Freedom Of Speech & The Constitution In An Uncertain World

icon-play Listen Now
Episode Summary

Is free speech disappearing for Christians? If you feel that way, it will be encouraging to get a refreshing reminder of our Constitution and Bill of Rights in this episode. People died for our freedoms and they protected our ability to have a government structure that makes our country the freest in the world. But if you don’t know your rights you may get bullied out of using them. Let’s live in freedom as our documents allow and teach them to our children!

In honor of all those who have sacrificed to fight for and protect the freedoms and liberties we get to enjoy today as Americans, we wanted to emphasize the importance of knowing our rights, exercising our rights, and teaching them to the next generation. The advancement of technology and online media has had massive influence on personal convictions, political views, and the beliefs of our fellow citizens. Fake news makes discerning truth harder and harder and as Christ-followers we must be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.

As citizens of the United States we are privileged with many freedoms and rights but those freedoms must be exercised within the boundaries of the law. We must remember that the law, was a man-made social construct, whereas the Bible is God’s Holy and infallible Word. In this episode, we go in-depth about the rights we have as citizens and the consequences of infringing on other people’s rights. We cover the importance of teaching our children those rights and standing firm when those rights are threatened or abused. Let us honor those to whom honor is due by taking time to appreciate the powerful freedom that provides protection and justice for all.

In This Episode We Cover:

  1. Standing up for our freedom is thanking those who died to create it and those who protect it.
  2. If we don’t exercise our freedoms we may lose them in the future. This is about what legacy we leave the next generation.
  3. Freedom of speech and religion & the internet.
  4. Personal testimonies of how God vindicated us from intense hardships, and how we responded by exercising our rights and pursuing justice.
  5. Review of the Constitution & Bill of Rights
  6. Scriptures that speak directly to the opposition Christians face and will continue to as the days draw closer to the end and why it is so crucial to be prepared to give an answer for what you believe.

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Subscribe

* indicates required

Scripture In This Episode:

John 15:13 – “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 –To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing; A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak; A time to love, And a time to hate; A time of war, And a time of peace.”

Romans 13:7 – “Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.”

Ephesians 6:11 – “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

1 Peter 3:14-16 –But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.” But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.”

Psalm 44:4-8 –You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob. Through You we will push down our enemies;
Through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, Nor shall my sword save me. But You have saved us from our enemies, And have put to shame those who hated us. In God we boast all day long, And praise Your name forever. Selah”

Proverbs 6:16-19 –These six things the Lord hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.”

  • All Ministry Resources: becourageousministry.org

    Social Media For Christians – BE COURAGEOUS app

    • Exclusive access to the courageous kid’s podcast. Play it for your kids to stir up good discussions.
    • Monthly LIVE Q&A with the Tolpins; ask the anything.
    • Powerful Biblically minded community.
    • Topic-based discussion groups.
    • You get your own profile and can connect with others.
    • Resources on marriage, parenting, homeschooling, pregnancy/birth, and more.

    We look forward to engaging with you on the inside!

    FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

    Relevant Resource Links:

    If The Spirit Prompts You to Financially Support (We are a for-profit, for social good organization.)

    • Financial Giving, is important to support our family and expand the impact of the ministry. We aim to impact 10 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 9 at home, so everything makes a difference. 

    Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 10 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting podcast, the weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world. Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom. And I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married 20 years, and have seen the fruit in raising our eight kids biblically based on the raw truth found in the Bible. We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from the faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. If you’ve been with us a long time, we are so glad you’re back. And if you’re new. Welcome. We have, I think, 76 episodes now. If I got there. Right. But a lot of episodes. And we’re so excited to be on this journey today. We’re shifting gears a little bit. It is Memorial Day. That’s right.

And you guys will be getting this the day after Memorial Day. But actually about a month before the Fourth of July. So we thought that this is would be a good topic to cover. And just to honor those who have gone before us and laid down their lives for our freedoms.

But a lot of practical stuff for your kids, too. And he has some amazing resources she wants to mention to be able to teach people about the Constitution, Bill of Rights and so forth. But also it’s important as Christians that we know our rights because if we don’t, we might lose them.

And the reality is, is if we don’t know them and we’re not teaching them, we’re not remembering those who fought and died so that we could have these freedoms. It’s really an insult to them right. It’s an insult to those whose family members are gone and they’re still living and they know they’ve experienced great sacrifice for us, for our freedoms, right? Yeah.

And so we want to teach our kids to give honor where honor is due to be respectful in that kind of way. So we have some scriptures that we decided to share with you guys. And you may see me if you’re watching our youtube version. You may see me holding this tiny little green book. This is the Bill of Rights we’ve reading up on this. We also have other resources that we’ve been using to gather information, of course, some online resources as well.

So you’re going to hear a short summary of the Constitution today. Some of the Bill of Rights. And we’re going to tie this in to relevant things regarding today.

That’s right. But you had a special quote that you wanted to share.

Yeah. Abraham Lincoln. I just remember when we were on our three month RV trip around the country, we went to Gettysburg. Yeah, we were there on 151st anniversary of the Civil War. You guys, there are reenactments going. It was cool.

So this there’s an image on my Instagram resolute man of Abraham Lincoln because there’s a statue there. Interesting fact is that statue is one of the only ones that is there for the purpose of someone giving a speech in the United States. And so there’s the Gettysburg Address, obviously a two minute speech. But here’s just the bottom part of it. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. So important that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. And we’re in a day where we start to see some of the stuff perishing.

