No Greater Joy Ministries » Cloistered

Response from Bill Gothard

Bill Gothard — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:15:36 +0000

In a previous article I characterized the teaching of Bill Gothard in a manner that is not representative of his views. He graciously called to inform me of his position. I asked him to document his views in a letter to me. Here is Bill Gothard's letter in its entirety. Dear Michael, I appreciated our phone conversation a few days ago, and I am happy to clarify and expand on the points that we talked about. When Is a Family Established? I was pleased to learn from your recent article, “The Balanced Patriarch,” that you and your wife were able to attend a Basic Youth Conflicts Seminar in the early 1970s. That seminar was born out of the Biblical concept to turn “the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). (See also Luke 1:17.) In this seminar, we explain that a man is to leave his father and mother when he gets married and is no longer under their authority. (See Matthew 19:5.) However, many husbands are not prepared or equipped for the challenges that they are going to face in their marriage and family. Therefore, we encourage them to get as much counsel as they can from wise and Godly sources, including parents and parents-in-law, because “in the multitude of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). Also, it is Scriptural for every man to be accountable to older, Godly men: “Ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble” (I Peter 5:5). Your question on the authority of a father is answered in a booklet titled Pavilions of Protection, which I am sending you under separate cover. What Damages a Father’s Leadership? Whenever a father asks for counsel regarding a rebellious son or daughter, one of my first questions is “Do you have a problem with anger?” Almost every dad says, “Yes.” In talking with groups of young people, I ask them the same question, and almost all of them acknowledge that their fathers have a problem with anger. I know of nothing that destroys the spirit of a marriage or a dad’s relationship with his children faster than anger. Many of these fathers have gone through counseling and seminars and still continue to have the problem. Recently, we have discovered a major cause of this anger. Most men have painful memories of hurts in the past or memories of things that they did to hurt others. If they did not respond by forgiving their offenders or by asking forgiveness for their offenses, they became vulnerable to Satan’s lies, such as “You are stupid” or “You’ll never amount to anything” or “People are out to hurt you.” All these experiences and the lies that go with them are filed away in the heart and mind of that young man. In the future, when someone tells him that he has done something stupid, or he is frustrated, or he feels like a failure, all the pain and guilt of the past flares up in anger. We have found that by helping dads transform these painful memories by applying the commands of Christ, they are able to experience victory over anger, as well as to overcome guilt, lust, bitterness, greed, fear, and envy. For more information, please visit www.LifePurposeHealth.com. What Is a Patriarchal Family? God has given three law systems to mankind. The first was given to one family, Adam and Eve. The second was given to Israel, the law of Moses. The third was given to all nations, the commands of Christ. All three are referred to by Jesus in Matthew 19 when He discusses divorce. This is important, because if we base our teaching on the family only on the Old Testament patriarchal model, we will run into problems with Jesus’ teaching on the family in the New Testament. Under the Mosaic law, the nation of Israel was not to have social interaction with other nations, and everything in their society was built around the family. In the New Testament, we are to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to all nations, and this is to be the priority of every family member. A true patriarchal family understands that they are the spiritual seed of Abraham and are therefore heirs of the promise God gave him, along with its responsibilities. “Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” (Galatians 3:7–9). We are to bless all nations by giving them the glorious Gospel of Christ, which encompasses all of His commands. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations . . . all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). What Is a Kingdom Family? “Absolute loyalty” to the family is a key factor of an out of balance patriarchal family model. However, as He did so often with various aspects of the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic law, Jesus explained a higher precedent affecting family loyalties when He was told, “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee” (Matthew 12:47). Jesus answered, “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:48–50). This is not to take away from the need for sons and daughters to honor and obey their parents, especially in regard to standards and choice of a marriage partner, nor is it to diminish the need for parents to train up sons and daughters to be Godly ambassadors of truth. In these matters, there must be a higher loyalty to the Lord than to the family. Jesus taught this when He said: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:34–37). Why Do Teens Turn Against Standards? Why are young people who have been trained up in a Godly home and kept from the corrupting influences of the world suddenly deciding to reject their upbringing and adopt the standards and ways of the world? There are many contributing factors. However, I believe that a foundational reason is that young people have not been trained in how to lead people to Christ and to disciple them with the commands of Christ. I have asked thousands of homeschooled young people, “How many of you have led someone to Christ?” In response, only a few hands have been raised. This is shocking! When Christian young people have no “labor and travail” over the spiritual birth and growth of others, they see no real reasons for higher standards. Disciples expect and even demand higher standards of those who are teaching them the ways of God. It was his concern for the spiritual well-being of his disciples that motivated Paul to set aside his own personal freedoms in Christ. He declared, “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (I Corinthians 8:13). One of the ways that we have found to remedy this deficiency is by having teams of young people go on a ten-day Journey to the Heart. They learn how to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then they are shown how to lead others to Christ and to disciple them in the commands of Christ. Almost all of the 1,400 who have completed a Journey so far have had a life-changing experience. How Do Parents Make Children Their “Idols?” About five months ago, a distraught father asked for counsel regarding the conflicts in his family. He feared for the physical safety of his two daughters because of the anger of their mother. When the daughters were released by the father for ministry outside the home, they quickly recovered from the abusive home atmosphere and their mother had an opportunity to reevaluate her relationship with them. A month later, the mother asked her daughters to forgive her for her anger. Then she revealed a powerful insight that has transformed her thinking. She realized she was expecting things from her daughters that only God could give her, such as approval, security, and fulfillment. When we expect things from people that only God can give us, we make them our idols, and we cannot love our idols, because this love is based on getting from them rather than giving to them. Should Daughters Give Their Hearts to Their Dads? When I first heard the concept of a daughter giving her heart to her dad for safekeeping until she got married, it sounded like a good idea. It was certainly far better than giving parts of her heart to different boyfriends and then having very little left for her future husband. However, there is a major factor that this concept overlooks and, as a result, we are now seeing serious breakdowns. Several fathers have acknowledged that they do not really know what to do with their daughters’ hearts, and other daughters who have given their hearts to their fathers are deeply hurt and disillusioned when their fathers fail in their walk with God or their attitudes toward them. We must return to the first and greatest commandment, which is to give our whole hearts to our heavenly Father. Then we are to dedicate our bodies to Him and yield our members as instruments of righteousness so that He can love others through us. It is then no longer a matter of trying to love God, parents, marriage partner, children, or others with our love, but rather it is a matter of allowing God to love them through us with His perfect love. Should Daughters be “Keepers at Home” or Seekers of God’s Kingdom? A family who is following Christ must make it their first priority to seek God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. Each family member should look for ways to advance God’s Kingdom by living out His commands and teaching them to others. The new emphasis on daughters being “keepers at home” is based on Titus 2. This instruction is clearly written to wives and mothers: “to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus 2:4–5). There is a great need for fathers to protect their daughters, especially from going out of the home for education or jobs that would influence them to reject what they have learned from Scripture. However, to say that this passage prohibits a father from sending out an older daughter for ministry outside the home is both unscriptural and impractical. It is creating major problems, as evidenced by the overwhelming response to your recent articles. Some who promote this teaching state that even though the passage is written to married women, it is wise for older daughters to also learn how to be a “keeper at home.” This is fine. However, it is one thing to learn how to be a “keeper at home” and another matter to be required to be one to the exclusion of ministry outside the home. By such a requirement, they make no practical distinction between a married woman and a single adult daughter. However, Scripture makes a clear distinction between these two: “There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband” (I Corinthians 7:34). God compares children to arrows in the hand of a mighty man. (See Psalm 127:4.) A mighty warrior does not keep his arrows in his house. He carefully sends them out on important missions and then retrieves them for the next assignment. This should be the pattern of incremental release so that both sons and daughters can do great exploits for God and have a passion for God’s Kingdom, which they can then instill in their sons and daughters when they do get married. There are many more factors that should be discussed on this very important issue, but I trust that these points will be a help to parents who are courageously going against the tide of our culture and want more than anything else to raise up sons and daughters who are mighty in God’s Spirit. Through Christ our Lord, Bill Gothard, PhD President, Institute in Basic Life Principles

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Patriarchal Dysfunctional Families

