Sanctification in Homeschool's Living Room
We’ve been waiting for more and more of the corporate sanctification for homeschoolers. We made more progess on getting a start this past week. It’s hard, but it’s great.
We’re still 1) walking through the questions about classical education models and applications for homeschooling, 2) walking through the unity and diversity questions of the local church and the varied callings of families and their application-of-choice—traditional classroom, public or Christian, and one-day co-ops or one or two-day class involvement with public school, Christian school or home-school. No question, we, the local church, with her elders, pastors and parents, have made progress the past 5-6 years on these matters. This has been the kindness of our God and Father.
We’ll keep walking through the doctrinal distinctives—and recently Answers In Genesis experienced this. I trust that there’ll be more to come.
It’s about time for us, as Homeschoolers, to learn how to home-school our own home. We’ve been learning the rules for engagement on the nature and calling of the family and the same for the local church, now she needs to learn how to fight and be good on other areas of doctrine and practice. Ken Sande’s work will help us. Maybe the folks at Monument Publishing need to provide helps on taking up the positions between Mr. Inns and Mr. Ham. Get the high school students grounded in the positions and turn us loose on learning and grappling to help with progress in our sanctification. It’s a good time to debate; it’s a good time to help contribute to our own house’s order.
We can look ahead for more growth in sanctification regarding positions in things like: Christians and filmmaking, Christians and Entrepreneurial Home-based endeavors, and Christians, Homeschoolers and their Role in Worship-leading in the Local Church.
Homeschoolers are learning to wade through positions on socialization and courtship and dating; let’s continue to get grounded in these other positions too.
G. Mark Sumpter
Community or Competition, Salute Other Dads or Sword-Fight With Dads
In what way does our pride figure into rebellious attitudes and actions around other Home Schooling families?
That question came up this morning in a certain living room in Grants Pass.
I confess: My lack of submission to other home schooling Dads; my lack of submission to them to learn from them, to be ministered to by them.
■They’re better at communicating vision to those under their charge. I’m in rebellion due to my envy of them about this.
■They’re better at plodding with the week to week home schooling schedule. I’m in rebellion propping myself up before others with my fits and starts about my duties with respect to home schooling.
■They’re better at specific emphases that are academically related, in the very places where I fall short, and I again, I try to prop up myself to have the appearance of having my academic act together.
As a Home Schooling Dad, I know I am supposed to lead—that’s vision. As a Home Schooling Dad, I know academics require the line upon line mentality, slow growth and seedtime and harvest actions—that’s plodding. As a Home Schooling Dad, I know that I should be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound with respect to knowledge—that’s the academic thing.
So I find myself all too competitive with other Home Schooling Dads, and envious, and routinely seeking justification before God and men by the doctrine of comparison. It’s the phony reformation doctrine of Justification By Comparison. I use the standards of men to justify myself. How wrong-headed, how wicked! Home Schooler—heal thyself!
God’s gracious and just reward to us—to me, in Christ Jesus, is His perfect obedience to God’s law. His work is credited to us, so that we stand before God as if we ourselves had kept that law perfectly. Our Lord’s washing us with His atoning sacrifice at the cross is imputed to us, so that we stand before God as if we had atoned for our law-breaking. All is grace. His justification is all that matters!
Lord, bury the Home Schooling-fuel for pride and envy. Teach me to honor Dads, to submit to them, to learn from them. They are my counselors, not my competitors.
G. Mark Sumpter
