This came from a friend of mine in response to the “socialization” question. I thought it was spot on!

Dear Non-Home Schooler,

Given the recent court ruling in California, there is much discussion about home schooling and why people home school. I have noticed citizens tossing about opinions on home schooling without care that perhaps, just maybe, a home schooler is listening.

As such, I would like to share with you how I actually feel when you ask me about certain home school concerns. For example, socialization. When you ask me about socialization, I feel insulted. In fact, such queries cause me to question your ability behave properly in polite society. It
causes me to question whether or not you accept people from diverse and unique backgrounds.

When you ask, “What about socialization?” or “How can your parent teach you what you need to know?,” you exhibit as much social grace as the virulently anti-public school folks do when they insult public schools. You imply that my education is inadequate. You suggest that I am unfit to move in society, that I am fundamentally lacking, and that you do not accept me as a person.

Further, I am tired of my perceived personal failings being blamed on my education. I promise you, I would have many of these same failings had I been primarily public schooled (for the record, I spent 6 months in public school and a year and a half or so in private school). I can assure you of my imperfection, but I can also assure you that home schooling has little to nothing to do with my imperfections. If anything, I am a better student and better citizen because of my unique education. I definitely wasn’t socialized by mean children to make fun of others as a sport. I wasn’t socialized to fit in above all else. I think these things make me a nicer, healthier person than I might’ve been otherwise.

“The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”    Frederick Buechner

When I was in my early teens, I can remember a turning point in modern history, at least the history of the small town where I grew up. No stores had ever been open on a Sunday and even finding one that kept Sunday hours in the largest town 30 miles away would have been difficult.

Then, one day, on our way to church, we drove past the local Red Fox store only to see that the lights were on and cars were in the parking lot. My dad was horrified. He was a deacon in the Baptist church two blocks from the store and knew something had to be done. After speaking with the deacon board, he planned to address the matter with the store owner, a man he knew personally.

On Monday morning, my dad went into the store and met with the manager, expressing his concerns. The manager said “Ken, let me show you something.” He went into his office and came back with a stack of 20 or so church bulletins that had grocery lists made out on them, several from the previous day’s Baptist church service. He then said “When the people from these churches stop shopping here on Sunday, I will close.”

In his older and wiser years, he liked to tell this story because it marked a change in his own life as a Christian. The Lord used that experience to drive home to him the need to pray earnestly for the lost in his own community and to witness to them at every opportunity. It caused him to examine what the Scripture actually teaches about obedience to Christ and how it is to be applied today. And it also convicted him that his own life was a walking billboard to those who knew he was a believer.

The same can be true of any cultural issue we face today as Christians and especially as we raise our children to approach the world around them. Columnist Cal Thomas said it well: “Christians must first understand that the issues they most care about — abortion, same-sex marriage and cultural rot — are not caused by bad politics, but are matters of the heart and soul. Some evangelicals wish to broaden the political agenda beyond these issues to poverty, social justice and the environment. Politics can never completely cure the ills of any of these, but the message Christians bring about salvation and redemption can. Besides, they can never “convert” people to their point of view.”

Though they seem quite simple, these are actually hard words. It is easy to write letters and begin campaigns to clean up our towns. It takes little commitment to stand in front of an abortion clinic to pray for half an hour. It is also easy to walk a precinct and mark a ballot for a politician whose views reflect a Biblical worldview, if you can find one. These are all worthy things that we have done and continue to do with our own children.

But they are not the hard examples learned from Jesus. Instead, He made every attempt to minister to those who were damaged by the dirt of the world, offering them hope through repentance and eternal life for their sin-weary souls. He didn’t offer words of external judgment, but, instead, he recognized that they COULDN’T live righteously because they did not have the spirit of the living God dwelling within them. And He said that the secret of true, Biblical personal, family, and cultural reformation was hearts made of flesh and not stone, hearts that beat for Him alone.

Man always looks at the supply side of sin, but God looks at the demand side.

My wonderful March 6th came and went with no word from the washing machine part supplier….until this morning when the e-mail announced that the manufacturer now will not be able to fill the order until, get this, MARCH 26!!! I screamed and, though no sound came out, Clay got the point. The washer is less than 3 years old and is a Maytag, for crying out loud. It isn’t supposed to be broken EVER. So, today we will have to decide what to do.

Actually, I am in love with the new laundromat across town and, aside from the 65-ish guys who always want to chat with me about the enormous amount of laundry I have, it is a pretty good situation. Old probably-divorced men who also probably want a woman to do their laundry for them and men in orange jumpsuits who stare at me from the windows of the state prison van, those are the guys I attract these days. Life is good.

Well, were I Hillary Clinton, a funny thought on a number or levels, I certainly wouldn’t be talking about women “finding their voice” this week. I wouldn’t be talking period. Over the past week my flu bug has gone from bad to worse and the past several days I have had absolutely no voice AT ALL. Don’t think for a minute that it has stopped me from talking. Just ask Corrie or my daughter-in-law, both who attempted to converse with in the past couple of days. I sound sort of like a girl Tom Waites in a paper bag. Sadly, Clay and I were supposed to be having dinner with Cindy Kunsman and her husband this evening when they pass by about an hour from us but it looks like that won’t be happening.

I also am sad because yesterday marked the one year anniversary of podcasting and I had a year of reminiscing planned that will have to wait until next week. I am also dreadfully behind in reading comments and hope to catch up today if the doctor’s prescription kicks in soon. Thank you all for continuing the discussion on bloggers and church discipline. You have had great thoughts and I will add my two bits as soon as I can get them on paper.

