Homeschooling has finally become a normal fixture of American life. But does the younger generation understand how and why it happened? Do they understand the Biblical basis for such a thing? Join Jason Dohm and me as we talk about this important issue. What Biblical truth do we need to communicate to the younger generation about homeschooling?
Hey, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Let me tell you a couple of things real quick before we get going. Hope you can come to our Theology of the Family Conference at Ridgecrest, North Carolina, May 20 through 23. Just Before that, a singles conference called Holiness to the Lord, May 19 and 20. Also go to our website.
We have lots of resources, over 5,000. Churchandfamilylife.com. Also, I just published a book called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy. I think this book could really help sweeten your local church experience. Okay, let's get on now with the podcast.
Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for the Church and the family, for the Reformation of the Church and the family. And today we have Jason Dome to talk to us about homeschooling. Well, we're both going to talk about homeschooling. Jason and I have been homeschooling for a long, long time.
So hey, Jason. Hello, thanks for the invite, Scott. Great, yeah, so we're gonna talk about this because of the moment that we live in, and I'll just go back a few decades to give some context about why we're having this conversation. Well, we're having this conversation because there are many people, many young people that really don't have a foundation for why their parents homeschooled. So we wanna just try to lay that foundation.
Pete Yeah, Absolutely. I recently gave a message to the church that I'm serving on homeschooling. The reason we did that is my co-elder and I realized that our older kids heard about this all the time when we were sort of hammering out how to articulate it a decade ago. But our younger kids really hadn't heard it at all, and it was time to just sort of revisit the ground and get back to the Bible text that would point you in this direction. Yeah, early on it was a big fight.
It's not a big fight right now. When Deborah and I moved to North Carolina in 1988, homeschooling had just been legalized in North Carolina. So, and everybody was still kind of slinking around, don't let your kids go out in the afternoon because people will feel very uncomfortable with you if, you know, they realize that your kids are not in school. My wife, Deborah, she, she went to homeschool our kids before we had kids. So when that first happened, I mean, you know, Deborah was going to all the early, early homeschool conferences trying to figure it all out.
Yeah. You know, Janet and I, We were Christians, but we weren't very proactive Christians. So when we got married, we hadn't talked about how many kids we would like, how many kids we hope to have, what we would do on education. We just knew we liked each other a lot, and so we got married. So really, that wasn't part of the early discussions at all, but we were hanging around the Brown family, your house, and we were looking at the two little girls that you had at the time and saying, something different is happening here.
That's really the first thing that put homeschooling on our radar at all. Interesting. I didn't even know that. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. My wife was teaching high school math at the time. So she was getting a front row seat to sort of both settings. She was teaching in a public high school, but then also we were spending a lot of time in your home and just kind of watching the interactions and seeing what the output of the home was in the life of two little children. And it gave us a good way to start making those decisions.
Hey, back then homeschooling was weird, totally weird, okay? And there was, you know, you got in trouble for doing it with your friends and things like that. But, you know, times have changed and people aren't in hiding anymore. It's, you know, in some ways it's kind of a cool thing to do for some people. I hope the freedom to homeschool continues, but we live in a time right now where we're most kids who are in their parents homes.
They have no idea the battle that was fought. They had no idea about the scorn that we had to face to homeschool our children. So it's kind of cush for them, but we want them to understand what the deal is. Yeah, it was good for me too, honestly. I came on the scene after that battle, and I never had to fight it.
One of the things I'd like to do while we're talking is to walk us through a handful of texts that I think inform the Christians' thinking about educational choices that they make. Starting in Ephesians 6 verse 4, Paul writes, And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. So, the question for me coming out of that verse is, it's Father's duty to bring up His children in the training and admonition of the Lord. What kind of task is that? Well, it's a long-term task.
You don't bring up children in a day or a week or a month. You bring them up over, really, the period of two decades. And what's the magnitude of the task? Big task or little task? Well, you have to figure that out, because that's really what you're solving.
If it's a little thing that you can just do in the nooks and crannies of time, just sort of the leftovers that don't have the big blocks of time, you can sort of fit it in between things, then that's one answer. But If it is the big thing that the other things need to be sort of shaped around in your schedule, that's another thing. So does the Bible speak to that? Does the Bible inform whether it's a big task that should be the center of your schedule or a little task that you can fit into the nooks and crannies? And absolutely, the Bible speaks to that.
Yeah. So the whole thing about bringing up, I mean, the language indicates a full-blown, top-to-bottom kind of educational program. You're gonna bring them up in everything. I don't know how you could duck that being the implication of the verse. For a while, when we were hammering out how to articulate this, I think we were all sick to death of sermons on Deuteronomy 6, because we had all heard a dozen of them in the last few years.
But now, I want to kind of take us back to Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 1 through 9, because even in our circles, I don't think there are as many messages being given on this absolutely core educational text. So, let me just read it, and then we can hammer through a few things in the text. So, this is Deuteronomy chapter 6, obviously comes after Deuteronomy chapter 5, which is the giving of the Ten Commandments. So this is really the follow-up. What do we do with these Ten Commandments?
