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Editor’s note: This piece originally ran in 1999 and was requested that it be run again in lieu of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

By Earling Opsahl

Yes, there will be more tragedies like those at Columbine at Littleton, Colorado, because we the people do not care.

Sometime ago I wrote an article about why throw God out of our schools?

In an editorial in our paper they stated that a senator says that “religion comes from the family and that’s the way it should stay. I do believe it has to be individual prayer,” the senator said.

As a former Sunday School teacher and also a former school bus driver I can tell you a lot of children are born without fathers and come from one parent families and do not know what you are talking about. I have worked with young people who do not have anyone to tell them about family prayers or morality.

Talking to some of these young folks who were in trouble, I asked them who their God was. Some had never been inside of a church and did not know anything about the love of God. The only way out for them was to commit suicide if they could not hack it as that was the only God they knew, or take a few with them when they signed out.

In 1962, voluntary prayer in public school was banned when the court ruled that the New York Regents Prayer violated the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment.

Yes, so called educated judges struck down God and now the government is the law and not God.

If the sleeping judges would have read the amendment it shows quite clearly that the Constitution does not prohibit children from praying in school. It states that Congress cannot establish a religion nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

In other words the government cannot grant favors to one religion at the expense of others. In plain English no government, teacher, principal or person can stand in a school room and tell my or your children that they have to be of one certain religion.

The First Article of the Bill of Rights denies Congress, the lawmaking part of the government, the power to prohibit the free exercise of religion. And the amendment did not give courts such power either.

The New York Regents Prayer that was thrown out, said, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy Blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.”

This prayer was not mandatory. School policy allowed children to remain silent or even to leave the room. It violated one’s rights. It favored no certain religion, yet the highest court in the land decided that the State should be God over the Almighty.

Since God was put out, we let in drugs, guns smoking, drinking, murder and no respect.

We now bring in baby beds for unwed mothers. This is the state-type morality.

Here are some past rulings: In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a federal judge ordered a public school to remove a portrait of Jesus Christ that had been displayed for more than 30 years. This was a print of artist Warner Sallman.

If this had been a portrait of the devil or Hitler it could have stayed.

Metropolis, Illinois — Two sophomores were in prayer out by the school flag pole and the principal told them they were engaged in unlawful assembly. Minutes later a sheriff’s deputy escorted them to a police car.

Livonia, Michigan — An eight-year-old pupil was chosen “VIP of the week,” and encouraged to bring personal items from home to share with classmates, but was stopped when she submitted a tape showing her singing a Christian song at church. The teacher allowed other students to submit papers on reincarnation, spiritualism and the occult.

These events show censorship plain and simple. The First Amendment was written to prevent government officials from doing the very thing they’ve done here — choosing which viewpoints they will allow and which ones they will not.

Evgenity Kirkin, Minister of Education in Russia said: The greatest problem is that God does not live in our land any longer. We must put God back into our country and we must begin with our children.

I wonder what he would think about the U.S.A. and our system of throwing God out of our young people’s lives.

Ralph Georgy, a native of Egypt, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of California, wrote in an article for the Los Angeles Times. He states that in the latter 20th century human beings are reduced to numbers. It is an age of fleeting images and instant information, self help cults and pop psychology, loneliness and existential angst.

This is what we have to accept as the price for the final sin against God. He says that God, with all his theoretical complications, gave us morality, decency and hope. He gave us something permanent to hold onto. We used to find shelter and meaning in God. Today we find meaning and shelter in physical sensations.

We escape our lives through television, movies, music, sex and drugs. We seem to need more and different sensations to feel anything at all.

As you read this you see where we threw God out of our schools instead of love allowing killing in our schools today.

Again, we should read the First Amendment and listen to our forefathers.

The government shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion.

The Four Horseman of Apocalypse are here to awaken us. America is now riding with the horseman of death. God does love us and he wants us to awaken and bring his love back to his children.