Categories: Beyond
      Date: Nov 11, 2008
     Title: Free at Last, Free at Last: Thank God Almighty

There is, in the homeschool classes I teach, irony upon irony. First this: only two of my students are my students. Once a week I meet with a group of young people and parents from the church where I serve. This semester I’m teaching first an introduction to logic, and second, modern American history. My eldest son and daughter are there, but the rest of the students are homeschooled, most of the time, by their own parents. The second irony is this. Not only are these homeschooled students not being schooled in their homes, they’re being schooled in a government school. Well, truth be told, it’s a former government school. We meet in the Mendota Community Center, a former elementary school which sits empty most of the week. Head Start, a rather innocuous name for what is really government preschool, met there until this fall. They had to close down because of a lack of students. The majority of children in Mendota, Virginia, these days, are homeschooled.

Our history class this week took us to the beginnings of the New Deal under Roosevelt. My goal as we covered this time frame was to help the children and the parents understand the nature of the New Deal. It promised not merely sundry social programs, but federal control of the economy. There is no greater current illustration of this reality, I explained, than the government school system itself. Here the state presumes to take upon itself that which God calls families to do. I explained that this is bad for education, bad for the economy, bad for the budget. All of that pales, however, in this way. The grave sin is the hubris of the state. The evil thing is that the state thinks it is God. These schools violate the first commandment.

I did not want the students to go away from class discouraged. As damaging and as obtrusive as the government’s schools might be, I reminded my students, they in the class had been set free. They, in God’s grace, were under the care of parents who saw the folly of government schools. They, in God’s grace, were being taught by parents who understood their own calling before God. As remarkable a betrayal of the nation’s founding ideals as the New Deal was, God’s grace was far more remarkable in their own lives, in setting them free.

Consider What He Has Done

We are in grave danger. As we slip gently into the second generation of homeschooling, we lose sight of the great grace of God in rescuing us. We lose sight of the nature of the government’s schools. Homeschooling becomes normal to us, and worse, it becomes normal to our children. What becomes normal soon becomes forgotten. And we will find ourselves once more betraying our own ideals.

The psalmist Korah gives us two keys to avoiding falling into this trap. He begins Psalm 48 with the first of those keys, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.” We must remember to give thanks to God for all the ways He showers us with His grace. When you sit down tomorrow morning with your children, ready to do your “desk work,” stop. Pray a prayer, or sing a Psalm of thanksgiving. It is God who has done this, and not we ourselves. It is God Who opened your eyes so that you would not send your children off the priests of the state religion. And so God is to be praised. Do not grow weary of singing His praises, as He does not grow weary of giving us His grace. Give thanks, and again give thanks.

But there is more. Korah concludes his psalm with this admonition, “Walk about Zion. And go all around her. Count her towers; Mark well her bulwarks; Consider her palaces. That you may tell it to the generations following.” Having given thanks to God for how He has protected your family, having given thanks to God for how He has prospered your family, having given thanks for how He has grown your family, the next step is to tell it to your children. Let them know that God has rescued them. Let them know that God is the one who guards your family, your city of God, your little Zion. Let them know that the Lord, He is God, and not the grasping state. Tell them, “For this is God, our God forever and ever; He will be our guide, even to death.” For as you tell them this, He will be your guide, even to death.

I told the students in my class that they will live out their gratitude to their heavenly Father and to their earthly parents as they, when the time comes, raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as they talk to their children of the things of God when they lie down and when they rise up. You must tell your students the same.