PearlS | The Average Pearl

Reluctant Homeschool: How do I even begin?

Homeschool. Ah, how I loathe the word.
It’s back on the table, y’all, and I’m eyeing it like a weary barn cat with a surprise litter of babies to feed.
There are people who love it; there are people who mock it. But there is one thing for dang certain–some people take to it better than others.

They are the doers, no doubt, the kind that love family time and conquering projects with a good dose of teamwork. They are habit-happy, disciplined and discerning–weeding out the unnecessary and proud of their many accomplishments. They don’t waste time. Their houses are clean, because chores are assigned. They set the table and clean it off. Their kids do not wander through the galley kitchen, mindlessly grabbing a handful of Cheezits from the pantry and leaving the box tipped over. Their kids pick up and throw away the hundred zillion paper airplanes they crank out, assembly-line style. They don’t race in circles around the house or dismount the trampoline with bloody noses. They light candles and gather for cozy, marathon read-aloud sessions. They get along.

At least this is what I’ve always assumed, and therefore concluded I had no business ever pretending I could manage such a lifestyle. Yet here we are again, Fate spinning the Wheel of fortune and sticking a firm landing on Homeschool, Suckers!

I’d be lying if I said I’m thrilled.
In modern hipster-speak: I, an Enneagram 5, am married to Joe, an Enneagram 9, and we suffer the curse of being doing-repressed. Snicker all you want–it is categorically unfair. We are, by nature, sorely lacking in energy. We can barely get our kids to bed at night, let alone plan for the insurmountable task of implementing curriculum. We hide, rarely surface in public, ever cautious of overextending ourselves. Doing too much causes us major stress–it’s our biggest handicap. We manage life by scraping out a lowkey existence.
Our kids, if they are great kids (and I’m partial), are so because we love them, nothing more.

I don’t think it’s fair that people who are good at it constantly pin their homeschool badge to every bio, handle, resume, and “about the author” blurb. I’m terrible at schooling, but I’m not a failure of a mom for delegating it to the professionals.
The thing is, homeschooling doesn’t count a lick in the grand scheme of things. No one will ask you when you are eighty if you homeschooled your children. It is irrelevant and sort of conceited. It’s like making sure the world knows I hang my clothes on the line to dry instead of using the dryer (though imagine the energy savings). What matters is that I care enough about the clothes on my back to wash them once in a while. I take good care of what I’ve been given.

I say this to encourage you readers who find yourselves in the same unfortunate circumstances. This is for all of you who have never homeschooled before because your conscience never pestered you about it until now. You are not alone in this endeavor. Homeschool has only ever been the back-est of backup plans for us, too.

My husband, nearly forty years old, rolls his eyes if you ask him what he thought of being homeschooled as a child. My mother-in-law has birthday card-shamed me for making my kids go to public, where they “probably sit at a desk, staring longingly out the window, wishing they were free to play.”
Church people have offered remarks like aren’t you afraid for them? Too bad you’ll have to unteach them all the bad stuff they learn there. It’s a waste of time. They only teach to the middle. Do you really expect your kids to set a good example? Wouldn’t they do better at home?

This feels like a slap in the face to any parent who really, truly is just looking for an ally in the kid-raising business. Any schooling option has its pros and cons; the choice cannot be reduced to what-ifs. Of course we will still need to manage behavior and expectations: any conversation surrounding the viability of school ought not doom a parent to immediate failure.

Like millions of other parents, I’ve been scouring the internet since June for options. I’m not going private, for many personal reasons (but let’s be honest, money). I’m stumbling upon homeschool blogs who plug it as the only breeding ground for “family unity” and “Individualized learning”–but it seems like more of an excuse to homeschool for people who already love the lifestyle it offers.

My family is the opposite of a traditional, well-oiled machine. We are flounderers. We are imposters. I can’t even open the mail on a regular basis.

But here I am.
Public school is failing me. My governor is failing me. News outlets are propagating fear and dread.The world is terrified of breathing in a virus, and my only standing choice is to rely on the computer for remote learning. I could stand, yelling into the wind, hoping for some reason to catch on, but I’m a quick learner. I don’t want to send my kids into a vitriol panic at the local school, so I’m keeping them home.
For the foreseeable future.
Fortunately, I’ve done this before. Unfortunately, I’m doing it again.
Listen: I am not a legit homeschooler. I’m as reluctant as they come. But dang it, I’ve been drafted back into the service, and I’m going to give it all I’ve got until God discharges me with honorable merits.

So–for the uncertain, reluctant public schoolers out there commencing a tentative homeschool journey–I propose we stick together and buoy each other above the waves.

First, try to nail down the reasons you are taking this path.

