Following is the first of four blogs comprising a graduation speech delivered by Miss Dang to the Class of 2008 of American Christian Academy Extension Campus in California.
Part 1: of a 4-part series
We come each year to commencement ceremonies always with a thankful heart to God for His faithfulness and goodness to preserve, protect, and provide our families and our nation with another generation to carry forward the legacy of Christian liberty -- Christ’s liberty which sets the individual soul free from the demoralizing chains of sin and degradation, then to enable him to live by faith in the power of Christ’s ability to govern from within man’s inward propensity toward unbelief, disobedience and sin.
Liberty is born of Christ’s Spirit; to the glory of the power of Christ in the life of the individual that Spirit moved and prevailed over the ages of time, traversed across continents, and planted itself as a vine of Christian liberty in the soil of the American wilderness. This vine of Christian liberty grew into a republic -- a republic unlike any other in the history of the world, having as its cornerstone the principle of individual self-government. History testifies that Providence reserved America for a people with a capacity for self-government, for a people who believed God and who would be guided by His Word in their personal lives, in their homes, in their churches, in their businesses, and in their local and national spheres of government.
Dear graduates, you have inherited six kinds of liberty. Not only may you avail yourselves of Christ’s liberty of salvation from the law of sin and death, but also, because you are American Christians, you have as well, with un-persecuted Christianity, a liberty of conscience, a Christian conscience free from offenses both toward God and man; religious liberty, freedom from the belief of another; economic liberty, freedom to enjoy the fruits of your own labor; civil liberty, freedom from the intrusion of the state into one’s life and livelihood; and political liberty, freedom from the control of another nation. You have inherited a responsibility for the stewardship of these six liberties, an inheritance of the greatest individual liberty ever known to mankind.
Should you, however, ever separate your Christianity from your country and thus neglect your individual responsibility to maintain these liberties by exercising the government of Christ in you, these liberties will begin diminishing by degrees. Civil government is God’s idea. It was instituted by God for the security of the life, liberty, and property He gives to every individual and for the just punishment of those who would do harm to them. Civil government was not instituted as the fountain of all earthly good and neither did God institute civil government to take the place of His personal government over the individual. Man was created to be governed by God alone; if not by self-government, then by civil government.
Part 2: of a 4-part series
When a Christian denies the divine origin and purpose for civil government, he naturally relinquishes his responsibility for the quality of civil government that may be established over him and tacitly consents to any potential loss of his God-given life, liberty, and property. How should God hold this Christian guiltless of negligence and disobedience with regard to the maintenance of good civil government when he is not maintaining good self-government within his own sphere of influence? when he is not trusting God for the government of himself and for everything which pertains to him? but, he is instead relying upon men for his direction, regulation, control, and restraint?
Today, we suffer for our being irresponsible for the quality of civil government, or the government of our nation, as generations past have walked away from and abandoned the responsibility for the quality of civil government within their local spheres of influence, beginning within their own homes, their churches and, then, within their local communities. They have demanded secularists somehow to maintain divine institutions and have expected men blind to God to see and to lead us with respect to our homes, our churches, and civil governments. Can any one of us defy the law of gravity and not crash and burn? Can generations let go of Biblical principles of the home, church, and civil government and not suffer miserable spiritual and material consequences? Can a people secularize the home, the church, and the civil government for long and not eventually feel the tightening bands of socialism about their lives, liberties, and livelihoods?
Self-government is no more than simple obedience to God’s principles for all of life and living: for marriage and the security of the home; for the care of the business of the church; and for the fulfillment of the purpose of civil government to protect every man’s life, liberty, and livelihood. In proportion to a nation’s ignoring and letting go of these principles, does that nation corrupt itself with unbelief and disobedience, thus to begin on a course of self destruction.
Are we now not undergoing the painful consequences owed to the corruption of our self-government? True to the ways of Providence, corruption has its own pain that leads to a correction, that leads men to ponder the causes for their discomforts and national troubles and to think upon what the cure might be for them, what other course might be taken in order to reverse the path they have taken toward self destruction. This painful process of correction leads us today to examine within, beginning with our own views of civil government, of the government of our homes, our churches and communities, and of our nation. As America was conceived by individual reformation, America shall also be restored to her foundation of self-government by individual repentance and the revival of individual self-government.
