The order is coming down from the federal government, from the assistant deputy secretary, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, Kevin Jennings, who also founded GLSEN. At one of his many speaking engagements around the country, at the Third International Conference on Conflict Resolution Education in Cleveland, in March, he described his plans for “safe schools.”
They now will be free, not only of drugs and weapons, but more importantly (in his estimation) of “uncivil behavior, verbal threats, hate language, and social rejection.”
Social rejection entails choosing one’s friends. The idea of having a “best friend” is going the way of prayer and patriotism in our schools.
A recent New York Times article described the vanishing best friend. Parents who encourage non-exclusivity by scheduling group activities are getting their cues from the schools that try “to prevent bullying through workshops and posters.”
The article also quotes psychologists who say that close childhood friendships help children “develop the skills for healthy adult relationships.”
There is even more at stake. C.S. Lewis in “The Four Loves” writes that it is “easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. … Men who have real Friends are less easy to manage or ‘get at’; harder for good Authorities to correct or for bad Authorities to corrupt. Hence if our masters, by force or by propaganda about ‘Togetherness’ or by unobtrusively making privacy and unplanned leisure impossible, ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude.”
Whether one is a political ruler, teacher or Department of Education bureaucrat, friendship threatens their power. And as I learned at this conference, their ultimate goal is to mold students into “global citizens.”
Their lessons go far beyond civics, citizenship or even political correctness. They want to change the world by changing children.
No wonder my college students look at me as if they had just been released from a Stockholm bank.
Hey Seth…I have with regularity told a world of those who fake and impostor you are the best friend I have ever had outside of a biological brother.
Whatever pains you have felt in your own journey have been channeled into care for a fatherless generation.
I for one have been blessed beyond measure.
Much love from your brother writing in the mountains of Colorado.
Butch
Koinonia in the Kingdom of God is the antidote for this. We should not neglect its cultivation.
Thank God for my tribe! Let’em try and break up my band of brothers!!
great lewis quote.
Just Google “kevin jennings fistgate” and you’ll learn everything you need to know about Obama’s “Safe School Czar”. Christian or not, you’ll be freaked out.
“producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends”
I’ve actually observed this mentality within a Bible Study group I was part of for a while. Everybody was busy attending group events and keeping up with the social scene, but I saw few relationships get much deeper than the surface level.
Being a fairly deep person but shy person, I found it comforting at first because it felt safe, but incredibly frustrating as the months and years went on with few actual personal friendships.
The whole thing was perplexing to me. And since most were older single folks, I came to the conclusion that they were getting their emotional needs met enough by the group that they were subconsciously unwilling to risk actual relationships. Maybe that’s assuming too much, but it was certainly and anomoly of some sort.
“Thank God for my tribe! Let’em try and break up my band of brothers!!” -thanks for the above comment, Glenn. I totally agree with you, and get fired up in the same combative way (screw non-combative sometimes when it’s clearly the enemy of our souls, and not people, we’re actually fighting).
The solution is trust. Trust in God. Trust that future Christian brothers and sisters will obey His commands after our time here comes to an end. Our grandchildren will experience a ‘new normal’ from what we who are living have ‘always’ experienced in this country. We can get pissed at ridiculous legislature that hints at taking away the right to choose friends because we have always had that right. If things go the way they’re going, future generations might not even know they SHOULD get pissed and take action… because to them, it will have ‘always been this way’.
Again, it comes down to trust in God, that He knows what the heck He’s doing… don’t worry, He does.
Very insightful! Collectivism, the enemy of freedom, has fallen away somewhat in the former Soviet bloc, but has left some, perhaps many, without a normal love for their children. Some of the most selfish people I remember meeting were from a Soviet bloc country, and I don’t think they regarded themselves as selfish. They just literally did not understand, really, really did not understand, why they should consider the needs and feelings of others. Without close bonds, how can we understand another’s feelings, and how can we learn to care?
Thanks, Seth, for continuing to share real truth that I need to hear. I’m in Wash DC this week with family and at a few points looked inside to think, “who am I?”, a very easy thing to do in such a city of power and grandeur. Then the Lord answered quietly,”Mine”. Maybe should have asked, “whose am I?”
And then I read your article and thought of my closest amigos Martin Medina, numero uno, Chris King, John Latimer and Rusty Ridgeway. I guess I have one best friend in Martin and three runners up.
Thanks for your friendship and writing.
Grace and peace,
Tony