Obviously, school is no guarantee, and right off the bat we are facing summer slide. Amid the politics and sickness going around, it is necessary to do whatever it takes to move forward in our education.
My family’s primary concerns at this point hover around the concept of computer-based learning. Public schools are worried about health and safety, but they are not coming up with a great alternative to being in class. The problem of computer learning for multiple young students at home is that it exceeds my ability to manage the situation. Something is funky about little boys and their brains on computers, and scheduled, hourly check-ins with various teachers is, for me, the worst ball and chain. What if I need to get groceries? What if I have an appointment? What if my four year old is throwing a huge screaming fit? It is too much to manage.

Therefore, this year my learning goal is excellent forward motion, minimal screen time, reasonable expectations.

(Note: it isn’t the goal that holds me up as “the best teacher for my kids”–a trap many fall into and sets parents up for failure and despair or on the flip side, pride and contempt for public education.)

Second, let your local school district know your plan to homeschool. I am still holding out till this week to see if, by some miracle, things will revert to normal. But many districts require fourteen days notice before the first day of school, so check into it.
Also, look up the your state’s standards on the Department of Education website, and jot down the core, primary standards and must-dos:
Is your child in a grade where state testing is mandatory? What are the expected areas of study? What does a family need to record? How many days of learning per year?

Hold these things lightly, because the world is a trainwreck right now, and sadly, chances are good there are many, many kids who will be far behind when we are all back in school eventually.

Excellent forward motion, reasonable expectations. I’ll try and post weekly some resources and ideas that are helping me stay relatively in the forward-motion–at least till things get back on track. We will get through it, and we will do it because we love our kids.

Encourage one another–from one reluctant homeschooler to another.

I don’t want to Survive; I want to Live

I don’t want to survive; I want to live. –Captain of Axiom, Wall-E

Going into my sophomore year at college, I chose to study abroad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You could say I did it to improve my Portuguese, but if you knew me at all, it had more to do with my anxiety over a romantic relationship that was moving too fast for me. Of course, that’s a whole other story.
As I prepared to leave the country, I made a doctor’s visit to update my shots–yellow fever and hepatitis were the two I remember. My physician also made a prescription available to me in the form of malarial pills. I told her I didn’t think I probably needed to use it–I was going to the city, not the rainforest.

“Take one every week as a precaution,” she said. “And if you forget to take it while you’re in Rio, at the very least try to begin using it a week before–if and when–you visit the rainforest.”

Turns out, this anti-malarial drug was something called mefloquine, a safer cousin of quinine (what the folks used back in the olden days to prevent sickness). It is also a cousin to the presently-hated, President Trump-touted hydroxychloroquine.

The tiny dosage–one pill a week–seemed peculiarly small, possibly too small to prevent at anything at all. But after some more research, I discovered it is used to fight a host of diseases. My grandma was probably on it at some point for her rheumatoid arthritis. My mother might have used it during treatment for colon cancer. Patients with lupus, renal failure, diabetes–all have seen positive results when treated with this magic drug. All ages, all stages of life can use it with proper dosing and frequency–this is a miracle, life-saving pill. And having been proven safe to use for nearly seventy years, this drug has been available over-the-counter, for any Joe off the street to buy. Countries with malaria buy it by the gobs and take it “Sunday-Sunday”, a weekly regimen for the whole family to fend off disease.

Until now, when the coronavirus threatens to take down our schools, economy, and way of life. Nevermind that scientists have proven on a cellular level how it congregates in the lungs, preventing the virus from making copies of itself.
Peculiar, isn’t it?
Let me tell you what else is peculiar:

Studies in highly respected, peer-reviewed journals are being published and then removed. This is a major red flag warning, nearly unprecedented in the medical community, where research is always on-going. https://www.netadvisor.org/2020/06/05/studies-removed-from-medical-journals-claimed-hydroxychloroquine-was-harmful/

When you type the drug’s name into any search bar, the main study that pops up is one published by the VA where toxic doses of hydroxychloroquine were administered to very sick people, who of course died by over-medication and co-morbidity factors. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1.full.pdf

(Scroll to page 13 to read the discrediting one sentence: Administering higher doses of hydroxychloroquine to achieve presumed antiviral concentrations might increase the risk of adverse events.)

The general media and public is basically ignoring research done by the esteemed epidemiologist Harvey Risch of Yale, urging widespread, immediate prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586

In African countries where this drug is already being administered as an preventative anti-malarial solution, Covid death rates are an incredible 400 times lower than countries like Spain, Italy, and the US. (Dig around on the John Hopkins website and look at death rate graphics.)

Doctors and pharmacists have been prescribing this drug for years but are now being threatened with the loss of their license in some states where hydroxychloroquine is currently flagged as untested and dangerous in Covid treatment.