That’s right. I love that it says “we resolve that what they died for is not in vain.” Resolve resolute man. Yeah. Posted about how we resolve. So as a parent, as an American citizen, what do you resolve to do on this day, Memorial Day or on Independence Day or any other day where we have the freedom? Right now, we have the ability to get our hands on resources that can help us to teach our children about our nation’s history, about why we have the rights that we have. And I think that that that is just we have to remember, we have to gain resolve. Like that said, we have to have a resolve.

Otherwise, we’re not actually going to fall through any other way and to make wise choices for our family and protecting our family as the darts of will come our way sometimes.

That’s right. So we have some scripture that we wanted to just share with you guys first to kick off this tribute. This is really where we’re titling this podcast Freedom of Speech and the Constitution in an uncertain world.

So we’re going to be covering a lot of different points in this podcast. So you wanted it tip it off.

John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one’s life for his friends. And the soldiers are our friends, aren’t they?

I mean, obviously, they lay down their lives for many freedoms. Right. Yeah. And we’re not just talking about one war, we’re not just no, we’re not bringing up you. You read from Abraham Lincoln, right. So some people might think, oh, is this about a certain war like the Civil War or we’re talking about the Constitution. Maybe people are thinking know Revolutionary War. Have been many wars in America’s history. There’ve been many wars in the history, biblical history. All right. And we’re not going to get into all of those, but we want to bring on or we want to share with you guys the things that we’re just sharing with you, the conversations we would be having with our kids that we do have with our kids. And I think shared that quote with our kids this morning. We reflected on what we saw when we went to Gettysburg. And we actually were at where? The 9/11 memorial. Yeah. And got to see the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July when we went on our trip. An amazing impact on our kids to be able to walk around that and talk about living history. Right. And for your kids, those are memories they’ll never forget.

Yeah, we’re not the fearful type taking all our kids in New York City and walking around driving an RV factory around the country. But, you know, I you guys, as we were preparing this time, there were a couple of verses that came to us that we wanted to share with you guys, because some people are very anti-war.

Right. And in the Bible has many examples of loving enemies and praying for your enemies for sure.

And we are to definitely do that. But there are also scriptures that teach us that we need to we need to actually stand up for truth and we need to stand up for what’s right. You know, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is one of those versus it says to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die. And it continues on. A time to kill and a time to heal. And then if you go all the way down, I’m going to go diverse eight, which says A time to love and a time to hate. A time of war and a time of peace. And so obviously, there are times in history for all of these different things. There are more in there. That was Ecclesiastes three, if you want to go and be encouraged by that word.

But one of the things that Isaac and I have tried to teach our kids is that it’s important that we are giving honor to where honor is due. And this is something that I think people are not doing often today. What do you think about that, Isaac?

Absolutely. All the time. Well. Yeah, lots of different scenarios. And then I can think of two people borrowing from other people’s content to slander defamation to all kinds of things happening.

Well, it says, though, to render. So if I go to Romans 13:7 seven, I would encourage you guys to read verses the verses before it where it says it’s talking about the government actually and being subject to authorities. And this is part of why we’re bringing this up, you guys, is because we are living in uncertain times right now. Yeah, there is a lot of uncertainty. There are things happening with the potential election in October. Right. Like you were just teaching us this morning about ballots.

Potentially mail-in ballots and versus going in and voting and how fraud can have potentially more likely, more likely to happen.

And so there’s there’s a lot of things that are going to be coming up that are uncertain. Right. That are there. There is opportunity for the devil to sneak in like a thief to steal, kill and destroy like it says in John ten button Romans 13:7. It says render therefore to all their do taxes to whom taxes are due to other government. Customs to whom customs fear. To whom fear and honor.

To whom honor. And I don’t know about you guys, but people who have died for us to have freedom.

Well, in my mind they are do are honor. Absolutely. Ah, do our honor. And if we don’t teach our children what those families have sacrificed, what current people are sacrificing. Like I have some friends whose husbands are in the military. Yeah. And there’s a great sacrifice for those wives and those kids when their husbands are gone.

So if you run into a veteran or somebody currently serving, let’s all treat them like heroes. Let’s buy their coffee, let’s pay for their lunch. Let’s warm. Have a great smile on her face when we greet them. And we don’t have to agree in all aspects of war and things like that. But there is truth that they are doing what they’re supposed to do. And it does protect our country. There’s a reason our country is one of the freest countries in the entire world. And overall, we have the greatest government that’s ever existed. Are there problems? Absolutely. But if you compare it to other governments, it is absolutely better in the way that it creates more freedom for its citizens. And so let’s not be tarnished by the things we don’t like and not embrace all the goodness that exists in the reason that goodness is allowed to exist because of these incredible people who fought for our freedom.

Yeah. And I you know, we said earlier in the intro when are talking about not if we don’t exercise our freedoms, we can lose them.

And in what you mean by that is that whenever we don’t utilize, people don’t value in over time, people stop valuing it, then it will stop getting passed in favor or something will come against it. It will disappear. Do you see that through history? Whatever we tend to take for granted disappears. And so that’s what you mean there is that we if we’re not knowing our rights, then we’re likely not fully exercising them and when they’re infringed upon, fully standing firm against that infringement.

