Jesus commended the centurion for understanding His authority in performing miracles. It is biblical to "be under authority" (that's where disciple came from - under discipline of an elder in the Lord). There is a significant difference in a child being under the authority of an older parental authority in order to teach proper use of dangerous implements... and statist control over all human endeavors - to restrict God given rights from use by a responsible and free people so the statists retain control over the unwashed masses. You won't acknowledge there is a difference after I explained it 3 times.
Yes, I grew up in the '60's and 70's. The public high school I went to - you could see probably 2 dozen guns in the gun rack of pickups on any given day in the student lot. TODAY, today, a kid eats a Poptart into the shape of a gun and he gets expelled.
I was introduced to Christ as a young boy by my den mother in Cub Scouts. Most Scout groups are Christian, but they let boys from other faiths participate - knowing the Scouting foundation is Christian.
Now, you may want to argue that the best way to achieve the Christian life is to set up a totally isolated and biblically ordered community. It's been tried before. But, I think the deeds of Christ backs up my belief that it's more evangelically beneficial to reach out to the broader community and show how a Christ-oriented organization provides a better foundation than Godless, statist indoctrination, which seeks to restrict thoughts and actions to their PC-approved notions so the elites retain power.
Well, it's probably a moot point trying to defend the Scouts with this new homo policy. There's probably no way to turn it back with all of the leftist forces pushing relentlessly to sexualize this organization that's chock full of healthy young boys. SICK BASTARTS!
being under authority...
The Boy Scouts are not part of civil government, the family or the Church.
Though Churches sponsor some groups, the Boy Scouts report up through their national leadership. The Boy Scouts organization therefore is separate and distinct from the particular Church denomination organization. Some Churches are involved in their troops, some not very much at all.
It’s simply two different organizations, even if they both have “good intentions”.
A Church can’t order the Boy Scouts to alter their moral teachings, but at the same time a Church that is Scriptural must insist upon their members adhering to their specific teachings.
One only has to carefully review the Family Life merit badge, required for Eagle, to uncover not only unscriptural teaching, but teaching that is right out of the statist/new world order playbook. I leave the meticulous analysis of this as an exercise for the reader; simply compare a solid Reformed Christian text on child rearing with these merit badge activities. The entire content of the badge covers subjects that parents should be teaching to their sons exclusively by themselves in a Scriptural fashion. In terms of Biblical parenting, parents certainly should not be delegating the instruction of these topics. Mind you, this is the first badge I reviewed in this way.
Also, a Church has no legitimate authority over non-members; the most serious Church discipline is excommunication. So what that means is a Church is sponsoring an external organization over which it has no doctrinal control, children are turned over to this organization, which may then teach contrary to the particular Church’s interpretation of Scripture. Doesn’t make much sense for a Church unless they exclusively staff the whole thing - and then edit Boy Scouts teaching to conform to their own, which would not fly with the Boy Scouts. One then would think that a Church should simply make its own youth organization, which actually is also unscriptural in that since the teaching of youth is such a predominant and important topic in the Bible, if youth groups were acceptable to God they would without a doubt be mentioned in Scripture, yet they are not. There are only the ordained Church offices, i.e., O.T. priest, teacher, etc., none of which are ever commanded to organize youth groups of the congregation’s children in the Old or New Testament, and the head of household that provides for family leadership. This would then mean that adding youth groups to Churches would fall under the category of sinfully “adding” our own innovations to Scriptural definitions of Christ’s Church.
Only a few short years ago I was completely oblivious to most of these concerns.
The totally isolated Christian society is, of course, false doctrine. Christians need to bring the Gospel to unbelievers, to be “salt” and “light”, which requires them to participate in the world - to that end. Of course, there is also the command to separate ourselves from the evil of this world. So clearly this means that if our participation in the world starts tempting us to sin, we need to back off that particular approach and use another. Certainly we need to not only be out and about in culture, business, science, etc., but lead wherever we can, thus furthering Christ’s Kingdom. We need to remember, however, that the Bible defines the roles of family, government and Church.
On that difference perhaps we can’t quite agree; I would only highlight the concept of statism always starting out in very tiny, innocuous measures, and the key controlling point of weapons should always raise a flag. The right to weaponry is unqualified; it is the punishment of wrongdoers and the process of self-defense that restrains (but does not promise to eliminate) wrongdoings committed with weapons.
We certainly do agree on the sitiation as it stands now. It’s time for people to form their own clubs, exactly per their own wishes. They have every right to do so. Don’t bother thinking about tax exemption, IMHO; make it informal or incorporate normally.