Deuteronomy chapter 6, starting in verse 1. Now, this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
And these words I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates." So I want to draw out a few things of this, and I feel like I might be starting to filibuster, so you just break in whenever you want to break in, Scott. I'm really not trying to filibuster.
The first thing I'd like to say is that this is made actually a multi-generational project in Deuteronomy chapter 6. It's not just you, it's not just you and your son, it's that the commands of God, the ways of God, are not just for us to be, or just sort of a repository, and we are an islands to ourselves, but actually we're supposed to dispense it, and not even just to one generation, but it speaks of you, your son, and your grandson. So this is an occupation, and we might call it a preoccupation because of how it's settled in the text, is just sort of woven into the warp and wolf of life. It's a preoccupation of generations together. So, I mean, that, from Ephesians 6, that answers the question, big task or little task?
Big task, sort of life- encompassing task. This is the big thing in the schedule, that we fit other things around, not the thing that we can just fit into the nooks and crannies. And just to add, you marry those two verses together, Ephesians 6 and Deuteronomy 6. What you have is something that parents must do themselves. The thrust of these verses is not outsourced to somebody.
The explicit thrust is you parents have this responsibility. Now we live in the outsourced generation, you know, we want to push everything out to the experts. The experts say, well the Bible actually begins with experts called parents And that's the central matter. I don't think either one of us would say that it's wrong to ever outsource any part of your children's education. We're not saying that.
But what's very, very clear here is the explicit weight of this task is on parents, not teachers, not professors, not the church. The church comes around and provides a tremendous help and central matter for the education of children through preaching and things like that, but the weight of these texts lays on the shoulders of parents, period. Yeah. If you look at where this text is nestled into Deuteronomy, It's given to a people who had come out of false worship, they came out of Egypt, and they're going into a land with false worshipers. So, I mean, it's really the prescription of how you keep you and the succeeding generations out of false worship.
They were coming out of false worship Egypt, they were going into a land of false worship Canaan, and it's God's recipe for how they stay true to the faith. So, I think you have an important progression here in verses 6 and 7. Verse 6 talks about the words being in your heart. So, the love for God in his ways has to be in the heart of a homeschooling parent. Without that, it's hard to argue that all is not lost.
There are ways to do it hypocritically and lifelessly that won't produce the type of result. In other words, homeschooling disasters are a thing. Homeschooling disasters are a thing. There are parents who do this hypocritically and lifelessly, and I think all homeschooling parents would say from time to time, that has been me. But that's a recipe for disaster.
Homeschooling isn't a guarantee of an outcome, but it's God's prescription for having succeeding generations be in the faith. So, it starts in the heart, that's verse 6, and then verse 7, it's a call for a diligently teaching, and it's actually spelled out what diligently teaching requires and means. It's that you talk about the ways of God, the commandments of God when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. In other words, all the time. So I think a key argument for homeschooling from Deuteronomy chapter 6 is the math argument.
What do I mean by that? The one who holds the hours, retains the hours, wields the influence. It's simple math, not mathematics as a subject for schooling, but math in terms of who has the hours. Whoever has the hours wields the influence. And God, speaking to a people who are coming out of paganism and into a land that's filled with paganism, gives them their chance of the survival of the faith, which is to wield the hours.
Keep the hours, don't give away the hours. Right. And you know, another way of saying that is God gives you particular hours, how do you use them? If you're going to have children, your hours ought to be given to teaching your children. So if you don't want to be a teacher, don't have children.
Okay? But you have been given a responsibility from God by explicit commands that you have to be the teacher of your children. I know in some circles, educational choices can be a very controversial topic, but I find it hard to believe that in any circle that proposition that the one who holds the hours wields the influence would be controversial. That's sort of, that's, you can't wiggle out of the implications of that. Whoever has the hours has the influence, and God wants parents using the influence that He's given them.
Think of the tremendous influence that God has given parents, the advantages that he's giving them that really no one else can have. And so, he wants that influence that he's gifted to parents to be used for his glory in the world. Hey, and let's just back up for a second, because this discussion has a backdrop. The backdrop is a proposition and it is, it's the foundational proposition. And that is scripture is sufficient.
If you want to learn about how to do anything, go to the Word of God. The Word of God will teach you how to be a husband, how to be a father, how to be a child, how to be a worker, how to be a church member, you know, how to engage with the world. The Bible tells you these things, And if you want to learn how to do something, go to the Word of God. Now, the Word of God actually has very clear things to say about the education of children, and he uses all this different kind of language, and I think you've just covered, you know, some of the core pieces to the puzzle. Let me anticipate an objection.
Okay, the objection is this. So what you're really talking about is discipleship. You know, what you're really talking about is discipleship. What you're really talking about is imparting the faith to children. So, that's sort of a separate category.