Right. And you can’t you can’t stand up for your rights if you don’t know them. Yeah. So you have to know what your rights are first, which is why we’re doing this part of this podcast as well. Because you guys, if we if there are people, today is a day when we are honoring those who have died for our freedom and then we’re just living and not exercising the freedoms that they died for. Isn’t that also somewhat of it’s it’s like it’s not really honoring them, actually. And and I keep thinking about legacy. You guys know, Isaac and I were big on legacy. We think vision forward. And so honestly, when we say things like if you don’t exercise your freedom, you’re liable to lose it, you might lose it. Now, we’re actually talking about generations from now. You know, we’re talking about like, OK, I’ll soldiers use homeschooling, for example. Yeah. There have been many attempts to take away the right of parents to be able to homeschool. It’s actually illegal in some countries.

And whether you homeschool or not, I’m sure you agree that we should have the right to do so? Especially in the data is in favor of it, right?

I mean, even people who are not Christians would say this exact same thing. Right. Like, if the government made it a law that all children had to go to a Christian school. Wouldn’t those who were not Christian feel this urge to be like, wait a minute, this is my right to act to protect my kids? Yeah. And so, yeah, it’s not just a Christian thing like this is a right that all parents should have to be able to teach their children and to make that decision and what they’re going to be taught and is just it’s a right that we have right now. And I’m not saying that you all have to exercise that right. By homeschooling. That’s what I’m saying. What I am saying, though, is we should be aware of what our rights are and we should be teaching them to our children. We should be supporting those to have those rights. Otherwise, that could be taken.

And remember, it’s not the government. It’s the people. What is the government? It’s made up of people and who elected the officials, the people. So we should never fear our government. It was set up in a way that we never have to. But we as people have rights and if we don’t use them, we lose them.

Ok. I mean, and that’s actually I even think about the right to bear arms. You guys, I mean, you could literally take any fundamental rights that we have and we could potentially lose any of those if we don’t stand up for them.

Ok. So Ephesians 6:11 put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness and heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand. Of course, there’s a lot of good stuff after that. You should read that.

And wow that has been such a powerful thing in our history, we’ll talk about some of the many situations where God has defended us in our past, which is just remarkable. And that’s it gives us this faith to be able to stand strong.

It’s true because we’ve been in some precarious situations as some that we walked into, some that came upon us, you know, like a thief in the night, in a way. And we our heart is to just glorify God, you guys and him as he totally vindicated us of all of them. Yeah. And he is righteous to do so. He will protect those who are walking in him, at least in our experience.

You know, it was common in all of those. Listen, I’m in a little bit. Yeah. Is it also involve us taking action? That’s true in faith and standing strong.

Do you think we would have the rights that we have today if people didn’t weren’t willing to actually fight for our right to not just die so that we could have the right, but we have people who are serving to protect our rights every day. Yeah, Amen.

And so, yes, you know, we’re really in a bit of a new age that we live in this. The next point I want to talk about. Yes. Is that the Internet is that there’s there’s a lot of sloppiness. And when people don’t know each other’s rights, it causes problems. People. Mistakes, and sometimes they make grave mistakes about hurting other people. And there’s rules and laws in place for a reason. You can’t just say anything you want about somebody. And we’re gonna go into the Constitution in the Bill of Rights and a little bit and talk about freedom of speech. But there is a right to freedom of speech, but there’s not a right to lie. And we’ll talk about that. There’s not a right to lie. There’s there’s there’s other things coming down the pike that I want to share with you. Of course, you hear the term fake news a lot. Part of the reason people say fake news is because you can splice a piece of somebody saying something on video or audio and then splice it was something else or splice a piece, add commentary and splice another piece and radically or completely change the meaning of something. And so a lot of times reporters, not all. There’s some really good reporters out there.

There’s some really bad ones, too. And they will literally have a paradigm in their head or their organization will. And they will go look for the narrative they want to tell and then they will splice dice and cut until they create that narrative. And if you saw the original footage, it would be completely different what they’re putting out there. And so we’re in an age where people are just believing what people put out to fit their own paradigm about something. And that’s really you have to be an independent thinker. Clear thinking is more important today than ever. You have to really be in the spirit and understand what’s true and be able to decipher what’s not true and to really understand it. Whenever I see splices, by the way, in video where jump cuts or something like that, I’m already like, OK, I can’t trust with Covid-19. There was a lot of those videos where people are coming out, doctors are talking, there’s this conspiracy and there’s all these spliced videos together. I immediately just kind of put my hands up and I go, Yeah. A lot of my friends out there were sharing that video. I don’t actually believe it because the spliced, diced and made up in a lot of cases.

Right. It’s interesting, though. So you just said you have to be a critical thinker to be able to test that. And it’s actually our job. We should never just believe what we see on the Internet. We should never just believe what we hear because we are actually called and commanded by God to test the spirits and to be vigilant, to be sober minded, to be wise as serpents, gentle as doves. It reminds me of what you were just sharing about people who do that, the reporters that do that. Right. 1 Peter 5:8. Reminds me of this. Right. Be sober.

Be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. And you know, as interesting about this, in conjunction with John 10, where it says that the thief comes in to only steal, kill and destroy.

That is the truth about the uncertainty, the uncertain world we’re living in right now. We have definitely we’ve been an end times since Jesus left. And things are getting worse. Things are good. There is maliciousness that is growing towards Christianity, persecution that is growing towards those who are living righteously. And so here’s here’s what you can do if you don’t know someone personally. You can judge their fruit. And what I mean is you go and you look at all their other videos or you go and you look at their actual family go. Do I want to follow them? Mm hmm. Do I want to live that way? Is that a person that I want to be like? And if you can’t say that, don’t believe it, because there is there is proof in the pudding, honey.