Michael Pearl — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:00:48 +0000

The response to our first article in this series has been phenomenal. The need was far greater than we imagined. The questions we’ve received have run in the same vein: • Is the Patriarchal doctrine scriptural? • What does the Bible mean when it commands us to honor our father and mother? • What can I do to stop feeling guilty? • How can I help my siblings escape their bondage? • How can I help my parents overcome their bitterness and rejection? • When and under what circumstances can I act contrary to my parents’ wishes? This article is quite long, largely because we have recorded portions of more than a dozen letters. If I tried to convey the ideas you will read in these letters, you would think I was overstating the facts. These letters speak volumes. I am convinced that this “Patriarchal” evil disguised as righteousness will be disposed of by simply dragging it into the light. The facts are too embarrassing and shameful for this pretense to continue. Many have continued to be faithful to their patriarchal precepts in spite of the many indications of failure, convincing themselves that their poor family experience is the exception. They plod on in blind faith trying to do better, but they blame their failure on their children, accusing them of worldliness and rebellion. When things don’t work out like the model they have been presented, they shut the door tighter against the world outside, not realizing that their failure is visible to the whole world, and is actually a universal side effect of a very bad idea. There has been a sacred hush over the exalted doctrine of the patriarchal family. None dare question a system that stands for a recovery of Biblical values and promises to restore the family to a Christian culture. The headline is respectable and is innocent-sounding enough—Patriarchal Family. After all, doesn’t the Bible tell us that the husband is the head of the woman and of his house and that children are to obey their parents? I understand the motivation of the Patriarchal authors and purveyors. The crumbling of the Christian culture calls for radical solutions. The church is in desperate need to be reconstructed in accordance with the Word and the Spirit. The world seeps into our children like cold air into a log cabin in a Montana blizzard. Righteous parents are desperate for a solution. They looked for a scriptural means of correcting the problem, but believed a “Hath God said” partial truth—now clearly proven to be a lie. The Patriarchal/Extended Family movement has been around long enough to demonstrate its bankruptcy. It is time to lay it aside and go back to the old-fashioned Holy Spirit-filled family—a family “in the world” ministering, but not “of the world.” These true families are overcomers, not barricaded babies. They are militant godly witnesses of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not fearful, isolated survivors of an evil and intimidating culture. A Physician’s Perspective: Dear Pearls, As a family physician who sees many homeschool families in my office, I am fully aware of how much damage is being done to young women because of this “Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome.” It started with good intentions, but has grown so far out of balance that these families are becoming dysfunctional. 80% of my patients are Christians, and a good majority of them are homeschoolers. I have worked with over twenty young ladies from 20 to 35 years of age who are so sheltered that they have no freedom to minister outside of their homes unless they work directly under their fathers. They have no freedom in Christ and must only associate with those who walk, talk, and look just as they do. To desire to be educated as an adult or to think on their own is forbidden. To have friends who do not belong to the “accepted group of believers” is unthinkable to the family. This false teaching is creating a growing number of health problems in our young adult daughters in these homes, and also among the wives who are being forced to believe and teach these untruths to their children as truth. Satan is using this new Patriarchal teaching to destroy families in the Christian community everywhere. The effects of it is destroying believers’ bodies due to extreme stress, and is taking them right out of their ministry to unbelievers, because they are too sick and are such a poor testimony to the world around them. Please accept my gratitude for what you are doing, and please follow up on this important homeschool issue before more families are divided or destroyed. Thanks for understanding. Clip their wings. Dear Mr. Pearl, While homeschooling my own kids many years ago, we read an article that told about how certain ants secrete a hormone that prevents aphids from growing wings and flying away, allowing the ants to “farm” the aphids for the honeydew they produce. This is exactly what my parents did to us. We weren’t just discouraged from exercising our wings and flying from the nest, we were prevented from growing wings at all! I tend to believe that many of the Patriarchal families you speak of are really Matriarchal families. And if you think this is impossible, you have never experienced the power and mind control an extremely intelligent and manipulative mother can have over her (young) children’s minds, and to some extent (though it may take years), over her husband. I don’t know if she really controls my dad; I think he just gave up. My 35-year-old (at the time) married sister once told me: “I won’t cross the street without asking Mom and Dad for their permission!” And she was proud of this. You can imagine what her marriage is like. She has also copied my mom’s manipulative tendencies and loves to cuddle up to my dad and “nurse” the wounds he suffers at the hands of my mother’s controlling spirit. When my mother, with my father’s silent consent, tried to control her daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, they refused to submit, so mother treated them as unfaithful to the family, and expected the rest of the family to respond in kind. We are expected to live our lives exactly as Mom and Dad ordain. We are to worship, think, believe, eat, work, and spend our leisure only with their approval. I watched as my mom became worse and worse in her “Queenship,” the older she got and the older her (once little) subjects became. The fruit of her control has been family infighting and divorce. I wish I could say that I knew how to “handle” my mom (my family) and her ways, and that I had stuck around to try and witness to them, but I have no idea how to handle her (them). And I refused to sacrifice my wife and kids any longer while I tried. So, I took my family and left. I have severed all contact with my parents and siblings. My parents have made it very clear to everyone how my family has hurt them terribly by this separation. My siblings throw at me: “You are not honoring your parents, and they may die soon. You are not a Christian, because if you were, you would follow the program!” Yup! This kind of bizarre stuff goes on! We need to wake up and say, “NO MORE!” And stop pretending this sickness is what God meant by “honoring parents”! I do not regret leaving. However, I do regret that my parents do not get to be a part of their grandkids’ lives, that my kids don’t get to know their cousins, and that we miss out on extended-family get-togethers. All because of my mother’s refusal to let go, my dad’s refusal to be a man, and my siblings’ terror over admitting any of this! And my not knowing what to do to make things better! Thanks again, A freed man Got it right. Dear Mr. Pearl, I am from a Patriarchal Dysfunctional Family, as you put it. At 25 years of age, I left my father’s home along with two of my younger sisters. We praise the Lord for providing wise counselors and pastoral support as we made the decision to leave the home. My father was the head of his own church, so we had to find counsel and pastors to help us realize the error of these teachings. I know that without them, I would have probably turned my back on Christ. To this day, we still do not have a relationship with my parents since we will not “repent” of forsaking our parents’ authority and leaving “their” roof. Even though we reach out in love to them, they will not allow us to have relationships with our younger siblings or have contact with them. Yet, all three of us attend strong Bible-believing churches and are actively involved in ministry. In many ways, I have come to understand that my love for Christ must be stronger than love for mother or father. “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). I never thought this is what my life would be like, but my love for my Lord has grown so much deeper. I hope others come to realize how devastating the Patriarch Movement is. Because my family was an “idol” in the Patriarch Movement (especially in the Vision Forum arena), the pressure and rejection we received was very severe when we left. Thank you so much for addressing this issue. I know so many families who could benefit from this article. May the Lord bless you all richly. Better late than never. Dear Mr. & Mrs. Pearl, This goes back to the question you asked in the article “Where are the Men?” Well, I became a man six years ago and eventually got out of Dodge! Thank you for your article. I needed that. Believe it or not, I still (occasionally) wrestle with guilt over leaving my family. My mom’s influence is still hard to break at 40-some years of age! Actually, the sadness I feel is not over what I did, but over what our family misses as a result of this mess. Fear. Dear Mike & Debi, I grew up in the worst of the cloistered dysfunctional families, and I can tell you the source of it is what God tells us we are not to have if we are His – FEAR. These parents FEAR too much. Just like the person who never leaves home for fear of being run over, these parents FEAR losing their kids. The parents believe they somehow are the only ones who know what is best for their maturing and adult children, and they thrive (literally) on their maturing and adult kids’ attention, honor and obedience. The children they have worked so hard to teach and train their way are now, as young adults, treated like ignorant and hopeless individuals. For them, God is considered powerless…even in the most conservative Christian circles. Did it Right! Dear Mr. and Mrs. Pearl, I have just read your article, “Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome”, and just want to stand on a chair and holler, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! I am a homeschool product whose parents raised as an individual, with an intricate part of our close family, but with unique giftings. By the age of 14, I was an equal with my mom and dad, helping to raise my five younger siblings, not as a slave, but as my mom’s partner and “right hand woman.” As her peer, I learned through her example wifehood and mothering. I was her buddy and friend, and she was my mentor and role model. My parents realized that I had a call for missions on my life, and I spent my childhood and teen years nurturing independence and life skills so that I would be prepared for when we would be parted. As I write this from my living room in India, where I have served with my husband as a missionary for three years, I can’t help but feel grieved for those of my friends who just became an extension of their parents, or those who got fed up and left the fold. Either way, they never saw life with God as an adventure, because the only future they had was the one carefully crafted by their parents. Thank you again for your article. I pray that it serves as a wake-up call for parents before it is too late. God bless you! —Rebekah Dead Inside. Dear Mike & Debi, I am a 25-year-old girl in one of these Patriarchal Dysfunctional Families. God gave me verses like Matt.10:32-39 and Luke 14:25-35, and asked me to give my heart fully to Him. He is, after all, a jealous God. My parents want me to give my heart to my father, and to follow them. I love my parents, and I do not want to hurt them or seem ungrateful. I actually