Grassroots doctors’ organizations who try to speak out about the benefits of this drug are being censored and deleted from social media platforms. (Google America’s Frontline Doctors and just try and see if you can find them. Their presence is being scrubbed from the very internet, even though they are primary care physicians successfully treating Covid patients every day. I especially love listening to Dr. Stella Immanuel–please look her up on Twitter or elsewhere and support her. She is a black, immigrant doctor, and if anyone should have a voice and internet presence in the age of Black Lives Matter, this is your gal.)

What is peculiar is this: If there were a life-saving drug available and people were dying at a rate of 411 deaths per 1 million, if your grandma in the nursing home could be protected from catching this awful disease, if kids could go back to school and recover the five month “summer slide” due to Covid, why in the world are we not talking about it? Why in the world are we not standing in line to get it?

It is safe to take as a preventative medication against malaria, whether or not you go to a rainforest or ever encounter mosquitoes. Yet we are pressured into hiding in our houses, avoiding social contact, and not talking about it. This is oppressing. This is fear-mongering.

The lengths at which some medical professionals, the World Health Organization, CDC, FDA and politicians are willing to go to prevent solving this Covid crisis is alarming. Whoever is pressuring you to stay home and “save lives”, whoever is telling you life isn’t safe to live–if their voices are louder than your own desire to find the truth–then get out of the way. You are of no use to the living.

I can speak about it because I have nothing to lose, no physician’s license. I’m an unemployed mother with an unimpressive blog. Our schools have abandoned in-school learning, so my kids are home with me for the foreseeable future. What would retaliation look like–cutting me off from the world? Sorry, folks, already there.

Look, there is a cure. But as Lavar Burton says, don’t take my word for it.

Check out this video conference with America’s Frontline Doctors while it is available.

Your Kids are Eating Lychee

This Spring, my boys came home with a small ziploc bag filled with something I’d never seen before. My kindergartner came running across the field to greet me, his arm extended, waving the treasure excitedly.

“What have you got there?” I asked him, as he pushed the baggie into my hand.
“I don’t know what it’s called,” he said, “but there were a lot left over from snack time, so I asked Mrs. A if I could bring them home so you could try one, and she said yes! Remember, you said you like to try new things.”

Of course I do. Straight from the grubby paws of kindergartners.
Our school has a health initiative–or mandate, I’m not sure–to provide healthy, diverse snacks twice a week to our Title I students. Michelle Obama wanted to inspire a new generation of Americans to a healthier lifestyle, and I guess this is what it boils down to: passing out lemon quarters and frozen, rotting bananas to elementary kids. How fun! How novel.
This particular day, it was lychee. I’d never seen the little brown squishy balls before, but as I bit into one on the field in front of the school, a grandmother nearby warned me there was a small round pit in the middle, and to take care not bite it. “It’s a slippery thing,” she said, “and it’ll slide right down your throat.”

Indeed, the perfect tropical snack for five year olds.
It tasted like squishy, juicy coconut eyeball. But the seed was scary slippery, and this sparked my concern over school snacks (though the lemons were always in the back of my mind). Of course I googled lychee.
Last summer in one city in India, over 100 children died from encephalitis by ingesting lychees with toxins.
If my kids hadn’t brought lychees home, if I weren’t a mom uncommonly curious over what snacks they eat on Tuesdays and Thursdays–I simply would have never known.

There are many things a parent can worry about. There are many things we will never know. I wonder if we only consider what is in front of our faces, how far we can let things spin into hysteria. But nevermind–those days are here.

My email inbox is filling up with school plans for the fall–except they are as far from normal as they can possibly be. Two weeks of remote learning, to begin with–even though our state department of education recommends those under 11 have no more than 1.5 hours of screen time a day. Followed by, potentially, maybe, a return to school. Cohorts. Masks. No school lunch. No flexible seating. No air circulation. Recess as a “mask break” and “social distancing will be enforced”. Disinfecting the playground. No parents or visitors allowed.

I’m feeling my hands clench, the adrenaline fight-or-flight rush. One evening, I’ll tell Joe I’m ready to buy some land in the middle of nowhere and grow strawberries. The next, I tell him I’m standing my ground. I’m disappointed with school leaders. My Vietnamese buddy called me and says his kids are losing their English from being at home so long. I’m sad, because school is where we make friends and now we’re lonely. I’m upset, because kids need non-virtual teachers and grownups who speak hope into their lives.

As for my family, we will be just fine. We are English speakers, my kids are bright, and we can live on one paycheck. I can stay home with them.
Aside from science and good judgment, I simply don’t have much of a choice to put myself and my kids in the hands of God. This has actually been a huge relief. In fact, I can see ways where I have tried to control things and God has gently pried my hands back open. I trust Him with everything I’ve got.

