Aravanna wrote:What did people think about his homeschooling comments? Douglas Gresham has worked with a lot of people with social disorders, and he more or less blamed public school for a lot of that.
Along with
220, I still have not yet listened to the, ahem, actual podcast.
Still, it shouldn’t stop me from commenting about a topic I’ve been blessed to know well! I was homeschooled all my life. For me, who was very often an introverted twit, it was what I needed. For some, such as you,
Aravanna, it wouldn’t have worked so well.
Blaming public schools for social disorders seems best done with disclaimers. Homeschoolers have their own set of disorders, some unique to homeschooling, and some problems almost exactly the same as those worsened by public-school systems.
Where I think some homeschoolers particularly fail is subconsciously assuming that if their kids aren’t in public school, then they’re pretty much immune to sin. Public school quietly becomes the object of evil — and there
are no “objects of evil” — instead of indwelling sin in a human heart. At least the public-school folks know there are terrible schools out there. Many homeschoolers I have known seem to assume they’re Practically Perfect (except for those oh-so-stressful days, etc.).
I hope Gresham may understand that homeschooling is not a golden bullet. Its negative idiosyncrasies may be more prevalent in the U.S.
Aravanna wrote:I know some Christians homeschool because they don’t believe in evolution and also to generally keep their children from being exposed to “worldliness” but I think that’s a little bit cruel.
I don’t think “cruelty” is the main problem with this sheltering. Perhaps it’s a bit naïve, but not cruel. Such parents — the majority I have seen — truly want the best for their children. However, Having the Best for the Children can become an idol as much as anything can. And if one believes the greatest sin is Worldliness and begins assuming that if you avoid the world then you avoid most sin, that fails to glorify God and allow children to grow naturally in discernment.
Lewis pointed out brilliantly in
The Great Divorce that sins such as lust and violence may be worse than valuing good things like mother-love or patriotism too highly. However, Lewis noted, the worse sins are less likely to be turned into religions.
Homeschooling for many people has become a religion — a “Christianity And” something-else (to quote His Utter Subliminity Screwtape) hybrid.
Aravanna wrote:If these kids attend secular college, they’ll be completely unprepared for the onslaught of science and philosophy that flies in the face of everything they’ve learned. They won’t have the experience to deal with the shock and won’t have deal with any of the issues before.
Aravanna, and I am familiar with the scenarios you describe. However, though you may not have seen this yourself, I have known of homeschooled kids who did just fine in secular college and rather relished combating the Godless science and philosophy that was thrown at them.
The main problem with these types of homeschooled graduates is that they can be
really snarky while they’re doing this. I put myself in this category, back then (I hope not so much now). Rather than grieving as a representative of God’s Kingdom for a lost world, and being properly angry about its rebellion against Him, I took the Worldview War much too personally. Self-righteousness (another symptom of many homeschoolers) had crept into my life. In many subtle ways I acted as though I had worked to attain the truth I knew. But what did I have that I did not receive as means of Grace from others — especially God?
I can’t blame this on my parents, or homeschooling culture, or Bill Gothard, though the latter two certainly did not help correct the pride in my heart. I can only blame myself. And this is not to say that we should keep quiet with the truth and not be active. We should! All homeschooling graduates should. But they should do this with
humble orthodoxy. Without God’s intervention, they would be just as bad as all the pagans.
Of course, I’m assuming here that these homeschooled graduates actually
get to college in the first place.
220, thank God you’re undertaking higher education. Am I to assume you did
not automatically turn into a raving secular feminist who hates men and God’s created order and has constant chips on her squared shoulders?
Some homeschooling leaders assume that if a woman does anything remotely close to working outside the home, or seeking higher education, then she is becoming a feminist and is therefore blaspheming God. Maybe you’ve heard this view, or more likely the implications, coming from some homeschoolers. This is patriocentricity, the father-is-pretty-much-head-of-all system of beliefs, and its leaders and trying to make its beliefs standard issue for anyone who decides to homeschool or who embraces Biblical husband/wife roles. It’s un-Biblical, subtle, and often annoying.
