Dennis Tuuri

Psalm 2 posits a time when there’s widespread unbelief and revolution on the part of the people and the rulers against God and against his authority in the nation. Such a time as this existed of course at the time of David, the writer of this psalm. It existed at the time of our Lord and has existed from time to time throughout history. It’s my belief this morning that we exist, we live in a country today in which this is a prevalent attitude.

A time of revolution and rebellion against the authority of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ. Now, the first application of Psalm 2 and the verses we read are obviously to the time of David, the writer of the psalm, so identified by holy scripture in the New Testament and to his ascension to the throne, which was of course fought against by various elements, the heathen, the people, the kings, and the rulers of the earth at that time.

Acts 4, however, tells us that the obvious antitype of this psalm and what the psalm is really talking about is the coming of Jesus Christ himself. There are indications of course in Psalm 2 of the magnitude of the king that’s being talked about, obviously being greater than king David at his time and pointing toward the coming Messiah Jesus Christ. But in Acts 4, we’re given an exposition of this psalm where the people in Acts 4 are identified as Israel, the heathen as the Gentiles, the king is Herod, and the judge is Pontius Pilate.

If you turn your scriptures to Acts 4, we’ll look at those scriptures just briefly. It’s important that we interpret the scripture on the basis of what the scripture tells us about itself. And Acts 4 gives us a holy exposition of the scripture in an application to the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. Acts 4:23. “And being let go, they went to their own company and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.

And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God at one accord and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is. For by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of a truth, against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed. Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together. For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy council determined before it would be done.”

So scripture tells us that Psalm 2 has specific application not just to David but to the coming of Jesus Christ, the great antitype of this psalm. It’s important to notice in both the psalm itself and in the interpretation in Acts 4 that God’s purposes regarding the kingship of David suffered not at the hands of the persecution of those who would attempt to prevent his ascension to the throne. And in fact, Acts 4 tells us about Jesus Christ and his ascension to the throne.

The powers that try to rebel and revolt against God and prevent the rise to the throne of David and then Jesus Christ are incompetent, unable. It is a vain thing for them to attempt to do that. In fact, Acts 4 tells us specifically that they—Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles and the people of Israel, the visible covenant community at that time—were gathered together to do whatever thy hand and thy purpose had predestined to occur.

One of the great truths of Psalm 2 is that God’s rule and authority are utterly inviolable, and his purposes are sure. While the heathen on earth rage externally, mutter internally, neighing like wild horses, plotting in their minds what to do about the authority of God—God in heaven is calmly declaring his decree, establishing the throne first of David and then later and at typically of Jesus Christ.

In fact, the ones who mutter and who roar at the purposes of God are themselves told in us to be in Psalm 2 the absolute possessions of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. “I’ll give the heathen for thine inheritance.” And we are told that they are used specifically for his purposes in Acts 4, which we just read. Now, this fact which is shown in the holy scriptures—that God uses these mechanisms and these supposed foes are in fact part of God’s purposes—that of course does not alleviate their responsibility for their actions.

What follows God’s holy laughter and holy derision at the attempts of the vain nations around to thwart the purposes of God is God speaking to those nations, to those rulers, and to the covenant people and the heathen as well. Speaking to them in his sore displeasure, vexing them, as it were. And following his declaration of his intent to establish his son on the throne and his purposes being sure, his laughter, then his speaking to them and vexing them, he then goes on to say that Jesus Christ will break them as if they were brittle pots or brittle crocks.

The rod of iron will come upon them and break them. This should remind us of Psalm 1 where the wicked are said to be driven or crushed, as it were, and blown like chaff by the wind, which of course represents God to us. So the rulers have their responsibility. The fact of man’s responsibility is clearly emphasized in this song of Christ’s eternal and perpetual reign. And so the psalm ends with the promise of blessings to those that trust and obey.

And also the psalm ends with cursings to those who attempt to deny the authority of God. Verse 12 says, “Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” Those that don’t put their trust in him are seen as not kissing the Son and his anger and his wrath will cause him to perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. So man’s responsibility is certainly emphasized in this psalm and throughout the scripture.

Now it’s interesting that this admonition at the end of the section of the psalm in verses 11 and 12 tells us to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Our two attitudes toward God and to this reign that is declared in this psalm and our responsibility for our actions should be the continuous reality of fear on one hand and joy on the other. Proverbs, in the book of Proverbs, in Proverbs 28, the 14th verse, declares the blessedness of the one who fears always.