enjoy being at home still, but feel as though I will be a perpetual child if I remain there. More importantly, I know that the Lord is calling me out so I can follow Him. I’m not allowed to believe differently from my parents’ beliefs. Up until now, I have never had to trust God or have faith in Him, because I was just to follow my parents. But the longer I and my siblings stay at home, the more we are finding out that although we have been given the whole world, we are losing our souls. We are feeling dead inside. Is there a way to remain at home, under our parents, and be alive? Am I still supposed to relate to my parents like a child, or do I follow Christ as an individual? I was always taught that God wouldn’t speak to me unless He also spoke to my father and gave him peace. Anything else was attributed to the Devil leading me and wanting to break up our home. Where does headship come into all of this? I do still want to honor my father and have him be my head, but how? Can I move from home and be alive in Christ, or must I remain at home to stay in His will? I have not been allowed to make a ‘life’ decision, and I would like my father’s wisdom, but not his control. No, my father doesn’t know I’m writing to you. He doesn’t agree with Michael Pearl, but agrees with Debi and the book, Created to Be His Helpmeet. He lets us get the No Greater Joy magazine, and each issue has an article that seems like you’ve been spying on our family by the way you address some issues. I just want answers so I can know my place. Thank you, if you can help me. I won’t be offended if you tell me to stay under my father, or if you won’t answer my questions without his ok. What can I do? I’ve already suggested counseling. Dear Pearls, I read your article, Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome. What do you do when your family is like this? What do you do when you are 23 and your father uses the word “submission” to control me, my mom, and my brothers and sisters? How does God want us to handle it? Is there any way to fix it, or does God want me to just wait for him to act? I’ve already suggested counseling, and they won’t hear of it. Should I just pray? I’m at a loss. Directionless. Dear Mr. Pearl, I am a 27-year-old single woman who read your article “Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome” with great interest. How could you know what had been swirling in my head the past month? These past year(s)? I’m still at home with my parents, my family of three siblings (one is married), and am honestly directionless. I was raised with the mindset that I would get married shortly after high school, but after that didn’t happen, and I became 21 and 22, my parents kept feeding me that I just needed to stay home, be patient, and the right guy would come. When I was 25, I finally was given permission to branch out and serve full time in a ministry away from home. I loved it. I finally felt like I had something to love in my single years and knew this was where the Lord wanted me. But my parents called me home after 9 months. Since then, I have felt incapable of hearing from the Lord. I was 100% convinced that this was God’s leading to work at this ministry, and I went with my dad’s blessing (even though it wasn’t his first choice). It doesn’t seem right, I’m still considered a kid, and treated as incapable of making decisions. I’m being molded into what my parents want me to be, not what God may have for me, even if it is completely different. It’s incredibly frustrating. I don’t want to live this way until I get married or, the rest of my life should God choose not to bless in that area. I don’t want to be a rebellious daughter. I don’t want to bring them heartache and sadness. But I do want to follow the Lord’s leading—and what if that is different from their dreams? Can I do so and not be condemned? How can parents learn to let go? How can adult children change their mindset so that they are not in rebellion to want to even think this way? Thank you for your time, and THANK YOU for your ministry. A Reader Angry Mother. Dear Mr. & Mrs. Pearl, I am a very concerned and frustrated 23-year-old daughter. My family has been having difficulties for some time now. I am no longer willing to be passive in regard to my mother’s control. She has poured her life into her children, and I am so very grateful for her, but when my brother went to work out of town, my mother had a nervous breakdown. She had to talk to him on the phone at least once a day and became completely distraught when he would only talk a few minutes, saying he had to get back to work. When my brother refused to promise that he would live at home until he was married, she considered this to be a breaking up of her family and wrote my brother an eight-page letter telling him how sinful he was. This past summer, I felt God’s call for me to go to Bible college. God has impressed on my heart that NOW is the time for me to prepare myself for a life of service with whomever God calls me to marry. Mother let me go for one semester. There are those in my life who think a girl is not to leave home until married and does not need education like a man. I love being a girl and a keeper at home, and I expect to be a wife, submissive to my husband, but I will never be a houseplant. The very way God has made me requires me to learn constantly, to be active, and to live for more. I have a passion for learning and an adventurous spirit. My father and I are very close, and I get his advice and blessing in what I do. When I returned home from college, I talked to my father about what God was teaching me, and I told him that I felt God was calling me to a different path, and that I wanted to return to college, and I wanted his prayer. I was so struck by how blessed I was to have a father with whom I can have such discussions. He was very encouraging and gave me his blessing, telling me he had been feeling the same way. Then I went to tell my mother, and as soon as I said, “I am praying about returning to college” she blew up in tears and anger. In short, she wants me to stay home, get married, have grandkids, and live next door so she can have a big “multigenerational family.” My mother says “a guy might not like a girl too educated,” but I don’t want to marry a man who is intimidated because his wife is intelligent and informed. I am not sure how to deal with this. My mother tries to wear me down by talking about it every day for hours. Yesterday, I spent almost five hours listening to her. She told me that she thinks I don’t respect her because I usually talk to my father first about things like college and such. Well, the fact is that my mother doesn’t agree with my father on much and fights over everything. I am not very close to her, but I do go to her because of respect, even when I know she will go against me and against my father. She said I am rebellious and sinful. She will “not give her blessing for things she doesn’t agree with,” and I “will have to live with the consequences and pain of that.” She is chronically depressed, upset, and often points out the spiritual fault of all of us in this family—including my father. She thinks she is more spiritual than he is. She says I’ve crushed her dreams and essentially ruined her life. She “doesn’t like who I’ve become.” Truly, my heart is to respect and honor both my parents, and I try so very hard. My father says that with him, I am being submissive and respectful. My mother says I am not with her…I should trust her judgment because she is a woman, and my father doesn’t understand about girls as much. It is difficult living in a home that is ripped apart daily by anger and tears. Most of all, I want to know how to act towards my mother. What does one do with two parents of different views? What more can I do to honor a mother with bitterness and constant conflict. She is very, very “spiritual” and will often cry and pray hours upon hours and read her Bible and always comes away with a message for us. The house is neglected, she doesn’t want to see other people, and will not do any other activities unless pushed. I’m worried about her. I think she is mentally sick and, though this seems radical, oppressed by the Devil. Both my brother and I feel that our home often has a spirit of conflict and that can only be resisted by God’s spirit of unity. I will continue to try to be kind and respectful in every way. My mother is incredibly insecure, so I will show her love with cards, notes, true words of encouragement, etc. Then, I will try to do something with her—a deliberate activity—once a week. I will pray for 1 Corinthians love. God has been with me for the past few years with her depressions and blow-ups towards the family. Nothing may change in my situation, but I need to live victoriously. I have been amazed at the joy, peace, and presence of God I have every day. I think my father is often shocked at the peace and quiet joy with which I carry myself…It is ONLY GOD’s doing. He is preparing me, and everything He does is on purpose, so I am not bitter or trying to get out of a lesson He has for me. I have specific questions. Where is my place as a daughter? What is my role before marriage? Where does what God is telling me come in? Even more, what can I do to help her out of her prison? Life has to be miserable for her living like this. She is so unhappy and always worried. Guilt makes me feel that I am sinful and cannot serve God with the gifts He has given. I cannot tell you how delighted I was to discover your article on this subject. It will probably make my mother mad. And I know I am not the only one in such a place. Please write more on this subject. My mother really needs to read it. Mother raises independents adults. Dear Mr. Pearl, I just finished reading the article called “Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome.” Our oldest daughter (19 at that time; we have four more children age 7–12) left our little nest in May to serve at a Bible Camp in Minnesota. The temptation to hold on to her was really strong. Our mission statement of sorts for our family is: To raise strong intelligent, independent adults who desire to love and serve Jesus. If we held on, it seemed then we would not have been allowing God to work, not only in her life, but in ours also. She will be home for a short while this Winter, then she is planning to return to the camp next Spring/Summer. Your article truly hit home, and I love what you said that as parents, it is our job to work ourselves out of a job. Rectified Misunderstanding... Dear Mr. & Mrs. Pearl, ...is all I can say for your article on the Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome. In fact, it seems opposite of what most people “accuse” you of. I am most grateful that you have rectified this misunderstanding. We have had families in our church in the past who advocated exactly what you are writing AGAINST and saying that is how ALL TRUE Christian families should act. They say that Dad is the “high priest”, grown daughters should not show aptitude for anything, except perhaps midwifery or herbology, and should never venture out on their own (even at 20 or 30 years of age!). Single or widowed daughters must move right back home, because they are now again under their father’s authority because they are without a husband, etc. etc. I have been trying for years to put my thoughts into words, and you said it exactly! Thank you! Thirty but seems twelve. Dear Mike & Debi, Was I surprised! Your article hit home on the “cloistered family.” My brother is 30 but seems 12. Until Dad’s death last week, he made my brother live at home. While my dad lived, he NEVER let my brother get a job. He was simply there to do my dad’s bidding. Now that my dad has passed, I have to figure out what to do with my brother. He is “mentally stable” but his social skills are pretty bad. Now I am trying to figure out what to do with him. I do not know where to start! I only wished my dad had your article to read 30 years ago. Seeing how Dad raised my brother helped me in seeing how not to raise my own children. Now, I TRULY LOVED MY DAD. But with his ways, he has put my brother and me down a road that seems to have no