And so another thing about the age we live in, there’s something coming that you may have heard about, but there’s actually starting to be the ability to take video footage of somebody and then write a script that you want that person to say and then put it into software. And it looks real with mouth movement and everything of them saying that completely fabricated thing. So no cuts. Literally, that person’s image. Clear as day saying whatever someone else wants them to say. And it’s 100 percent false. Yet nobody can tell what’s real and what’s not. That isn’t. That’s what we’re walking into. That’s what that’s what’s coming. They can at least the techno technology is going to be capable of that. Yeah. And so we this is important for everybody, right. We need to know our rights. We need to understand this. And we need to be vigilant to stand for it.

And I would even say not to just look up your belt. The Bill of Rights online own the Bill of Rights. If you’re watching my YouTube, you see me holding a book.

Bill of Rights. I wrote a book for that. Yes, I do.

I have books. I just think that there is such an necessity for us to actually hold the tangible writings in our hands.

It’s one of the reasons why we teach cursive to our kids. They can actually read the forefather’s writings and not just believe what they’ve been told. That’s oftentimes a lie. Yeah. So why don’t we talk about some of these situations before we dive into the Constitution that God has vindicated us from over the years?

Because this is only a few. By the way, we don’t have time to talk about everything, but we’ve lived life. You know, we’ve gone against that. Maybe some of the the normal grains of, you know, the world. And in really stick to what the Bible says about living and things like that. And so, you know, own businesses have had business failures. I’m 44. You’re up 40, 40. And we have eight kids. So we’ve been through a lot of experience and we’ve had some. Before I go through hard situations. We’ve had way more good situation, a hard situation. Wow. Have we lived an amazing life? I love our life.

But I will say, though, that the hard times that we walked through and watching God do some crazy miracles really instilled in us a stronger faith. But but that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have faith. And what we didn’t see first, which is what Jesus says, he says by those who have not seen yet, still believe.

I’m going to give you three examples here. I just cherry picked three that I thought would be interesting and one I’ve never shared before publicly. And that is that we have a thirty nine foot class A RV. We rent out and use we use more than renting. Barely allow people to rent it sometimes. And it’s a renter was driving it and oil companies tanker truck backed into it with a family in it and just rented it for who it rented and destroyed the front of the RV which is a very expensive rig. And and then lied about it and blamed it on the driver. My renter and the oil company believed in the police report was not good, not helpful. And the the oil company said it’s totally not our fault. Our driver didn’t do that and so forth. And God. Totally. Not only paid for that RV to get fixed but also awarded us money.

Yes. All the time that you had to spend doing private investigative work and talking to people and getting testimonies on audio.

but see God partners with us. He totally gave me wisdom and I acted on it from contacting and talking with the leaders of this oil company. I got an Email response from the CEO of the large oil company to the head of H.R. two, eventually having recordings, conversations with witnesses and recording them myself to all of these things and submitting the evidence. And God gave us a victory in that. Praise God.

I mean, even the crazy thing is how many people would have given up? How long did that take? That was took me about six months. Yeah, six months. And so what’s crazy about this, you guys, is that the oil tanker actually backed into the RV twice in a row. And so fortunately, the family that was in there, video recorded some of that. Yeah. And that.

But the video is not really provable because of the way it was shot. Yeah.

Yeah. And so but just knowing your rights and knowing what’s true and the family that rented from us was a lovely family that’s in ministry. And we knew that they in no way could afford to pay for the wreckage. You know, and it wasn’t their fault, just hearing how the so that would have been a huge burden on them and us.

And and so I also talked to the police chief of the officer. Yet I also talked to the officer. You know, did your investigative work, whatever I got to do for for God to get the glory. And he gave me the wisdom on what to do. Because I’d never been in that situation before.

And you learned a lot about our rights and our laws and going through that lawsuit and pursuing that. Right.

Yeah. And so the other thing is, I owned a digital publishing company that we founded, co-founded and built and learned a lot about copyright. Oh, yeah. content, online internet stuff. All of those things. And unfortunately, the hard thing is that was our biggest failure. Right. We’ve had a lot of success, but there’s a big failure. And we went all in and it failed. We had 43 employees and every one of them got paid. We were honorable to our employees as much as we could be. And we were left with no income and 1/2 million in debt following us and praise gone. I diligently pursued because God, I feel told me to the spirit convicted you any harm. That was my big humbling experience because pride is the enemy. And I had pride and he humbled me. And I worked really hard. I proactively called every creditor and worked with them. It was a year and a half process.

I mean that you guys, I was so proud of Isaac. You should’ve seen him spending hours and hours and hours on hold with government. Right? With all kinds of people. Whoever it was, I’m seeking to make our debt right. And he would be honor reason with them. And it was it was for us about our reputation, regardless of if people found out about it or not. And we wanted to be debt free because we knew that was what God’s word was saying. And we didn’t want to be owing any man anything, which is what the Bible says and praise God, any man, anything.

All that debt was gone in a year and a half later. And and we were thriving.

you pursued your creditors and they were oftentimes surprised that you came to them.

