Last week, while America was waking up to celebrate freedom, heroes in Kerrville, Texas were showing how freedom serves love.
On the heels of heartbreaking reports of mass casualties came the stories of heroes who risked everything to rescue others.
Camp director, Dick Eastland, died saving hundreds of Camp Mystic’s girls. Petty Officer, Scott Ruskan, persevered tirelessly in the maelstrom to evacuate 165 single-handedly. Julian Ryan poured out his life to open an escape route for his mother, his fiancé, and their two children.
Nobody compelled them. Neither red tape, nonsense, nor cowardice fettered them. Rather, parents had entrusted their kids to Eastland and Ruskan and they rose to that trust, in loco parentis. And Ryan was the actual parent, son, and fiancé of those he died to save.
That’s what parents do. They don’t consult manuals or ask permission to fight fiercely for their children. They simply do whatever it takes for their children, come hell or high water. Pity whatever fool or fiend would stand in their way.
Their cheerful ferocity sharply contrasts with the somber obeisance of parents in dystopian fiction.
Consider Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence in the blockbuster “Hunger Games.” What kind of parents would leave their young teenage girl to be forced into a death match to entertain the masses? In that dystopian world, we know more about the twisted characters who groom her than we do about her mother or father.
Consider Beatrice (Tris) Prior and her brother, Caleb, from the 2014 film, “Divergent.'' At least her parents came to her aid in the end. But not before they passively sat in the audience, wringing their hands while their daughter and son were forced to make a blood oath to put “faction over family.”
If you are not familiar with these recent fictions, think about whatever dystopian tale that comes to your mind—Orwell’s “1984,” Huxley’s “Brave New World,” or Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”
Dystopian societies are inconceivable unless parents abdicate their duties or are absent altogether. The reason is simple: The fierce and primal love of parents is the force that holds the powers of evil at bay.
Dystopian worlds don’t exist where parents do their duty. The Texas floods may have been hellish, but they were not dystopian. People like Eastland, Ruskan and Ryan overcame evil with good.
In the real world, parents will fight to the death rather than give up their children to a system that harms them - physically, mentally, or spiritually. They would rather be called “domestic extremists” than be the docile automatons that feed their own children into the machine.
It was these contrasts between the natural disaster in Texas and the man-made disasters of dystopian worlds that suddenly clarified what is at stake in today’s constant battles over parental rights.
Whether it be inappropriate books in the children’s section, inappropriate content in the classroom, or the Wyoming Education Association’s despicable tactics to deny parents their right to educate their own children, it is always about freedom to love their own children, and perform the duty given by God.
Unless and until you have been given that gut-level relationship of a mother or a father, you can only imagine the power of the mamma bear protecting her cubs or the ferocity of a father fighting for his child. Pity the devil who gets in his or her way.
And I do mean devil.
The devil knows the power of parents for good. He knows full well that, for evil to prevail, natural family bonds must be overcome.
Good and healthy governments know this, too. And they fight back the devil by protecting parental rights.
Wise lawmakers also know this truth. That’s why the best of Wyoming’s legislators are working with State Superintendent Megan Degenfelder to strengthen Wyoming’s parental rights laws and make them more enforceable.
The protection of parental rights is not about giving arbitrary adults the license to do whatever they please. It is about breaking the shackles that prevent parents from doing their duty. It is about unleashing the power of love.
We saw that power and freedom at work against the rising flood waters in Texas. And, while we mourn the loss of life in Kerr County, we also rejoice at the hundreds of girls who were rescued, and the generations who were led to safety by the self-sacrifice of family who loved them.
Give me the hotblooded love of mom and dad over the sterility of state caretakers any day. Then watch the fury of evil shrink back at the power of God.
Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.