light at the moment. All because he was selfish. How do I get my brother to where he can take care of himself? Stupid Guilt Dear Mike & Debi, A thousand thanks for your article, Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome. I was raised in a situation like the one you described. I have struggled with guilt for more than a decade over my decision to “fly away to breathe fresh air” against my father’s wishes. By God’s grace, I ended up marrying a wonderful Christian man and am continuing to follow after God, but I was left to my own devices with zero parental support for several years. I’m in a reasonable relationship with my parents (Now that I’m married and in a new patriarchy, as they see it, they will talk to me.), but they still hold my leaving over my head, and I know they are waiting for an apology for the breach of their patriarchy. I know there is much to be gained from them even in our imperfect relationship, but I’m hoping that your article will speak to them and bring some peace to our whole family the way it has to me. Thanks so much for sharing your insight. My parents are in my brain. Dear Mr. Pearl, I just wanted to express my thanks for your recent article called, “Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome”. In reading it, I saw it fit my family to a “T”. My husband and I left my parents’ jurisdiction, so to speak, about 5 months ago. We have a little boy almost 2 years old. We have struggled on a daily basis with many doubts and insecurities and continue to face negativity from my parents. It has been hard, knowing that the decisions we make are not according to my parents’ beliefs. My parents are very much in the Patriachal thinking, and it has damaged my family in many ways. I am the oldest of five children and have just now left at 33 years old. My brother (the youngest) left my parents in December last year, and my youngest sister just left about 2-3 months ago. My sister after me is turning 30 and is still at home. I worry about her, as she has a very private personality. She has gone through a lot, and I believe she has a tendency to depression. She invests her life in a couple of dogs, which I think is used as an escape, because they make her happy. I don’t talk to my folks much because there is always a negative atmosphere or underlying attitude that is very hard for me to live with. I am not even in their presence, and yet I feel like my parents are in my brain. I fear what they think of me. I came to the understanding after I left my parents that I was using my mother as my Holy Spirit. I don’t blame my parents, because I know that I make my own decisions, but when the LORD helped me see this, I just cried because I see where it has led me. I just want to be able to feel and experience the LORD working in my life and be led by his Spirit, but there is so much confusion… MICHAEL RESPONDS We have been inundated with letters like these testifying of dysfunctional families. The last time we had this strong of a response to an article was years ago when we first published the article “Jezebel”. Reading your letters, we have come to see that the two issues are really one. Rather than speaking only of Patriarchal (ruled by men) dysfunctional families, we should also be speaking of the Matriarchal (ruled by women) dysfunctional families. It is a deadly combination. When a man adopts the doctrine of bringing his family under the umbrella of parental oversight, Jezebel, with her emotional need to be nursed beyond the toddler stage, seizes on the doctrine to justify and solidify her Matriarchal rule. Dad still needs a little nursing from time to time and doesn’t want to sleep on the lonely side of the bed, so he goes along with it, pretending to be the authority. Not fully understanding what is happening, he allows her to wield awesome power in his name, and will not speak his mind about how he really feels because he does not want to appear unspiritual. And then, there are those families where Dad is the patriarchal head of his family and does not share the throne with his wife. His Patriarchal status readily turns to a monarchical rule. He jealously tightens his control until he squeezes the ambition and independence out of his children and his wife. Absolutism prevails. Thirdly, there are those sincere families that just get caught up in the latest “Christian” trends. They desire the best for their kids and have no twisted emotional needs, no compulsion to be king and queen of an everlasting kingdom. They do hope to see their children marry and become independent, but the patriarchal system they have adopted has enslaved them as well as their children. The family is weak, maybe hurting, and their children are not maturing as they had hoped, and they are ready to see this sad movement in its true light. These articles will free them like the dove turned out of the dark and smelly ark after a year of confinement, having been tossed around on the waves of destruction. Those with the King and Queen compulsions will defend their silly doctrine until the last kid leaves in bitterness or disgust. Those who are led by the Spirit of God will welcome the light of liberation and will throw off their own shackles and open their children’s cages. Honour your father and mother. Men and women ranging in age from 18 to 80 are asking, “What does it mean to honor my father and mother?” The Patriarchal movement has capitalized on the misperception that honor means obey. The Scriptures are clear, there is no age limit on honoring your parents. In Matthew 15, Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for not honoring their parents. But nowhere in the entire Bible is honor synonymous with obedience, and nowhere does the Bible even suggest that an adult should obey his parents. It speaks quite to the contrary. Jesus said very plainly, “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:35–37). The Bible viewed in its entirety—not cherry-picked—throws a lot of light on the subject of honor to parents. Foundational Passages. The word honor (honour) is found in the Bible 146 times. Following are the two Old Testament accounts of foundational passage on honoring your father and mother, and the New Testament reference and affirmation of the commandment. Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Deuteronomy 5:16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Ephesians 6:2–3 Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. God promised the Jews that if they would honor their parents (no age limit), they would continue to live in the Promised Land, but if their society failed to honor parents, they would be cast out of the land. What it means to honor. Leviticus 19:32 Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD. 1 Samuel 15:30–31 Then he said, I have sinned: yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of my people, and before Israel, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD thy God. So Samuel turned again after Saul; and Saul worshipped the LORD. Honor is Respect Due to a Person Based On Any Consideration. 1 Peter 3:7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. If honor implies obedience, or conformity to the will of the other, then a husband is to obey his wife. Honor all men. Romans 12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; Romans 13:7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. 1 Corinthians 12:23 And those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. 1 Peter 2:17 Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. We know we are not to obey all men, but we are told to honor all men, so honor and obey are not synonymous. If honor were to equate with obedience, Samuel could not have honored Saul with his presence at the sacrifice. Inappropriate honor. Proverbs 26:1 As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool. Proverbs 26:8 As he that bindeth a stone in a sling, so is he that giveth honour to a fool. [It will come back and hit you in the head.] Ecclesiastes 10:1 Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour. [An otherwise honorable person who commits folly stinks.] “Honour to whom honour,” but no honor toward a fool, even if it is a parent. You honor your parents as the ones who gave you life and dedicated one fourth of their lives to nurturing you, but you shouldn’t lie and cheapen honor by being blind. A grown woman who honors a father who molested her and has never repented and sought restitution, that woman is binding a stone in a sling and flinging it with a certainty of it returning and hitting her in the head. Jesus on honoring your father and mother. Mark 7:9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: 11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. 12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; 13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. Jesus gives us a clear example of what it means to honor your parents. He was speaking to grown men in positions of spiritual leadership who found a loophole in the Jewish law which permitted them to abdicate their responsibility to care for their aging parents. They took their savings and, as it were, put it in an account labeled: “Dedicated to God.” Having done that, they couldn’t access it to spend on their needy parents. No doubt after the parents were dead, the money would be transferred to a retirement account for themselves. Not honoring is: • Cursing parents (Matthew 15:4). • Withholding financial support (Matthew 15:5). • Not doing for them when they are in need (Mark 7:12). There is no mention of descendants obeying their parents—never. Honor is: • Being kindly affectionate (Romans 12:10). • Seeking the good of the other (Romans 12:10—“preferring one another”). • Respecting the office or position of a person (Romans 13:7). • Bestowing more honor than their level of gifts suggest (1 Corinthians 12:23). Bottom Line. Ephesians 6:1 Children, [Those being brought up—Ephesians 6:4] obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 Honour [Obedience and honor are separate issues.] thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. 4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. [Children, the ones who are to obey their parents, are being brought up—not yet adults.] 5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters [Parents are not masters; they are mentors, and children are not servants.] according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Obedience and honor are separate issues. We know this to be true because: • The words are spelled differently. • They are never used interchangeably. • The context in which they are used demonstrates a clear distinction. • A distinction is made the only time the two words appear in close proximity. (Ephesians 6:1–5). Children who are being brought up are to obey their parents (6:1). All are to honor their fathers and mothers (6:2). And servants are to be obedient to their masters (6:5). Different words, different meanings, different applications. It is all in the Word of God, but kept carefully separated and distinct from each other. 1 Peter 2:13–14 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. The language used here when commanding us to submit to government is conspicuously absent in those passages addressing the honoring of one’s parents. What Age? What is the age at which a person stops being a child who is to obey and becomes an adult who assumes responsibility for his own life? We don’t need to guess. The Bible is clear. Exodus 30:14 (38:26; Leviticus 27:3) Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD. Numbers 1:3 From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies. Numbers 14:29 Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me, A Jew was counted as one year old when he was born, and became two years old when he commenced his second year, at the beginning of his thirteenth month of life. The way we reckon age, on one’s nineteenth birthday he is reckoned to be an adult, responsible for himself. There is much more that needs to be said, which we will address in subsequent issues. Send your questions or comments. Feel free to challenge what I have said. I learn more from sincere challenges than from flattery.