Philippians 4:4 tells us to rejoice in the Lord always. And so those two attitudes of fear and reverence, fear for the wrath of God, and joy in the Lord himself are to be our two characteristics. Therefore, this is summed up nicely by the Westminster Catechism when it tells us that the chief purpose and end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. If we teach our children, we must teach them to both fear and to rejoice in God.

If we teach our children to fear God and not to rejoice in him and in his blessed gifts to us, then we teach our children a faith that is severe and is not the biblical faith. It turns out to be slavish obedience as opposed to joyful obedience that God demands of us. If on the other hand we teach our children to joy in the faith and not to fear God’s wrath and God’s displeasure at our sin, then we teach our children presumptousness.

Now, it should go without saying in a nation—the nation that we live in—we don’t have the first problem very much, do we? We have the second problem. We live in a country that is presumptuous. We live in the midst of a church that is taught cheap grace. It’s taught a joy in Jesus Christ and not a holy fear and an understanding of our God’s displeasure at our sin. The psalm instructs us on the basis of Christ’s rule, on the basis of man’s sinful attempts to throw off Christ’s rule, that the end result of all that in us be joy and fear before the King of Kings.

Act 4 gives us then a proper interpretation of Psalm 2 applying it specifically to Jesus Christ. But it goes on then to give us also a holy application of that psalm in the lives of the disciples who lived at the time of the activities that are described in Acts 4. We may rightly infer from the use of the term anointed in Psalm 2 that those who are in Jesus Christ the Messiah and who are thus in the anointed one are also identified with him in terms of his reign and of his authority and also identified with him in terms of being the object of the rebellion of the ungodly.

These facts are clearly spelled out in Acts 4. It makes application of these things not just to David, not just to Jesus, but to the church itself. In Acts 4, the situation that we had just read about—the context of that was the companions of Peter and John who had been detained for preaching the gospel of the kingdom of Christ. That context was immediately identified by the disciples who heard of the occurrences.

They identified the persecution of those rulers and elders of the people upon the people of God—trying to get them to quit preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ—they identified that persecution with the ragings and mutterings of the heathen people, countries, kings, and rulers in Psalm 2. And they identified the release of Peter and John with the sovereign reign of God and his anointed. They understood the historical situation in which they lived.

They understood the basic actions that were being carried out by the rulers of the people, as it were, against John, against Peter. They understood them as being an application of Psalm 2 where the rulers of the people were muttering and trying to put down the reign of Jesus Christ among them. So we must make application of this psalm today for ourselves. I said earlier we live in a time of active and widespread rebellion against the Lord and against his anointed.

It’s our purpose this morning to draw your attention to some newly released, or newly passed rather, administrative rules regarding child abuse. These rules have a potential for great harm to the people of God. And I believe it’s absolutely necessary for the churches of Jesus Christ in this land to speak out against these rules and to boldly proclaim the obedience required on the part of God’s people and also the civil government to the reign of Jesus Christ.

We find ourselves in the position this morning of having to say as Peter did shortly after this time in Acts 4 and Acts 5, where Peter had to say, “We must obey God rather than men.”

Now, first I’d like us to look at the national context of these new administrative rules that were adopted in October this year in Oregon. And then we’ll spend a few minutes looking at the rules in some detail. Following that, we’re going to make application of Psalm 2 and the things we’ve just read about and considered to our situation this morning.

As I was listening to one of R.J. Rushdoony’s easy chair tapes this week, he talked about the situation in Sweden. He actually was reading an account—a Swedish account, a newspaper account from 1985. And he said that in Sweden at that particular time over 2,000 children a year were forcibly removed from their homes by the civil authorities. This in a country where there are about 8 million people total population.

That’s a tremendous amount of forced removals of children from homes. And then he also pointed out that in Sweden at that time they were passing laws and they had actually put into effect in cases of some people where children were removed from their mothers prior to their mother even seeing the child after birth by the state. And he said we have to understand these things because many people in our country look to the Swedish model as a good model for our nation. Well, we’ll see in a few minutes how we have probably at least caught up with Sweden and may have surpassed them in terms of our activity in terms of breaking up families in our country.