But then I remember my kids–lots of kids–eating lychees at school. Someone higher up than me thought that was a great idea. And even if I’m called to live a quiet life, I’m also supposed to not look out for my own needs, but also the needs of others. This calls for sticking my neck out once in awhile. The Lord has done some prodding in my soul on that, and I’m learning to trust Him there, too.

Below is a letter I penned to my local school board, who, after pressure from teachers’ unions and dissatisfied parents, plan to begin school with remote learning.
I am posting it for anyone else who needs to voice their concern to their own school board in a respective manner. Copy, delete, and add your own words as necessary.

Dear School Board,

I want to begin by saying how much I love public school and how I support the initiative to get our kids back in an appropriate learning environment. My gratitude for professional, dedicated, outstanding and caring teachers and administration is unrivaled. I am the first to show up at our own Title I school with kind words, food, volunteer hours, and every encouragement I can muster as a mom. Teachers and support staff are amazing, and one of the biggest blessings in my life.

In my observation, those working in public education are severely under-appreciated, even as they are forming the next generation of thinkers and doers. As parental responsibility is increasingly shifted to the shoulders of educators, teachers and administration carry an additional burden of addressing behavior, safety, mental health, inclusion, mediation, equitability, and differentiation to the already heavy load of inspiring a love of learning.

I have been made aware, as both a parent and active observer, that this is hardly feasible. It is certainly unfair to saddle educators with our jilted personal responsibility. I think this is why, during the Covid crisis, the stakes appear to be higher. The lines were already blurred; boundaries were already beginning to shift. We are each consumed by our worries and seek to lay blame on whomever was bearing all the responsibility for raising our children in the first place: schools.
It needs not be said, public school has been incorporated into our life something like a basic right. We’ve become dependent on it as childcare, education, structure and support system–and there is a communal sense of panic we might lose it. Thanks to social media and the everyone-gets-a-megaphone attitude, there is hardly a place to discuss this reasonably. I want to assure you, the loudest, angriest voices do not represent many of us.

School board friends, I recognize it is not any administration’s personal responsibility, but mine, to adequately prepare my child for the future, academically and otherwise. It is my responsibility and honor to support, keep them safe, facilitate educational experiences, inspire and equip them in every way possible.
All along, public schooling has only ever been a wonderful piece of that puzzle. It’s helped me understand my GT kids, rather than toss up my hands in frustration. It has relieved the pressure of having to figure out fifth grade math and grammar. It has opened doors to compassion and community.
Up until now, I have been happy to incorporate public schooling as a life discipline.
And I am sorry. I apologize for myself and behalf of other parents for the burden placed on public school to assume my responsibilities. I’m sorry for the times I have blamed and complained, when teachers and administration were keeping my plates spinning.

I mean this sincerely: I am letting you off the hook.
You don’t have to keep my kids healthy and safe–that’s my job.

You don’t have to teach them mindfulness and how to control their emotions–that’s my job.
You don’t have to worry about the food they are eating–that’s my job.
So is civic duty, appropriate behavior, discipline, morality, respectfulness, and a thousand other extras you have taken up as your responsibility.

I want you to send my kids home when they don’t act like school is the utmost privilege. Send them home every time you feel like you’re closing the gap into parent territory or crossing the nebulous boundary of teacher versus mom/dad responsibility.

It is only a modest proposal, but it seems like the only attainable one: loosen the reins and return some of the burden back over to the parents.
Let parents decide. Let them assume their proper place in society where they raise their own children. Perhaps this seems an odd suggestion amid such dire times. But schools have over-promised, and angry parents and teachers are desperate for a line to be drawn. Instead of casting blame, it is time to humbly pick up the pieces and rebuild a broken system–one where kids succeed because parents–and educators–care deeply about responsibility.

Let teachers choose, individually, if they ought to be in schools. Let us choose, individually, how to stay healthy and safe. Suffer us the consequences, because we are all born risk takers. Life is not a promise, but a gift.

I love public school–it has been a gift to my family.
I’m terribly sad I am withdrawing my children from school this year in order to homeschool. It will be a tremendous and difficult lifestyle change.
But I see no other choice. Remote learning, as I understand, will tie young children to their devices–and even the Colorado Department of Education recommends children under the age of eleven get no more than 1.5 hours of screen time a day (https://www.cde.state.co.us/learningathome/gettingstarted). In-school learning will close the doors to any and all visitors, effectively eliminating my privilege and responsibility as a parent to support learning and hold administration accountable. I do not think public schooling was ever designed to demote parents to second fiddle grownups in a child’s life.
Imagine if, instead of trying to manage and control this crisis, we banded together as responsible adults! Imagine if we called on concerned parents, educators, and community members to either step down or step up, rather than trying to make everyone happy? What if we called on healthy, willing parents to volunteer their time in serving our children and teachers instead of locking them out of the building? What could it look like if we pool our energy and resources into cultivating exemplary academia? What if we drew a line and told parents, “Your health and your children are your responsibility”? What if we drew a similar line, permitting educators to pivot?

