I just finished reading this article: The Homeschool Apostates It's a lengthy article, but please take the time to read it before reading the rest of this post.
This was a hard article to read. Although most of the home school families we've associated with have not gone to this extreme, we have known some who were following a dangerous path, with the very real risk of losing their children. Some already had, but still couldn't see their own fault in the matter.
I myself had been influenced strongly by a lot of the extreme ideas described here. Some of these ideas were originally biblical, but were distorted and twisted by controlling, ultra-authoritative people (mostly re-constructionist men, I'm sorry to say). The overriding mindset behind the distorted extremes is the over-emphasis on the child's outward appearance and behavior, and the failure to adequately shape--and treasure--the child's heart.
This article represents the dark side of home schooling, the side that gives all home schoolers, especially Christian home schoolers, a bad name. Thankfully, not all Christian home schooling families are like this. Some of us hold some convictions dear, but realize they can't be forced on our children. Some of us have figured out that the more you try to force your child to believe something, the more likely they are to run as far and as fast as they can to get away from it. Some of us have discovered that having your child's heart is far more important--and more rewarding--than making sure they dress and act "correctly" in public.
The fundamental theological error that is at the heart of the kind of extremism described in "The Homeschool Apostates" is patriarchal reconstructionism. I'd rather not give a detailed description of this doctrine, but in a nutshell, the basic gist of it is that Christians have the ability and the responsibility to "bring in the Kingdom": to prepare the world--particularly the "chosen" land of the United States--for the coming of Christ. They believe they can do this by saturating society with their own ilk, putting their people in all levels of society, especially in politics and Hollywood. They hinge their hopes on their children, grooming their sons to take leadership positions in law and politics, and training their daughters to marry reconstructionist men and raise as many reconstructionist children as possible.
These ideas in and of themselves are not necessarily wrong. Scriptures are rife with passages extolling the blessing of family and exhorting believers to be salt and light in the culture at large. It's the motivation behind the reconstructionist ideal that is flawed. The idea that we can set up God's kingdom on earth is, in fact, unbiblical. Even if you are not a premillenienialist (as I am), you cannot deny the Scriptures which describe the destruction of this world at the end of time, and which state that God (not people) will create a new heaven and a new earth. While people are redeemable, this current world system is not. Reconstructionism is not a new idea, but it suffered a severe setback after "Armeggedon" (a.k.a World War I) failed to bring about lasting world peace. Those who have spurred a Reconstructionist revival have not learned from history, and continue to try to make a flawed-at-heart system become heaven on earth.
My husband and I do hold to some of the beliefs common to "fundamentalist" home school parents. I won't list those specific beliefs here because that's not the point of this post. But there is one key point in which we differ with the extremists, a point I alluded to earlier: each of our children must ultimately decide for themselves what they will or will not believe, and what convictions they will or will not hold. They are the ones who will stand or fall when we are gone, so they need something more than "my parents said so" to stand on. They have their own hearts to yield (or not) to Christ. And it is He who will lead them in the path they will follow, which may be a much different path than the one their parents followed. Our responsibility as parents is to train them to follow Christ, but we cannot force them to do this at all, much less in the way we ourselves do.
In other words, as our children work through adolescence and become adults, they will form their own convictions and make their own choices. And we as parents must give them the space to do that. We cannot live their lives for them, and we should not try. Our children, both daughters and sons, know they are welcome to stay home as long as they want, but they also know we're not going to force them to. We watch who their friends are, but they certainly are not isolated or secluded. College is waiting for all of them (both genders) if they want it (and if they are able to pay for it themselves). Higher education is neither required nor forbidden. Of the two children who are or will shortly be married, both chose their own mates, then sought their parents' blessing and counsel.
Probably the saddest observation in "The Homeschool Apostate" is this:
I feel like at some point I had to choose between my family and my
freedom," [Rachel Coleman] says. "I couldn't pick them both; I had to pick one. And I
picked my freedom."
No child should ever be forced to make such a choice. No child will ever be a carbon copy of his/her parents; no child should ever feel shunned because he/she is not. In some ways our adult children are less conservative than we are, and in other ways they are more conservative. One child has chosen a non-religious path. All of them know they are welcome and encouraged to come home to visit, regardless of what they believe or don't believe. And while there may be conversations about their choices (but usually there are not), there will not be heated debate or hostility. There will be hugs and "I love you" instead of a cold shoulder or a refusal to speak. There will be respect (though not necessarily agreement) for differences of opinion. And there will always be an open door.
