Sep 12
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I sure hope you own your own children
ChristianGovernance eletter – September 17, 2012
A homosexualist/humanist advocate last week labeled Christian parenting as “sinister.” We linked to the article in our last eletter: “Intolerance disguised as parental rights”, by Howard Elliott. This writer was commenting on the Christian father in Hamilton, Ontario who is suing his government school board. He wants the right to review troubling course content before it is fed to his child in school. He wants to be able to exercise the right to withdraw his child from classes when objectionable material is being taught. Mr. Elliott, in his comments, also objected to the father’s statement that he owns his children: “‘My children are my own. I own them. They don’t belong to the school board.’ (Yes, he actually said he owns his children.)”
Christian parents have been fearful of using such language for years. Praise God for a sensible parent who is not afraid to use such simple, straight-forward language to clarify the nature of the conflict.
The fact of the matter is that non-ownership of children does not exist as a real-world category – even though many Christian leaders are among those who wish this were not so.
Non-ownership of children is a non-existent category. So what does the term mean? Even many Christians get all queasy around the term. Why? Because the left has successfully associated the concept of owning children with images of slave labour and child abuse, treating people as property.
What’s interesting is that most of these Christians are not card-carrying communists. If they were logically consistent, they would be. After all, in other areas of life Christians and conservatives commend ownership – private ownership of property. The idea of private ownership is considered a good thing by conservatives, including most Christians.
Why is private ownership of property considered a good thing? For simply ideological, esoteric, abstract reasons? No. Because we understand that property owned by individuals, rather than property “owned” in common, or by the state, tends be cared for better, tends to be treated in a superior manner. Private property tends to increase in value. It is made more productive or more beautiful, depending on what it is. Ownership is recognized by conservatives and Christians as a positive dynamic and a positive arrangement for that which is owned.
So, why is this understanding flipped on its head when it comes to the idea of owning one’s own children?
Pure irrationality. Fear of the rhetoric of the humanist left and all the nasty associations they have made to the concept.
If you recognize that you own your own children, you are more likely to take better care of them than if you keep trying to pretend that you don’t really own them.
As noted earlier, there is no such thing as a category of non-ownership. If you don’t own your children somebody else does. Guess who that is? The humanist Left’s rhetoric against the ownership of children has served – whether intentionally or not – to camouflage the modern movement towards State-ownership of children. We talk about if often. Government schools. Child care at ever younger ages. The powers of children’s aid society agencies. Oppressive regulations for home schooling in many jurisdictions. Etc. We seem to recognize that the humanist Left has been pushing to take control/ownership of our children for at least a couple of generations now.
But when it comes to articulating the best – the Christian – alternative of the ownership of children by their own parents, we get all nervous, our language becomes confusing, and our categories get fuzzy. We’re weak and halting. And the enemy wins another round.
No it doesn’t all come down to whether or not you use the word ownership. But it does come down to the posture of weakness reflected in the fear of using such language.
We use the same possessive pronouns when talking about our children as we do when talking about our other belongings: “my”, “yours”, “his”, etc. It’s silly semantics driven by fear (or ignorance) that leads so many of us to try to argue that possessive terms really don’t mean possession or ownership when talking about our children. If that’s so, then you’re talking gibberish and words don’t mean anything. That’s Postmodernism for you, not Biblical Christianity.
I own my child. You own your children as well, and if you know what’s good for them, you shouldn’t be afraid to say so. If you don’t think you own your children then, by default, you are surrendering them to the State and, Biblically, that is not an option that is available to you.
Remember the two women who both told King Solomon that they were the mother of the same child? The lying woman was willing to have the baby killed in order to get her half of a dead baby. The real mother, the one who owned the child – who knew that the child was HERS – told Solomon to give him wholly to the other woman rather than kill him. With that plea, Solomon knew who the real mother was. Do you love your human possession that much? I bet you do – and I bet you love him far more than any agent or agency competing for that ownership of your child ever will. So celebrate and protect YOUR possession sacrificially in a way that you never would for something you did not own.