Addressing Two Terrible Arguments Against Homeschooling

Even before we had kids, my wife and I were discussing homeschooling with a friend. "As Christians, we're supposed to be salt and light," our friend argued. "I almost think it's a sin not to send your kids to public school."

I don't think I've ever heard a more ignorant argument against homeschooling in my life. By that reasoning, one could say we need more Christians working at strip clubs and abortion mills. After all, those places could use a little salt and light as well.

On his blog, Matt Walsh addressed two terrible arguments against homeschooling presented in an email from a reader. The first was similar to our friend's: "If we don't help the system, the system will not work."

Walsh responded:

Is this really a priority for parents? When my wife and I make a decision for our family, should we stop first and ask, "wait, but will this help the system?"

Would you REALLY put the welfare of 'the system' over that of your own children?

I'd hope that you wouldn't, and I'd hope that this line of logic is unique to you, but I know that it isn't. I've heard it before. I've heard it so often, in fact, that I'm starting to think I'm the strange one for having absolutely no desire to make my children martyrs for some bureaucratic machine.

You know what my kids need me to be? A parent. Their dad. Not a cog in the system, not a member of the community, not a loyal townsperson in the village, not a 'team player.'

Sure, I'll tell them not to litter and I'll make sure they play nice with the other kids in the neighborhood, but when it comes to making choices about something as serious as their education, I don't frankly care how our decision effects the community. Does that make me callous? I don't know. I think it just makes me a man with priorities.

Would the school system be helped if my family 'participated' in it? Maybe, and I'm sure the circus would be helped if you went on stage and stuck your head in a lion's mouth. But you won't sacrifice your scalp to the Ringling Brothers, and I won't sacrifice my kids' brains to public school. I guess we're even.

The second argument was just as ridiculous as the first: "It's most important for kids to learn the academic fundamentals, but learning proper socialization is very important as well. Public school gives young people the chance to become well adjusted adults."

Walsh's response:

Expecting your kid to learn 'social skills' from public school, is like sending him to live with chimpanzees so that he'll learn proper table manners.

'Socialization' — in the public school context — means that your child will simply absorb behavioral cues from her peers. She learns to socialize by aping her friends, who are themselves only copying other girls. She learns to repress the parts of her that don't fit in, and put on an exterior designed to help her fade into the collective. I'm not theorizing here, this IS the social process in public school.

It's also competitive; your social status depends on your ability to cut your peers down, until your can easily step on them and elevate yourself.

Expressing your ideas, showing vulnerability, communicating your deepest thoughts and feelings — these are all fervently discouraged. Kids are tasked with expressing not their own thoughts, but sufficiently imitating the thoughts and views of the peer collective. Children who can't keep up, or who have no desire to keep up, will either have to be the most self-assured human beings on the planet (which is unlikely, since they haven't been given the tools to develop that self-assurance), or they'll become bitter, self-conscious, and depressed.

There is nothing positive about any of this. Nobody is better for it. Nobody benefits. The psychological damage can be lasting, maybe even permanent. Again, this is not my theory. This is just the way it works. How could you be so oblivious, Dan?

Now, homeschool socialization is different. Here, a child learns his social skills from his parents. He is oriented by adults, not other children. He matures, and grows, and is provided a safe environment to, as the phrase goes, be himself. Despite common perception, I don't think most homeschool kids are locked in a tower like Rapunzel, and forbidden from human contact. They have friends, they play sports, they emerge into society and interact with people.

The only difference is how they learn to interact. The public school kid learns to interact based on how his peers carry on in the hallways and at the lunch table, whereas the homeschool kids learns to interact based on the guidance of his parents.

Who has a better foundation for becoming a well adjusted adult?

Anyone with an interest in homeschooling, either for or against, will want to read the entire post.

This Week in Calvinism - April 25, 2014

• Regarding anti-two kingdom theology, D. G. Hart suggests, "In addition to New Calvinism, Neo-Calvinism, Old Calvinism, and Paleo-Calvinism, we need Neo-Paleo-Calvinism."
  
