Primary Consideration

As a Christian, my primary consideration at all times should be to please my Father in Heaven, to be in His will. How do I know what that will is? As I posted on my "Get Serious" blog (link on the left), we all too often look for God's will in terms of feelings or circumstances instead of looking where we will actually find it: His Holy Scripture! You can guarantee that if you are ordering your life around the principles, patterns, and precepts of the Scriptures, that you are completely within God's will! Pretty simple, right?

Simple in concept...a bit more difficult in execution. Some things must be studied carefully in order to properly interpret Scripture. That requires work, diligent work.

So...for instance...what does God value, and how does that relate to the education of our children? I'm sure I will post an incomplete list...but it's a start!

God values our hearts. He wants us to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. That sounds pretty comprehensive, if you ask me.

God values our "fear." i.e. we are often commanded to "fear the Lord." He wants our complete attention. When one "fears" God, then one can rest assured that he will give God his complete attention!

God values wisdom. What kind of wisdom? Not the wisdom of the world, but rather God's own wisdom as grasped from the Scriptures, both through doctrine and through the wisdom literature of the OT.

God values our obedience. Over and over we are told that our love for the Lord is shown in our obedience to His commands.

So...our hearts, our "fear," God's wisdom, and our obedience. That's a good start. Then, what are the implications to educating our children?

First, in no way is any school's (public or private) scope and sequence going to help us raise our children in a manner that encourages them to give their whole heart to God, to fear the Lord, to gain godly wisdom, or to obey the Lord's commands. If we are constantly comparing our efforts at home to what is happening to those in the school system or in private school, we will be drawn away from what the Lord truly wants by focusing our attention on what the world says is important.

Second, God gave us children with an end in mind...a life He already has planned out for them. Our job is to help discover that life with them by carefully observing them, working with them, noting their strengths and weaknesses...and then guiding them carefully to an end, always squaring what we are doing with the roles as defined by Scripture.

And this then helps to clarify why my blog is titled the way it is: We as homeSCHOOLers tend to spend way too much time focusing on trying to do "school" (the same scope and sequence as the world) better than the schools themselves, all while practicing an avoidance ethic for all the practices and ideas we don't like. This tends to cause us to ignore that which is truly important and truly desired by God...the discipling of our children. If it happens at all, it is usually a sloppy second to the primary goal of competing with the group school.

Thus my hope that more and more people will rename what they are doing with their children from "Homeschooling" to "HomeDiscipling!"

If we carry out that discipling, I really think we will raise children who will make a massive impact for the Kingdom as they grow.

I think God would be pleased....