Much of the material I’ll be giving you now is extracted from Mary Pride’s book, *The Child Abuse Industry*, which I strongly encourage you to get a copy of and to read. One of the things Mary Pride does in the beginning of the book is to give some examples of people who have been victims of child abuse laws. And I’ll just read a short portion of one of those examples. She talks about a boy who in May of 1985 was 9 years old. And the child loved to play baseball. It was one of his favorite pastimes. He was very good at it. And one day he was back in the backyard playing a game of practice ball with other kids, using a pitchback thing.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those. I used to use one when I was a kid, days on end. I would be back there throwing the ball against the pitchback and catching the ball back. It’s a frame sort of a deal with some elastic material and you throw the ball into it and it throws it back at you and you catch the ball and you play a little game that way with other kids. And he was doing this and one of the balls that were pitched back came back and he did catch the ball and it hit him right between the eyes and it left a red mark between his eyes, on his nose, and also right next to his eye.

It didn’t cause a great deal of damage, though, and he didn’t stop playing with the kids. He didn’t want to show that he had been hurt or anything. So he kept playing, which was fine. Well, the next day, the boy went to school. And the mother began to get worried because the boy was 40 minutes late coming home from school. So, after waiting for him for about 30 to 40 minutes, she sent her sister, her aunt, who was also in the neighborhood, to look for the boy.

And she also sent—she had another child, a baby girl who was 16 months old at the time. She thought she might like riding along with the aunt to try to find the boy. So she sent her with her. So the aunt and the girl were going to the school to look for the boy. When they went to the school, they were met by police officers and the son, Christopher, who was scared to death and crying. In front of Chris, the policeman removed my baby.

Well, I’m quoting from the mother’s story now. “In front of Chris, the policeman removed the baby from the aunt’s arms and told her they were taking my children for child abuse and we could not see them.” The children’s aunt came back home in a state of total hysteria. She stood in the middle of the living room crying and screaming. It took several minutes to find out what was wrong. She kept saying, “They took our kids. They took our kids. Oh God. Oh God. Why did they take our kids?”

The police took the children to Lamar Community Hospital to be examined for possible child abuse. The lady has since received a bill for $373 from the hospital. By the way, the hospital report said: a small bruise on bridge of nose, redness around the eye, and a couple of small scratches on her face. Apparently, the scratches on her face were due to the baby. As any of us would have heard, a year-and-a-half-old babies, if you play with them very much, they can scratch you. They recommended no treatment. They x-rayed both of the children’s bodies and neither had had a broken bone in their lives.

She says, “Thank God.” They found no signs of abuse of any kind on Jennifer. The children’s services then had Chris placed in a foster home which already had two children sleeping on the floor and his playground was the local high school where the children played unsupervised after school hours. Jennifer, the year-and-a-half-year-old, was placed in McLaren Hall where she sustained numerous bruises on her face, ear, arms, and legs. Only Jenny can’t talk to tell me how it happened.

Christopher told the teacher, school nurse, and school principal about the baseball accident. He told the police and the social service workers. He told everybody and anyone he could tell, and they still took her babies away. They wouldn’t believe him or even tell [the mother] to ask her what had occurred. After 3 days of being unable to eat or sleep, we had a dependency hearing where the judge ordered my child detained until the trial on July 22nd, 1985.

On Friday, I was finally allowed to visit Jenny in McLaren Hall. I found her sick, dirty, and covered with bruises. The only answer they could give me was that, “She might—another child might have gotten to her.”

By Monday, I was hospitalized for stress and severe dehydration. The following Wednesday, we finally went before a judge who released the child to me until trial. I have pawned my jewelry in the process of selling my car and furniture. I’ve called every attorney I can find. My job put me on a personal leave of absence. They would not have to pay me my salary until I solved her personal problems. I’m broke, she says.

Now I have two very frightened kids at home besides myself. Am I guilty? I did buy him his first baseball.

Now later at the trial date, the lady did win her appeal and did receive her children back, but at great personal cost to herself. Obviously a lot of damage done to her home. These sort of situations are not unique in our nation anymore. These sort of situations happen daily in our country in some state or another.

I begin with a story like that which can be very uncomfortable for those of us who have children, particularly mothers who have children, to try to imagine yourself going through that same set of circumstances that these people go through. I begin with that not to get some sort of emotive response from you. Actually what I’m trying to get you to see is that this is a real problem. There are real people involved.

I was talking to Bud Buyers who’s been involved in this fight for several years. He said, “One of the worst things you’re going to have in trying to get people to do something about this situation in our nation today is getting people to understand the gravity of the situation—that it’s really real and there are real problems out there.” That’s why I begin with that. Mary Pride begins with that, I think, for the same reason.