  
• The Blogging Bald Guy has "serious concerns with the analogical and paradoxical implications of common grace, the 'sincere offer' of the gospel to the reprobate, and the notion that God wills [or wishes] for something that he has not decreed."
  
  
• Carol Howard Merritt presents a more "tolerant" TULIP: "Jesus died for the elect. We could have a long theological discussion about all five of those words, but let's just say that there are many Calvinists who believe that all are elect."
  
  
• CalvinistProbs tweets, "Well, time to burn all my Jars of Clay CDs...oh wait, I don't listen to them."
  
  
• Tim Challies reviews John Hagee's book Four Blood Moons.

This Week in Calvinism - April 18, 2014

• Calvinism is "a particularly potent form of heresy," according to Mark Shea. He also sees a "Calvinist Purifying Impulse" behind just about every evil throughout history.
  
  
• James White responds to an anti-Calvinist sermon preached by Dr. Adam Harwood at Emir Caner's Truett-McConnell College.
  
  
• Russell Moore is interviewed by CBS This Morning.
  
  
• John Piper on the Greatest Prayer in the World.

This Week in Calvinism - April 11, 2014

• According to one blogger who misunderstands what Lordship salvation is, "[Lordship salvation] is the unsupportable belief that the PERFORMANCE of good works, the PROMISE of good works, or the EVIDENCE of good works MUST accompany faith in Christ in order to make that faith result in eternal life." Oh, and John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon were false teachers. I would remind him that scripture does teach that the bearing of fruit is proof we are Christ's disciples (John 15:8). True believers will persevere in the faith, with Christ sustaining us to the end (1 Corinthians 1:8).
  
  
• Michael Hansen gives an example of "Calvinism" (i.e. God's sovereign will superseding human will) in the Old Testament.
  
  
• Enter to win a free copy of Jeremy Walker's book The New Calvinism Considered.

PBS Profiles New Calvinism and the SBC

PBS ran this profile last week as part of its Religion & Ethics Newsweekly:


Read the transcript here.

Psalm 14:1, Proverbs 1:7, 1 Corinthians 3:19

I pity the fool...

...and pray for him.

This Week in Calvinism - April 4, 2014

• Is your God good? Roger Olson's is.
  
  
• Pastor Chris Noland believes Calvinism is a false doctrine. Apparently our free will wasn't affected by sin as much as everything else. But we Calvinists do get eternal security right, so we have that going for us.
  
  
• Austin Fischer, author of Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed, says:

  I began my journey out of Calvinism when I realized that if I were to be a consistent, honest Calvinist I would have to believe some terrible things about God. I realized I, personally, could not have Calvinism and a recognizably good God whose heart was fully revealed at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I could not have Calvinism and a God who would rather die than give humans what they deserve. For me, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was something too generous for Calvinism to make sense of.

  Why is it most former Calvinists seem to have never truly understood Calvinism?

Apparently, 'Noah' Is a Great Movie. A Bunch of 'Faith Leaders' Say So.

"Any good movie has to deviate from the book."

Especially if that book is the Bible.

Making Church Cool in 1897

Trying to make church appealing to disinterested youngsters is nothing new. Today, it's pop music and skinny jeans. In the late 1800's, it was Gilbert and Sullivan:

This Week in Calvinism - March 28, 2014

• Richard Coords, on the discussion between Austin Fischer and James White: "Austin Fischer is no longer a Calvinist because he ceased the self-deception and honestly dealt with the difficult issue, whereas James White is in complete denial, and demonstrated that, completely."
  
  
• On John Piper's lecture on New Calvinism at Westminster Theological Seminary, Dale M. Coulter concludes that "the New Calvinism looks a lot like the old New School Presbyterianism with a Baptist and charismatic flair to it."
  
  
• In his second post in a four-part series on the New Calvinism-Old Calvinism discussion, Rick Phillips writes that "Old Calvinists should not be threatened by or feel pressure to conform to the New."
  
