born again. Joy: Mother a wonderful Christian.

4. Trial: Father never told us he loved us or made any display of affection. Joy: Mother was very loving. Father supported us and in lots of ways he loved us and Mother.

5. Trial: Lots of sickness in the home. Joy: God always seen us through every trial.

6. Trial: Was very large in my teens. Joy: God helped me to lose 100 lbs.

7. Trial: Didn’t get to finish high school. Joy: Got to go to Bible school.

8. Trial: During our first year of marriage we had quite a low income. Joy: All our needs were met and alot of our desires.

9. Trial: We always had to plan carefully for the things we got. Joy: Made us to appreciate what we got.

10. Trial: We lost a baby boy, Phillip, at 2 days of age. Joy: We have a great treasure in heaven.

11. Trial: Living in a small trailer house for 5 years. Joy: We learned patience & forgivness & love & to depend on God with all our hearts. 

Home Ministry

Your Home is your Ministry, Your Neighborhood is your mission field.

We have been deceived, conditioned, and brainwashed to believe that our main ministry is somewhere other than our own Homes.  It is important to remember that our Lord warned us about people who would say that we have to go here or there to find Him.


What is a man's ministry?  His Home,  we must not neglect the foundation of the Church of Christ for romantic dreams of our ministry being in places other than our own Homes.  People with selfish financial agendas that have created large organizations will tell you lies. They will tell you that the organization is your 'Church Home', but that is a lie, the truth is that you are the church that exists worldwide, and your Home is your ministry, and your neighborhood is your outreach.

What is a man's duty to his Home?  To work hard with his hands to provide and support the Home, to love and support his wife,  to love and help train his children in the ways of the Lord, to protect them from evil influences, to include his family in all of his activities, and show them that he loves them and is giving himself to them as Christ did.


What is a woman's duty to her Home? To help provide a clean, loving, nurturing environment for her husband and children,  to homeschool her children in the ways of the Lord and to protect her children from evil influences.  She should be satisfied and thankful for the money that her husband provides and make due with that amount.  The peace, happiness, and blessing that comes from God to a Home does not depend on the size or beauty of the Home, but on the Love that exists within the hearts of the members of that Home.

Money is not happiness, do not desire it.  Happiness is found in a Godly Home with thankfulness and contentment, and humble obedience to the Lord Jesus' Commandments.

Men, the greatest thing you can do for God and Country is be the  leader of your Godly Home, and Love your wife and children with the benevolence that creates a strong, healthy environment.
 Leading by example and not by compulsion, yet providing the discipline necessary for good psychology to lay a foundation for self discipline in the hearts of your children that they will need to survive this world and make it to the next.

Working hard to create a Godly Home will not only bless you and your children, but also those around you in your neighborhood, which is your outreach.

Men, if your wondering what your ministry is, and you don't know what God wants you to do, then you are missing the boat,  it is quite clear what God's will for your life is, to have a Godly Home. Not some romantic dream of being a missionary in some far off land,  your mission field is right in front of you, and you are neglecting it.  Get right, get poor, get humble, and get busy.

Women, your greatest contribution to God and Mankind is to fulfill the Godly order by respecting God, and your husband, and becoming the Master Homemaker that God created you to be.

Pro 13:7   There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing;  And one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches.


If one wants to see what the early church looked like then you need not look any further than your own Godly Home.

Christmas

As we enter into this wonderful, beautiful and awe inspiring season my thoughts go to home and it's warmth, the one I grew up in and the one I have now. More importantly my thoughts go to the baby born in a stable 2000 years ago and the message he brought has spread all over the world, changing people, bringing them closer to the one who is their true father. Some reject the message, some take it for a while and let go and then some it takes root and bears good fruit. ...How powerful is his message that it has never been forgotten and has traveled all these years down through the generations of man and has come to rest in my heart. I am so thankful I know you Lord Jesus and I am so thankful for all those who do. What a wonderful community all over this world, you have built Jesus and the gates of hell will not prevail against it! (These were my thoughts as I listened to this song)

How Dr. Spock Destroyed America by Rob Bradley

I read this article this morning and agree with what is being said.  My mom read Dr. Spock's book when she was a young mom in the 1950's and tossed it after she read it because she knew it was going against what the Bible taught.  She knew that it would cause big trouble in our society and she was right.  - Elena

Here is the article: 

In the last 50 years, our nation has taken a moral nosedive.  Since 1960, the rate of violent crimes has more than tripled. Every day there are news reports of heinous crimes unheard of in America a generation ago. Children murder their playmates, their teachers and their parents. Teenage mothers abandon their newborn babies in trashcans, and every year students commit carnage on their classmates. Our culture has sunk so low that children are no longer safe with their teachers in school or at church – scores of men and women are arrested every year for preying on the children under their care.