But she goes on then to a statistical analysis of child abuse. It’s not just a book of anecdotal stories. It talks about statistics and the reality behind the supposed child abuse crisis we have in our nation. Some of these may be a repeat for some of you, but hopefully you’ll memorize them then and be able to tell other people about them as well. One of the things she points out in the book and that it’s important to recognize is that this is not an isolated occurrence in this nation alone.

Almost 1 million families last year alone were falsely accused of child abuse. Falsely accused. Almost a million families. By the way, that statistic comes from the American Humane Association, which is the only association chartered to provide national statistics in the entire country. So these are the only statistics that really count. If somebody else is quoting statistics and you have your statistics that we’re going to talk about this morning and yours are from the American Humane Association, you have the only viable statistics, okay?

There’s a lot of other things floating around that people conjecture about, but these are the actual state-sponsored or federal government-sponsored national clearinghouse for statistics. Now, we talked before: there are 72 million kids in this country. Out of 72 million kids, based upon the statistics available through the AHA, there have been approximately in one year 10,000 children receiving major injuries, which would definitely be child abuse.

But if you work that out, that means that’s one child out of 7,200. Now, regularly on TV, you’ll see people talk about the fact that one child out of three or four are abused, either sexually or physically. Those statistics are quoted ad nauseam on the media these days and by legislators as well. But it’s important to recognize that based on these AHA statistics, only one out of 7,200 receive major injury in a year in this country.

Now, we’re not happy about that. We’re going to talk about that in a few minutes, how we think that child abuse should be legislated against and stringently enforced. Those laws. But that’s not what’s going on in our nation today. The context of the laws we’re going to talk about now is this national hysteria about child abuse, this national state of emergency that’s been created through people for various purposes.

Now, one of the reasons why you hear these statistics like one out of three or four being abused is because some of the most important studies that people cite are produced by people who believe that child abuse is actually any kind of corporal punishment administered to the child. There’s a book written by Gell and a couple of other people that is frequently quoted by child abuse advocates, with child abuse law advocates.

And this book says that between 84 and 97% of children are abused. And it says that because it defines abuse as any kind of corporal punishment or inflicting of any kind of pain on the child. So once you use that definition, well then we are a nation full of child abusers and there is a child abuse hysteria that should be rightly drummed up if you believe that’s child abuse. Of course we don’t believe it is.

It’s important to recognize. I just—when I got home from Getty Woods’s Bible study the other night, we got home from that about 10:30 and I flipped on the TV and on channel 6, I believe it was, there was one of these news magazine shows, 1986 I think or something like that. And they had a story on—this is national media now, channel 6 news or CBS news—had a story about a man who had his daughter taken away. His wife had charged him with child abuse of their daughter, sexual abuse. The child was kept away from him for 2 and 1/2 years before he finally, through the legal mechanism, got her back. And it just crushed him and completely destroyed his relationship with his daughter. He wasn’t allowed to talk to her in that time. He wasn’t allowed to explain that there was this thing going on at all.

They just simply didn’t allow any communication at all until he finally won release after 2 and 1/2 years. It was interesting that the media now is starting to see some of these things and starting to be aware of the fact that there are real problems out there. And they’re now moving also to some investigative reporting of this stuff. But the reason I brought that up is that they interviewed one of the child services division—I think the head of the child services division in whichever state it was, I don’t remember which state it was—and he said, “Well, we do have these laws. We think the case was prosecuted correctly. He said, “You got to remember that the home is the most dangerous place for a child to be.”

And he said that 70 to 85% of children in homes are injured somehow in homes. And he was talking—when he quoted the statistics, he was using these statistics from this book. And so he gave away then to anybody who understands where these statistics come from—he was quoting that source that had defined child abuse as any kind of corporal punishment. And he was very, you know, very sure of themselves in wanting to prosecute such cases as this.

Well, in fact, and you’ll also hear people say that child abuse is the leading cause of child death in our country. That is absolutely ridiculous. Around 80,000 children die in every year in America. Out of 80,000 children, about 1,000 die at the hands of parents, guardians, or people in parental authority over them. 1,000 a year. Now, that’s terrible if those children are killed.

But there’s a couple of things you got to keep in mind when you hear that statistic. First of all, it doesn’t say it’s the actual natural parents themselves who are inflicting those injuries that cause the death. Many of those cases, in fact most of those cases, are guardians or foster homes or something like this. Secondly, you have to realize that out of 1,000 children dying of some sort of wounds suffered by people in control of them, that compares with 4,000 children dying in the same period of time over a year from suicide.