Individuals are cured of socialism when they come finally to the end of socialism within themselves, when they have had their fill of the leeks and onions of today’s Egypt, of the socialization and standardization of socialism, never to return to them again, never to separate the history of America from the History of Christ, and not forsaking, but standing firmly, assured in the individual liberty with which Christ has set them free, in the greatest liberty for the individual seen in the history of the world.
Part 3: of a 4-part series
Graduates, your home education is God’s idea. It is one positive evidence of God’s favor upon our nation. All the problems which a nation has originate in the nation’s families and homes. If these problems are to be addressed and resolved, they must first be addressed and resolved within the Christian’s home. To correct what is wrong in America, we must begin with what is wrong with the thinking and government in the Christian homes in America that have caused them to be unable to produce the proper leadership for each of the spheres of civil government: city, county, state, and nation. American Christians have not been cultivating and growing individual self-government in their homes and churches for a long while.
I ask you: As generations before you, have you been socialized, predisposed to trust in associations, fellowships, organizations, corporations, and all of society rather than in God for all of your earthly needs, so as to exchange your birthright of liberty for the world’s mess of pottage? Or, will you believe in God’s principles of economics and individual enterprise taught us by Paul in his letter to the Christians in Thessalonica:
. . . that ye study to be quiet, to do your own business, and to work with your own hands. . .That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. (4:11, 12)
We do not, however, separate what God is doing in the wilderness of home education from what God is doing in America. Home education is blessing America. From the demand of independency and the enjoyment of liberty which are naturally inherent to home education, generations are arising which are not as disposed to socialization as their fathers and mothers were; old patterns of life and living which have supported the increasing of socialism in this nation are being set aside and new patterns of individual enterprise and independency from the State are being set for generations to come.
Thus, we ask ourselves: Could Providence not be preparing generations to live unto Him, those future American generations who would seek to please Him, having the mind of Christ concerning history, government, and education? Could God, perhaps, be weaning our nation from a belief in the all-powerful state unto faith in the absolute, eternal, and unchanging power of God? Could it be that home education in America represents the beginning of the end of socialism in America? The positive hope is real because we know from personal experience of the power of Christ in the life of the individual, of his home, of his church, of his business, and of his local community.
Part 4: of a 4-part series
Graduates, were you not born for this time, that you might contribute to the bringing of individual self-government to the foreground of the current history of the world; that you might represent Christ and his form of government to the nations; that they might seek after Christ and find His form of freedom: individual liberty; that the world might acknowledge what power Christ is in the life of the individual American Christian; that nations might want, instead of our military and monetary aid, want our Christ who is the foundation of our liberty and self-government?
Today we are more concerned about which brand of socialism is better than another’s rather than being concerned for the quality of individual self-government which shall displace socialism in the future and coming generations. The cure for the American people’s growing tendency toward socialism is not in their electing political conservatives into public office. But rather, the cure and antidote are to be found within the American Christian, who first repents for his own socialism, for his not trusting Christ and His principles of self and civil government, who repents for his denying the power of Christ within his own life and living, and then to clean his own household of such unbelief.
History testifies that while individual self-government -- while Christ -- is in the earth, no socialism shall prevail and the claim of the inevitable victory of socialism is a pretentious impossibility. For, ". . . of the increase of his government," of the government of God’s Son, "there shall be no end." Christianity is power, not force; not of might in numbers but rather of internal strength, the strength of individual character and conscience.
Modern America has been separated from its own history for seemingly far too long. The controversies and challenges presently issuing from within the local and national spheres of civil government are the direct consequences of the American people’s ignorance -- willful or innocent -- of the principles which established this nation and which promote the greatest liberty for the individual and the greatest individual capacity for self-government that the world has ever known.