  
• It is being reported that Louisiana College President Joe Aguillard has lost the support of the Board of Trustees and has been asked to resign.
  
  
• While Paul Vander Klay has "been generally pleased to see the popular emergence of interest in Calvinism," he fears "that this appropriation of it won't last in the long run, as adherents grapple with the complexities of engagement with our cultural context."

Aborted Babies Burned to Heat U.K. Hospitals

The ancient Phoenicians burned their children in sacrifice to Molech. The modern Brits burn theirs to heat their hospitals:

The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals, an investigation has found.

Ten NHS trusts have admitted burning foetal remains alongside other rubbish while two others used the bodies in "waste-to-energy" plants which generate power for heat.

Last night the Department of Health issued an instant ban on the practice which health minister Dr. Dan Poulter branded "totally unacceptable."

At least 15,500 foetal remains were incinerated by 27 NHS trusts over the last two years alone, Channel 4's Dispatches discovered.

Idolatry is alive and well.

Free eBook: Sermons and Essays from the Works of B. B. Warfield

Download this free ebook from Monergism.com.

Would You Like Your Psalms Read?

(from Go Comics)

Minimum Wage Legislation Based on "Principle As Old As the Bible"?

I wouldn't be surprised if Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois actually believes that "you shall not make less than $10.65 per hour" is the 11th Commandment:


Gary North dismantles Gov. Quinn's argument:

There is nothing in the Bible that indicates that the civil government has an obligation to achieve the impossible. If it is impossible for a civil government to pass a law that will make every employee a member of the middle class, simply because the government is incapable of making people sufficiently productive to enter the middle class, then anything that the government does in an attempt to make everyone a member of the middle class will backfire. It will increase the number of people who are poor. This is because employers will not hire them.

A minimum-wage law is, above all, a law that says that somebody who is willing to work for less than the minimum wage will not be allowed to do so, because the legislature has made such a transaction illegal. It restricts employers from making offers to employ people at less than the minimum wage. So, those people whose output is not sufficient to warrant paying them the minimum wage will find that they must either move outside the jurisdiction of the legislature, or seek employment in the black market, or go on welfare.

Probably they will go on welfare. They will figure that it's better to get something for nothing (welfare) than getting nothing for nothing (unemployment without pay). They are, in short, a lot smarter than those members of Illinois legislature who vote for a minimum-wage law. Those politicians really do believe that you can get something for nothing. You can get paid for output that you do not have the ability to produce.

This Week in Calvinism - March 21, 2014

• On Westboro Baptist's supposedly "consistent" Calvinist theology, Gawker's Adam Weinstein writes:

  Basically, five-point Calvinism boils down to: There's a God who saves some people and screws the rest over for eternity, and there's nothing you can really do about it. If there were, He wouldn't be God, and you wouldn't be a depraved, terrible not-God quivering mass of id urges.

  Far be it from me to think someone might actually try doing a little research on a topic before writing about it.
  
  
• On the Young, Restless, Reformed Movement, it's Roger Olson's opinion that "there are ideological and faddish dimensions to the YRRM that help explain its popularity. By no means does that detract from the good that it does. The passion for missions, for example, is certainly a benefit." But, yeah, it's mostly ideological and faddish. He concludes, "Something else will replace it—in a few years."
  
  
• Roger Olson argues "that belief in double predestination is simply logically incompatible with the claim that God is good—unless 'good' is emptied of all meaning so that it is a useless cipher for something we don't know." Someone please remind Dr. Olson that "double predestination" does not mean "equal ultimacy."
  
  
• Kevin DeYoung's nine thoughts on celebrity pastors, controversy, the New Calvinism, etc.
  
  
• Matthew Barrett shares his thoughts on John Piper's recent lecture at Westminster Theological Seminary.
  
  
• Reflecting on Piper's lecture, Jared Oliphint lists 12 features of the New Calvinism.
  
  
• Rick Phillips sees the New Calvinism as a triumph of the Old.
  
  
• D. G. Hart points out that the New Calvinism is not the Old.