So four times as many die from suicide in our country today as die from any kind of child abuse. Automobile accidents account for 10,000 of those 80,000 deaths. So a child is 10 times more likely to die in an automobile accident—and usually it’s the result of a drunken driver—than suffering some kind of injuries in the home. The fact, when people say that child abuse is one of the leading causes of child deaths in our nation, they are absolutely perverting the facts.

Heart disease, pneumonia—these things also account for far more deaths than does child abuse. Now, why? So, I guess what I’m trying to say here by looking at these statistics and trying to put some reality to them and not letting people use statistics that are gleaned from people who have vested interest to produce. Why are they doing this?

What we see as we look at the child abuse statistics in the media, by legislators, and they look at the actual statistics of the American Humane Association, is that the things are far out of balance. What we’re talking about when we talk about child abuse, when we go down and talk to the legislators in Salem this next session—what we’re going to be talking about is not so much data from these guys. It’s doctrine. They believe, in spite of the evidence, that this is a tremendous problem.

There are some religious presuppositions that underpin their interpretation and which statistics they use. They’re not treating this thing objectively. And so to help us understand some of the mentality that’s going on here, I want to read a few quotes from Mary Pride’s book. These are the sort of things that people want to have occur in our nation.

In North Carolina, there was a group that was set up. They produced a child care plan which was endorsed later by the governor and copies of it were sent to every state in the union. This plan is now receiving wide circulation in states and also for the federal government. Federal government officials are also trying to implement this plan or at least move states rather toward implementation of this plan. This plan included among other things compulsory health care home for every child. Children had to be registered in one such home at birth.

Okay, a healthcare home established on the block somewhere. If parents refused to have their children registered with this health care home as opposed to their own home, they’d be turned over to child protective services and threatened with losing their children. Among these things that this plan would require conformance with recommendations for prevention and promotion: “The child and his parents will arrange for examination, education, counseling, immunization, other well-child services rather than only episodic treatment.”

In other words, what that plan calls for is that as soon as the child’s born, it’ll be registered with a state-approved or state-certified block home, as it were, that kind of idea. And the parents would have to regularly go to this state agency for counseling on how to parent, counseling on how to discipline your child, mental evaluations of the child, mental evaluations of the parent, et cetera, et cetera. It wouldn’t be voluntary. It would be compulsory.

Additionally, one of the healthcare home services is “organized instruction, individual counseling throughout the parenting cycle including the decision to have a first or additional child.” So of course one of the things they want to counsel you about through this mandatory plan that they want to institute in North Carolina and other states as well is whether or not you should have children at all. And of course, you can imagine the sort of response you’d have if you took a position like the scriptures do—that children are a blessing from God and blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

But you would not be a cooperative member in this whole team. You have to understand that their psychological and social thrust is completely different from that.

Now another plan similar to this one was promoted at a workshop in Missouri. Missouri Governor’s Conference on Children and Youth met in Jefferson City on December 7th and 8th, 1981. This conference, by the way, was funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government. Our tax dollars are going to pay for these sort of conferences. The first speaker at this conference said the following.

He said that to be effective, educators must reach the child at birth. He felt that ill-informed parents ought not be allowed too long a time to pass their value system on to their children. He recommended management of the child by what he called professionals at age zero, with the parents acting as caretakers under the direction of the professional from age 0 to 2 and a half. And then at age 2 and a half, he thought the approach should change with both the management and the service to the child being placed in the hands of those whom he called professionals.

So what they’re calling for in Missouri was for the first 2 and a half years of a child’s life, the parent would be kind of a caretaker. You know, you’d be responsible to provide his economic underpinnings I suppose, but the state would be the professional agency in there to make sure that your education of the child, your upbringing of the child, was completely consistent with state-sponsored goals and means. At the age of 2 and a half, both oversight of the child management and service would be in the hands of those whom he called professionals.

This man. Condescendingly, at another conference the same year, said the following: “Sending a new parent home with a six-day old baby as we do now in this country is absolutely insane.” These people don’t believe in the ability of parents or the proper functioning of the family. As we’ve noted in our country, they’re absolutely committed to something totally different. They’re committed to the state providing nurture for the child, not the family.

I could go on and on reading some of these things, but the point I’m trying to get at here is that the state systems—you can go through many of these state conferences that have been held in various states sponsored by the federal government or whatever—there are people at work here. These same people are ones who produce child abuse laws in these states. These people are using child abuse laws as a mechanism whereby to pry the authority of the family away from parents and put the child under the dominion of the state.