Cloistered Homeschool Syndrome

Michael Pearl — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:05:39 +0000

The Foger family came to stay with us one spring about 12 years ago while they were on furlough from Mozambique. Their eighth child was soon to be delivered. Although I had just met the family, I was highly impressed by them. The oldest daughter, 19 years old, was a joyful, hardworking, energetic, blue-eyed beauty. The next, a 17 year old son, was cut in the mold of his father, dedicated, reserved, and very mission-minded. The five other children were 13 years old and younger. The family sang together with strong, forceful voices, no bashfulness among them. The two oldest children provided the instrumental accompaniment. It was an experience just listening to such a group. They all understood and spoke two languages. The oldest two children spoke three languages. The father had left South America after ten years of mission service to move to another country, which meant learning another language. The parents still stumbled around slowly learning the Portuguese language. The two oldest children were invaluable in the new ministry, which was already showing promise. While we sat around one evening, the mother casually asked us to pray that their daughter find a husband before they left for Mozambique in the Fall. I asked in a shocked manner, “Why on earth would you want her to marry now? She is such a blessing to you and knows the language. Surely you need her to help you with the other children.” The mother lifted her arched brows as she pondered how she would answer me. Her look conveyed her surprise at my lack of understanding. “We will be in a foreign country for the next 4 years. All that time she will be at the prime of her marriageable age. We feel it is best for her to marry an American. God called my husband to Mozambique as a missionary…not our adult children. We have obeyed God and raised them up to serve HIM…not US. We don’t add; we multiply. It is time for her to live her life.” That next year we received a mission card with their picture. There were only six children in the picture. The mission letter briefly stated that the oldest son was in Bible school and the daughter was married. Over the years I received their missions update. I noted that the parents were growing fatter and grayer. The children disappeared from the picture, one or two every year or so. It was sad to see the diminishing of such a magnificent family. The mission letters were filled with gospel film presentations to prisoners and villagers, church camps, protracted meetings, people getting saved, and only a brief mention of their now grown children. They would write something like, “Joshua and his wife are in Romania serving as missionaries; Peter and his wife are in Russia working with the something ministry; Sara married this year. Her husband is the pastor of a church.” And so it went. Today we receive mission letters from their now grown and ministering children. I see their families expanding. Their joyful, energetic, blue-eyed beauty of a daughter is now the mother of six children. Her family is growing up in Cajun country. I know if I meet them I will be very impressed. I heard that they sing like soldiers…with power and command. I am thankful for the testimony of the Foger family as well as other families that have come into our lives. They are a prototype to help us understand the problems that are arising among some older homeschooling families. We call it by different names. Today it is the Cloistered Homeschooled Syndrome. Briefly, it is the failure of the parents to understand, appreciate, and respect the individuality of their adult children. They sacrifice the individual identities of their children on the altar of their own emotional needs, making them nurse when they should be killing and dressing their own food, making them obey when they should be learning to command. They seem to think that grown children are God’s gift to them rather than their gift to God. Through letters and personal contact, we see more and more of this cult-like isolationism, parents demanding absolute allegiance to the family group, and fearing outside contact might break up their “fellowship.” Adult kids who want to launch out on their own are told that they are rebellious and disloyal and are causing grief to those who have nurtured them. Emotionally needy parents manipulate their grown children into remaining loyal to the unit. Thirty-year-old daughters sit at home acting as surrogate mothers, watching their prospects to ever be a mother dwindle. You cannot stop a tree from growing without killing it or deforming it. Likewise, every year of one’s life up until about the age of twenty-one or twenty-two is a year of radical change and development. Some parents are trying to stop that development, clinging to their teenagers like they were six years old. We have observed the victims many times. They either flee their chains in anger, or they are slowly smothered into inordinate submission, and their personalities die as they merge into the ego of their dependent parents. This medieval hierarchy is preached as Bible doctrine. Father and Mother as King and Queen of their little kingdom preach the divine right of Kings and parents—“Obey me without question, for it is your manifest destiny.” Their “patriarchal” status is the only expression of their significance in an otherwise disconnected world, and they milk it until their children are dry and lifeless in spirit, or until they fly away to breathe fresh air. For over a year we have been discussing this subject, thinking about how to address it. We have talked with many young adults who are, or were, held captive, the rebellious and the subdued, those who are disciples of Christ and those who are worldly and lost. We have spoken with families who lost their children early, in their teens, and families who lost a child to the world in their twenties or later. How did this happen? It is the old pendulum at work. Thirty to forty years ago Christian parents were losing their children to the world through public schools, public churches, and public play. The family was disconnected and dating was the norm. We rebelled against the soul eating monster and took charge of our lives. Our children would not be raised on the TV. They would not lose their virginity in a school bathroom or under the stairwell. No more evolutionary philosophy and godless history and science. We took our children home and taught them from used books and the Bible. We created culture anew, abstaining from mega churches with their youth groups and revolving boy-girl relationships. We parents became the principle influence in our children’s lives, selecting their friends and ours with care. No overnight sleeps or backyard playhouses with closing doors. Family worship and Bible study took the place of Television. Once again parents were in charge and there was hope. It felt good to be in control of our own destiny, to not be a victim, to know that our children would escape the sin and shame that some of us had to go through before we came to Christ. There was a vacuum, a need for leaders to arise and define what had become a movement, to clarify our journey and give us direction through uncharted waters. First, curriculum was written, then seminars. Sub-movements arose to flesh out the new culture, specialists addressing every conceivable issue—head coverings, dress, doctrine, spanking, scheduled nursing, Kosher foods and Jewish practices, and the list goes on. Books were written, some good, some not so good. Then someone pulled from ancient Chaldean and Sumerian culture, also practiced by Jews of that day as reflected in Scripture, a system of Patriarchal rule. It was the way nomadic clans were held together, a necessity of the times, but never taught by Moses, the prophets, or Christ as God’s divine plan. I laughed the first time I hear of the Patriarchal Movement. “It will never fly,” I said, “People are not that gullible.” But they were. Daddies who were never in charge of anything, maybe not even their wives, were finally given justification for assuming the throne. Yippee! It is now become a disease of epic proportions. We call them PDFs, Patriarchal Dysfunctional Families. The children are treated as permanent property of the parents. If they don’t marry, and many of them never have the opportunity, they remain at home as a sort of indentured servant, never rising to the status of an adult, always under authority of the head of the clan, the Patriarch Daddy. Don’t snicker. A lot of kids are hurting. And if you want to see something scary, try to conduct a betrothal with two patriarchal mothers involved. It is uggggly. Daughter sits at home serving the younger children and doing Mama’s chores—waiting for God’s choice. Daddy and Mama hold their merchandise guardedly, waiting for a buyer who never comes. What is pitiful is the whole process is done in hopes of getting the perfect will of God, but one vital ingredient is missing—encouraging your children to become responsible, autonomous, well educated, and experienced adults as soon as possible. You should have trained your sons to be men by the time they are fifteen, independent by the time they are eighteen. Your daughters should be capable of living apart from the family by the time they are eighteen and should be allowed to make their own life’s decisions somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Unmarried, grown (18 years old) children may remain at home; it is good if they do; but the parent-child relationship should evolve into an adult-adult relationship by the time they are sixteen to eighteen years old. Parents should have earned the right to give advice, and kids should have grown in wisdom enough to ask for it. But a parent should never invoke his parental authority on a grown kid. It is demeaning to both and akin to not being potty trained. To teach a student to drive or fly a plane and then always make him be in the company of his parents is degrading. You teach them so they can become independent of you. Whose need is being met when a Father treats a 22-year-old girl like a child, dictating the parameters of her choices? The glory of a parent is to work himself out of a job, to stand back and see his kids fly solo. I expected to have supplanted myself by the time my kids were eighteen. And so it was. Long before that, I began to confer with them adult to adult. I have stepped back and allowed them to make decisions that I knew were not the best choices, and sometimes I was wrong; they were wiser than I. Space does not allow us to say more at this time. More will come later. Sit down and talk with your nearly grown kids. Ask them what they want, feel, aspire to. Don’t express hurt, and don’t emotionally manipulate them. Encourage them to pursue their dreams and support them in their effort. In 1996, our daughter Rebekah Joy, then a 20-year-old in training to be a linguist, wrote this poem. At the time, the poem was the future; it was full of promise and hope. There is a mighty army Being trained to stand and fight. A Battlefield of soldiers Learning what is right. A Company of warriors That will boldly take the Word To every tribe and nation Til every soul has heard. There is a mighty army, I’ve seen them everywhere. Most are wearing diapers And dragging Teddy Bears. Infants in the training Drilled in right and wrong. Mom and Dad are making Soldiers brave and strong. There is a mighty army Trained in righteous war. Cheer them on to victory, Children of the Lord! At 22 years old, Rebekah went into a remote mountain range of Papua New Guinea to study the language of a tribe who had never even seen a white person. Her 19-year-old brother, Gabriel, went for a few months, then was replaced by Nathan, her 17-year-old brother. Nathan stayed for a few months until he believed that she would be safe. She was left alone on that mountain with the unreached tribe. After two years, others came to help, and she came home. It was her understanding of languages that gave us the information needed to pass on to veteran missionary Tom Gaudet. He is a publisher of Bibles into obscure languages. He sent out an appeal on the web for any translator that might have been working on a common language of that area. He received 14 replies. One was from a missionary who had spent 35 years translating the Bible, but when he went home he couldn’t raise the money to get it printed. Tom pulled together all the translators, had them correct each other’s work and settle on a finished manuscript. We raised the money to get 20,000 printed and shipped. Sending a beautiful, unassertive, young woman is not God’s usual way. He was proving a point. He was making a statement to her, to us and to you. “If I can protect and use this young girl to win a remote tribal people, then I can do the same for you.” Rebekah kept a diary of those years, which we read when she came home. We wept at her courage and resolve. We wept that we had the honor of being her parents. We published Rebekah’s Diary in 1997. She was such a regular, normal girl until God gave her the vision of reaching a tribe. A few years ago, missionaries contacted us and told us that there are now seven strong villages of believers on that mountain and that the village men proudly carry their Bibles under their arms. Because a young girl went willingly… Because we, HER PARENTS, didn’t say no. Because she would have obeyed us and stayed home. But we cheered her on to victory… There are new names written down in glory.

Jumping Ship (Part 4)

Michael Pearl — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:05:21 +0000

If you want to almost guarantee that your children will not jump ship (other factors being equal), provide a community life that holds promise of suitable future mates.

Provide entertainment

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” so says the popular children’s rhyme. “No play” will also make Jack very dissatisfied with the life ship he is on, and when he gets old enough, he will observe the gaiety of others and begin to think about jumping ship for one that is more fun. If you are going to keep your children from longingly looking at other passing vessels, you must meet their need for diversion and entertainment. It is true that if left to themselves, children will overdose on entertainment, and, like Pinocchio, they will come to ruin on Pleasure Island. Yet, even with that danger in mind, the fact remains that children, just like adults, have both a legitimate and physical need to indulge in playful fun. Mature, well-adjusted adults live to produce, and recreational play is clearly secondary, whereas small children live to play (“…when I was a child I thought as a child…”). Children would never work if not constrained and trained to do so. During their first twenty years, they evolve from full-time life of play to full- time working. There is also a rapid transition in their forms of play. In a period of fifteen years, they will go from tasting everything on the floor to riding motor cycles in competitions, or competing in international chess games. It becomes very difficult for parents to keep up with their children’s changing interests. I now clearly understand why God chose to give babies to young people, and not to us old folks. It takes a lot of energy to meet their ever-changing and increasing needs. The key to providing proper and adequate entertainment is that you must thoroughly enjoy seeing them immersed in good healthy fun. Children have always loved pushing or riding something. They love the thrill of simple things, like sliding down a steep, grassy hill on a piece of cardboard, or sledding on snow and skating on ice. Kids love wheels, even at the earliest age, and will continue to do so until eventually they are begging to take “your wheels” out for a joyride. I just love putting one-year-olds on plastic riding toys and teaching them to push themselves along with their feet. They soon graduate to a tricycle and then on to a bicycle. Can you remember their thrill when they first rode without training wheels, and how exhilarated they were when they mastered roller skates, skateboards, and skies–the faster the better? When I was a kid, my daddy assisted me by bringing home old wagon wheels and axles and scrap boards. Lawn mower wheels are excellent. At eight years old, along with the rest of the neighbor kids, I would build what we called a push car—something with four wheels, a seat, and a way to steer it. Dad would bring home buckets with the remnants of bright-colored paints, and we would paint our push cars to be the snazziest in the neighborhood. Then we would find a hill where the road was momentarily empty of cars, and, while one person rode and steered, the other would push him as fast as legs could go. It was then “freewheeling” it to the bottom of the hill to see whose car was the fastest. Yes, there was many a wreck, and the pusher would sometimes fall flat on his face in the road. And, yes, occasionally the cars would turn over or crash into the ditch. But, the “challenge and the thrill” is what made it all fun. My parents played their parts quite well. Daddy provided the raw material and an occasional suggestion as to improvements in the design. Mama was fitly admiring of my paint job and ingenuity. Grandma liked to watch the races, especially if there was a crash. To finally get Dad to sit on our masterpiece of a push car and let us push him was the ultimate thrill. And to see him sitting there so vulnerable and so stiff and scared, just added more to our “great” achievement. Times change and toys change, but children remain the same. They have an inherent need to tackle challenges and turn them into thrills. They will climb to the top of the tallest tree, jump into the water from the highest spot they dare, and then later they will “need” to see how fast the family car will go. It is dangerous being a kid, always has been, but to them it is just sheer fun. We adults must provide restraint and caution while we still can, before they get big enough to get out of our sight too quickly. But play they will, and play will inevitably find the thrill in everything, whether it is a ten-month-old climbing to the top of the stairs, or a ten-year-old climbing to the top of the fire tower, or a twenty-year-old checking out hang gliding. Girls start off playing much like the boys, but with a little less of thrill seeking. They love horses and bicycles, but they also enjoy practicing to be mothers. Young girls, right down to the one-year-olds, entertain themselves with playing house and family. Mama Pearl, my wife, just bought a two-foot-long broom for ten-month-old Gracie. She spends a lot of time “sweeping” the floor. Almost three-year-old Laura Rose has her own little china tea set. She will spend an hour playing with the dishes and pouring tea for everyone. When my daughters were six years old, they would bake something and expect the whole world to stop and indulge in their delectable delight. I was delighted with them for their many attempts, even when I often had to pretend to swallow and then slip outside unnoticed to get rid of the unpleasant mouthful. Parents who habitually push their children aside, not wanting to be bothered with their frivolous play, will lose the hearts of their children. It is not enough to allow time for your children to play; you must “sacrifice” your time and yourself and play with them. You don’t have to physically be there at the swing set all the time, but they must feel that your eyes are watching them from the kitchen window. You can even stop your work and run outside occasionally to laugh at them or to be “amazed” at their abilities. I sought to be the most thrilling source of entertainment available to my kids. I actually pushed them to do the daring thing. I helped them set up a jump for their bicycles, encouraged them to swing higher, do flips off of the rope swing into the pond, or difficult dives from the diving board. I took them skating, and we raced around the rink. When it snowed, which was only once or twice a year in Memphis, I stopped everything I was doing just to play with them. We would make a sled and go find the highest hill. We would even try at full speed to make it through the sharpest curve, and “piled up” time and time again until we finally got it right. We were rightly proud of ourselves and congratulated each other profusely. At times I took the boys into the swamps where we regularly caught or killed snakes, and caught sacks full of fish. We speared the very large fish or shot them with arrows. Exploring new “uncharted” territory was exciting, something we greatly enjoyed. I practiced baseball with the boys until they were good enough to not be embarrassed playing on a local team. But one season was enough for them. They liked the wild places much better, and throwing knives filled in the empty spots between their exciting outings with me. We had a pond for the kids to swim in, but they would get bored swimming alone by themselves and started begging me to join them. When I headed toward the pond, they all got excited, and the ones who were not already in the pond would rush to join us. They knew I was going to add a new dimension to the fun, even though it might be nothing more than my watching and laughing as they did some new stunt in the water.

