The Shire Under Sharkey

Ubiquitous Lists of Rules

The Law of God sets us free.  The law of man crushes us into the gulag.  What we mean by this is that the respective fruits of the Law of God versus the law of man are radically different.  The law of man--at least as we know it in the West--is the law of soft-despotism.  The State adds endless rules and regulations to take more and more control of our lives.

There are examples and illustrations on every hand, but here is one more, to illustrate the point yet again.  In the UK, government schools have been granted the authority to search pupils' lunch boxes to ensure the food provided for them by their parents complies with state rules, regulations, and mandates.  So much for the laws of privacy.

In a move that has fired up parents, teachers in the UK have been granted the power to inspect pupils' lunchboxes and confiscate unhealthy snacks.  "Schools have common law powers to search pupils, with their consent, for items," Schools Minister Lord Nash said.  "There is nothing to prevent schools from having a policy of inspecting lunch boxes for food items that are prohibited under their school food policies.  A member of staff may confiscate, keep or destroy such items found as a result of the search if it is reasonable to do so in the circumstances." [Daily Mail, via NZ Herald]

The State and its agencies are increasingly showing the wolf underneath the sheep's cloth.  The State is becoming the overlord, the uber-parent.  Now, we have always known this is where the law of man leads.  Unbelief cannot help itself.  Once it sets itself up as the final authority to "make things right" in the end there are no limitations to its power.  Sin, imperfection, inadequacy, and failure is part of the fallen human condition.  The State's salvation is law, rules, and regulations--promulgated by the State and administered by the State's agencies.  No part of the human soul will be exempt as "one thing leads to another" and yet one more inevitable imperfection or inadequacy leads to yet another profusion of laws and extension of State controls.

A Labour Party MP put the matter in perspective:

Iain Austin, a Labour member of the Commons education committee, said: "With Britain tumbling down the international league tables and with a generation entering the work force with less literacy and numeracy than the generation retiring, you would have thought that teachers might have better things to do than rummage through children's crisps and fruit."

It is also true that the parents of the generation now retiring would have been aghast to think that within the lifetime of their children the State would have assumed such powers and controls over the families of the nation.

Is this the straw that will break the camel's back?  Unlikely.  We have plenty of scope yet for further rules, regulations, controls, fines, punishments, and retributions, whilst the people "bowed and prayed to the neon god they made".   The state is on a mission.

The woods are ugly, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.  

Is child obesity not a health problem, then?  Of course it is.  But the solutions of the administrative soft-despotic State are always worse than the evil they intend to combat.  When the State arrogated the power to become "healer of the nation" through the National Health Service it implicitly assumed the powers to rummage through the lunch-boxes of children, inspecting, confiscating, and punishing recalcitrant families.  It has taken a couple of generations for those powers to be used--but the remorseless, relentless course was always fixed, and inevitable.  


Sooner or later men will awake and realise that their idol gods are evil and destructive.  Their gods are death and reign in the realm of death. Sharkey is their prophet.  But the true King has seen, and will ensure, their end.  He has taken oaths, and He has risen from the dead.