Some Reflections On Religion In School and Government

I had a few minutes during lunch today and wanted to pen some thoughts that have been on my mind.

I was thinking this morning about how emotional we can get as adults over issues like prayer in school, elimination of the Pledge of Allegiance and what religion our president claims to be. As a kid in grade school, I don’t think any of us kids really viewed the “Pledge” as anything more than a morning ritual quite honestly. I don’t believe we were ever taught verse-by-verse what it even meant; besides-we were focused more on things like lunch and recess. Nowadays it’s a popular big deal to take on passive crusades (by that I mean shallow lip-service) to make public our disapproval of those who seek to change or eliminate the “Pledge” or deny our children the right to pray in school. This is usually undertaken with little more action than a few keystrokes. I’m all for prayer; I’m just not convinced that there are many Christian kids that had or would publicly pray in school had a controversy not taken root anyway.

Now the daily news is ridiculously focused on the religious “leaning” of president Obama. Good grief-how many different ways can he say he’s a Christian? Even if he were not-I’m not sure it would matter in contrast to Bill Clinton who led our nation as a Christian if you catch my drift. Surely I would “like” my president to be a Christian yet I’m a pragmatist and as such understand the faith principles of a man or woman new to Washington are mandated to be “checked” along with his or her bags and coat at the door for the duration of their term (except on Christmas and Easter for photo-ops) so they are better equipped to “play ball”…hardball.

All that said-if we as Christians value God in the public sector so much then why aren’t most of us practicing our belief out loud in our own home? How many among us pray daily together as a family? How often do our kids see mom and dad pray together, study scripture or read literature that grows us as Christ-followers? Its gut-check time folks because my bet is our kids see us spending exponentially and ridiculously more time on internet social networking sites than they see us doing any of the above.

What would it look like to our kids, if they saw mom and dad spending even a mere 20% of the time they waste on Facebook serving as volunteers in some capacity instead?

It seems to me we need to get our head on straight, wise up and give God priority in our own house and set the example for our kids there.