I feel the need to write about this, partly for myself, just to reiterate why I am home schooling and also for my Christian friends to read and think and pray about this.
I have been called by God to home school recently. Within the past year, God has put families in my path that home school, parents of homeschoolers, and also children of homeschoolers. He put me in a place, where I was volunteering with middle school kids at church, where I could see huge differences in kids that were home schooled and kids that went to public schools. Also, opening my eyes to all the scary things going on in middle school these days, by the prayer requests of the middle school students that I was working with. prayers about friends having sex with more then one person, doing drugs, drinking, cutting etc.......Being the parent of a son who is going into middle school I was appalled at what I was hearing was going on in the schools at this age.
Until recently I hadn't thought much about home schooling that son. I knew God was calling me to home school my 6 yr old , and the younger ones when they were school age, but didn't think about my 12 yr old son. When he did hear me talking about home school, he'd say, "not me!" " I don't want to home school" I guess in my mind, I thought, that's ok, I'll just let him go to school, he's a good kid, he does well in school, doesn't get in trouble, etc... But lately, my heart is aching about sending him to public school. I pray for intervention from God because I don't know what to do. I know he doesn't want to, but at the same time, I know what's best for him, and I trust God that being at home is best.
Besides just having God lay in on my heart that I should home school my kids, I have been doing lots and lots of reading on home schooling and public schools.
As I knew I would, I have to explain to people why I think it's necessary to home school my kids. The simple reason is because I love them, and God loves them, and God told me to. I could just leave it at that, but that's not enough for everyone who feels they need to argue with me about it. The bible says that we are not supposed to cause other Christians to sin, especially our kids, ( Matthew 18:6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea) if I put my kids in a secular school, that they can't even talk about God in, how am I NOT causing them to sin? They have to deal with more temptations when I put them into the public school. Temptations to be worldly ~ The need to have everything that everyone else does, to dress the way everyone else does, the peer pressure to date, pressure to have sex, try drugs, try drinking, to sin. I am putting them right into temptation. Another verse is Romans 14:13~ Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. If I put my children in a place where they will be tempted, when they could be home where they are not, isn't that placing a stumbling block in front of them to sin? People argue, well they will have to go out into the "real world" someday. Well, yes they will, but I'd rather have someday be a day when they have a foundation built on Jesus Christ and they are mature enough to deal with secular pressures.
If we send our kids to school and try to tell them they don't have to be like everyone else, that Christians are supposed to be "set apart", then what happens? They get teased for being different and it crushes their self esteem. They get teased for not doing what everyone else does, Or the pressure is too much and they just give in, to "fit in" with everyone else.
Why don't more Christians don't feel this way? That they would rather their children be taught in a secular world then at home where they can have living examples of how we are supposed to live as Christians, and they can talk about God during the day, and they can pray before their meals, and they can learn to love their family. I know part of the reason is selfishness. Most people don't want to have to give up their time to invest it in their children. They want their time to themselves, to do their own thing, for "me time" or to do other ministries. Today, we received a devotional in the mail from Charles Stanley ministries, called In touch.
There were some interesting articles in there today, there was one called Surprise child. The article itself was talking about women becoming pregnant when they thought they were done having babies. But one woman said something that struck me, she had to give up her teaching position to be a stay at home mom again, and she said this " I realized I had subconsciously absorbed our culture's values" another thing she wrote was this- "through my pregnancies, God often literally brought me to my knees. I realized we never graduate from the call to live the life of love that Christ exemplified. There is no "promotion" beyond loving and serving others, especially the weak and needy among us". Those weak and needy are our children! They should be our first ministry before others.
(except our husbands of course!) Seriously, what other ministry could be more important then the children that God entrusted to you?? How can anything be more important then how your children are brought up and how they will live their lives? We are instructed to raise up our children in the training and instruction of the Lord. When we send our kids to public schools, we have made an anti-Christian institution our child's teacher. Isn't that a sin? We are handing our kids over to a secular school that prohibits our children from talking about God ~ won't that cause our children to sin? Our children are shaped by who they hang around and where they spend their time. To me, 2 hours a week at church is not enough. If you send them to public school to hang around all their non Christian friends, you have to work even harder to help them "unlearn" all the things they've learned from their "worldly" friends all day long. My son can go to a friends house and come home with an attitude and speak to me in a way he hadn't before, what does 8 hours a day do for him?
How does any Christian parent protect their children from learning the ways of the world, how to be in the world but not of it, when they send them to learn from non Christian's all day long?
What about the bible verse in 2nd Corinthians 6:14 that says Do not be yoked together with unbelievers, for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? or what fellowship can light have with darkness? By putting our kids in public schools where they are taught to deny God, isn't that being yoked with Unbelievers? How do we teach our children to be Christ centered and morally pure in their behavior when they are with kids all day who live for the world? Our kids will learn to do whatever is necessary in order to gain approval by their peers, and I'm sure that is not going to be talking about God on their lunch hour! Proverbs 13:20 says, He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.
What about 1 Corinthians 15:33 Don't be misled, bad company corrupts good character. I think it's pretty clear that if my kids spend their days with kids that are ungodly, that's what my kids are going to behave like.
My children are so small and weak in their faith and understanding of our Lord, how will they be able to resist what is "normal" for everyone else to be doing and acting like? Last night Kevin and I talked about things, I told him I didn't want to send Jake to school this year and he said, "so don't" but it doesn't seem quite that easy to me, because he is resistant, and I also have his biological dad to deal with, who I haven't talked to at all yet. This morning in the shower I prayed for God to help me know what to do, to somehow make this all work out. Later in the morning I went to meet with another home school mom, a new friend, that I had met once before. One of the first questions she asked me when we sat down was, "So, have you decided what to do with Jake? I've been praying for you, and I think if God called you to home school your children, he meant all of them" Honestly, she's probably right about that, but I still feel like I'm resisting because Jake is resistant. So this afternoon I'm reading the In touch devotional that I mentioned before and one of the devotionals says ~ God speaks through a friend. ( oh perfect) It says, Read 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and this~ When we're not listening for the Lord's voice, He will often send a message through someone else. It also says at the bottom, When we're going off course, the Lord will sometimes speak through other believers to reach us. Therefore, it is vital to maintain a close network of godly men and women we can trust. So, was what she said God speaking to me? I am not totally sure, but it sure could be. Sometimes I pray to God that he just knocks me with a billboard because I can't hear what he wants me to do! It's either that or I don't want to hear it? Because it's going to be hard! Maybe that's it, I don't want to hear what he's saying because It will be hard to try and talk his biological dad into this idea, and it will be hard to home school a middle school child who is going to have an attitude about it.
I also have an article that I was reading today called Are public schools an option for Christian kids, a few things that stuck out to me were this~
"Christians are accountable for knowing and obeying the word of God, and they should not have given up their children to be educated by unbelieving strangers- not to mention placing them in the company of unbelievers companions for twelve years."
" Christians have such a dependence on government schools that they remain in denial about how bad they really are. Indeed waking up to reality would entail personal accountability and necessitate change, which seems to be more then most parents can bear to handle. Of course, God neither recognizes dependency as an excuse nor excuses denial of reality. He sees this dependency as sin and sees denial as hardened heart.
Ouch.
If your reading this- please pray. For me, and for you, to hear God, and to be obedient.