Recently I wrote this to someone, about a patriocentrist lady-leader. (For a supposedly male-led movement, these circles have a
lot of ladies pushing these ideas and paradoxically having nice control over their acts of wifely submission; I
wonnn-derrrr how
that could be!) I can reproduce (ha ha!) some of it here, with its original recipient anonymous.
I wrote:I wonder if any of our friends may be aware of Chancey’s statements that
any Christian woman who works outside the home is blaspheming God? Or that it would be better if Christian women did not vote, and that such a concept is part of a flawed system? Or that any Christian parent who somehow does feel their public school is okay is always sinning?
(I can source these assertions if you like, but I don’t want to seem I’m only building some legal case!
Still I’ve seen where this has been said.)
[. . . I]n the very least these are things about which Christ’s people may legitimately have differences — Romans-14 issues of conviction not specifically in Scripture.
This would be a good time for me to say again
[. . .] that I am
staunchly complementarian! :-D Scripture outlines different roles, though not different levels of importance, for husbands and wives. To some extent these roles are conferred upon the children — though again I would disavow the wrong “daughters as helpmeets until fathers find them husbands” teachings of some, including Chancey. So this isn’t about this kind of “patriarchy” vs. feminism, but this kind of “patriarchy” vs. feminism vs. more-Biblically balanced complementarianism in the center.
So, in seeing a quote from Chancey without at least a disclaimer about her questionable-at-best views of what “real” male/female roles always mean, I am worried that some Christians wondering about these issues will be skeptical about all true
Biblical complementarianism because of these views. Unfortunately, it is wrong teachings like those of the “Ladies Against Feminism”
[a website run by women elevating the men in their lives, including their little boys (I do not joke), and their own submission to them] folks that are framing the discussion in a wrong way.
Part of the problem may be deeper than just beliefs about male/female roles, I’ve come to suspect. The main issue may arise when a leader, ministry or whatever, starts basing teaching on an “anti”-something, rather than on
positive emphasis on Biblical balance, Law and Grace, God’s truth
and love, and other healthy doctrine “tensions.” Even Chancey’s site name shows a core bias: it’s “Ladies Against Feminism.”
I wonder if they would even acknowledge that one could
theoretically overcorrect against feminism into a form of Christian Chauvinism? Then a future generation of women would rebel against
that, the way the women now are rebelling against feminism, and back and forth, back and forth, and at either extreme, ignoring the Gospel of Grace in the center.
So far I haven’t seen much other from Chancey and Co. than an emphasis on that one issue of male/female roles, along with homemaking, fathers-and-daughters, etc. And an emphasis on missions has been substituted for an emphasis on expanding families as much as they possibly can. I wonder how they would look at other Christians, outside the “circle,” who believe they have different callings, such as a man or woman legitimately called to overseas missions who believes he/she has the gift of celibacy (not as common as some believe, I think, but it’s still in Scripture, and I once hoped I did not have this “gift”!). How would the “militant fecundity”
[you must have lots of children] folks look at single Christians who don’t/can’t marry? What if my wife and me were unable to have children, or could only have one or two, or decided to have only one or two?
Some of this you may recall from our last exchange. Personally, my wife and I look forward to imitating Christ and His church (a la Ephesians 5) even more in our marriage (we will be married seven months on Dec. 30) and teaching His law and His grace to our future children.
Yet we also come from homeschooling backgrounds, and have seen firsthand the damage that overdone “against feminism” kinds of views can do in families. I have known of families who started out with the best of intentions to keep their children safe, avoid feminism and worldly sins. But gradually they became very hostile or fearful about Christians with different standards (and especially to non-Christians, which compromised the family’s gifts and ability to impact the world for Christ’s sake). Many of their children later rebelled, throwing the “baby” of actual Biblical truth out with the “bathwater” of the other views. We’ve seen this happen on many occasions and are burdened to try learning why it does happen.
[. . . I]t’s a vital topic for sure, and I believe this is one of those areas God may want me to bring up with some people. As a homeschooled graduate and future homeschooler, especially, I yearn not just to correct for excesses and Do Things Better, but love God’s grace.
So I do hope especially that Gresham is aware of this, at least in the U.S. (it’s a
very America-centric movement, so far). Homeschooling has its own too-prevalent and dangerous drawbacks here. Patriocentricity is the biggest one.