I think it would set an example for the dissatisfied and unhappy among us. It would spark a curiosity–the world might wonder why we choose the greater good of our children over an unspoken, debilitating fear and the futile attempt to satisfy everyone.
It would spur them on to responsible living–which is sometimes painful, but necessary.

I do not envy your position as board members. But I advise you not to think you can solve a bevy of problems in the hopes of making the general public happy. Surely you have discovered that these days, we are a surly bunch. We will ride waves of disappointment and contentment, we will suffer the blows of natural disasters and sickness. We will need to repent, again and again, for heaping up expectations and standards when life itself presents a risk to all who dare live it.

But we cannot abandon our children. They are our greatest responsibility.
I stand by, ready to join again in this noble pursuit.

Sincerely,

Pearl

Jen, Sidney, and a bully’s gospel

Yesterday, I referred to a podcast I’d recently listened to–one that won’t leave my mind. It was an interview by Jen Hatmaker of her nineteen year old daughter, Sidney.

Where were you at age nineteen? Were you super wise and full of insight? As a nineteen year old, I myself had a serious boyfriend. I didn’t know what I wanted from life (which happens to be a pretty typical nineteen-year old-conundrum), the options overwhelmed me, and I was an anxious mess. They say the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until the age of 25. My twenty-one year old self would argue this, as she had been married five years by the age of 25. But my older self looks back more honestly. I know I had some awfully immature thinking well beyond age 25.

Sidney Hatmaker is nineteen. She is gay, so the podcast announced. It was no news to the elder Hatmaker, who, six years earlier, at about the time she rearranged her faith worldview, was deciding how to raise a homosexual daughter. Thirteen–she would have been thirteen.

This guts me. A child going through puberty, a girl wondering about her place in the world. Asking questions, curious, a bit lost, suddenly being introduced to new feelings and ideas. Doubting her barely-established principles and belief system, shaky at best, prompted by the culture to model adult feelings and expressions. At thirteen.

The Hatmaker interview was a first public plea of sorts, an emotional mother-and-daughter co-urging for acceptance. The mother asks what she should have done, what we should be doing now, and how she can support Sidney now, and encourage others to row the same boat. As Sidney responds, I am thinking of my own daughter, the little girl I forced to go to her room and lay down for a nap today, even as she kicked at the door and pounded the walls, angry I suggested such a thing.
I am thinking about me at thirteen, full of longing to be accepted and loved.
Me at nineteen on anxiety meds.
I am thinking as a 36-year old woman who has years of maturity on my side, thankful my prefrontal cortex is developed.

And I am disturbed.

Sidney Hatmaker’s words are petulant and bitter. She rails at the church and Bible teachers who cite Scripture to show what God says about sexual deviance. She is mad. She says how it destroyed her, as a young teenager, to hear Christian leaders teach what the Bible says about sexual sin. She just wants love and acceptance. She cannot fight, she says. Her fight is all gone.
And her mother is proud. She says she cannot wait to meet the woman Sidney will someday marry. Jen Hatmaker warns the listening audience:

I want us to have a reckoning together…that…when we refuse to cherish and affirm the LGBTQ community including our kids, we are literally breaking their hearts. We are breaking their bodies. We are breaking their life. This is not neutral. This is not a difference of opinion. This is causing harm and trauma and suffering.

Let me explain why this ought to make Christ-followers shudder:
Hatmaker is not suggesting you agree with her. She is drawing a corollary between the rising death rates of LGBTQ teens and churches refusing to pat them on the back for their troubles. In other words, this morally despicable situation is your fault. This mess of sexual deviance that leads to abuse, confusion, and self-loathing is actually your fault. You are killing them.

The blame is palpable. The hate is thick. The lack of personal responsibility is unbelievable. Jen Hatmaker is a bully.
I hope you recognize this particular tree by her fruit.

When you leave the door wide open, all the flies get in the kitchen. It is no wonder the Hatmakers are swatting everyone within range.

Maybe it looks like freedom, to form an identity so young. Maybe there is a sense of actualization, a coming of age responsibility in modern times, to be “out”. But in Song of Solomon, the much-read, racy love song of the Old Testament, there is a warning. Do not awaken love until it desires.
Attraction, infatuation, misunderstanding–these are hallmarks of adolescence, aren’t they? But they are not necessarily markers of love. In a young adolescent, they merely indicate development, hormones, growing up. Thirteen must be a safe place to lean into maturity, not a time for sussing out sexual feelings.

