09 February 2013

Just some thoughts on an aggravating subject

So a couple of weeks ago I was doing some research on a project. While in the midst of my research I happened upon a series of blogs and articles that really aggravated me. There is an ignorant war going on right now. I say now, but really it’s been going on for many years just recently it’s been getting on my nerves. What is this war? Should Christian parents homes school or send their children to some form of private/public school?

As soon as you read that line, immediately something began to swell up in you. Some of you sarcastically and arrogantly went “Of course Christian parents should ….” Right now your own defenses are rising up, preparing the usual arguments you present or have been trained to present. But before you lose your dignity please read on.

You see I’m really sick and tired of this debate. Both sides I hear people say “It’s the only Godly thing to do!” However, if I may, I’d like to share with you a secret. The only Godly thing is as follows… if the Lord has placed on your spirit the idea of either sending your child to public school or to home school, then you should do that. Plain and simple people.

I get sick and tired of the anti-home schoolers using arguments like “Your child won’t have adequate education,” or, “Your child will be socially inept.” It’s simply not true. Are there cases where it’s true? YES! Trust me I met plenty of those type of home schoolers when I went to bible college. I saw plenty of kids who had absolutely no concept of what life in the real world was like. However, I have come to know far many who are perfectly normal people with an IQ far surpassing mine. Not to mention the benefits of not have the massive class sizes that public school systems have. You also have the fact that when home schooling you don’t teach to the test, you test to the child’s needs.

I get sick and tired of the anti-public schoolers making claims about how public school will turn their children in to atheistic degenerates. I have known MANY kids who have grown up in strict Christian homes who have turned so far away from God it’s not funny. Many of which have gone on to have had gotten knocked up before marriage and are not with their baby’s daddy. The argument of “You don’t know what they are teaching your kids” is flat out ignorant. If you don’t know what your child’s teacher is teaching your child then that means you are not involved with the process or your child’s life.

So please people, both sides have their upsides and their down sides. So stop acting all pompous and putting “the other side” down. If the Lord has placed in your spirit to home school, then please by all means home school, and do it with the excellence our Lord demands! If the Lord has placed in your spirit to send your child to public school, then please by all means do so and be as involved in your child’s school with the excellence our Lord demands!

As for me, I honestly feel that my children will be public school. I learned to own my faith because while at public school I had people who would ask me the hard questions and that made me think. Even in elementary I was asked, and I asked, hard questions about faith and God. I thank God I had a mother who took time to answer question when she could, I thank God for a youth pastor who didn’t mind being called up on his off day to answer questions when he could. Thanks to them I learned to own my faith.

Then because I owned my faith I was able to reach out to people around me and bring God’s life change presence into their own lives. Every so often I’ll get a message or I’ll run into someone from high school and from BPCC and they’ll tell me, “hey man thanks for being there for me, for showing me what God is like.” I will do my best to raise up Godly children, and I look forward to the day when they get a phone call from friends who say , “thanks for being there, for showing me who God is.”