When a culture loses its grip on those foundations, the “experts” (or, as C.S. Lewis called them “conditioners”) step in. They loudly suggest that a college degree in education and a place on the government’s payroll gives someone the vocational and moral authority over kids. Don’t buy it. That authority belongs to God, Who assigns it to parents, along with the responsibility to educate children. If we believe that, we should also trust Him to equip us to rise to the occasion of raising our children.

On Tuesday, Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated incumbent Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor race. The issue that gave Youngkin the edge was education, something that Republicans in Virginia typically do not perform as well on. Things have apparently changed in the Commonwealth, however, after a year and a half of school shutdowns, heated disagreements over masking policies, debates over whether Critical Theory should be taught in the classroom on issues of race and LGBTQ, a horrific cover-up by the Loudon County school board, and, especially, Governor McAuliffe’s comment during a September debate that parents ‘shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach.’ 
As shocked as Virginians were by the statement, the view of education it reflects has a storied history. The late sociologist Christopher Lasch described it in his 1979 bestseller, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Lasch believed that when industrialization took labor outside of the home, it led many Americans to question whether other responsibilities should leave home, too. Lasch quotes two national education officials who, in 1918, said, “Once the school had mainly to teach the elements of knowledge; now it is charged with the physical, mental and social training of the child as well.”
Around the same time, Sigmund Freud was psychoanalyzing parenthood, often casting parents in the role of villain. This was also the era in which the modern concept of social work was born, and when America launched the juvenile justice system. Entire industries were built upon the premise that parents were largely unqualified to raise their kids, or at least needed a lot of help from the state. In the late 1800s, Ellen Richards, the founder of modern social work, suggested that “in a social republic, the child as a future citizen is an asset of the state, not the property of its parents.”
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The congregation recently released a special statement highlighting its troubled history and explaining why the church changed its name to “Redeeming Grace Church.” The statement also explained why the congregation left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America denomination. One factor in such a separation is that it would allow the church to welcome back some of the former leaders sanctioned for their roles in the abuse case.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A West Lafayette church at the center of “minor-on-minor abuse” allegations opted to change its name to put the “painful chapter in our story” behind them.
A December 2021 Indy Star investigation found Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church Pastor Jared Olivetti and elders Keith Magill, Ben Larson and David Carr failed to act with urgency in responding to inappropriate behavior and sexual offenses by a boy at the church.
In January of 2022, the national governing body of the Reformed Presbyterian Church announced that Olivetti must refrain from exercising his duties as pastor pending the result of his ecclesiastical trial, which resulted in his defrocking.
The congregation recently released a special statement highlighting its troubled history and explaining why the church changed its name to “Redeeming Grace Church.” The statement also explained why the congregation left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America denomination. One factor in such a separation is that it would allow the church to welcome back some of the former leaders sanctioned for their roles in the abuse case.
“If you do know us by the name ‘Immanuel,’ it’s likely you know something of the negative publicity and very hard years recently suffered by our congregation,” the statement reads.
“Those years began with the revelation of minor-on-minor abuse in and around the congregation. As we worked through that painful chapter in our story, our former elders worked to follow the pertinent laws, to believe and support the victims, and to honor Christ.”
The IndyStar investigation revealed that leaders at the West Lafayette church were informed that children from multiple families had been abused and harassed by another minor within the congregation, according to internal church documents obtained by IndyStar.
The ecclesiastic trial revoked Olivetti’s ordination and status as an elder, the IndyStar reported, forbidding him practicing in any capacity within the denomination. He has also been suspended from participating in sacraments such as communion.
Olivetti and his fellow elders were found to have kept the abuse from church members for more than four months, even as they learned of additional transgressions.
The perpetrator, a teenage boy, was a relative of the pastor. Rather than immediately recuse himself, Olivetti continued to shape the church’s response, taking advantage of his position as a leader to interfere with the investigation, according to the IndyStar reporting.
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The need for preachers and leaders to stand strong on biblical truth and proclaim it fearlessly has always been great, but certainly so today. We have far too much compromise, equivocation, men-pleasing, and seeking to have feet in both camps. The need of the hour is what we find Joshua saying elsewhere: “choose today whom you will serve” (Josh. 24:15, NLT). Mealy-mouthed pastors who want to please everyone will never be pleasing to God.

Yes, this is a strange title, but wait: there is a connection between the Atlanta pastor and the two Old Testament champions of the faith. Indeed, this article is all about faith: real faith versus false faith. Biblical faith is never divorced from obedience to God and his word. Fake faith is all about ‘if it feels right, do it,’ and anything goes.
Let me explain. I have written before about Andy Stanley, the preacher son of another well-known preacher, Charles Stanley. I have already penned three articles about the son over the past five years, given what worrying things he has said that are at odds with biblical Christianity.
For example, he has basically embraced the heresy of Marcionism, in which he dismisses the Old Testament as irrelevant for the believer today. Back in 2018, he said that Christians need to “unhitch” themselves from the OT.

And in another article, I took him to task for making this reckless claim: “Participants in the new covenant (that’s Christians) are not required to obey any of the commandments found in the first part of their Bibles.” Good grief: so we can now kill, lie, steal and commit adultery since OT law means nothing to us now? See more on this here.

I also penned a piece on why the OT is indispensable to the Christian, and to ignore it or to reject it is to reject God himself.
So what is Andy up to now? Well, he has been quite weak on homosexuality, for a while causing many Christian leaders to be further concerned about him and his wishy-washy positions. Now he has come out and said homosexuals in churches have more faith than straights do.
Um, biblical faith is ALWAYS tied in with obedience. Just as one can never say a Christian living in adultery is faith-filled or faithful, so too here. A ‘homosexual Christian’ is a contradiction in terms – full stop. Living in known sin and being a faithful Christian is an oxymoron.
But some might argue that Stanley should be taken to task privately for all this. However, the old principle holds here: ‘Private sin, private rebuke; public sin, public rebuke’. When you proclaim heterodox views from the pulpit, then they need to be called out. Another American pastor – and an ex-homosexual – Daren Mehl said this on social media:
When someone as big as Stanley openly rebukes the Bible, it is Stanley who is openly in error and STANLEY who OPENLY needs to be corrected so ALL can hear. Andy got this far into heresy because he left the truth a while ago. He started to miss the discernment on lgbtq a while ago. His current public error is fruit of a seed from a while ago. I would place my bets he’s selfishly ambitious and looking for a “middle ground” or “third way” so he can play both sides without having to offend anyone with the truth.
Indeed this seems to be a long-standing habit of Stanley. He seems to want to straddle the fence and he seems to delight in being deliberately vague and unclear on these sorts of issues. In a recent article, Denny Burke warned that this recurring ambiguity of Stanley is just far too problematic:
Stanley’s message comes across as a straightforwardly affirming position on homosexuality in the church. He valorizes the faith of homosexuals as head-and-shoulders above the faith of straight Christians. He says, “the men and women I know who are gay, their faith and their confidence in God dwarfs mine. And so not only is there room, there’s plenty of room” for them in the church. He brushes aside what the Bible says about homosexuality as “clobber” verses, as if those texts somehow harm gay sinners.

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