You're right to condemn the abuses of organized religion.

Below is a sad report of modern day abuse by the religion of psychiatry....

As bad as El's abuse at the hands of the followers of the religion of lawyers was, at least he kept his head together enough while in jail to not get tortured in the hands of the psycho-doc cabal as well. I appreciate your passion on his behalf. I think at the point we visited him in jail you didn't really understand how bad it was and you didn't quite share my outrage at that point, but now it seems like yours exceeds mine! I just wish I wasn't so conflicted over the issue of how his stupid mistakes, but most of all his refusal to listen to my warnings, contributed to his problems. I was frustrated enough in one of the early juvenile hearings (long before the jail visit) that after the hearing was done, and the judge refused my request to issue reciprocal stay away orders against Lynette as part of the proceeding, I told the judge that his court room was a travesty. He was somewhat shocked, but claimed the rules required it to be such, he couldn't make orders against Lynette who was not present. I didn't challenge him further, but what a bunch of nonsense. Judges make orders against people not present all the time, and it's then someone's job to go and serve the individual with the orders so that they know they are under an court order, and that they may come to court to contest the order if they so desire. Instead of a nice streamlined court session ordering reciprocal stay away orders, they told me I had to go and pursue at my own expensive a separate case against her to get her, the adult, to stay away from my son the juvenile. Two court cases, hearings, sets of lawyers, etc. And then they complain of an overload of their schedules. Is it any wonder?

It was a perfect example of the court refusing to do even the simplest of things to support the parents in trying to get a kid to obey the court, and defend the child against repeated parentally and judicially unwanted contact by the adult at issue. Never once at any step did they help us with our complaints, against things like her war dialing our house starting at 5am hoping El' would answer the phone, The sheriff's response was "Change your number, we can't be bothered to pursue a complaint against an adult who is hassling your juvenile".

Unfortunately the godless "progressive human's know best" religions such as psych-isms and law-isms are on the rampage due to

• their lack of godly moderation,
• a convincing of the rest of us that we can't exist without their expertise,
• the ironclad hold they've gotten on our medical and justice systems which are now twisted to require their involvement at every step.

And also the fact that they have only their own intellect and the heritage of Darwinian survival as standards. Truly shifting sand indeed. May God have mercy on the souls trapped by the practitioners of these religions...

I appreciate your stand against religion and God in government, and medicine, but it is folly to try and run it without reference to God's standards. Humanity is unable, ex-nihilo (or "out of nothing"), to invent truly just, merciful, and healthy, systems. Justice and mercy are attributes of God, and health is best defined by the Creator who knows how he made us and what our requirements for health truly are. According to the Bible, man's heart without the Bible is carnal and filthy because of the effects of thousands of years of sin. The sin issue is denied by godless belief systems. Expecting man to come up with truly caring structures of government and medicine without God's guidance is like expecting inner city ghetto kids to invent calculus from the mathematics of drug commerce.

But the problem is even more fundamental than that. Although the psych-isms try to say humans are blank slates because they are systems designed to try to explain man without reference to God or sin, the Bible tells us of the sin problem that causes people to tend to make bad choices. However, some people do more than just tend to bad choices. Some people show that, by the constant drama and problems in their lives, they are actively involved in not making good choices. Their situations aren't purely a result of circumstance. Even using flips of a coin to make their choices would have improved their life and resulted in relief from their problems. So, why do some people exist like this? The fault isn't totally their own. The above discussion ignores the fact that there really is a spiritual component to life, and that spiritually there is an agency (called Satan and his angels) that is opposed to God. The satanic agencies are equally able to inspire man to do evil, as God is able to inspire man to do the good and noble.

So why the tendency to do evil? The Great Controversy theory offers the explanation in both in describing these spiritual agencies and how they function. Unfortunately it seems that the forces of evil are very active in plotting mans destruction, and evil is enslaving, and can easily become a default choice. Our moral nature is like a muscle, and without proper exercise, it is very weak to lead us to do the godly things. Lack of practice in making godly choices with reference to God's laws makes wrong choices even easier, and a strength to do the perverse is developed.

