There's been a lot of talk about President Obama speaking to our children today via internet in classrooms across the country. It turns out that the whole thing has been blown completely out of proportion by some of us conservatives. His speech (though I've only read excerpts, quite honestly) is a fantastic message to our youth to work hard in school and in life. Check out the gist of the message according to John Piper at the Desiring God blog.

Let me be clear that I still want to be understanding to those who were weirded out by this whole thing. At first, I was under the impression that the content of Barack Obama's speech was NOT going to be made available to parents ahead of time. That is a bit unnerving to those of us who A) do not believe Obama is infallible and B) were unsure if this was a political endeavor to push his current agendas.

Quite frankly, I don't want public policy to be blindly pushed on my children whether it is policy with which I agree or disagree. My goal is to raise human beings who actually know what I believe/think and why, and then are able to logically come to their own conclusions. And let's be honest, I hope that they come to many of the same conclusions I have come to. Anyone who says that they wouldn't enjoy that is lying to you or lying to themselves. But more than that, I want for my kids (and I hope you want for yours) to learn how to critically think through everything so that they have solid reasons for the principles they stand on, no matter what those principles may turn out to be.

Random thought: Isn't it totally weird that I now can say I have childREN? It feels weird to me.