The last few weeks, I have had a lot of related thoughts rolling around in my head and finally decided that I would really like to start a dialog on a subject that keeps popping up here and there. Perhaps I will be the only one interested in this discussion; maybe others are as interested as I am in hearing what others are thinking and what Scriptures they believe apply. At any rate, I am tossing this out and hoping someone will join me.

I have read articles and commentary over at Tim and David Bayly’s blog on and off for the past few years. Sometimes I was informed and intrigued by their essays, especially if they were of the pro-life nature. As my husband has been oft quoted, “If the pastor is pro-life and says so, he get a hundred bonus points right off the bat.”

But while I have stopped reading most of the Baylys’ ramblings so my unducttaped head won’t explode, I still have a lingering question about their penchant for demanding the names of the elders and pastors of commenters on their blog, commenters who either question or disagree with the Bayly’s views, particularly if they are women. Their blog was the first place I had ever seen this take place, but it seems to have brought up the necessary question to ask and that is “how far does a church’s jurisdiction extend into the personal blogging life of its members?”

I have heard many of these sorts of stories, where members have expressed their own opinions on blogs (isn’t that the purpose of a blog?) and, as a result, have been prevented from participating in certain aspects of ministry in their own church or have had their ministries removed unless they are willing to recant their views and clean up their blogs.  I also personally know women who have been banned from commenting on blogs because they simply questionned the blog owner’s views.  Of course, that is his prerogative, but is it ok to extend that action by demanding the names of the woman’s husband or church leadership and then contacting them, hoping they will be disciplined for, shudder, having an opinion and expressing it?
I have also witnessed people placing passwords on their blogs so that their horrific views, such as white supremacy and the embracing of kinism, might be hidden from the sight of potential church members or those within the congregation who wouldn’t approve or so it might not cause the church leadership any problems. While this may be a simple solution, I try to picture Winston Churchill password protecting his words. Geesh!

So, where do I stand on this topic? I guess there are lots of variables and lots of questions to be asked and considered and I am opening up this discussion to do just that.

Not long ago, my friend Sallie, asked what her readers thought would be the “next big thing” in the church and I happen to think that determining where the line is drawn between the individual beliefs of a church member as expressed on his blog and the church leadership’s responsibility for member accountability is a phenomena that will certainly come up thousands of time down the road as more and more Christians express themselves on blogs. And since homeschooling moms are typically bloggers, this seems to be one area on the cutting edge we need to examine!

Here are a few of my thoughts….
In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Captain Barbossa, when challenged by the young Elizabeth that he must release her according to the pirate rules, said, “First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.”

Somehow this resonates with me. When you join a local church, many times you are never told of the “unspoken” rules, the “guidelines” and as a result, you may write about or hold strongly to beliefs that are really not the essentials of the faith but are “expected” to be followed. What do you do if that is the case?

Also, should the rules be different for church leaders than for a member? For example, should a pastor have less freedom to write what he believes about something because he represents his own church? What about elders? Sunday school teachers? Choir members?

What about higher standards for those in high-profile positions outside the local church?

And what about honestly and transparency on blogs? For example, what if the blogger is presenting a picture of himself that is either misleading and dissembling or blatantly hypocritical or dishonest? Should there be any accountability for that?

Or is it ok for a blogger to simply respond if asked to remove certain things from his blog by replying as Barbossa did “I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Means “no”?” Is church discipline ever warranted for responding this way and if so, is there any Scriptural precedent for this? I mean, what statements could you make that would be discipline worthy?

These are just a few things that have been simmering on my back burner. Please feel free to add your thoughts so we can all learn together!

The past couple of weeks have had their share of distractions, nothing too awful but not pleasant just the same.

As previously mentioned, the washing machine is now beginning its third week of vacation. (I think it is secretly glad to be missing two key parts.) I have found a lovely laundromat, one with working washers and dryers and a floor so clean even Monk would wash his collared shirts there, even twice. I can make it until the new part arrives, though I find myself considering March 6, the part-is-available-to-ship date, as a benchmark day. You know, “Oh, so you can come for dinner on March 7? Great, that is the day after my washing machine part is available” or “Sure, grandma can have the doppler test on the left artery in her neck on March 10. That is only 4 days after my washing machine part is available.” I am really looking forward to March 6th.

In the midst of the washer kafaffle, we had to replace all 4 tires on our van. It started out to be just the front ones and one of the tire guys assured us that the rear tires still had good use on them. Three days later, we had a flat tire and everyone else determined that the two on the rear needed replacing, too. Within a week of that event, the car wouldn’t go into gear and had to be towed to the repair shop where the transmission was pronounced DOA. So, in between loads of laundry, we have car shopped. Did you know that most car manufacturers no longer carry vans? Did you know that some dealers are not allowed, by order of their insurance companies, to sell 12 passenger vans to non-commercial groups? See, homeschooling moms never stop learning.

And, just for fun and sprinkled throughout this mix, the flu has struck our house. A couple of the guys have had its lingering effects for several weeks, with hacking and coughing and sore throats. It didn’t hit me really hard until Thursday night. Today I am going to church, but I am not going to breath during the entire service.

For those of you who read some of the past comments on this blog, perhaps my cyber-friend who regularly prays imprecatory psalms of destruction on me and my keyboard is spreading her cheer to other facets of my life. If so, she will have to try harder. Between all the down time at the laundromat and staying home because of being carless, I have been doing much reading and research, preparing for some terrific upcoming podcasts.

Listen here to this week’s podcast as I conclude my discussions with Corrie Marnett on The Book We Wish Someone Would Write for Wives and Moms. This week’s presentation features our views on marriage, having babies, and the importance of homeschooling moms studying God’s word.