WOW! I don’t know if I have ever, in my life, heard ANYONE say they haven’t made ANY mistakes.

LOL! C’mon, sister!

Leslie-the last paragraph of your comment is exactly what I was trying to say when I commented…you just did a better job

Kelly-may God bless you…for standing firm on your beliefs and encouraging other women. Maybe at times you may feel that you don’t make a difference or reach anyone…I’m here to tell you that you’ve been a HUGE encouragement to this young, stay-at-home-homeschooling-want-as-many-little-blessings-as-HE-gives-wife-and-mommy. Thank you! May God richly bless you and yours! Oh, and by the way…would you mind if we packed up and moved next door to ya’ll? It’d be so nice to actually be around a like-minded family. We wouldn’t make much noise, I promise

VERY well stated, thank you. I think I became exhausted with this thread and walked away

I thought of an analogy in my sleep (as usual) to help explain why we don’t lean too hard on the idea that “there is no formula”…

People like to say that because the Bible doesn’t speak directly about education it’s open to whatever choice we make. I’ve maintained the Bible speaks *inn principle* about it, and gives us direction.

The area of money seems a lot the same. The Bible doesn’t say “don’t buy things you don’t have the money for”, i.e. credit purchases, but we take the principles from Scripture and know that credit cards can cause financial distress in a hurry.

And just like public school, for example, not everyone who uses a credit card to buy a plasma tv will experience difficulty; but more will than not, and it’s playing with fire. AND, not everyone who has a “debt-free” approach will escape financial trouble to some degree, but many more will than not.

Am I making sense? Another thing about that is, we don’t attack Dave Ramsey for pointing out the foolishness of making poor economic choices–he does it to HELP people, just as that is my desire, and many others who talk about this subject.

Enough rambling…

Someone commented “As women, we rely on methods. The cake didn’t rise, so I must have done something wrong — let’s see what it was: I didn’t put in the baking powder, or I opened the oven door as the cake was starting to rise, or I didn’t beat the batter enough, whatever. I’ll work out the glitch, and then my cake will turn out fine.” This is true, but if you know that you didn’t follow the recipe and DECIDED to skip the baking powder, you wouldn’t be surprised if the cake didn’t rise. Same with kids. God gave us instructions and when we don’t follow them we need to be ready to accept responsibility and repent. (this includes me, as I currently send my 6 year old off to a presbyterian school and I know I we are pushing our God ordained responsibility off on someone else.)

“I can have a Christ-centered philosophy of education, but not a Bible-based education. Only our Bible classes can be that.” I REALLY disagree with this comment. I might have agreed with it until I started homeschooling my 16 year old (then 10). Once I taught a Christian curriculum, one with God at the center of EVERY subject, I knew I could never go back. It’s like a piece of the puzzle was missing and I didn’t even realize it. What cemented it for me was realizing, as I taught, that some of what I learned in school was a deliberate misrepresentation of some historical events, in order to diminish the impact that Christian men had on this country and also to elevate certain theories in science.

To WW: I imagine you must get frustrated sometimes. I just want you to know that I wish I had a Titus 2 woman in my life when I was a new mother and working outside my home and even later when I was sending that child off to a secular school. All the Godly women in my church (and they did love the Lord) were misguided and had a secular/feminist view. As a result, I got very worldly advice from them. I wish I had someone like you to honestly share your mistakes and convictions and the scripture that you based it on so that maybe I might have made different choices based on different information.

Also, I want to add that basing our decisions on how we “feel” God wants us to behave is not biblical. The bible says “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9.

Lastly,
Like Kelly, I also went to secular school, my friends were my “life” and as a result I made some very bad choices. I was really cute (now 20 years and 3 babies later and I’m not nearly as cute) and enjoyed attention that I got from that. The 2 things we were praised for in my family were being intelligent and being good looking. So I was smart, and pretty….and promiscuous. I think someone commented on the socioeconomic status of the teens that were falling away. Well, you can’t come from a “better family” in Alabama than I did. (my family is extremely political and the emphasis was ALWAYS on how things “looked”) But avoiding pregnancy and VD is not the standard we should be setting for our children. Even respecting themselves. They need to respect GOD! And just having our children get “saved” shouldn’t be the only goal. the only worthwhile goal is raising children that are WARRIORS for CHRIST. all the other stuff, is just stuff.

BUT none of this matters. Outcomes DON’T matter. What matters is obedience to God’s word and I think it is very clear on how we should raise our children and carting them off everyday for someone else to teach is in direct opposition to that.

Leslie