I just have learned from scripture, spirit of God. And maybe my entrepreneurial experience, too, is you never run away and you don’t just back down if something’s happening to you. It’s very, very important, at least to me. I want my kids to see this in me, and I want them to be the same way because they’re not watching today’s world. They’re launching to the future uncertain world when things are even more different than today. So the last one is a little softer of an experience, but still an issue. We had a very nice I called almost an estate in Portland at the time when I was an entrepreneur world and with a vineyard. And I rented it because we moved. That was when we lived in Portland, because we’ve only lived in central Oregon for five years, five years now. So that was when we lived all the way over the mountains into Portland. And we had the renter stopped paying a large amount of money monthly and had a tractor there and lots of things that put in trust of this renter to use lightly and so forth. And he ended up renting to other people and painting cars in the garage and sold my tractor.

And said it was stolen, but it didn’t tell me. It was worth like seventeen thousand dollars. It was a Kubota tractor.

So and as I learn more about him, he is into the drug scene and dangerous and lots of things like that stole my washers and dryers and the house in the Bose sound system, the guys, it was trashed. So anyways, God redeemed that and he gave me wisdom when we worked hard. I love the authorities, by the way. They’ve helped me so much. I went. I called the sheriff’s department, I remember Austin was with me, my son. And we met in the parking lot with the sheriff. They had it. And we’re and we’re gonna roll in together to the house. Yeah. And, you know, there’s a lot of things that God just totally worked out to make that work and exit that renter.

And and we were we were kept safe. We were unharmed.

There could have been physical harm because of his background and friends that ended up showing up when my family was there and we were there and he wasn’t looking for drugs and things like that. So anyways, I just I I’m just sharing stories with you because if you’re walking rightly. None of us are perfect. We’re not perfect. But if you’re striving to walk rightly in, do wealth by your family and live well in the marketplace and in public and in be can contribution to the world, then and you have God, what is there to fear?

That’s right. There’s nothing to fear.

So you just keep moving forward and doing the right. The next right thing.

And God will vindicate and help and guide you. It’s when we’re in fear that we shrink back. Now, can there be wisdom in shrinking back? Sometimes there can be as long as God is giving that wisdom to you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

It’s not out of fear because, I mean, think about the soldiers. Right. How many of them were fearful on the battlefield?

They are trained to run towards danger. And you know what? Sometimes in this world. And what’s going on? We’re going to have to run towards danger sometimes.

In faith and I would say that all Christians need to run towards suffering. I wrote a post about that awhile ago when we lost our last baby to miscarriage pregnancy loss. I like that term better than miscarriage because I didn’t do anything wrong to miscarriage, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times that can anyways. But when we when we lost mercy. when you walk through trials. You realize who your friends are. You realize a lot of things, right? Those who are going to obey God and weep with those who weep and those who get Fearful and run away and hide and those types of things. And we want our children. We want to be the type of people that God wants us to be there. Obey the scriptures, say mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Right. All all those things love your neighbor as yourself. And I when you’re walking through suffering and you feel alone, you realize that. You’re called to run towards suffering. Mm hmm. And I think that sometimes in wars, that’s what the Warriors were doing, right? They were running towards vindicating those who can’t fight for themselves. All right. You guys know that we are very pro-life because babies can’t fight for themselves and they are just as much any they’re just as human as any of us are. Yeah. And they have rights as well. And we don’t get to choose who’s human and who’s not human. And that’s why we’re pro-life and standing up for the rights like we were called to stand up for those who can’t fight for themselves. And sometimes in wars, that’s what people are doing. They’re going to set the captives free. And we need to honor them. We need to honor all of them. And so you guys today, Memorial Day, it’s not just about those who fought in specific wars for specific freedoms, although that is very important. It’s also about those who fought to set the captives free. It’s also about honoring those who died as a martyr for true freedom.

The only real freedom, the freedom that can save our souls.

And that that’s just always Jesus who died on the cross so that we could be free.

He ran towards he he allowed his accusers to take him. He allowed them, even though he was unjustly accused and he died, so that we could all be free. Real freedom.

We don’t we don’t want to spit on his sacrifice. That’s enough by allowing the enemy to win.

That’s another beautiful thing about being a Christian, is that we have eternity in heaven. So there’s nothing to fear while we’re on earth. People could do the worst thing to you, which is kill you. That’s the worst thing. And that is not good for time on Earth, but it’s what do you get to be? You’re going to be in heaven forever, which is better. And so the sting of death was taken away. So what are we to fear? So when we really have faith, we shouldn’t be fearing at all. So let’s dive in here to the Constitution. Wow, this is good. By the way, I’m not one of those guys that is like studied this extensively and so forth. I’m knowledgeable. We’re smart people. But I did prepare this and then guess who I ran on by? I did run a buy more of an expert than me. That is our Kelsey, who’s our oldest daughter, our oldest daughter, who’s a government major to Liberty University and honor student doing incredible. That’s kind of why it’s so fun to see here that your home schooling skills are things that actually Kelsey gets the credit for the hard work.

Yeah, that’s what it’s like raising independent critical thinkers, you guys. And they get passionate about things you get to watch them just engage in when she comes back from college.

She has some differing opinions about things. And we have these awesome discussions that are fun and so good and that’s good. I want them to be the expression that God wants them to be in the world. I want them to do what God is calling him to do. And that’s up to them. Our daughters, by the way, they have things to do, impact the world. It’s so exciting to see in our sons, too. And they’re all different. Yeah, it’s just fascinating. So let’s dive into this. So. The Constitution. I’m not going to go deep into this. Right. I’m going to give you the basics and I’ll go deep in some areas. But the purpose of the Constitution is to ensure that government is just and protects citizens from internal strife amongst each other and outside attack. And it is proven over a long period of time now to be the best constitution that exists in the world. Now, that’s an opinion. People from other countries tuning in don’t take offense. I do love my country, though, as I hope you love your country if you’re a different country, because people are listening all over the place. But our Constitution has also been adopted in parts in other parts of the world, too. And it’s nothing’s perfect. The only thing that’s perfect is the word of God. Yeah. But so the Constitution, by no stretch of the imagination, is perfect.