That’s their stated purpose throughout these conferences. It’s not a veiled conspiratorial purpose. It is their stated purpose as we’ve just quoted from some of the plans they’ve adopted. That’s the context of the laws that we have here in the state of Oregon today.

Basically what’s happening then, what they’re saying is that any nonconformance to a state-approved method of raising children, of nurturing children, of disciplining children, providing for them all the services necessary—health, education, welfare, mental health, as well—of course any lack of conformance to those things they are increasingly defining as child abuse.

So they set a standard up now of what they think is the correct way to nurture and educate children and any nonconformity to what their standards of righteousness are, if you want to call it that, are now looked upon and being defined more and more as child abuse. Okay? So child abuse is being used as a tool again to assert the authority of the state over the child and to diminish the authority of the natural parents.

Now, Mary and I can’t really, you know, obviously sum up this book in a couple of minutes, but the book is an important thing to read and to understand. If you read this book and you assimilate what’s in it, you’ll be more than capable of talking to people about child abuse and what the real reasons are behind the child abuse laws we have in the state.

I must mention also that her book doesn’t end with simply an attack upon the existing child abuse laws in the nation. She provides specific actions that we should engage ourselves in. One of the recommendations that she makes is first of all to change the definition. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, specifically here in Oregon. She talks about trying to get rid of that.

One of the specific things we should do is to eliminate the hotlines. I guess maybe most of you don’t know, but every state now, as a result of federal intervention, has a hotline system where anybody can hotline somebody else. If I don’t like you, I can call up the hotline and tell them I think you’re abusing your child in some way and they’ll come out and investigate you. And if you keep that in mind—that any investigation can be started by anybody anonymously over this hotline—then you’ll understand why some of these rules that we’re going to read about here shortly are so disastrous to liberty in this country.

Hotlines should be absolutely eliminated. Hotlines are a Soviet style of justice. After all, we’ve always heard about the Soviet Union as the ones that have people informing on their neighbors left and right and even their children. I’ve heard instances just last week where children being disciplined will actually threaten their parents with saying, “You better watch it. You’ll get arrested for child abuse.”

The children themselves, of course, at a certain age catch on to this and realize they can eliminate the parents’ authority simply by hotlining them to the state themselves. By the way, Mary Pride—one of the reasons she got into this whole thing is when a neighbor told her that she had overheard some children’s services workers, I think in Missouri, who wanted to get at a particular family. They thought the family was doing things incorrectly, but they didn’t have any reason to investigate the family. And one of the social workers just told the other social worker, “Well, just go ahead and hotline them a couple of times, and that’ll start a mandatory investigation of the family.”

Anybody can hotline anybody. There is no requirement that there be evidence. There is total anonymity guaranteed. You got to get rid of the hotlines.

Third, she says that we have to look at these things realistically. If we have an actual case of child abuse going on with proper definitions, why do we want to pull the child out of the family? If we have a man abusing his child and the wife isn’t, we should pull the man out and throw him in jail. We should remove the perpetrator of violence in the family before we remove the child out of the environment that is nurturing and caring for him.

What good does it do a child to remove him from a situation, throw him in a foster home, such as we described earlier with the case of the lady with the baseball? That would be tremendously damaging, I would think, to a child removed out of the place of nurture and help for them.

And finally, if on the other hand both parents—or if it’s a single parent household, you actually can’t remove the parent without leaving the children there by themselves—why not have a system where the children rather be removed for their own safety to the homes of individuals who are related to the family or friends of the family? In other words, put them in an environment where they’re going to feel comfortable as opposed to one where they have complete strangers in a state-run system.

Fourth—the fifth point, rather—she recommends changes in liability policies. It’s part of the context of the rules we’re going to talk about here in a couple of minutes: the fact that liability laws now in most states say that if the children’s service worker doesn’t take action early enough, he’s liable to be sued by somebody for allowing the child to be damaged by the parents.

If he, on the other hand, comes in and acts in an intervening manner, takes the child out like he did with this family, they’re absolutely immune to liability lawsuits from the parents. So the liability laws now actually encourage children services workers to remove children from homes early on in the whole investigation. So we have to change that.

Another thing she recommends is to junk psychological testing. I mean, after all, why would we believe the presuppositions of the psychology that’s practiced in our country today? Why do we allow the government over us to insist on psychological testing of children and of parents? The whole thing is just a big bunch of malarkey, not founded on any kind of science at all. Totally open to interpretation by individuals. We should get rid of all psychological testing and evaluation from the child abuse investigation procedures.

