Irony ‘o’ the Day: Christian bakers lose their business and are fined $135,000 for exercising their religious liberty by declining to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual anti-wedding, while Muslim truck drivers in Illinois win $240,000 for exercising their religious liberty by declining to deliver alcohol.

As sure as darkest night follows day, liberal legal eagles will start parsing legal language and cherry-picking precedents to explain why the Muslim case is soooo different and the result soooo constitutionally justifiable. But reasonable people using common sense and a dollop of wisdom know that spiritually blind people are doing what spiritually blind people have been doing since Adam and Eve made a really bad snack choice: rejecting truth.

This blindness has resulted too in the suspension of Bremerton High School football coach Joe Kennedy for praying on the football field after games. Meanwhile, gender-dysphoric, cross-dressing teachers like “Karen” Topham at Lake Forest High School or “Dane” Fox at Glenbrook North High School get to keep their jobs.

So in public schools today, the voluntary post-game prayers of a coach are wholly unacceptable, while the cross-dressing and cross-sex hormone-doping of gender-rejecting teachers is acceptable.

It’s even more outrageous, though. Public school faculty members and administrators actually expect students to lie. They expect students to refer to these gender-rejecting teachers by opposite-sex pronouns, something theologian John Piper has said Christians must not do. If Christian teachers and students in public schools truly want to be salt and light, they will refuse to refer to gender-rejecting students and teachers by opposite-sex pronouns.

Who would have thought we would come to a day when teachers—who are government employees and who used to be role models—would encourage students to reject God’s created order, reject reality, reject truth, and participate in deception?

First Amendment religious liberty and speech protections are under assault, and the target is orthodox Christianity. Don’t let the arrogant mockery of liberals dissuade you from publicly asserting this reality. Liberals, who have burnished their rhetorical weapon to a blinding glow, dismiss as outlandish and paranoid claims that Christians are increasingly persecuted in America. While Christians should “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,” (James 1:2), we should also remember that we are actually part of “We the people.” Our Christian forbears fought for the freedom to exercise their religion unencumbered by an oppressive government. Let’s not relinquish that freedom without a fight.

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own;
but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you:
‘A servant is not greater than his master.’
If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”
~John 15: 18-20

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Bremerton High School in Washington state just suspended beloved football coach Joe Kennedy for praying on the football field after games, while gender-dysphoric, cross-dressing teachers like “Karen” Topham at Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, Illinois or “Dane” Fox at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois get to keep their jobs.

So in public schools today, the voluntary post-game prayers of a Christian coach are wholly unacceptable, while the cross-dressing and cross-sex hormone-doping of gender-rejecting teachers is acceptable.

I can think of no more fitting way to conclude the school year than with excerpts from the retirement speech delivered by retiring Glenbrook North High School social studies teacher, James McPherrin, who is retiring after 33 years of teaching.

The words he expressed put to shame countless commencement speeches by celebrities who have little to offer students other than pedestrian cliches. It would behoove administrators, faculty, and students to hear Mr. McPherrin’s speech at the start and end of every school year.

Mr. McPherrin offers wisdom and erudition through eloquent prose that points those who have ears to hear toward truth:

St. Thomas More, the intrepid 16th century chancellor to King Henry VIII of England, once said, “When statesmen forsake their own private consciences for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.” Now, I would suggest that the very same quotation might be tailored so as to apply directly to teachers. It would read, “When teachers forsake their own private consciences for the sake of their public school duties, they lead their students by a short route to chaos.”

Thomas More was among the sterling individuals in the western intellectual tradition who understood well the necessary relationship between the natural law and the human law, and that circumstances often challenge us to acknowledge the rational demands the former places upon the latter. More, as we know, would later sacrifice his very life in defense of that compelling idea. In essence, dear colleagues, please consider that our cardinal duty as instructors of the young is to shepherd them in their journey towards truth.

Whether it be European History, English Lit, Calc, Phys Ed, or Music, our task is to foster in students a love for and desire to acknowledge what is true. If such a premise does not inspire our efforts, then I’m afraid they might well be for naught. Make it your purpose to ignite the element of intellectual longing that exists in all young people; that desire to know, that desire to bring order out of chaos. Give them that education to which the English writer, G.K. Chesterton, alluded, when he said, “Many are schooled, but few are educated.” There is a difference, and it would behoove us all to acknowledge it openly.

Furthermore, I would encourage you not to align yourselves with those forces within our noble field who would seek to rid the discussion of divine things from the intellectual discourse in our classrooms. This is an unfortunate act that flies in the face of a teacher’s visceral commitment to the free exchange of ideas. Steel yourselves against the notion that such discourse violates the separation of church and state. It doesn’t. A reflection of ethical ambivalence more than anything else, such an argument is a specious one, and those of us who purport to cherish freedom of expression, ought to find it intellectually repugnant. Students are naturally inclined to ask metaphysical questions. To do so is in complete keeping with their nature as young, sentient, beings. It is how they are wired, and to stifle such instincts, or, to attempt to coach them away, does them a grave disservice.

Once they understand the idea of truth and that things can be known — surprise, surprise — they naturally gravitate toward a desire to know in what truth has its origin. The logical consequences of such thinking may unsettle some of us. However, trepidation of that sort is the lamentable result of lost cultural moorings. To attenuate such discussions is to attenuate the very growth of our students’ scholarly faculties. It’s as plain as that! We were meant to contemplate higher things — most obviously within our English and history classrooms. Thomas Aquinas understood this as far back as the 1200s and explained quite clearly our human commission, when he said, if you’ll permit me, “Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.”

May we have the courage to let our students’ minds move freely and joyfully toward those things for which they were made; and if such pursuits lead them to apprehend that force through whom we live and move and have our being, then so must it be. We should view any attempt to stifle such dialogues as nothing less than an attack upon reason itself. A final quotation from the luminous G.K. Chesterton: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it (Everlasting Man, 1925).

May we always have the strength and the wisdom to know when to swim against the stream.

Mr. McPherrin had this to say about his experience in public education: “It’s been a tough slog, but I think truth is making gains.” Our children deserve more teachers like James McPherrin, teachers who will, even in the face of obstacles, persevere in their labor to point students toward truth.