It makes me wonder–could it also be the result of irresponsible parenting–not equipping our kids, not preparing them with a solid foundation that recognizes wickedness in the world?
There is no greater harm, trauma, and suffering than that faced by a child sentenced to hopelessness, forever cheated out of abundant life. There is nothing that will devastate our children more than a culture norm of nihilism, void of morals and boundaries, where sex is cheapened, lust is encouraged, and suicide is prescribed as relief from pain.

This takes energy and awareness on a parent’s end. It is up to mom and dad to protect, monitor, and manage that which an older child is still too young to handle…whether they want to or not. What is the world saying? Where are my feet planted?–these are the two fundamental questions a thirteen year old can handle. And we, as parents, have the honor, the special, intimate duty to remind them. You are loved right here, and there’s no need to look anywhere else.

We build, little by little, safely and securely, into our kids, that they will understand someday what Solomon wrote: Do not awaken love until it desires.

We cannot truly say we love our children if we do not equip them for life in this world, if we don’t allow maturity to take its time and prepare its way. We cannot say we love them if we manipulate our precious kids away from God under the pretense of what is culturally acceptable, or where the wind is blowing. After all, there are still places in this world where fathers and mothers don’t bat an eye when burning their children in a fire dedicated to Molech.

But we share a Father who made them and loves them and has a purpose for them, no matter what the world is saying. And when we focus on this one singular goal, to glorify God, we do whatever it takes to keep our kids out of the fire.

We become parents who model our perfect, loving Father. And because He is a strict, holy Daddy, God “disciplines those he loves” (Proverbs 3:12)–we do, too.

“Discipline your child, for there is hope. Do not be party unto his death,” another proverb warns (Proverbs 19:18).

This is not punishment for having a naughty thought, but dusting off their bottoms when they fall and gently, sternly, setting them back on the path. This is age appropriate, contextual learning, always driven by a desire to honor God and respect the child we are training. This is erecting boundaries for your thirteen year old, assuring her she doesn’t need to worry about sex right now, doesn’t need to infatuate over feelings, doesn’t need to awaken love until it so desires.

Boy, did I need to hear that when I was thirteen.

Mrs. Hatmaker feels quite liberated to preach an anti-Gospel. It is opposed to Christ. Millions of people listen to her and are swayed by clever wording and a false message. When Paul was met with opposition who tried to turn people against the faith (a spiritual bully of sorts), he looked straight at the man (Elymas) and said,
“You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?” (Acts 13:10)

I want to be clear: I am not railing on folks caught up in sexual sin. We all struggle with living in the flesh, pounding the same dirt. I’m railing on those who promote it, those who tie millstones around necks and direct folks off the nearest cliff.
I am railing against the Prince of the Powers of the Air. The King of Liars. The one who has an official title of destroyer of souls. The one with a ticket for our arrest. The Accuser himself.
He is whispering in the ears of people you love, making them captive to their own emotions. Love parades? He “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).

This faux-angel delights in twisted words and double standards. He loves holding the bar of equality, social justice, and many lofty, humanistic pursuits–every false idol–in his hand.

When we join his ranks, he feeds the lies right into our mind and out our lips. approving and accepting homosexual behavior is kind. That it isn’t soul-destroying, but life-giving.

But we are to preach the Gospel–the one and only, where Jesus’ blood was spilled and our guilt is wiped out. How we are given power over our temptations. How sex and lust cannot control a person entrusted to the Lord. How we are given new life and promised a new body of our own after this life is over.

There is a big difference.
I wonder–in what other ways are we being bullied into believing another gospel? In what ways are our kids open to the flaming arrows aimed at their very soul (Ephesians 6:16)?
What are some truths you needed to hear when you were thirteen or nineteen? Can you share them with someone you love?

Keep on Bible-splaining

Don’t Bible-splain me, Jen Hatmaker warns. Don’t shame our family. We are throwing a party over her queerness.

These are the words of a Christian writer in 2020, after a podcast interview with her teenage daughter who has come out as gay.
This is the voice of a hard hearted, hard headed, unrepentant mother.

Hatmaker’s first published book dove into the whys and hows of Bible study, declaring the importance of God’s infallible Word.
God’s desire for us is to encounter His Word truth by truth until there isn’t a folded piece left, she writes (A Modern Girl’s Guide to Bible Study, 2006).

I wonder where she closed the good Book. I wonder what triggered her “faith evolution”. I wonder why her very enemy now is a person like me, doing exactly what she asked us to do in her Bible study books a decade and a half ago…encountering truth.