But it is a great attempt at creating freedom in a society of the least amount of wrongdoing is possible while keeping people free. And I think that’s really, really cool. So there’s articles in the Constitution, there’s seven articles, and then there’s the Bill of Rights. And the first article, the first three actually are to create the three levels of government, which is the first is the legislature creating laws and so forth. The second is the executive branch, which is the president and the vice president. Involving that in the Article three is the judiciary, which is like the Supreme Court in the lower courts in the process and how the court system works and so forth. Fascinating stuff is great stuff. Talk with your kids about and know yourself. By the way, I didn’t know this stuff until I had kids.

It’s like I didn’t like I had an education and then I had kids and then I had a better education because I had to learn what we teach and redeeming here, education.

And by the way, I graduated college and all that. But yeah, I don’t big I don’t talk about that much because I don’t care about it very much, OK. That’s just me. You can have a different opinion. I loved education. Love you. We’re very different in a lot of things that I respect that a lot. And my daughter loves it too. Yeah. And I love that she loves it. We can be different. So Article four is talking about the states and the states upholding democracy. Can you imagine if one of the states is like, I really don’t like what the federal government’s doing and what the that part of their constitution says? I’m going to create my own constitution. Now, here’s some protection. The states can’t go crazy. They have some freedoms, but they have to align with the federal government.

And then Article five, which is the method to make amendments or changing the Constitution. And that’s important because things change. Different issues come up as technology advances and things like that. There might be some need for change. Our additions or additions. But we have to be very, I believe, very, very careful about the. Very, very careful. And then Article six is about the USA. If they create debt in the world, they’re liable for that debt. Need to back that up. That’s so important for our currency. By the way, because if other people don’t believe we’re going to come through on our debt in the world, then our currency would suffer, which causes harm to our whole economy. So this is incredibly important. And there’s laws it has to with laws and treaties as well.

And also any this kind of cool, you might think there’s cool teach this to your kids. Officers have to take an oath of allegiance to our country only and its constitution. That’s interesting. Yeah, it’s cool. So they should lose their job if they don’t believe in the flag. OK. That might be a little bit of an opinion, but I’m extrapolating that from our analysis.

They have to have an oath of allegiance to the United States. What the flag stands. And that’s what it stands for. So they died. For this to for us to be able to have these freedoms.

So the flag shouldn’t trigger any officers.

You know, it’s interesting that just came to my mind is a lot of times people mix things up and they think that freedom means there are no rules and there are no laws. Right. Right. That’s not freedom because then there’s complete chaos. You know, it’s very dangerous. Just look at any country that has that situation. Definitely don’t want to be living there.

Yeah. And Article seven, the final one is the method of ratification or acceptance of the Constitution. So that’s pretty cool. Signed in 1787 in Philly.

Awesome. Well, let’s dive into the Bill of Rights. So you guys may not realize this, but in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights are actually in the United States Constitution there.

Now, first, 10 amendments to the Constitution. Yes. Do you want to go over those Isaac?

Yeah. Thank you. So we’ll go over the ten and I might give you a couple of the newer ones, but not all of them. I have prepared all of them. There’s 27 total. But you’re right. Ten went right with the Constitution right at the beginning and so. Or close to. So the first one you hear about this a lot. It’s the right to religion and freedom of speech. This is so paramount. You sometimes we take our freedoms, for example. But I have relatives, most of them are gone from Venezuela now. But I used to have lots of relatives in Venezuela and there were successful people there. And it was a vibrant country with the massive oil reserves. And it’s beautiful. I’ve been there. The beaches are gorgeous, like just amazing. And the people are so nice. And when I was there. Awesome place. But then what happened is socialism started taking over. They don’t have a constitution like we do or it’s been altered and changed over time in negative ways. And what happened is now you guys know the story, but it’s a socialist country and things are horrible there. And. And so what was starting to happen in the beginning of that, though, is private property rights were taken away.

We remember relatives that had like land and ranches and they allowed the people would come sleep on it, squatters and the government would force them to be able to do that really strange stuff. So that can happen when you don’t have the law set. Well. In your country. So this is really, really important. So freedom of speech is a big thing. And that freedom of speech doesn’t mean we can say any speech. I don’t know if you knew that there are exceptions to freedom of speech. Obscenities are an exception. Things that are illegal. Child pornography, for example, is an exception to freedom of speech, things that is illegal, that they violate intellectual property is illegal. OK. So very, very important, especially in the Internet age with social media, YouTube and all of the above. It’s very important that you understand that. Not for what? Only what you do, but what potentially might be done to you. That’s right. It’s really, really important. So we can’t you can’t create libel. And under libel is a couple of things. First of all, defamation of character. Is anybody allowed to just go out there and just say what ever they want about anybody in the public? Well, there’s a lot of ability to say what you want about people, but what you can’t do is put people in a bad light knowing it’s not true.

