From the Executive Director

I remember when I was growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s; more than one evangelical preacher predicted the apocalyptic day when our Bibles would be taken from us Christians.  Believers were encouraged to memorize scriptures, goaded not by the Spirit of God, but by the intimidating threat that God’s Word would one day be unavailable.  Now, some three decades later, the plethora of Bible translations as well as Bibles on cd’s, dvd’s, downloads and the internet could easily generate a long and hearty laugh at those fearful prophecies of old.&nbsp

"For seven days you shall keep the feast to the Lord your God at the place that the Lord will choose, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.”—Deut. 16:15 (ESV)

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?

A recent article in the liberal magazine Parenting covered the concerning statistic that more than one in five American adults now take at least one type of medication to treat a psychological or behavioral disorder, a 22 percent rise since 2001. Similarly, there was a 264% increase of medication for ADHD among women aged 20-44 in the last decade.  The author described a young mother who was diagnosed with “situational depression” by her therapist. What was the horrendous “situation” that she confessed was the trigger for her depression? Her children.

The concept of advertising intrigues me. Think about it with me for a moment. People who live thousands of miles from us, who don’t know us at all, get paid a whole lot of money to get us to buy something we really don’t need. How often have you gone into someone’s home or even a place of business and there on the television set is the Home Shopping Network? It takes me back to my nostalgic high school days of Ronco and K-Tel. (I just dated myself.)

Our first trip to the ICHE Convention was in 2000, some 13 years ago. We’ll never forget that initial five-hour trip from our southern IL home as we drove through sunshine, torrential downpours, excessive winds and tornado warnings. We even had to pull off the road once because we were afraid the hail was going to crack our windshield.

The tendency of most people—Christians included—is to wait for things to get really bad before they react and, unfortunately, that reaction can get pretty ugly. Legislative Days has been ICHE’s way of being a proactive and positive presence in Springfield and beyond for several years. Because of this forward thinking, who knows how many potential pitfalls have been avoided that would have otherwise threatened our home schooling freedoms here in Illinois. An ounce of prevention …

Surely, most of us have heard the saying, “He who defines the terms wins the argument.”  We see this most clearly in modern day culture throughout the media.  Words such as “tolerance” have been twisted and bent so that they mirror little of their original intent but it matters not because society as a whole has bought into the new definition and it has opened up a Pandora’s box of sin that will infect several future generations until it is corrected. 

The face of home schooling has changed much since its infancy. While we may not be considered mainstream yet, the overall culture has definitely taken notice, which is evident from the recruiting of home-educated students at the collegiate level to the marketing of curriculum and other educational tools to the growing populace. It has provided numerous opportunities that seemed but a far off dream to its forefathers.

Deuteronomy 8 was given as a strong warning to the Hebrews who stood at a similar place of prosperity in their history:

I was recently talking with a dear friend, a home schooling father, and he commented that home educators’ independent spirit was their greatest strength as well as their biggest weakness, a blessing and a curse. I smiled because of my experiences on both sides of the coin.