The sexual revolution that started in the ’60s continues with many casualties. Promiscuity has become so rampant that 1 of every 4 teenage girls now has a sexually transmitted infection. In the last five decades, practices have become so deviant that the number of distinct STDs had risen from five to more than 50 – a sudden increase of a thousand percent. Obsession with sexual violence has brought a 318 percent increase in sexual assault.

Our nation is in severe moral decline, and the descent is not slowing.  The root cause of decline in America is not that difficult to deduce. When a society becomes out of control, it is because its members elevate self-indulgence and lack self-control. It really is that simple. In the last 50 years, human nature has not changed. Selfishness, lust, covetousness and all other passions are in the human heart at birth. It is only a trained proclivity to say NO to our natural drives that keeps our passions in check – self-control is what stops us from stealing, murdering and committing adultery. It is parents who must instill this important quality in each generation. History and common sense teach us that the society in which children are not taught to keep control of their passions is destined to moral disintegration.

In America the reason that baby boomers and their children have grown up with less mastery over their passions than previous generations is because in the late ’40s a new voice of authority on parenting rose to prominence, and parents of the ’50s and ’60s began to raise children differently than before.

In 1946, Dr. Benjamin Spock first published his infamous book “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” which was unlike any that came before it. Instead of stressing the importance of teaching self-denial and respect for authority, Spock discouraged directive training and emphasized accommodating children’s feelings and catering to their preferences. No longer did children learn they could endure Brussels sprouts and suffer through daily chores. Using Spock’s approach, parents began to feed self-indulgence instead of instilling self-control – homes were becoming child-centered. As parents elevated children’s “freedom of expression” and natural cravings, children became more outspoken, defiant and demanding of gratification. In fact, they came to view gratification as a right.

Spock wrote his book in response to a cold, authoritarian philosophy of parenting that had been dominant in America. For years, parents had been told to withhold affection from their children – not to touch them too often – not to respond to their tears. Understanding of children had not been encouraged, and fathers had held a minor role in their nurture and care. These things distressed Spock, and they would have upset me had I been born back then. Children need our tender affection, understanding and respect. However, Spock’s solutions reflected total ignorance of the hedonistic bent of human nature and fostered an over-exalted sense of self-importance in children. Homes became hotbeds for narcissism, entitlement and victim thinking.

In the early ’60s, under Spock’s influence, parents were watching their children become sassy and contentious, and increasing numbers were seeing them become juvenile delinquents and criminals. As the crime rate started to crawl up, SAT scores began to drop. Teenagers began to exercise less moral restraint and revealed an increasing contempt for authority. The free-love hippy movement and student protests were inevitable for children who had been raised to think too highly of themselves. Is it any surprise that Spock himself participated in protests and was arrested in 1968 because of his contempt for governmental authority?

In 1972, Spock’s imbalanced view of child rearing became greatly apparent when he entered the presidential race as the candidate for the socialistic People’s Party. Anyone who embraces socialism is clueless to a key element of proper parenting – personal responsibility.

What Spock’s actions reveal about the weaknesses of his philosophies is obvious, but some doubt that Spock’s influence was that pervasive. However, in the first year, his book sold 750,000 copies, and within six years it sold more than 4 million. It has since sold over 50 million and has been translated into more than 40 languages. According to Dr. Spock’s website, it is second in sales only to the Bible. Life magazine certified the depth of his influence, naming Spock among the 100 most important people of the 20th century.

Even Dr. Spock was aware of his negative influence upon parents. In a 1968 interview with the New York Times, Spock admitted that his first edition of “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” contributed to an increase of permissive parenting in America. “Parents began to be afraid to impose on the child in any way,” he said. In his 1957 edition, he tried to remedy that by emphasizing the need for setting standards and asking for respect. Unfortunately, Spock failed to see the deeper problems of his philosophy, so subsequent editions continued to cultivate narcissism.