Interesting. OK. So that’s really if there’s public information that certain things are true, that’s much harder. But if if some but you can’t just defame somebody, for example, you can’t take someone’s image that has nothing to do with child pornography and put them with a crime and connect them in any way to child pornography. Mm hmm. That would be defamation. Clearly, it’s really important to understand this. And you can’t defame there’s a couple that there’s another thing, too, that’s falsity. And there’s a malicious intent, too, especially if you’re a public figure, which we are not. But if you’re officially a public figure, you have to prove malicious intent. Yeah. Much easier if you’re not like us. And there’s also false light. You can’t put somebody insinuate them in connection to something else that makes them look bad. That’s called false light. It’s called false light. It’s untrue. Implications is also defamation. And that’s really important. I’m saying this because it’s relevant to the age ran. And we’ve also dealt with this okay.

It’s it’s interesting because this all goes in alignment just even with Proverbs Chapter six, because, you know, the people who wrote the Constitution, some of them were Christians. Yeah. Some were not. Right. And the Constitution is not a Christian work. Yeah. In that sense. Right. Isaac. Yeah.

However, there is inspiration from from Christianity that has inspired some of these freedoms, these protective rights, such as the freedom to religion. Right. Like when the pilgrims came over to America, what were they in search for? They were in search for the freedom to practice religion because they were oppressed where they were.

Yeah. And so there is definitely that that is something that people have died to preserve. Is this freedom of religion reign where just because someone has a different religion or has a different moral right, they can’t impose that upon you and and defame you because you don’t fit their bill. Right.

You don’t fit their way of life. What’s interesting, though, is because you’re talking about like Internet, which is where a lot of media comes from. Like you see Trump always right now saying, what else did I say?

What was the last part of what I said? He’s constantly trying to defend himself. He’s taken off out of context. And that’s why he says “fake news” all the time. Right. And be careful of fake news is because people do what you were saying before was splicing and dicing regardless what you believe about Trump.

This is something that’s a problem and you don’t really understand it until it happens to you. And recently this happened to my wife, Angie, where they took parts of a 20 minute video about one topic. It actually was about homeschooling for homeschoolers and they to fit their narrative. They took a little sentence here, two words here, little I was here and then near their narration and then a couple of words here spliced it. Jump, cut. So it’s right here. And when you watch it, it’s like, well, she looks intense and. Mean, I’ll say, yeah, yeah. And then when you look at the original content and you look at the distortion, the illegal acts, it’s crazy. Yeah.

You know, it reminds me of this verse in Proverbs six that says these six things the Lord hates.

So if the Lord hates something, shall we hate them? Oh, for sure. Like if the Lord hates them, we should hate them. Yes. Seven are an abomination to him. A proud look. A lying tongue. Hands that shed innocent blood. A heart that devises wicked plans. Feet that are swift to running to evil. A false witness who speaks lies. And one who sows discord among brethren.

And that is oftentimes what is happening with people who are purposefully doing defamation. Right. They’re purposefully running into. They’re running swift into evil. They’re actually acting like the devil. We read in First Peter, where he says he roams a war. There there’s a roaring lion. We’re going around looking to see who he can devour.

The qualification here is when somebody is innocent. Yeah, but they’re being accused wrongly. Correct. Yes. Because there are times for justice and to bring things into the light where wrongdoing has happened.

Yeah, for sure. And so it’s that there is scripture in here that that for us as believers, we are believers. So us as believers, we look at this and we go, yeah, we should hate when there are false lies spoken. Yes. And we should teach our kids to hate when there are false lies spoken. Do we hide them? No, we don’t hide them. We actually expose the the lie for what it is. Yeah. And we speak truth.

Well, and there’s freedom of religion, too. And the same thing, which is we have the right to assemble. We have the right to believe what we believe. And we have the right as long as no laws are broken within what we believe.

That’s right. So in relation to like Covid right now, where churches are potentially starting to meet up and do things like that, it’s important that even pastors are familiar with their constitutional rights. It’s important that church goers are familiar with their constitutional rights, because if we all think that we have a freedom that we actually don’t have and then we’re at. I don’t know. We’re fighting for it. That can also make us look foolish.

So we actually need to know what the laws are state to state, but also in our country so we can exercise our right, because some states might, for some states do have the authority in their state constitution to during times of proven emergency, to have periods of time where there’s exceptions.

Our point, is not whether we agree or disagree with them.

Our point is that we all need to know what our rights are. And it’s super important that we teach our kids so that they know what their rights are as well.

And on this day, on Memorial Day or on any day when we are actually honoring those who died for our rights, you guys, there is a direct connection with giving honor to those who would give honor. And part of how we give honor is by remembering and knowing and studying and exercising our rights and teaching our rights to the next generation. Because if we don’t, they literally could be gone by the time we’re 70 or 80.

Yeah, absolutely. So the second one we hit on that because it’s the most relevant thing to all the issues of today. The second one, though, is our right to bear arms, the Second Amendment. You hear it all the time. Yes. It’s over and over and over again. And just it doesn’t matter where you believe. And levels of gun rights, it’s important to know that that is the Second Amendment. And it’s important see in leadership of those learned this where later actually in leadership when as well more seasoned, I used to run a large organization. And what it was I started to notice is when you take one thing out of a system or you make one decision, you start to really reflect on all the positive and negative ripple rippling effects of that decision. And so whether you own a gun or are scared of guns or like guns or whatever the case is, you have to understand that the Second Amendment is not only just that we get to have guns, but then the positive ripple effect is that protects a society against a tyrannical government. And you’re like, oh, wow, that will never happen. Don’t be fearful. I’m not fearful of our government. Why? Because all of these things are in place. Would I be a little more fearful if the Second Amendment was erased? A little bit, because that is one of the first steps towards tyrannical governments in other places. Just you look at history to learn things. Okay, so that’s really important. The third bill of Rights that was originally put in is the army can’t force homes to do to do room and board. They can’t force you to house their soldiers.