Social life

Now, important as it is to be involved with your children in their younger years, the most critical time for entertainment is when they get to their middle teens. At around fifteen years old, their social life becomes a significant part of their entertainment, and, in many cases, it is their primary concern. Social entertainment, has the potential of impacting them very negatively and is much more demanding of discerning parents. It is at this point that many parents make the mistake of trying to completely fence off their growing teens from other young people, lest they do something foolish and destructive, either physically or morally. When my kids were getting into their early teens, I set up a volleyball net in the “holler” back of the house and invited other families to join us. Girls and boys their own age came to play. We were always there to oversee the kids together. They got to socialize with the opposite sex naturally, and without resorting to the dating pattern so common in modern society. I will be quite plain about the social life of teenagers. When kids go through puberty, especially boys, mating becomes a consuming interest. They begin to live in a daydream/night-dream world. You can’t prevent it. It is absolutely natural and is quite glorious and wonderful. It is God’s design, intended to cause them to want to marry and reproduce. Furthermore, by divine design, the sexual drive constitutes the most controlling temptation a boy or man will ever face. It is the ultimate test of character and the bedrock on which self-control can be established. On this single pivotal point, young men either shipwreck, sometimes never to recover, or they grow strong in character, possessing their vessel in honor and sanctification. Girls are not initially possessed of sexual drive, but their desires for romance and their God-given need to be treasured and possessed by a man renders them vulnerable to the predatory conniving of immoral males. Girls can too easily become junkies for male attention, selling themselves cheap to get it. Girls in unhappy homes are the quickest to jump ship into the first male arms directed toward them. I can understand why many parents want to isolate their children and save them from their vulnerability in this area, but you cannot isolate them from their imaginations and passions. It is extremely helpful if, when your children reach this age, they are greatly occupied with other things. If a boy is engaged in hard work and hard play, he will expend much of his testosterone in that manner. “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop,” is not an idle statement. We are addressing the vital issue of providing a safe social life for your teenagers. Here is the delicate key: You can inoculate them against runaway passions by controlled injections of a supervised social life. Children jump ship when they think their most pressing needs cannot be met on the present course of their voyage. If you continually isolate your boys on a ship with no exposure to girls, they will eventually go overboard, and once they do, you no longer have a say in the way they seek fulfillment. So, you must provide a social life that promises a strong expectancy of future fulfillment in this area. Teenagers are more likely to be patient if they can see that their ship is part of a fleet that will occasionally rendezvous in port with other ships carrying handsome young men and beautiful girls just waiting to be swept away. In most cases, your children will marry someone from the circle in which they are raised. They will make their picks long before you ever imagined they were showing interest. Although they may change several times, they will always have someone in their imaginations as a suitable future mate. Even if they end up marrying someone from outside their common social circle, your boys’ ideas of what they like in a girl will have been formed from their early contacts (which you provided) with thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old girls, and they form them when they have just gone through puberty! And if you think you can replace this natural, God-given, God-ordered drive with teaching them Bible principles, you are off your religious rocker! But, we will talk about biblical admonition and character building later.

Community

Ideally, your family should be part of a community of like-minded families who share the same biblical values and worldview. If your sixteen-year-old can look around and see a young woman whom he believes would make a great wife, he will hang around on your ship, doing his chores and making the sacrifices necessary to wait out the opportunity to enter into a marriage relationship on grounds that are acceptable to the community he is a part of. There it is. Read that sentence again. He will wait for the opportunity to enter into marriage on grounds that are acceptable to the community. The community is a more certain, powerful regulating factor than is the self-control of the kids involved. Even teenagers who are not saved and do not possess personal convictions will go along with community values if that is what it takes for them to attain the deepest desire of their hearts — or of their flesh. If you want to almost guarantee that you children with not jump ship (other factors being equal), provide a community life that holds promise of suitable future mates. If your community is narrow and self-righteous, your kids may decide early on that they do not want to live like this the rest of their lives, and they may make up their minds that they are not going to marry and live in your community circle. They will look over the railing at other passing ships that seem to be more sincere and friendly. Once kids leave the natural constraining factors of community, all that is left to control them is their own wisdom and self-control, which is usually not enough to keep teenagers, even “Christian” teenagers, from doing something foolish and regrettable. When I speak of providing a community, I am not necessarily speaking of the traditional “small town,” old friends and family, all in one accord, going to the same country church, and having picnics at the city park after listening to gospel music and a political speech. That would certainly be nice, but in most cases, such an idyllic environment is gone forever in America. In some areas it can be partially recovered, but only at great difficulty and sacrifice. Your family may be part of a very small church and community, offering few possibilities for your teenage children to find mates. It is a ship-jumping waiting to happen unless you can enlarge the community and the pool of possible marriage partners for your children. If you are in this situation, you must give immediate attention to increasing your community. One way of doing that is to get out and travel with your fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds, visiting other families with kids of a suitable age. Start attending camp meetings or Bible conferences, any gathering of Christians of like values. Your family must stay loosely connected in a way that provides your budding adult children with hope of finding suitable mates. Seeing other families with possible mates, even once or twice a year, can be enough to give your young dreamers hope. When teenagers start dreaming of a particular mate, it creates a stabilizing influence in their lives. They will now have incentive to preserve their virtue for one whom they feel is worthy of nothing less. There is a popular teaching that you should just tell your children to be patient, and God will bring into their life the one person created in heaven to be their mate. For a few very dedicated kids, who have committed their lives to serving God on the mission field or in some full-time capacity, this is doubtless true. But, the average kid who has never experienced a walk of faith is not going to have faith in this one area and just sit around until he is thirty years old waiting for that one special female to fall out of heaven into his arms. We receive many letters like a recent one where a 28-year-old daughter has jumped ship and married an older divorced man with a smeared past and three children. As she was getting older, she saw the small pool of “possibles” dwindling away to nothing. She lost hope and needed love. She foolishly rejected her captain and her family, and threw herself to the sharks rather than continue on a hopeless voyage leading nowhere. Older children and young adults must have a tangible, visible hope, one with a social life that provides potential mates of the same caliber as themselves. I know that kids should exercise more self-restraint, that they should be more patient, and that they should listen to the counsel of their parents and their church elders. I agree that they should be wise and spiritual and seek God’s will first and foremost—but few do, whereas virtually all of them will eventually marry. Don’t risk throwing your children away by setting the marriage standard so high that they despair of reaching it. You are making a grave mistake if you fail to provide for the possibility that your teenage children may not be spiritual, discerning giants. They may just end up marrying an acquaintance — one whom you provide or, one they meet at the video store. God has chosen you as the captain of your ship. You are authorized to command your crew, but remember that many a voyage has ended with a very disheartened crew abandoning ship, or worse, in mutiny. Provide community for your children. Don’t fail in this one last task you are commanded to carry out: providing adequate community for them so that you can happily send them ashore to produce Godly seed. Give them hope, and they will stick it out until you have safely delivered them to a lifemate worthy of the time and prayer you have invested in them.

City Dwellers

If you live in an apartment in a big city, you can still provide community, but it will certainly not happen by default. It will take wise judgment and careful control. You must actively seek out others of like faith and convictions and create an association with them. In the city, you are not likely to find a church that provides a proper community life for your children. A church receives anyone and everyone who chooses to come through the door, as it rightly should. But to have a proper community for your teenage children, you must exercise your freedom not to associate with some families. You must pick and choose with wisdom. If you are a pushover, welcoming into your home all who would seek your association, you might as well throw your children to the dogs, for they are prone to adopt the worst influences you allow into their lives. If you can’t judge between right and wrong and don’t exhibit the courage to flee the company of evildoers, your children are in danger from your weak-kneed attitude. Learn to say “no” to companying with ungodly people, and mean it! Use the word, “No!” in ways that cannot be mistaken for, “Maybe some other time.” “No, we don’t want to go there.” “No, my children are busy this weekend.” “No, that is not our idea of fun.” “No, I think it would be better if our families did not mix; we have convictions that your children don’t seem to share.” Will they call you “hypocrites, self-righteous, isolationists”? Yes, they will, and things a whole lot worse, but when you live in Sodom (any city in America), you will either let the popular trend be your guide, or you will set your own agenda and enforce it, no matter whose feelings get hurt. To select a righteous community out of your church or your city and guard its borders is not an easy task, but I know many families who have been successful at it. If a deadly virus were to sweep through the world, no one would fault you for quarantining your family. How much more deadly is the disease of sin that so infects the world today! Just make sure that your family “quarantine” shares its isolation with enough families so that it does not feel like isolation to the children. The point is not to cease having a social life, but to build your social life around your own worldview. There are families out there who are part of God’s remnant, just like you. You might find some of them on this web site: www.fellowshipdirectory.com Michael Pearl

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Jumping Ship (Part 3)

Michael Pearl — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 11:15:56 +0000

I was one of those children who jumped ship, and I did so for all the reasons you listed. My parents were hypocrites and expected the same from my sister and me.