Matthew Paul Turner is another progressive Christian author. He announced a few days ago his intention to divorce his wife because he is gay and can no longer deny his gayness. Social media threw a party, blessing his un-coupling, applauding his identification as a gay man. Nevermind the heartache of his three children, the promise he made to his wife, the unraveling of a family. Nevermind what God says about the union of two souls–what God has hewn together, let no man separate.

If you have been on the fence about how to approach these modern messages, let me be clear: it’s not about gender equality and sex, like these modern prophets would like you to think. It isn’t about identity, being true to oneself.
Iit is a sign of the times. It is indicative of judgment.

In those days, men will be lovers of their own selves…boasting…proud…Without natural affection…despisers of those that are good…Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness but denying its power.
2 Timothy 3:1-5

The thing is, fifteen years ago these messages would have been very influential to me, a young wife who was looking for any way possible out of a difficult marriage. I would’ve leaned hard into the idea that I needed to seek my own truth, celebrate my uniqueness, and free myself of matrimonial chains. I was depressed, directionless, and any rope tossed my way looked pretty appealing.

But the Word had already implanted in my heart. My despair was swallowed by a knowing sorrow–the absolute Truth that I would not be happier outside of His providence. I had to face the fact in my own life that ultimately, God was not going to give me what I wanted.

Truth hurts. In my case, it nearly crushed me. It was hard to believe. I let God believe it for me when I couldn’t. I told Him–my face buried in my pillow in the spare bedroom because I could not share a bed with my husband–that I didn’t see any way out, but I would do my best to trust Him. I would sign up for the pain if it meant He would lead me to holiness.

Having conquered those times, having come out in every way a winner and in love with my husband and family, I can’t begin to explain how heartbreaking it is to watch the social influencers of the day lead people astray. The instant gratification of folks applauding from somewhere in the nebulous Twitter atmosphere almost rings sincere. But it is no more than a scratching of ears (2 Timothy 4:3).

I have a brother who is twenty-one. I have teenage nieces and nephews. I have children who haven’t reached adolescence. Truth must be handled, it must be rightly divided. It cannot wait.

Hatmaker and Turner, along with many, many others, mirror the false prophets of the Old Testament. They dole out haughty messages and then plug their ears.

“Do not prophesy,” their prophets say. “Do not prophesy about these things; disgrace will not overtake us!” (Micah 2:6)

In other words, don’t Bible-splain me!

If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for these people! (Micah 2:11)

We are throwing a party over her queerness! Hatmaker says.

Yet they lean upon the Lord and say, “Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us.” (Micah 3:11)

They call themselves Christian authors and influencers.
It is a party on Twitter. False prophets, more than anyone else, think they are leaning on the Lord. Their mouths are wide open, applauding and assuring, blind and ignorant to their fate.

What is better?–is it to read truth and believe it, how God speaks it even when it hurts, to lean into the promise He will conquer your todays and tomorrows? For me, I can say yes.

The Jen Hatmaker of fourteen years ago wrote that God wants us, more than anything, to encounter Him, truth by truth. I agree with that Jen. But truth doesn’t become the modern Mrs. Hatmaker:

If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin and does the same detestable things the wicked man does, will he live? None of the righteous things he has done will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness he is guilty of and because of the sins he has committed, he will die.
Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear, O house of Israel: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust? (Ezekiel 18:24-25)

The guilty person will die, and all those who oppose His holy ways. The words from her mouth are dead, rotting words. The Truth about God–He is just.

And He is loving:

Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, dealers the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live! (Ezekiel 18:31-32)

He doesn’t take pleasure in judging, but the truth is, He will. Repenting is hard, but it leads to Life. He loves you, and because He loves you, you won’t always get exactly what you want (ask any parent of a four year old to explain how that works, exactly).

Folks, read your Bible. Let God change you, no matter how impossible it seems.
Keep on Bible-splaining.
People like me need to hear it.

For a time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
2 Timothy 4:3

With Such a People You Can Do What You Please

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

Hannah Arendt, 1974

I am observing the swirling current of today, trying to find a foothold, but coming up empty.

Isn’t it interesting how folks who were rioting elbow-to-elbow only a month ago are now pressing their concern for social distancing onto our consciences?

Those who railed on guns are arming themselves.

Those who made their kids hold signs promoting life that matters are once again numbing themselves with legalized drugs and trash TV.

Those with anxiety disorders and emotional support animals plunge daily into the very animosity that caused their problem in the first place.

Those who want freedom of speech are the first in line to silence the person who challenges them.

Those who want government protection are obliterating their local enforcement agencies, destroying any sense of justice.

We want laws, but only if they are bendy.

We all want privacy, but every cell phone video that captures a public evil is simply “holding people accountable”, so we have ours handy.

We point fingers heavy with blame, but we deny we are the ones who have gotten ourselves into such a pickle by ignoring the small fact of personal responsibility.