Here is an example of this principle: The cashier accidentally gives you a $10 and $100 bill as change for a $30 purchase from a $50 bill. Or you get home and discover three inflatable pools in your trunk, when you've only paid for two pools. Or the bus driver gives you 50 cents change from a dollar, when the bus fair is 75 cents.

What choice will you make? Will you a) keep the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Steal" instead of keeping the items? Or will you reason in worldly secular terms that b) the corporation is evil they screw other people or even yourself, you've got a right to screw them, c) they calculate this shrinkage in advance it is no big deal, d) the law wouldn't actually define keeping these items as theft since you had no mens-re (or mental intention) to commit theft, e) the extra money or pool was God's way of giving you a blessing or a bonus.

Probably even more reasons on the side of a secular choice to keep the items could be thought up. There aren't too many permutations to the right choices, there's really only one reason to make the right choice: You fear the Lord, (or literally, you are in awe of His position as sovereign of this universe), and you respect His laws, and make a concerted effort to apply them to every day life. One can see by what we've listed, you've got only a one in six of randomly choosing God's way of handling things. The deck is stacked against the right choices if you haven't developed your moral muscle to help you make the right choices. And even if you are devoted to God, what it is to stop you from choosing choice e) and thinking that keeping the pool or the extra change is God's way of spreading blessings? Only careful study of His word, and prayerful attention to his attributes, will help you discover that e) is probably not the way God works.

Psych-isms and law-isms have no defense against having practitioners who are enslaved by bad habits and ungodly tendencies in choices. When human reason is enshrined as the ultimate standard, anyone's situational justifications could override anyone else's ideas. There can be no absolutes. This situation is fundamentally opposite to every sphere of the real world that we see, all of nature is bound by God created laws. It's silly to think that morality can be any different. But those other isms do, and they end up with appealing to people with un-godly tendencies who get involved in building those edifices as an alternative to God's way. The result is ungodly tendencies and structures ingrained in the very fabric in those systems.

What is the solution? It's defamation to claim the only solution is to create a fundamentalist theocracy. You try to denigrate fundamentalists with comparisons to fanatical decisions like stoning adulterers. Fundamentalists simply try to get back to the fundamentals, to peel away the things that man has added, and get back to the basics. It has nothing to do with trying to enshrine the Bible in the law.

What it has to do with is studying the Bible thoroughly, and working hard to strip away the contradictions of human tradition. Then, after thoroughly learning God's way as revealed by prayerful and careful Bible study, you endeavor to apply those Biblical principles in the decisions you come in contact with.

Solomon was famous for having first asked God for wisdom. When he was faced with two woman trying to claim a baby, his solution at first seemed barbaric. He said, ok, cut the child in half. However, his decision revealed the heart, the imposter woman was happy to see the baby destroyed if her desire to have the baby whole was going to be thwarted

So how would the judge deal with his decision on reciprocal restraining orders if he wanted to apply Biblical justice? He might be moved by the fairness of the appeal, and find a way to make the order. If the rules on the surface seem to prohibit the order, he might table the request and study the issue to find a way to make the order. He might make the order and leave it up to an appeals court to overturn it. He might have at least expressed some sympathy and understand, a wish for a way to make the order, instead of just cowardly hiding behind the rules, and expressing shock that a frustrated parent would challenge his ego.

Perhaps the people in charge of writing the rules of the court that require the travesty could have approached their jobs not from the standpoint of what they think is best, enshrining their own reason as the standard, but rather instead only after a prayerful study of what would be the best Godly form of justice in the situation. Perhaps there is a good reason for the current rules, but they might decide that justice would require an exception for this kind of situation, that the request was just and there should be a way to grant it. Perhaps a godly judge would have worked to champion the request, to get it in front of those who write the rules so they could consider the modification. While it might not help that particular case, it could end up helping future parents.

Unfortunately, the godless system of justice we have doesn't leave much room for adding in the consideration of God's principles after the fact. Godless people aren't going to do the job for us. But it doesn't relieve each of us from an attempt to seek out what would be God's decision based on His word and law as revealed in the Bible. We need to bring the leavening of God's ways into the public sphere in order to counteract the forces that are against Godly decisions.