Dear Mr. Pearl, I was one of those children who jumped ship, and I did so for all the reasons you listed. My parents were hypocrites and expected the same from my sister and me. Our family was the perfect Pharisee household, though we “prodigal daughters” tainted that appearance. We never missed a church service; we always helped in church ministry, always witnessed to our neighbors, and kept the Sabbath day holy (if you didn’t count the fighting or abuse that went on behind our closed doors). Believe me, we had everyone fooled. When my sister jumped ship, I went back and told one of my mother’s friends the truth of what our family was really like. She didn’t believe me—I’m telling you we hid the hypocrisy very well. We did not tell, mostly out of fear of more anger and abuse that would come if we let it be known. Pride kept us strong, not God. I jumped ship for 2 reasons. The first was to escape home, and I figured I might as well give them something to condemn me for since they were going to condemn me regardless of what I did. Also, part of me longed to know the good Shepherd and to lie down in green pastures. I had to jump ship because I was DETERMINED NEVER to become a Pharisee like my parents—I had to flee. My sister had no choice but to do as I did. Our parents still say it was our choice and they had nothing to do with it! They are so blinded by religion and are confident that they trained us right, but that, due to some fault in us, it did not work. Just this past week they were proclaiming that we will one day come around to their way of thinking. I love living in the grace I have found in Christ! I love that my kids love me, that my husband and I love each other; I love that I am free to choose joy and hope every day. I can attest to the fact that when children are not engaged as vital crew members on a glorious voyage, they do acquire a greater sin than “rebellion.” They become angry, bitter, resentful human beings who are beaten down, broken, and will lash out at all attempts to be loved. Like a runaway dog that was abused all the time, when you try to feed him, he will bite you because he was trained to expect evil. Beka was right—it is all about love. You were right—it is all about joy. And where does that come from? It comes from knowing Jesus. I wish my parents could really know Him. God has used you to reach so many, for which I am grateful, and I look forward one day to know that my kids know Him also. --AB

There it is! Children jump ship because parents make the voyage miserable. Facing that fact is the first step to recovery. When they are trained right, they walk right. And, you should know by now that training is much more than words and warnings, more than principles and precepts. When the example is wrong, the words can never be right, for our own attitude screams louder to them than do our carefully crafted religious words. Parenting is the most accurate test of one’s true character. It reveals all the secrets and uncovers all that is hidden. Children reflect the soul of their parents; they manifest the heart that may have been formally concealed behind sophisticated screens and carefully crafted public perceptions. We parents can manipulate the public perceptions, leading others to believe we are something quite different from reality. But, it is our children who become windows to our true selves, often opening the windows wider than we want them to go. They find and expose the real you and tap into and follow that reality as their guide. They bypass our words and emulate our vital centers. If the mother has a “bad” day, all the children will have a bad day, and Dad will have a bad evening. Bad days make bad weeks and bad years, which eventually turn into bad lives. It is impossible to become a good parent without experiencing a revival within. There can be no duplicity. Parenting is not like a job where you meticulously follow the procedures and then clock out, knowing that you have played your part well. You can’t do the right thing as a parent without becoming the right person. Your children are just too perceptive to be fooled by outward displays. When parents have a transformation within, good parenting comes naturally, without all the struggle and deliberation. Pure souls living pure lives don’t need a great deal of knowledge about child training to raise good kids. Good children grow out of good soil. America needs revival. The Christian church needs revival. The Homeschool family needs revival. Most of all, parents need revival, because the children won’t survive the Sodom in which we live without a revival that changes us from the inside out. So, what can I do? Many people have written, some of them just a little bit irritated, saying, “OK, there is a problem; my own children are near to jumping ship, so tell us what to do. Give us some practical examples.” They are missing the point. It is not about doing; it is about being. Get real. Love God until the joy of the Lord fills your cup to overflowing. Fall back in love with your spouse (that’s revival!), and enjoy each otherin front of the kids! Let the Holy Spirit create discipline in you so that you use your time wisely and have more time to be with your children. It is a matter of perspective—of where your heart is actually fixed. Your children are your legacy, the only one that will endure in future generations. Parenting is the most demanding job in the universe. The CEO of a mega company needs to excel in a limited number of areas only, but to be an effective parent requires expertise in many areas. And, more than any other job—more than being a pastor or missionary—it requires purity of soul. Nearly everyone comes to parenting with a lot of counterproductive concepts. If God gave us a parenting test before allowing us to have babies, few homes would have a swing set or a box of toys. It seems that you have to be a parent to learn to be a parent, and by then it may be too late to improve your proficiency to do your children any good. Most obstacles that limit children’s potential are set in motion by the parents, and are rooted in their own fears, ego needs, inattentiveness, and unproductive habits. But parents are most often blinded by their ego and careless habits. Thankfully, we don’t have to be perfect people, or even especially wise. We don’t have to be thoroughly informed as to all the ins and outs of parenting. We don’t need schooling. We need to be real—consistently realand caring. We need to be there. Everything else will somehow fall into place when our hearts are right. A right heart can make up for a lot of wrong headedness, but great knowledge and understanding can never make up for indifference. Good will You will get a much better response from your children when they perceive that you care more about them than you do about public perception. They are more perceptive than you give them credit for, and they always know your true heart—even when you don’t want them to. Your children must be conscious that you really want them to have great experiences. When they see you putting emotional energy into them, they will respond with cooperation and openness. They will be moved by your willingness to invest yourself in their lives. Think of yourself as raising up a manager for your own company—someone to take your place when you are absent, and to assume your position when you are gone and no longer part of the equation. Working together toward common goals eliminates that adversarial relationship that poisons most families and sabotages every effort. Sudden changes of heart with big efforts will not impress them. A lot of small gestures add up to big trust. You will create a climate of trust by never hurting—but always caring. Respect and dignity Teens will want to get out of a home that does not treat them with respect and dignity. They will want to flee a home where they are not allowed to make a positive impact on the home and their younger siblings. You are not respecting your teenagers when you don’t confide in them, don’t listen to their ideas and treat them with the same seriousness you treat this article you are now reading. The last thing many parents hear as their kids are going over the railing is, “You didn’t listen to me.” Don’t get haughty and tell me how hard you tried and how much you care. Look at your family through the eyes of your children. That’s reality. Rule by belittling Never belittle their efforts or debase their person. Some parents’ leadership style is to demean, to cast their children in a role of unworthiness with the mistaken belief that it was their responsibility to prove by their works that they are indeed worthy. Your role must change from warden to friend. Remember Jesus’ words to His disciples: “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15). Command and Control Successful parenting is not found in “ordering” your children to be good and do the right thing; it is achieved in example and attentive organization of their lives. Children cannot be brought to a healthy maturity raised in an atmosphere of fear and punishment. Helping children develop their own persons will produce a family atmosphere and spirit of cooperation that is not possible under command-and-control alone. Children will not mature and develop independent decision-making when raised in an atmosphere where they know nothing more than being ordered to perform, even if doing so produces discipline and order when they are young. Work The secret to teaching children to work is to give them jobs that they will enjoy carrying out. If there is no such job for a particular child, then structure a job with other incentives—like fellowship, or shorter duration—that will make the work pleasant. In the military or a sports team, the first concern of the leaders is the morale of the men and women. When optimism and hope runs high, you have potential winners. Think about the difference it would make if you had eight initiative-takers instead of eight foot-draggers. Give attention to their morale. Never keep pushing if the family has lost its morale. Purpose The family’s morale will skyrocket when they clearly understand the purpose for their existence. Only then will they cooperate and accept the sacrifices of labor without bickering. Don’t allow the family to stagnate in boredom and fear of failure. The family should be constantly full of energy. Lack of energy is a ship-jumping waiting to happen. They need to share a compelling vision for their work, a good reason to believe it is important. An enthusiastic parent makes an enthusiastic work force. Responsibility Children are not happy if they are not given increasing responsibility. We humans are by nature always in need of reaching higher, stretching just beyond our reach. And we are not happy unless we’re regularly doing so. Give your teens all the responsibility they can handle, and then step back and let them try. Define the parameters in which they are allowed to operate, and then set them free to experiment, including failing (without fear of punishment). Trust is a powerful incentive. Create an atmosphere that allows a child who makes a mistake to admit to it and take responsibility without recrimination. He can then use his energies to improve his performance rather than falling into the self-defeating trap of excuse-making. Kids make excuses when the consequences don’t allow any way out. They can start fresh with experiences that will enable them not to make the same mistake again. Respecting authority Achieving goals is important, but how you arrive at them is more important. It is imperative that you do not undermine others whom your children should be respecting as authorities. And if your children see you acting contrary to the authority you are under, they will feel more free to not support you when they disagree with your policies. Elevating your children You know when you are in the presence of someone dedicated to elevating you. And, you also know when someone with a hidden agenda proceeds to tear you down, to humble you, to see you admit that you are wrong, and to make you try harder to win their approval. You don’t want to be around them. No doubt they think they are on a mission of righteousness, that they have a calling from God to hold up a higher standard, and you are their mission field. It stinks, doesn’t it? Instead of tearing your children down to make them submissive to your commands, build them up so you don’t have to give them commands. Your job as a parent and the principal educator is to create a climate that enables them to unleash their potential. Given the right environment, you will be surprised at what they are capable of achieving. Our constant drive should be to make them grow taller, to elevate them, not with flattering words but with space to grow, the opportunity to fail and to try again without shame or embarrassment. When your children see you taking pleasure in helping them develop and grow, they will take pleasure in doing the same with their siblings and with others. When they feel you have been patient with their failures, they will be patient with yours. When your children are hard on you, know for a certainty that you have been hard on them. Starting over Raise your kids as if your getting to heaven was based on their good works and good attitudes. You want to get down to the bitter root? Ask them, “What do you like most…least about the home; what would you change if you could?” The answer will give you a chance to reexamine your own policies and attitudes as well as to provide an opportunity to instruct your children in ways that will give them fresh perspectives on your goals and your reasons. When you listen to your children, you will come to respect them as people, and they will go along with your policies without grumbling, knowing that they have been heard and their views considered. They will greatly appreciate it when you find out what their goals are and then help them to get there. There is creativity and growth in providing and clarifying information. Those who have it, prosper. Those who don’t, stagnate. They have hopes and dreams and need to understand why what they are doing is important—how it relates to the big picture. Optimism and pessimism are twins, and are equally infectious in the home. Parents set the tone and spirit of the family according to one twin or the other. Repent, or watch your children perish This writer understands that there is more preacher and prophet in him than therapist. I do not seek to make you feel good about yourself. My goal is not to encourage you, but to inform you of your failures and to call you to repentance before God. It would be nice if, in reading my remarks, you would learn one more helpful principle or technique and successfully apply it to your children’s training. But, if you would simply repent and become a disciple of the man from Nazareth, if you were filled with the Holy Spirit of God, you would always have One to teach you, and there would be a sudden and radical shift in your entire life—including your relationship to your children. There it is, nothing held back. I cannot do otherwise.**** Michael Pearl

