Doug Phillips posted a wonderful article HERE.

What is the purpose of homeschooling? Is the purpose excellence in education? Is the purpose sheltering of the children? Is the purpose of homeschooling because the family is all important? Is the purpose of homeschooling because to do so is cool? Is it because we don’t have enough money to send our kids to private school? Is it because that is just what we are supposed to do? Or is it because children shouldn’t be educated unless they ask to be?

These and many more reasons are not good, Biblical reasons for homeschooling.

I was in a private Christian school through the 4th grade, as grading systems go. I was a straight “A” student. I remember I once got a “B” and I was horrified. My parents were determined that I would not go to public school because of their own experience in that system. The corruption, the ungodly things they learned from the other kids and from the teachers as well. The problem was that as I was to be entering the 5th grace, and my sister would have been entering the 2nd grade, my parents discovered that they did not have enough money to continue to pay for our tuition. So they decided to homeschool us because they felt public school was not an option. And that is to be commended.

It was not until a few years later that my parents began to see the real reason for homeschooling. Ultimately, the real reason was that they felt homeschooling to be the best means available to them for providing their children with good, God honoring education. They saw it as a way they could teach us when they were sitting down, rising up, walking by the way, they were in complete control over what I was being taught. They were in control of the perspectives we were being taught, the motives for the teaching, the theories, they were in charge of everything.

But there is a problem among the homeschool community. The distinction is that of what Douglas Wilson refers to as Homeschoolers, and Homers. Homers place the highest and utmost importance on the family. The family should never be split apart so they must do everything together. In some extremes, the children must all do Kindergarten together, 1st grade together, and so on. If the children play with friends, they must play with friends all together. Above all, the family must not be separated from each other for any reason. They worship the family as their god. This means (in some cases I have known) that 15 or 16 year old Johnny can’t go help Joe Moe hang drywall down the street unless the whole family goes. This means that Daddy can’t go out to make a living unless the whole family goes. In their view there is to be no distinction between ages because age segregation is just bad and evil, an invention from the pit of hell itself.

The problem with all this is that it is not Biblical. Biblically, the family ranks as very important, but does not occupy the highest and most important place. And indeed the family is split and splintered and fragmented in today’s modern culture, but Homers have a knee jerk reaction to this and carry it to an extreme. We should feel it a good thing if 15 or 16 year old Johnny goes of down the road to help Joe hang his drywall. And no matter what your view on the industrial revolution, we should view it as a good thing that daddy is out being the breadwinner and not making his wife or children fill that role so that “he can be home with the family”.

And Biblically, age segregation is a must. The Bible itself age segregates when it addresses a particular age group. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” Ephesians 6:1. And there are other types of segregation when the Bible specifically addresses women, such as older women must teach the younger women. That is gender segregation.

To be sure, in today’s culture we are segregated to death, to the point that we can’t even go to church and worship together. And to that point that children must be with their own age group in order to play together and get along together. This ought not to be. But again, the Homers assume a complete knee jerk reaction to an ungodly society.

The right and Biblical reason for homeschooling is because God commands parents to train their children, and to raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That’s almost, if not entirely impossible to do in the public school. The principle is that parents are responsible and ultimately answerable before God for the training of the children God has given them. This does not mean that we cannot delegate certain teaching to teachers. For example, both myself, and my wife would be completely unqualified to teach our children how to pay the violin. Neither of us play one, and we would therefore not be able teach our children how to play one. If one of our children (providing the Lord blesses us with children) expresses an interest in learning to play the violin, and if we have the means, we cannot deny it to them only on the basis that we can’t delegate the responsibility of teaching to someone else. That’s silliness, and yet I know Christian homeschoolers who would say just that. Now, we are responsible for what the teacher we hire teaches of course.

The principle I am trying to communicate here is that of Christian discipleship. Not excellence in education, or any of the other reasons I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The reason for everything we do should be Biblical. Homeschooling for the wrong reasons is still homeschooling for the wrong reasons no matter which way you slice it.