We applaud others for finding their own truth, when finding one’s own nuanced truth only ripples out, effectively destroying another’s truth.

We whip up sweet, lovely, kind and benevolent versions of ourselves to parse out, but just under the skin our blood boils hot hate, unfiltered.

I am one-hundred percent certain you can identify with one of these sentences.
I’m afraid it smells fishy. A flood of contradictions. It seems like there ought to be a great reckoning, but all I hear is anger. Anger aimed at people who don’t budge, don’t bend, don’t follow whatever rules seem to be “saving lives”.

I’ve been reading some Hannah Arendt lately. She dipped her toes in book reviews for magazines and eventually pumped out the massive tome, The Origins of Totalitarianism. (If you think I spelled that word right the first time, you are wrong. If you think I’ll read anything but the Cliffnotes version, you’re wrong again.)

But Arendt came to a particularly interesting conclusion when it came to ideology. She was Jewish, writing post-Holocaust, English a second language, sorting out thoughts into words that could be digested by the American public (especially the ones who were enamored with Communism). It’s pretty striking to read 75 years later, when we think we’ve really progressed.

She did not think life could be simplified to a set of rules enforced by the government, nor could a society be healthy with only one particular “code of behavior”. Once banded to this ideal, the individual spirit is lost.

You are coordinated not with the powers that be, but with your neighbor—coordinated with the majority. But instead of communicating with the other you are now glued to him. And you feel of course marvelous. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.

This, more than anything I’ve yet read, speaks to our modern times. I spent a sweaty hour on Facebook Live this week, listening to our school district’s plans on reopening, and had to turn it off because the comments were so heated. No one is communicating, though Twitter might like you to think everyone has a voice. All have been physically isolated at one point or another, and fear is pulsing through our veins. More than one person commented (ahem, sneered), “Who do we blame when our Grandma dies because you weren’t careful enough in reopening schools?”

Arendt warns of a totalitarianism evil that isn’t limited to regimes, but becomes a way of life because people are reduced to a “bundle of reactions” and therefore find a common anchor in politicism. If that doesn’t scald the conscience, what will?

And here I am, trying to keep my kids from sneezing. Here I am, a white, stay-at-home mother stifling every little instinct to clear my throat in public.Trying to take up less space than ever before, lest I step on a toe and offend. Maintaining my distance, discreetly taking precious sips of fresh air. Slinking around the parking lot of grocery stores and libraries to retrieve the small necessities: food and books. Retreating to my house, minding my business. Withdrawing my children from the local school because the rules have become oppressive for both teachers and kids, the public arena a vicious screaming match, a la damnatio ad bestias.

This is what is becoming oppressive: it is not the wearing of masks.

It is the silencing of the fellow man, the regime totalitarianism. The lie of making things “equitable”, when making things “equitable” inevitably forces someone to be stepped on, someone’s mouth to be covered.

I’m finding out that, for a person like myself (and quite possibly you), a rule-follower, respectful to a fault, ever conscious of how one should act responsibly and committed to the greater good–we can not be good enough. We are labeled fragile and unaware.
And if you are tired of this (like I am), you cannot, obedient as you try to be, equivocate or distill it to a passive turning of the cheek maneuver. You cannot afford to be idle, a cop-out Christian. We are given marching orders to “not grow weary in doing good”–and this forward motion compels us.

To do good, not to be better. To do. To let our light shine before men, that they may worship God (Matthew 5:16).
This is what began revolutions. This is why the Israelites left Egypt.

But we must not wage war the way the world does. As much as we’d like to, being in the flesh and tempted all the same–the old man (and woman) has died. The reflexive nature, reactive, hateful, spiteful–has been crucified with Christ–she is no longer welcome to throw a pity party or daggers or sulk in the corner, bemoaning her circumstances. She is not fragile. She doesn’t need to rant or add comments or doubt and feel ashamed.
The new being has been brought forth, Spirit-controlled and lovely. She hopes. She endures.

I have often quoted G.K. Chesterton, because I can think of no one who can put it more aptly:

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Despite what the world is saying, there is more freedom to be had in every oppression.

And when I remember this, I’m fully aware: no matter the circumstances, I know what I believe. I believe in God’s rule and order in my life, that He has made me a new creation. We weren’t meant to swallow lies. We weren’t meant to argue with the old creature, the nature of man who loves to hate and hates to love. We are not a people who, as Arendt puts it, cannot believe anything or make up its mind.

And it is right here I can finally understand it, in the eye of the storm where everything around me is topsy-turvy: there is still capacity for us to think, act, judge, and not fall prey to reactive, nervous messes. There is still plenty of darkness to let my light shine–and that, indeed is what we’ve been called to do.
There is still plenty of room for good things to run wild.