Great thought number two:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27

Francis Schaeffer made application of this passage in his book The Mark of the Christian:

“The command in John 13 and 1 John 3 is to love our fellow Christians, our brothers. But of course, we must strike a balance and not forget the other side of Jesus’ teaching: we are to love our fellow men, to love all men in fact, as neighbors.

All men bear the image of God. They have value, not because they are redeemed, but because they are God’s creation in God’s image. Modern man, who has rejected this, has no clue as to who he is, and because of this he can find no real value for himself or for other men. Hence, he downgrades the value of other men and produces the horrible thing we face today, a sick culture in which men treat men as less than human, as machines. As Christians, however, we know the value of men.

All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of god. Therefore, they are to be loved even at great cost.

This is, of course, the whole point of Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan: because a man is a man, he is to be loved at all cost.”

It is often the tendency of Christian homeschoolers, once they have rejected the public school systems, to pull away from others who are not homeschoolers, even within their own churches. As I have watched this over the years, and even as my own family has, to my chagrin, practiced the same, I have come to the conclusion that we are missing an opportunity to teach our children the essential truths of loving our neighbors as ourselves. This does not mean that we are to lack discernment in our relationships; in fact, discernment is something that we must develop ourselves and then pass on to our children. But discernment cannot be learned apart from humility and faith.

Are there people in your circle of associations who are not Christ followers? How are they received by your family? Have you declared that you “hate so and so” because they are “the enemies of God” as some within the homeschooling movement would encourage you to do? Or do you imitate Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, while we were yet sinners, died for us?