As Spock’s radical parenting ideas grew in popularity, other “experts” jumped on the bandwagon and promoted their own versions of indulgent child rearing. Since 1946, parenting approaches that foster narcissism and contempt for authority have become the accepted norm in higher education and subsequently, in society. It is a simple matter to trace the dominant hedonism of our culture back to Spock’s influence.

And since the parenting we receive in childhood develops the worldview we hold as adults, Spock influenced not only how American’s conduct themselves in society, but how they approach government as well. Interestingly enough, in the 1968 New York Times interview, Spock admitted that he would “be proud if the idealism and militancy of youth today were caused by my book.” Raising children to adulthood with a defiant attitude toward authority was apparently one of his goals.

Spock died in 1998, and my intent is not to malign a man in the grave – it is to rescue America before we expire from moral disintegration. We must, therefore, identify and abandon the polluted well from which we have been drinking.

Not by might, nor by power but by My Spirit sayeth the Lord

Dearest Mary girl, 

I write this account for you. For some of these events of this story occurred before you were born and then when you were very small and would not remember unless Mama tells you. Your dad was diagnosed with asthma when he was 2 years old. He struggled with it all his growing up years. He had many visits to the doctors and was diagnosed with lots of food and environmental allergies. He couldn't have chocolate, cows milk, pets that had dander like cats and chickens. He had to sleep in a room with no carpets and a big air purifier. Remember this was in the late fifties and early sixties. So most machines were a lot bigger back then compared to what they are now. He had to sleep partly elevated with 2 pillows so he could breath better. He gave his mom and dad a lot of scares as they watched over him and provided the best care they could give. 

When he became a teenager, he out grew the asthma for the most part. He still could not run long distances and was excused from such activities in school and when he was in the military. He picked up a bad habit of smoking with he was sixteen. Grandma was not happy with him doing this after all the trouble they had with him on his breathing. He smoked for about 25 years. This habit was not kind to his lungs or his body. When he recommitted his life to the Lord, 5 years before Mommy met him, he became convicted about his habit and asked the Lord to help him. After a great struggle he was able to kick it. 

Shortly after we met, his asthma began to return. It first started with only needing an over the counter allergy inhaler to give him relief when he was working in a dusty, dirty job or really tired. Then when we moved up here to Oregon, it got worse. The grass and tree pollen is really bad here in the spring and summer. He started going to a doctor for his condition. First he had an emergency inhaler with albuterol sulfate in it. Several years later he was having so much trouble between the weather and his job working in refrigeration, heating and air conditioning repair, that he went to the doctor and told him that he felt like he was drowning. They did a blood oxygen test on him and if he would of been one point lower they would of hospitalized him. They gave him a breathing treatment there and since he responded and the oxygen in his blood increased, they sent him home with a month of steroids to get the inflammation in his lungs down. Then they put him on a twice a day inhaler called Symbicort. It was a very expensive medicine ($350 an inhaler). It was a special drug that suppressed your immune system and it targeted your lungs. The doctor gave dad a free sample one. We did not have insurance to cover it, so your dad limped along with not using it all the time like it said to. 

Finally dad was able to change jobs and started working for Providence Hospital. It really helped his health as he got to work inside with very sterile air and he worked in the sterile processing department for the surgery center of the hospital. Also we were able to get insurance that covered the expensive Symbicort. His breathing did improve but he still needed his medicine for the summer and when he got a cold. He would also have allergic reactions to the pollen of watery and burning eyes and dripping nose. 

This summer, God touched your dad. My eyes are full of tears as I write this part. He stopped needing to use his inhaler. He could go outside and garden with Mama and not be bothered by the pollen. He stopped snoring loudly at night when he was tired and I would look over at him and he was breathing through his nose and his mouth was closed. Daddy had always needed to breath through his mouth at night to get enough air to breath. He went to his doctor and told how his breathing was so much better and not needing his medicine and his doctor was very surprised and said that he doesn't get news like that. Daddy is not taking any special vitamins or supplememts, just eating healthy and staying hydrated, as he has for a while now. 

Dear sweet girl we are rejoicing in this work. The Lord promised your dad and I that we would live to raise you and he is abundantly fulfilling His promise to us. Your dad loves the Lord with all his heart and he is following the Lord in the truth humbly and faithfully. His walk with the Lord has always been such a joy and inspiration to me!!

Dad's tomato plant that has produced 40 tomatoes so far

Your are the wonderful fruit of our lives!

Your dad's grapevine that is blooming in the fall too!

Beautiful fruit from blossoms this spring

Dad's loaded grapevine