Mostly (99%) white middle-class
Energetic wives
Glassy-eyed husbands
Multiple children with the same hair color
Legalism
Perfectionism
Hope
Despair
Modesty
Pharisee
Fear
Moral
Thirsty
Ambitious
Right
Self-Righteous

These are thoughts/words that came to mind as I met Laura at the CHEF convention. In short, it’s a homeschool curriculum conference with seminars and a large exhibit hall.

Homeschooling is full of theological baggage.
There are many reasons why people home school, from the extremely pragmatic, “my child can’t make it in public school”, to the extremely theological, “our call as Christians is to give our children a distinctly Christian education.”

My path in understanding home schooling is to view it as a tool. Christians are responsible for the education of their children and there are numerous tools available including, public education, private education and homeschooling. As a pastor, I will not deem the public school system to be anti-Christian and call for its end, nor will I bind the consciences of other believers as to its use in giving children a Christian education.
I do believe it is a matter of choice for each family, as they seek to train there children in the way they should go.

I have heard the statistics that the church loses 80% of its kids from the faith, and I have heard that public schools are the problem, as they train children in secular humanism. I disagree. Nowhere that I know of, in scripture, is the responsibility for the leaving of a generation placed anywhere other that at the feet of the parents.

The challenge I believe is given to us in Psalm 78 among other places. The challenge is to proclaim the Gospel to the generation to come, to tell of the LORDS mighty works. The failure here is not that the government is evil and that public schools are anti-Christian. The failure is that we as a church and as fathers have and are proclaiming morality and empty religion to children, seeking to conform their externals to our revised, conservative, it was better in the 19th century, norm. We are producing a generation of children who think that it is what is outside the man that defiles him.

Let us repent! Fathers repent! homeschoolers repent! Let us cast ourselves upon Christ and begin to pray that the Gospel will remake us and that we can then equip our children and society to know the true God.

That’s enough for now! Sorry for the typos, my editor is still at the CHEF convention.

G