And really, with schooling, what we're talking about is mathematics, English, history, and so on. So, Deuteronomy 6 doesn't speak to that. And I would say, I think that objection actually proves the point. Deuteronomy 6 is calling for faith to be at the center of life, not the periphery. So, if whatever is being called for, you're supposed to engage it when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
It means that it's primary, it has the place of honor in your life and in your schedule, and that the other things, whether they be mathematics or English or history or whatever else, is done sort of in the shadow of that. And So, homeschooling allows you to keep our faith, which is absolutely the most important thing. Jesus said, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? And it's a rhetorical question because the answer is so obvious. Well, this is sort of following that track of primacy.
The faith is primary, and the other things can actually fit within that structure well. Now, try to reverse it. Try to make mathematics, English, history, primary, and then have the faith just sort of second fiddle, the faith fitting into that structure. You get sort of what we have today. Yeah.
You know, these passages, they answer the who, what, where, when, and why of education. Who is centrally responsible? The parent. What should be taught? The Word of God.
Where? Everywhere. When? All the time. Why?
That your days may be prolonged in the land. So it really gives you the rationale for the whole picture from the beginning to the end, and it really establishes the central responsibilities and the central materials and the central objectives that education should have. And, you know, Scripture is sufficient for these things. We should trust these ways. Yeah.
Another text that I wanted to make sure got read, it's still in Deuteronomy, it's in Deuteronomy chapter 32 verses 45 through 47. So let me read that. Again, it's Deuteronomy 32, 45 through 47. Moses finished speaking all these words to all Israel, and he said to them, set your hearts on all the words which I testify among you today, which you shall command your children to be careful to observe all the words of this law, for it is not a futile thing for you, because it is your life, and by this word you shall prolong your days in a land which you cross over the Jordan to possess." So Moses is saying what is repeated through Deuteronomy, that the Word of God, the ways of God are actually for our good, the commands of God are for our good. It's our life.
It's not a feudal thing. It's not a sideline. These things are our life, and it takes our life to acquire them and give ourselves to them. Yeah, again, you're always brought back to the centrality of the Word of God. Now, we believe that, you know, you ought to teach your children math, you should teach them history and science, but at the center of it is the Word of God.
The Word of God is the great interpreter that brings, you know, all of it together. Scott, let me give you Proverbs 1 verse 7. It's the beginning of this verse, Proverbs 1.7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now, so decide whether that's true or not true.
If it is true, The thought of disconnecting an endeavor designed to acquire knowledge from Bible truths is insanity, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Now, can you learn facts without fearing God? Yes, you can. It really sort of points to the danger of piling up facts in your mind without a fear of the Lord, without a knowledge of the things that matter to God, because they're disconnected from the most fundamental truths, and you actually don't even know where the facts you're learning fit into the world that God made. Yeah.
And notice, you know, our arguments are not pragmatic arguments. There are pragmatic arguments we could spend time on. What's the result if you homeschool your children? Well, hey, for some families, it's a disaster because they didn't really take the responsibility seriously. So you have these disaster stories of home education where the children really weren't challenged and stretched and they really weren't taught.
And that's, well, that's sinful. That's actually disobedience to the things that you've just mentioned you know on the whole though you know homeschooling children do better they test better they're able to concentrate and they're able to grasp things they do very very well you know in higher education and things like that, but we're not bringing pragmatic arguments like that. The Word of God is true, and it's the thing that works the best in the life. And you don't want to send your children into the world without being fortified by a vision of God and everything that God said. Scott, I cannot let us end without bringing you one more text.
The text is almost always used just about marriage, but the principle in the text is a lot more broad than marriage, and it comes from 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 14 through 18. So, let me read 2 Corinthians 6, verses 14 through 18, and then we can talk about how it applies to educational choices. So Paul writes to the Corinthians, I do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness, and what communion has light with darkness, and what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?
And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." So my recommendation for any Christians who are thinking through educational decisions is, is the environment that I am considering sending my child in for the bulk of the hours. Remember, he who holds the hours wields the influence. Can it be rightly characterized as lawless, dark, unbelieving, idolatrous? And if the answer is yes, then Paul is telling you here, you have no way legitimately to get into a yoke with that group of people, with that system.
We're actually called to come out from lawlessness, darkness, idolatry, unbelief. – Yeah. So there's the case. There's the biblical case. And what we want to say to the kids that haven't grown up having to fight the battles, what we want to say to them is that the Word of God is really clear.
It tells us the who, what, where, when, and why. So just trust it and go for it, and school your children the way that the Bible teaches you to do it. And God promises many blessings as a result. So they're the reasons. They're the biblical reasons.
So there you go, Jason. Any parting shots here? I don't think so, other than to say we're 22 years kind of into homeschooling now, and our only regrets might be associated with not having engaged it more wholeheartedly than we have. We have no regrets that we did that. We maybe wish we did it better or, you know, more perfectly, less imperfectly than we did, but we don't regret for a day having started down this track.
Amen. Me too. I wish I'd done it better, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Absolutely. Okay, so there you have it.
So, hey, thanks for listening, and thanks for bringing the Scriptures to us, Jason. So, Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. That's what we really tried to do here. Hey, hope you can join us in our next broadcast next week. We'll see you then.
Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to ChurchandFamilyLife.com. See you