That’s crazy because that is something that’s been talked about even just with the potential of what could happen with Covid right. And so it’s important to know what your rights are to teach your kids, because who knows, in 50 years, you could if you want to, they’ll be an amazing thing to help out and in times of challenge.

So what’s interesting about this, you guys, I mean, Invision, back in the days of like and I just think of Braveheart and different, you know, different historical accounts where they took over homes and homesteads and and different things.

And I there was a time where I literally thought to myself what I have been willing to do that I like a lot of times people don’t put themselves in those shoes and that perspective to reflect on where their heart is. I think that you’re talking about the movie Patriot. Oh, yes, Patriot that what it is.

But like, that kind of stuff did happen back in those days when we were on our RV trip, we were going through a lot of the East Coast in the southern states and all of those and seen some of these old colonial homesteads. And they were even doing reenactment tours and things. Right. And teaching. But my point is, it’s those are great ways to teach your kids about human history in conjunction with the third Bill of Rights. Talk about making that right. Real to your kids.

Number four, protects from the government improperly taking property, papers or people unless there’s a warrant because there’s evidence.

So if you’re not doing anything wrong, there is nothing to worry about. It’s in our Constitution. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Number five protects people from being held unless properly indicted of a crime. We see this in the TV shows, right. In the movies and things. Unless there’s due process, proper process and real crime, nobody can be held. That’s right. Number six is the right to a speedy trial. Things can’t be prolonged out. To, to, you know, bleed someone’s bank to try and prove their innocence. No, it is speedy trial and get things done, get to the truth and ask an impartial jury. Right. Was so important, which is people that are more objective and having a lawyer. We all have a right to have a lawyer. Number seven, guaranteed a jury trial in federal civil court cases. That’s cool. Yeah, I like that. Eight guaranteed punishment is fair. Interesting. So it can’t be.

There is a Bill of Rights. Yeah. Right there.

No, thank you. And number nine, other rights aside from listed may exist. So there’s lots of I like how simple this is, because there’s other things where a judge can decide, you know, who did this? Is this hurting their way of being? Is is hurting their reputation in a negative way? Is there restitution as a restitution needed? And they get to decide in an objective way, even if it’s not here. And then 10, any power not granted to the federal government belongs to the states or the people. I like that the people are in there. That’s really cool. Yeah. And then there’s these other ones. I’m not going to go through them all because of time. We spent so much good time. But I’m going to just mention a couple for fun. Number 12 is a hot topic right now. President and the vice president are chosen by electrical electoral college. And that is the Democrats are actually trying to get rid of that. They’re trying to amend the constitution because what happens, what actually happens is big cities, New York states like California and states more they decide more of the election than all of the other places. So I’m not a super expert on it, but I know that it’s to create a voice for all parts of the country in the election process. And that was put in there after the 10 bill writes, but a long time ago, 13 was abolished. Slavery. Praise God. Mm hmm. Wow. That’s so important. All right. I mean, even like women voting is in here, women voting, collecting, income tax, the ability for the government to do that to rules around the presidency. Number twenty. You got to be 18 to vote. There it is. Right. So it’s really cool, but it sets up things for checks and balances and for us to live in the freest country in the world. And you know what? Our armed forces helped to enable this freedom to happen, which is so, so important. Well, we hope this was helpful for you. You have some resources, don’t you?

Oh, yes. So you guys a while back. I put together a blog post that teaches it actually asks a question. The blog post is called “Do Your Kids Know Why We Celebrate the Fourth of July”. And we’ll put a link to that in a courageous parenting show, notes which you can find at courageous parenting dot com. If you just look at this podcast. You’ll see all the show notes there and there’ll be a link to this blog post. And in that blog post, you guys, we share some other really good questions that are just really powerful to ask his parents to reflect upon. Am I teaching this? Why am I not teaching? It is a matter of not knowing it myself, like just really digging in. But then we share a ton of resources. There’s well over 20 different books. There are actual books that we recommend that can you can use to teach your kids the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. There are awesome books that do like a biography where every couple of pages is on a different signer of the Declaration of Independence. Our kids really like that one. There’s also biography’s. I mean, YWAM has put out some amazing biographies that teach you about these heroes of history. So there’s just a lot of resources in that blog post.

So feel free to jump over there. It’ll be in the show notes at CourageousParenting.com, hit podcast and everything’s there. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. We wanted to quickly tell you about a six week online parenting mentor program.

Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week, Isaac and I release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you and your spouse to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

It’s an incredible program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes. Most Christians are making more than that. It’s an incredible community. You’ll have access to a private online group live Webcast and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragements straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentorship program, secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

That’s CourageousParenting.com

Written By Angie Tolpin
Angie has been married to Isaac for 19 years and together they have eight children, whom she homeschools. She is the Founder of CourageousMom.com, a doula, the author of the best-selling book Redeeming Childbirth, and the creator of the first ever Christian Postpartum Course. Angie loves ministering to Women and has created a few online Bible Studies on Biblical Friendship and Motherhood.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Create a Godly Legacy
free tips & trainings every wednesday