Sitting by the garden, waiting for the rain, my husband reminded me of the newest preconception brought out by his old hunting truck paired, no less, with his old overalls.  He's started taking our youngest son to the high school's football workouts.  And at a prior activity with the athletic director, he was rather dismissed, having driven up in the beat-up, old Toyota.
    The whole purpose has been to get our son on the team but only on campus for two classes, as our state's new law allows.  As far as we know, he will be the first homeschool student in the county, at least at that school, to try it out.  His older brother went as far as an out of state boarding school to continue in sports.  One older sister went full-time public high school in order to participate, which did not go as planned.  So, we hope and pray that this "marriage" will be suitable for our younger son.
    Every Christian parent should consider while their children are participating in youth, public team sports that they might get good enough to play in high school, then college, which lends itself to the desire of participating at the highest level, and that is unlikely at a small, private, Christian institution, scholarship or no.  So, there your young adult is, on scholarship at a publicly funded university, the system feeding your child that which is "right in his own eyes," just as in the days of the book of Judges that the younger two and I finished up yesterday.
      So far, our older children have had the wherewithal not to subscribe to farfetched ideologies, willing and able to debate the teachers.  But the student culture is where things get hairy, especially in the subculture of team camaraderie: the music, the language, the "activities."  All these things are insidious for a young person away from home who has no one to answer to at the end of the day but the team.
     And that's where you hope you still have some influence to encourage that child who is continually in close proximity to what amounts to Paganism (many participants professing Christ, yet denouncing Him in deed) to take some sort of stand, because the student's sitting back and tolerating it is only a lie to tempt them into the "it's not so bad" excuses.
     And before they know it, they're one of "them."  The truth is that the Christian is either growing or withering.  We don't get to make up the option of just standing still.  Influence or be influenced.
     And that is what we are wanting to convince our younger son of.
     "Yes, you're the new guy.  But when the coach asks if anybody has music they want to play, speak up...," just like he did yesterday here at home in our daily reading, giving special attention to this verse in John 7, "Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment."
     It is easy to pin that one on the athletic director, since he had a better attitude when he saw my husband drive up in the newer car and in better clothes, or newer overalls anyway.  But we all do this to some degree, fair as we may be.
     God is perfect in this though. Acts 10:34-35, "Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is  no respecter of persons.  But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him."  Just now, after looking up "respect," I find three definitions before the one most similar to the Bible's, "deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges."  God does not have "respect" of persons, of positions of authority, yes, but not "respect" among people who believe.  So, why do we?  And why do we change the term "fear God" to "respect God?"  Fearing God is understanding that he is the ultimate authority, the final say, the all in all.  So, please do not change my Bible to say that I ought to respect God.  I have much more than that for Him.  I defer all things to Him and to Him all things I owe.