Finally, one of the last things she says is that police should investigate child abuse cases, not social workers. Let’s say I know my neighbor—I know that the neighbor is actually torturing the child. I call up CSD and CSD then sends out a social worker to look into the situation. They don’t send out a policeman to investigate. They can, but they don’t have to. The investigations are normally carried out by social workers.

Now, social workers aren’t trained in criminal justice. They’re not trained to understand proper methods of investigating possible crimes. Police are. That’s what their training is all about. Why not send police out to investigate the matter instead of social workers?

And finally, she calls for—and this church certainly endorses—strong and effective legislation and prosecution of people who actually do abuse children. If we have a good definition of child abuse on the books, then we’re certainly ones who want to call for stringent enforcement of those child abuse laws.

It’s important when you look, when I read through some of these regulations we’re going to read about here in a couple of minutes, to remember that these things are not at this time being—let’s see, what am I trying to say? What I’m trying to say is: let’s say a person does actually physically abuse a child through sexual abuse, through physical abuse, or some other abuse.

There is right now no strong state law to intervene in that situation and to punish the perpetrator. There’s removal of the child. There’s psychological counseling from both parties, et cetera. But child abuse really is not a crime in this state. It’s not investigated by police and the people aren’t thrown in jail. There’s simply removal of the child and then an attempt to bring the child back together.

If child molesters in this country, true child molesters, were given the biblical punishment, which is execution, then child molesters wouldn’t be allowed to perpetrate their crimes upon—what is the average rate of repetition for them?—which is 30 to 60 victims. Most child molesters abuse between 30 and 60 children. If one of the first children they abused, instead of getting psychological counseling from the state to tell them that they’re not responsible for their actions, if they were executed for raping a child, that person would then no longer rape the next 20 or 30 or 40 kids, would they?

That’s the kind of punishment we need for rape. We need strong, effective punishment of those people who actually do physical damage—physical damage to children. So we’re not saying that we’re not concerned about child abuse. We’re saying it should be a crime and that our laws should be stiffened and enforced vigorously when they’re good laws. But these laws are not good laws.

Now, that’s the context. That’s the child abuse hysteria going on in our country today. And that’s the context of the new rules in the state of Oregon. I brought copies of these rules. I’d like to have maybe a couple of you guys come up and pass these out. We’ll go through these now in a fairly fashion. You can read them in some detail later perhaps.

Now remember this context. It’s pointed out immediately in these rules what we’re talking about. Under the first section, the purpose section on page one, it says in the middle of the first paragraph: “The animal protective service is to protect children by assisting their parents to resolve problems which underlie child maltreatment.”

Okay. The second paragraph: “The goals of children protective services are to assure the child’s welfare and safety, to reduce factors, causes and stresses which led to the abuse or neglect, to support and encourage cognitive, emotional and behavioral adjustment which results in family maintenance.”

The first thing this purpose section should get across to you is that their goals for this legislation are far broader than simply moving against people who are criminally guilty of abusing their children. That is not the goal of children services division. Children’s services division has stated their purpose here is to resolve the underlying problems in a family, to talk about behavioral adjustment of the child and of the parents as well.

What their goal is: to restructure the way you think about life to a correct way which they believe. Which again is the idea of conformance to their set of standards. If you don’t conform to their set of standards, you’re going to come in for instruction from them. If you’re ever hotlined, you’re going to come in. It’s one thing to say a CSD here has an overall goal not simply to punish criminals. The goal of this legislation is rather for an intrusion into the family to dictate state-approved value systems onto the family.

Okay. Now, in the actual definitions themselves, on page two, we have a definition of physical abuse. Now, it’s interesting. Now, you understand first of all: administrative rules. What they are is you have the legislature passes a law in the state of Oregon. Okay? That produces a statute law. The law then, if it is general, has to be defined by administrative rule.

Now, first of all, the first problem with all this stuff is that we have administrative rules at all. If the legislature was doing its job and writing good laws that were clearly understood by people and had good definitions of statute law, we’d have no need for administrative rules. Administrative rules are a denial of the separation of powers. You have a bureaucracy of the state, in effect, writing statute law because they take the law and determine what it actually means. So they’re actually writing law here that has the force of law. Okay?

So administrative rules in themselves are bad. But the purpose of administrative rules is to make more specific the policies that have been passed in statute law by the legislature. And remember that, because then it’s interesting how they approach this job of trying to clarify what physical abuse is for us on page two when they say in the first paragraph under physical abuse: “Physical abuse includes but is not limited to any injury which cannot reasonably be the result of the explanation given.”

