The System is Double-Minded and That's why It Can't Be Saved

What’s built on lies can’t be redeemed by reform

“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” - James 1:8

The child welfare system is double-minded. It preaches safety while causing harm, demands accountability from the powerless while excusing its own failures, and calls oppression “care.” Its instability isn’t accidental. It is the predictable fruit of a system built on lies. And no good fruit can grow from rotten soil.

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The System That Celebrates What It Would Never Tolerate from a Parent

The truth is, this system celebrates what it would never tolerate from a parent.

A child born with a rare genetic disorder suffers broken bones. The State accuses the parents of abuse and removes the child. Yet when those same bones continue to break in foster care, no one accuses the State. 

A father working two jobs leaves his children with a neighbor because his childcare voucher never came through. He’s reported for inadequate supervision and the investigation is substantiated with him as the perpetrator.   Instead of fixing the system that couldn’t meet his childcare needs,  the State removes the children.

When a mother tells the state she can no longer safely keep her child at home because she hasn’t received the help she needed from community-based programs, she’s charged with abandonment.

The system abandons parents and calls it success.

The children who survive it often return home carrying new layers of trauma, while the parents who fought to reunify are themselves exhausted and scarred by the process. Many can’t focus on healing because they’re too busy proving they deserve their own children.

After months of surveillance and humiliation, the State dumps these children back home and calls it a victory.

Cupcakes are served.

Cameras flash.

Parents are paraded for National Reunification Day as if the same system that nearly destroyed them now deserves applause.

The State punishes parents for abandonment but celebrates itself when it does the same thing in the courthouse with cupcakes.

Rules for Families, Grace for the System

Parents are held to timelines the system itself never meets. They are expected to show progress within months while agencies take years to “improve outcomes.”

When families fall behind, they’re labeled unfit.

When the system fails, it hides behind excuses of being under-resourced and understaffed.

Case managers miss court dates, court documents go unfiled, and hearings get postponed again and again.

Judges grant more time to the system, which delays permanency.

Parents wait.

Children wait.

The same system that demands compliance from parents excuses itself with compassion.

This is double-mindedness in its purest form

A system that demands grace for itself and judgment for everyone else.

It speaks the language of accountability but practices exemption.

It claims to protect children while protecting its own power.

As Scripture says in Luke 12:48, “To whom much is given, much will be required.” 

Yet those entrusted with the greatest power:  the agencies, the courts,  and the State are held to the lowest standard. They fail federal benchmarks year after year, yet nothing changes.

Their failures are met with more funding, not consequences.

If a parent’s rights can be terminated for failing to meet a plan, why not the State’s?

Why is endless grace reserved for the system, while families are punished?

A structure that holds others to laws it refuses to follow is not righteous.

It is unstable in all its ways.

Constant Testing for Parents. No Testing for Power

Parents are forced to jump through endless hoops taking multiple drug tests a week, sometimes for more than a year.  

They’re ordered to complete assessments, classes, and therapy while trying to keep a job, maintain housing, manage visits, and care for themselves.

Every area of their life is monitored, measured, and judged.

Meanwhile, the people with the power to destroy families are rarely tested at all.

Caseworkers and supervisors undergo checks at hire. After that? Silence.

No mental health screenings.

No trauma assessments.

No evaluations to ensure they are emotionally grounded, professionally competent, or spiritually whole.

The ones tasked with evaluating parents’ fitness face almost no scrutiny over their own.

A parent’s smallest mistake is treated as a moral failure.

A worker’s negligence is excused as “burnout.”

A parent missing an appointment is “noncompliance.”

A worker missing a court hearing is “they’re overworked and understaffed”

A system that demands parents be constantly tested while those in power remain unexamined is not just unfair. 

It is double-minded. It measures righteousness by proximity to power, not by truth.

System-Induced Homelessness

In some cases, when a child is removed, the parent loses their subsidized housing. Then the very system that caused their homelessness demands they obtain stable housing in order to get their children back.

This is system-induced homelessness. A cruel cycle that punishes families for conditions the state itself created.

A family that was experiencing poverty becomes homeless, and the system that destroyed their stability calls it “noncompliance.”

This is what double-mindedness looks like in practice

A system that destroys what it later demands,

Creates the conditions it condemns,

Then blames the very people it failed to help.

“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” 

The instability isn’t just in the families it disrupts. 

It’s baked into the system itself.

Money, Morality, and the Lie of “Support”

When a birth parent receives cash assistance, it’s limited, stigmatized, and heavily monitored. Parents are lectured on budgeting and “financial literacy” as if poverty is a personal flaw rather than the legacy of systemic oppression.

But adoptive parents? They receive cash assistance with no oversight. 

No one evaluates their spending habits. No one scrutinizes their financial literacy.

They must prove stability before adopting, but receive monthly checks until the child turns eighteen with no strings attached.

We give unstigmatized money to those who already have stability and conditional crumbs to those who don’t.

This, too, is the instability of a double-minded system. One that rewards comfort and punishes struggle, that calls control “care” and coercion “help.”

Reunification and the Reward of Harm

When parents do the impossible.

When they complete every task, attend every class, and fight through every barrier to reunify, their battle isn’t over.

The children who come home are not the same.

They return bearing the scars of separation, anxiety, and distrust, trauma the system itself caused.

And those same parents, already wounded by years of surveillance and coercion, are told they must now prove they can parent in spite of the damage the system inflicted.

Adoptive parents, meanwhile, are rewarded for caring for those same traumatized children. They receive enhanced subsidies based on “special needs.”

Needs manufactured or magnified by the system.

Birth parents get referrals.

Adoptive parents get checks until adulthood.

This is the double-minded nature of the system:

• it causes harm and funds strangers to manage it,

• punishes poverty and rewards removal,

• weaponizes trauma and calls it treatment.

  
  

As James 1:8 reminds us, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” 

A system that inflicts wounds and celebrates its own bandages cannot bring healing.

Its instability is not accidental.

It is moral, spiritual, and structural.

No good fruit can grow from soil rooted in deceit.

A System Built on Lies

This is not simply a policy failure; it’s a spiritual one.

“You belong to your father, the devil…He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  - John 8:44

This system is built on lies.

Lies about who deserves support, who deserves separation, who deserves dignity, and who must be controlled.

It lies about protection while it profits from harm.

It lies about help while it enforces trauma. It lies about love while it destroys families.

But truth and lies cannot coexist.

A system grounded in deception cannot produce justice.

A double-minded system cannot be reformed because instability is its nature.

The truth is that every parent and every child is created in God’s image and holds equal worth in His eyes.

A system that denies that truth is not of God. 

Its foundation is deceit, its fruits are destruction, and its legacy is pain.

That is why this system cannot be saved.

It must be abolished.

You cannot reform what was built on a lie.

You cannot redeem what refuses repentance.

It must be torn down and replaced with something rooted in truth, justice, mercy, and love.

Only then can we build a structure stable enough to hold families together, rather than one that profits from tearing them apart.