How it all started, part 2

Kelly and I spent several months discussing this off and on, until we moved to San Antonio. We received orders to move down here... and ended up in a church with several homeschooling families, including two women about my age who had been homeschooled themselves. I think inwardly I groaned. Here I was running away from what my husband wanted us to do, and I land in a place like this?

So I picked their brains, asking so many questions, I am sure they were sick of me. :) I read books, I prayed, I went to their houses and looked at what their kids were doing. I learned two important things during this time. The secondary thing I learned was that the "how" of it is not as difficult as I first thought. There are so many options out there for homeschooling, that the real issue is narrowing down the choices of curriculum and books.

But the most important thing I learned was the reason why so many people, especially in that Christian community, have started keeping their children at home for their education. The longer Kelly and I talked about it and studied what the Bible said about parenting, the more came to firmly believe that God has entrusted parents with a sacred responsibility to raise their children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." It is listed as either the father's or parent's job to teach their children the ways of the Lord. The books of Joshua and Judges is full of examples of what happened when fathers neglected this instruction. This goes beyond taking them to church every Sunday, but encompasses so much more.

We believe that this includes talking about the Scriptures and about what Jesus has done for us "while we sit in our house, and when we walk by the way, when we lie down and when we rise up." That this should be as "frontlets before our eyes." (Paraphrase of Deuteronomy 5:7-8). This means not just reading the Bible, but demonstrating how the gospel changes us, shapes our thinking, how it guides our thoughts and actions. This also means we should glory in His creation, wonder at His complexity and logic in the way he fashioned the universe, and how He shaped and guided history. It also means preparing our children to be released into the world as adults who can not only get and keep a job, but who have been equipped for the life God has called them to; to be able to stand firm against all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Once I came to this understanding of our jobs as parents (a little later than my husband who had obviously arrived here well before me), I realized that my earlier reason for not wanting to send the kids to government school was incomplete. Rather than just not wanting to expose them to all the bad stuff, I looked at it from a different angle. If the above is our goal as parents, is sending them to government school going to help us toward this? Will it keep the Scriptures as frontlets before their eyes? Will the government schools teach them about the wonder of creation? Will they teach that the laws of physics and chemistry are the works of an infinitely intelligent creator? Will they teach history in light of His plan of salvation for men from before the foundation of the world? When our children graduated from high school, would they be prepared to enter the world with a heart wholeheartedly given to the Lord? Would the government schools strengthen their faith?

These are sobering questions for any Christian parent to consider, and our answers cemented our course away from government schools. More about our journey in part 3!