Then it says: “Examples of injury which may result from physical abuse include…” So in an attempt here to define what the statute of law says is physical abuse, they leave it open-ended. They make it more expansive yet. In other words, they don’t say this is physical abuse. They say well, this may be physical abuse. This is physical abuse, but there’s a lot of other things that could be abuse as well that we’re not going to list out here.

So they don’t even define it themselves. They leave it just as open for a fishing expedition on the part of some zealous children’s services worker as the original statute did. They failed their purpose, I guess, is what I’m saying: to put concrete definitions to an ambiguous law by writing ambiguous rules now, which has the effect, of course, of expanding the powers of the state to investigate families.

But they do something specifically here. They tell us specifically that bruising a child—under B, bruises, cuts, lacerations, discoloration, breakage or tear of skin tissues—that bruising a child is definitely child abuse. Now this thing, as I said, has the power of statute law. And if a parent spanks the child with the rod and produces some small bruising on their behind, they are now guilty of child abuse.

Now, as I pointed out before, one of the other contexts of all this is that I, as a clergyman, am responsible according to state law now. I am under obligation to report all suspected incidents of child abuse. So if I know the congregation of thanking their children, that it may actually give you some bruising, or if it leads to fear on the part of the child for their parent, I’m under obligation to the state to report that.

Now anytime I don’t do that, I’m liable for a $1,000 fine. Now remember that as we go through some of these definitions. I have to understand these because I have to walk in obedience to them as a clergyman. Now, as a public official, I have to understand these so that I can report those of you who are violating these laws. Well, either way, I have a big problem because it doesn’t tell you what child abuse is. But it does say that it’s bruising.

Is spanking allowed under this law? Well, we don’t know. Because it says that bruising is not allowed. But remember, the physical injury isn’t limited to the things they define here. And in fact, when I first heard about this the first week of October, it was passed. The CSD official that they had on one of the local news stations said that spanking now was a gray area. It wasn’t legal. It wasn’t illegal. We don’t know if it’s legal or illegal, they said.

Well, actually, if you get to a little bit later, I think that it is definitely illegal now, but we’ll get to that in a minute. It’s expansive.

I won’t—as I said, you’ll have to go through these in some detail yourself. We don’t have time this morning to talk to all of them. We’re on page three, under neglect. Neglect is child abuse. These tell us: What is neglect? Well, neglect is “failure, whether intentional or not, to provide and maintain adequate food, clothing, shelter, et cetera, et cetera.”

You see: “inadequate food means failing to provide a basic diet to maintain age-related physical and social activities and prevent, based on nutritional deficiency, significant or continuing illnesses, diseases, developmental delay or impairment of physical and mental functioning.” They talk about inadequate clothing. You have to have adequate clothing. What is adequate clothing? What is an adequate basic diet? I don’t know.

But I suppose that depending upon your medical perspective, you’d have a lot of different ideas, particularly these days, about what an adequate diet is. I suppose, and in fact, Mary Pride gives examples where some states now, if you give your child Twinkies, you’re in—you should come under some fear that you may be guilty of child abuse through this thing here regarding physical diet.

On the other hand, if you got a state legislature who’s into Twinkies, I suppose, and you put them on a, you know, bulgur diet or something, they won’t like that. Adequate clothing, adequate shelter—all these things are just ridiculous.

Medical neglect. This is a real good one. “A refusal or failure to seek, obtain, and maintain those services for necessary medical, dental, or mental health care.” You have an obligation to provide mental health care for your child. Now, what does that mean? Which psychiatrist is a good one to take them to? After all, I don’t know. But they’re saying you got to be concerned about that. And I have to look for those of you out there who don’t provide good mental health care for your child.

These, as I said, these things are obviously expansive. They attempt to expand state powers to investigate and prosecute people for child abuse. I don’t know what adequate is. I do know this: that again talking about adequate food, and Mary Pride gives an example, a specific example there, many of them where the child is small—you may well come to be hotlined by somebody and then come under the watchful eye of the state to look over and see what you’re doing with your child.

And she gives an example of a girl who at age two wasn’t very big. And so they took the child away for 9 months, put in a foster home. At the age of six, the child was only, I think, 38 pounds or something. And the mother is trying to tell them all along that both her parents and her grandparents are very small. Turns out the child’s grandparents were 4’7″ and 4’9″, respectively. Well, you’re in big trouble, I guess, if you have a small family.