The generations immediately following after George Washington’s began to let go of their responsibility to maintain the liberty and independence for which their forefathers paid so dearly; those generations were found unworthy of their inheritance. Washington’s generation was uniquely prepared by Providence to establish the world’s first Christian republic, but we are learning that to maintain this republic, generations greater than Washington’s must arise. We rely upon the ruling and overruling work of Divine Providence to preserve you and make you worthy of your inheritance and fit you for the stewardship of our nation.
In the years just ahead of you, life’s experiences will deepen and widen that foundation so well laid by your parents. Build your lives well on this foundation. Your education is your enterprise. In faith complete what has been so faithfully begun by your parents. Your challenge is not to be neglectful and irresponsible of your Christian liberty as some of your fathers were; but, in the name of Christ’s liberty, your challenge is to put on the mantel and authority of Christian character and conscience that all the world within your sphere of influence may witness the power of individual self-government, of the power of Christ in the life of the individual, which is for His name’s sake.
You also, will be held accountable for the quality of civil government you leave behind; starting within your spheres of influence you will answer for how secure you have made your inheritance of individual liberty for your posterity. Is it unreasonable for you to think your generation ought to do better than the last? Your parents gave you more liberty than they ever experienced in their lives at your age. Rather than trusting in society, they trusted God for their earthly needs and for your education. Are you to do any less? Will you promise God to do anything less?
Now, each one of you, go and walk with Him independently dependent upon Him alone rejoicing. Govern and measure your lives by His Word. Live by the power of Christ in you. God who made you has prepared a place for you in this world. Look not on your shortcomings, inadequacies, and failings, but know only that God cannot fail in His good and wise purposes. Then some day, further down the road of your life, you shall look back over your shoulder to see that His goodness and mercy have followed you all the days of your life.
Graduates, please accept my sincere congratulations to you and your families and best wishes for a blessed future.
END
Courtesy of philomathfoundation.com
Philomath Foundation was founded by Miss Katherine Dang of Pleasanton, California. It is a non-profit, religious foundation established to propagate the ideas of Providential history, self-government, and Christian education through the dissemination of teaching and study materials, American Christian Education seminars, history and government study groups, youth and adult classes, and the encouragement of all in the understanding of the God of Providential history and creation.
"Katherine Dang’s extraordinary contribution to this millennium is to restore the Providential Interpretation of History and to encourage the contemporary Christian to judge of and deal with the affairs of the modern world… As a Chinese American Christian, Miss Dang has become one of the most erudite thinkers and expositors of Christ, His Story, in this age. How gracious God is to raise up a woman whose ancient heritage is China, ‘A complete and unmixed despotism’, and to prepare her to become the foremost American Christian historian since Miss Verna Hall to document and elucidate the Perfect Law of Liberty in the subject of Universal History."
After receiving an undergraduate degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970, with her faith in Jesus Christ and the Word of God intact, Miss Dang was subsequently introduced to the Biblical principles and reasoning that distinguish America’s Christian history, government and education by Verna Hall and Rosalie Slater of the Foundation for American Christian Education. Subsequently, she began teaching at the pilot school in Hayward, CA under the direction of James Rose. Within the next 25 years, Miss Dang became a Master Teacher of teachers as these principles and ideas were taught, illustrated, and demonstrated in the classroom and later to the 50-member faculty of her own church-school of nearly 800 K-12 grade students. Retiring from the Christian day-school ministry in 1995, she dedicated herself to writing and compiling a four-volume work on Universal History from Creation to the present – the first two volumes of which were published in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Currently, Miss Dang is President of the non-profit religious and educational Philomath Foundation, Founder of Philomath Publications, home school consultant, conference speaker, and author.
Miss Dang teaches groups of home school parents and youth in 14 California cities. When she consults with individual families, parents acknowledge her unique ability to encourage, embolden, and give hope of success because she knows how to cancel the fear of achieving commonly accepted but unreasonable and unbiblical expectations for children. Gifted with the capacity to evaluate a student’s attitudes, disposition, and qualities of thought; equipped with practical curriculum ideas, outlines and resources of her own making; and tested by over 35 years of classroom/counseling experience, Miss Dang simplifies both the Biblical path and the goals for self-education and self-government. She occasionally accepts invitations to teach the philosophy, curriculum and methods of American Christian Education to assemblies throughout the country.