I’ll be getting off of work early today to go to Lobelville and move the last of my stuff out of mom and dad’s old place. They have pretty much moved into the new house even though it is not yet finished. They were mudding and painting drywall last I knew.

I don’t even know what all I have left at Lobeville for sure. Among other things there is a welder that dad would like to keep at his place for a while, but he needs help moving it to the new place. I know I have a lot of mag motorcycle wheels lying around the shop from my buggy building days. I don’t know if I have ever mentioned that on my blog. I used to build buggies (the kind that horses pull). I didn’t build a too many. I think I actually built maybe 8 to 10 or so. I also built other horse drawn equipment like fore carts. That is basically an Amish tractor. You hook too horses to it, and you can pull trailers and just about anything else with it. Ah, my past life. Working in film is so much different.

I am looking forward to going to the regional NCFIC conference in Alabama next weekend, although I didn’t recognize any of the speakers, it is put on by the Vision Forum.

Most of what I have been doing at work lately is mixing the audio for The Peasall Sisters live concert. It is for the DVD we are working feverishly on. We are very near completion now and should be releasing it shortly. We have already started taking orders for it on our website. I’m sure I sound like a broken record, but I am really excited about being able to work for a family oriented company.

The dust has settled just a little bit. We did survive the Film Festival and the drive back home, and I am still not caught up on sleep… so everything is back to normal.

We did have an awesome time at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. There is real promise from the Christian filmmakers that were assembled there. You know, film is an area of our culture that has too long been dominated by the enemy of our God. The purpose of the SAICFF is to conquer that realm of Godlessness. We believe it is part of the dominion mandate God has given us. We also believe it is our job to impact the culture in a positive way. To be salt and light is our God given calling. The medium of film is an incredible means by which we can be an impact on the culture around us. Now more than ever are there tools (and cheaper than ever before) to accomplish the conquering of the film arena.

I went to a couple of RC Sproul Jr.’s seminars, and one of them was titled, “The Weapons of our Warfare.” The elements that make up our weapons are truth, beauty, and goodness. Particularly truth though. The reason for this is that our enemy really has none at all. What a powerful weapon. To illustrate, he told a story of when he was in college. He fought the good fight for the “theory” of objective truth in a world that says we make our own truth. “There is no objective truth,” the world says. And so RC was out to prove that there was. He was quite outspoken about it too. Then one day the dean of the school called him to his office. The dean told him he had no complaint with his studies, he had very good grades. No, rather his problem was that he was arguing with the teachers that there was objective truth. “It’s okay for you to believe that,” the dean told him, “just don’t be so vocal about,” he said. So RC couldn’t help himself, and he said, “I think I understand you sir, what you are saying is that you want me to not be quite so vocal about my view that there is objective truth?” The Dean replied, “Yes, that is it exactly.” So RC said, “Well let me make sure I am understanding you just so that there can be no mistake, you are saying that it is wrong for me to be so outspoken about my view that there is objective truth?” “Well yes,” replies the Dean, “That is exactly what I am saying.” Since he still did not get it, RC had to help him just a bit more. He said, “So sir, you are saying that the objective truth is that it is WRONG for me to say that there is objective truth?” The Dean simply lowered his head a couple of notches and said, “You may go now, Mr. Sproul.”

You see, how could the dean tell RC that the objective truth was that it was wrong for him to propagate the view that there is objective truth when there is not supposed to be any objective truth? After all, we make our own truth.

My point is that we, as believers, DO have the corner on truth. We have a powerful weapon in our arsenal that is truth, and it is particularly powerful because our enemy has NONE. Sure, sometimes our enemy mixes a little lie with a lot of truth, but we know that a partial truth is a lie. So our enemy has no truth. When we confront the enemy with truth he has no defense for it. And we must be merciless with the truth.

I’m still trying to catch up on sleep after the Film Festival. I hope to post more soon.

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TJDraper.com/myblog