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Jumping Ship (Part 1)

Michael Pearl — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 11:15:35 +0000

What to do so your children don't jump ship to the world when they get older. The homeschool movement has matured to the point that we now have a large pool of graduates from which to survey our successes and failures, and to modify our course accordingly. The first wave, in their late twenties to early thirties, are now married and have children of their own. There are many success stories among them. Success can be measured by tangible or visible achievement, such as the many attorneys, doctors, scientists, teachers, and statesmen who are now making a difference in the world and in the lives of the individuals they touch. But success is best measured by the emotional stability and spiritual perspective that homeschooled young people have carried into their marriages. Regardless of the prestige of their vocations, we have a new generation of godly parents, not having been tainted by the world. They are now building heavenly marriages and raising a fresh new breed of stable, godly children. While the public school system continues to degenerate into a drug-stupid, sex-oriented, illiterate morass of misfit, Marxist clones, the homeschool movement is producing intelligent, clear-thinking, confident citizens ready to stand in the middle of cascading corruption and declare their allegiance to God and family. However, not all homeschoolers become success stories. A few fail to measure up fully, while a small percentage fail miserably. Not all homeschool families create themselves equally. Homeschool children are the product of their parents and the culture they provide. There is nothing magical about homeschooling itself. It is just a context in which to conduct parenting without interference from humanistic government and the influence of contemporary cultures, which are causing the “devil-lution” of society. When parents choose to homeschool, they are choosing to become the primary example and the prevailing culture for their children. They are “cloning” their worldview—an enormous commitment of responsibility before God. However, there are two problems. In the first place, some parents are not always good stock for “cloning.” The world doesn’t need more people “just like them.” Secondly, and this will be the main point of our present discussion, there is nothing easy or automatic about culture cloning. You cannot take it for granted that your children are going to adopt your perspective on life. It takes serious commitment and wisdom to duplicate your heart and soul in your children. There was a time, many years ago, when the community life (church, school, the extended family, friends and neighbors) all pointed the children in the right direction–a godly direction. Sometimes when parents failed to be good trainers and examples, their deficiency was rectified by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the local church, around which all social life revolved. But no more. The average church today will send your children to hell as fast as the local video rental store. Community life has gone the way of the old familiar front porch and grandma sitting there shelling beans. Today, you have to be on guard for your uncles and cousins, who may attempt to molest your children. Our present culture is scary enough to send a family packing to the Amazon, taking their chances with drug lords, anacondas, and malaria. We are receiving far too many letters from parents who tell us that their older children, 15 to 18 years old, are jumping ship, bailing out, changing sides, looking for the meaning of life on the other side of the tracks. Parents are shocked. They tell us, “I kept them from the TV. We homeschooled and homechurched, were careful to only meet with families of like mind. We taught them the Word of God and protected them from evil influences, but the first chance they got to join the world’s parade, they did so without hesitation.” One woman wrote and told us that she discovered that her two teenage homeschooled boys had been engaging in sodomy since they were young. Another family discovered that every one of their children were engaging in group incest in the first degree. Children everywhere are finding ways to access pornography on the web. One kid was slipping into his neighbor’s house when they were gone. A sixteen-year-old girl ran away and shacked up with a druggie. In two years, she was a drunk and a drug addict with a child and a broken jaw where her shiftless man busted her one for sassing him. When one family discovered that their children were engaged in incest, the mother and father stopped going to church and took up drinking themselves. The whole family went to hell with an “I don’t care” attitude. One of the girls wrote to us to decry their shameful condition. She told how the family had done devotionals every day and did not watch TV. They did all the “right things”, but it just did not take with the kids. She got saved after getting married and having three children, and then became concerned for the rest of her family, especially her lesbian sister. I know this is depressing to you. It has depressed me to write it, but you need to be forewarned. So the question I seek to answer is, “What can I do to ensure that my children do not jump ship when they get to be 16 or 18 years old?” Let me re-frame the question a few times, and then see if you catch a hint of what the answer will be.

What can I do to be sure that my children are actually embracing the values that we teach? What can I do to prepare my children to resist the temptations of the world? How can I impart a knowledge of good and evil to my children that will cause them to choose the good? How can I forewarn and forearm my children without taking away their innocence? How can I cause them to love righteousness and hate iniquity? How can I cause them to be patient and wait for the spouse God has prepared for them?

It is hard to communicate with many of you because you have been blinded by the “religion”. Even now as you read this, you think I am talking about someone else. You are confident that your family is secure in Bible principles and religious devotion. You have given them a “packaged Christianity” and isolated them from any outside influences, and you are confident that they are safe behind the fence. There are two problem areas that you must consider. The first one is your own example. You must be all that you want your children to be. You can’t drive teenagers; you must lead them. That will be the first point of our discussion. Second, you must not assume that innocence is a hedge. The enemy is not always on the “outside” of your home. There is a big enough and bad enough enemy within the flesh of your own children to scare an angel to death. A child who never even heard of sex of any kind, never saw an example, never has been tempted by any outside source, can discover it on his own and then engage in incest. Genuinely good families who provide righteous examples, can have their children go to hell right in the middle of their carefully constructed and properly maintained sanctuary. While a father and mother are standing guard at the gate that leads out into the world, children of Adam’s descent can build their own Sodom from scratch, right under the best example that loving, careful, attentive parents can provide. Above all For starters, you must sell your children on your worldview. It must be an active and aggressive sell. They cannot be fooled with pretense. By the time a kid is sixteen years old, he will know you better than you know yourself. Teenagers are forming their values based on what they see as valuable. No one can give another person his values. Generally, everyone values what promises to fulfill his deepest desires. If the thing you offer your children does not appeal to them, they will reject it, as they should. Why would anyone choose a path that appears to lead to misery, boredom, or loneliness? How can someone value what is of no value? Teenagers want romance and passion. Girls want tenderness and security with their passion. Boys want a challenge. They must be engaged in conquest. Everyone needs a vision and the means to fulfill it. The quest for goodness and productivity is not enough to contain a sixteen-year-old. Duty and respectability will likely not be their controlling drives. Many families have a tradition of being “good Christian people.” They are hard- working, honest, and respectable. They choose to live a “good life” and avoid the consequences of sin, and so they expect their children to see the wisdom of this lifestyle and choose it for themselves. They attribute their good lifestyle to their religious convictions. They could never even imagine that their children would choose a low-class life of shameful sin. Parents make the mistake of thinking that their “good life” is a recommendation for the Christian life, but a “good life” can be lived by anyone of any religion, or by an atheist, for that matter, as observation so easily attests. There are Sodomites in the public schools who are happier than some Christians. There are fornicators and adulterers who love each other more than some Christian parents. The movies represent evil people as full of life and fun. Video games, bursting with big-busted women and powerful young men slaying their adversaries, provide the boys with the conquest they need. A trip to the mall reveals to the young person that there is a lot of “loving fun” over on the other side. What have you got that is better? How do they know it to be so? You’d better believe it right now that they won’t for a moment buy an “old fogy’s” argument. There are actually only two kinds of lives lived on this planet. The “natural life” whether in doing evil or doing good, or somewhere in between, and the “Jesus life,” which is much more than a life of doing or being good. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). The Jesus life is an abundant life of joy and love. It is a life of honesty, judgment, and sacrificial service. There is no hypocrisy in the Jesus life. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance…” (Galatians 5:22-23). Peter says, “ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory…” (1 Peter 1:8). Do your children know you as a person who rejoices with “joy unspeakable”, and do they see your life as being “full of glory”? Then, what have you got to offer your kids that will hold them to your worldview? How is the life you have chosen better than any other? Prove it to them without joy, and you will have done the preposterous. A “good” life without any passion is not worth repeating. Love is always passionate. So is joy and peace. Longsuffering is passionate in its quiet reserve, taking into consideration the needs and feelings of others. Gentleness and goodness are virtues that point to God like a big red arrow. Faith is as lovely as a cherub’s wings. Meekness never allows others to feel inferior, and temperance is the ultimate demonstration of the power of God in one’s life. The fruit of the Spirit is attractive indeed. Teenagers are attracted to attractive people. If their parents are unattractive, they will fix their admiring gaze on someone who is attractive. A lighthearted spirit of joy and praise is attractive to everyone. Religious convictions worn only on the shirtsleeves are about as attractive as a man sneezing in your face. The problem is that teenagers are not wise in discerning the difference between true joy and cheap laughter. But, they can easily discern when their parents don’t have any joy at all. And then, they come across a person of the world who is lighthearted and full of fun. What do you expect them to do? They don’t see the cynicism and rebellion behind the feigned joy. They just know that, for the first time in their lives, they have found a context for their passion. When they are with those kinds of people, they feel alive. They suddenly have hope that life is not always going to be dull and boring. They find unconditional acceptance with the people of darkness, and since they have never really experienced God’s love, they think this is the love they have always missed. They will walk away from their miserable parents and right into the Devil’s den without any doubt that they have finally found true meaning in life. They are indeed fools, but their parents were foolishly naïve enough to believe that their teenagers would be content to accept the middle-of-the-road, principled but passionless religion that never brought a shred of joy. Parents’ ability to communicate their worldview to their children is mostly bound up in their personal relationship to each other. If Mother and Father have a romance that is visible, a joy that is uncontained, and a passion that is enviable, their children will want to travel the same road in hopes of reaping the same fruit in their own lives. That is all the space we have for now. Next publication we will continue with this discussion. If you have anything to contribute on this subject, please drop us an e-mail or a letter. We really appreciate hearing from you.

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