Christianity

Home School Marriages: Shadowspring’s Story, Part Three

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

Home School Marriages: Shadowspring’s Story, Part Three

Shadowspring’s story was originally published on her blog Love. Liberty. Learning. She describes herself on her blog as, “a home school mom near the end of my career home schooling and looking forward to what life has to offer next. I am a follower of Jesus and a lover of freedom, as it is for freedom that Christ has set me free (Gal 5:1).” This story is reprinted with her permission.

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In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

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3. Poison For My Marriage

"I did this because I believed these false teachings. They are simply more of the same old Gothardite lies."
“I did this because I believed these false teachings. They are simply more of the same old Gothardite lies.”

I have sat and listened to some whacked out teachings about gender roles, and especially teachings to women about unilateral submission, why it’s important, what it should look like.

They were poison.

And I ate it up.

It was inevitable that I would, since as a fundamentalist Christian, it was offered everywhere I went. There really isn’t any other marriage advice on their radar. In the fundamentalist churches I attended anyway, once you were married the rest of the Bible faded away. You were no longer a disciple of Jesus, you were a wife. And that’s the sum total of all you were expected/allowed to be.

Funny thing, my husband also stopped being a brother in the Lord at the same time I stopped being a sister in Christ. Suddenly we were only husband/wife in the teachings I was hearing. No other scriptures applied to our relationship.

Here are some of the falsehoods I was taught, and often by women themselves.

(1) Because I am married, I am no longer to speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15) I am no longer to consider how to spur my husband on to love and good works. (Hebrews 10:24)

Since Paul would not suffer a woman to teach a man, I should keep my opinions and insights to myself. Yet in all the time my now-husband and I spent together before considering marriage, we were very good friends. We talked about everything. Nothing was off the table. But according to these teachings, once a girl says those vows, she is no longer welcome to share her thoughts and insights. Paul’s words were the scripture cited, but there were other reasons given. I’ll get to the stated relational excuse in a bit.

(2) Because I am married I cannot help my husband see his fault. (Galatians 6:1)Because I am married, I am not to go to my brother who has sinned against me and seek repentance and restoration. (Matthew 18:25)

A wife should fast and pray before approaching her husband about anything, and then only if she feels she absolutely must. This advice is based on the story of Esther as she has to approach the wicked king Xerxes. Excuse me? I didn’t marry a wicked pagan king, I married a brother in Christ. Esther, the exalted concubine, was no valued partner of King Xerxes. She was chosen strictly for her looks and her bedroom skills. Their marriage was hardly an example of the one-flesh union comparable to Christ and the church. Ooh, ick.

Further, because of Peter’s advice that a woman with an unbelieving husband can win him over without a word, relying on her quiet and gentle spirit, I was told that I should keep my mouth shut. But again this made no sense to me. I didn’t marry an unbeliever! I married a brother in Christ. We met at church and I saw him at prayer meetings, church socials and visitation ministry. He already knows Jesus. I was puzzled.

(3) Because I am married, I am no longer to run the race to win. (Hebrews 12:1,I Corinthians 9:25-26) I can no longer put off falsehood and speak truthfully. (Ephesians 4:25) 

I have heard women speakers say that wives who feel their husbands are lukewarm in their faith, are really just making their husbands look bad. Men apparently have really fragile egos and can’t take this, so they quit serving the Lord in their struggles with feelings of inadequacy.

A smart wife will hide her devotion to God, pray and read her Bible in secret, and keep her mouth shut about spiritual things unless her husband brings it up. In order to encourage (manipulate) him to discuss spiritual things, a wife should ask her husband questions, feigning spiritual ignorance in order make him feel more spiritual than the little woman.

In other words, she should pretend he is a “spiritual leader” in order to manipulate him into becoming more fervent for God. We are to pretend he’s running the race faster than we are, even if in fact he is sitting doing nothing. It amounts to nothing less than living a lie, and dishonoring the Lord by not loving Him with all of the wife’s heart, all of her soul, all of her strength, in order to make her man look better.

Yes, it really is that crazy.

All that to prop up his ego, lure him into thinking himself a true “man of God” when in fact he is lukewarm and lazy and unconcerned about spiritual matters.

This teaching rewrites Ephesians 4:25 as “put on falsehood”! Though it never sounded right to me, in my fervent desire to please God, I gave it a shot. I admit it. I did. Stupid woman that I was, I was of no help to my husband or my family by living a lie.

I did this because I believed these false teachings. They are simply more of the same old Gothardite lies: be subservient and commit your way to God, pray in sincerity and love, suffer “as unto the Lord” and God will make all the changes in your authority figure that need to be changed. That is such a destructive doctrine.

(4) I was told to engage in “smooth talk and flattery” (condemned in Romans 16:18, Job 32:22) by offering undeserved respect to my husband. 

Fundamentalists falsely teach that the greatest need a husband has is to be respected by his wife. Too bad they don’t teach that the greatest need a wife and children have is for the man to live a life worthy of their respect. The Bible calls men and women alike to live lives worthy of respect. (I Timothy 3:8,11 and Titus 2:2.) I don’t recall reading anywhere that we should give undeserved respect. The scripture that tells wives to respect their husbands does NOT add the caveat “whether they deserve it or not”. Yet I have listened to people claim that is exactly what God meant. The God of truth? Are you serious?

Uh, no, a man’s greatest need is for authenticity, just like the rest of humanity. Truth is our greatest need. For nothing else we say or do or feel or think is worth experiencing if it is based on a lie.

This whole doctrine is so disrespectful to men. My husand’s ego is not so fragile that he needs to be told he is succeeding when he is failing. He is not incapable of serving God or earning respect. A lukewarm man who is coddled like this will be shocked when the day of truth comes, and it will. The truth will out for every person.

One day, the ridiculousness of the whole teaching finally became crystal clear to me. I called to my husband and told him that I had something to say. God had convicted me that I was not to hold back anymore. I showed him in Hebrews that I am to run the race to win, and I am not going to lag behind him pretending he is racing ahead of me anymore.

He was shocked that anyone ever told me I should!

I determined that day that I would not disrespect God and my husband by following these false teachings one more day. I have his full support on this.

First and foremost, my husband and I are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is who we were when we met, and who we still are. That relationship will never change, and trumps every other relationship we will ever have.

We are the one anothers mentioned in all those scriptures (John 13:34, Romans 12:10,16, 13:8, 14:13, 15:7; I Corinthians 1:10,16:20; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 4:2,32, 5:19,21; Colossians 3:13,16; I Thessalonians 5:11; Hebrews 3:13, 10:24,25; James 4:11; I Peter 2:22, 3:8, 4:9, 5:5,14; I John 1:7, 3:11,23, 4:7,11,12; 2 John 1:5). This is how we are called to live as believers, keeping the unity of the Spirit (Romans 15:5, Ephesians 4:3). It is the only way we will ever with one mouth and one mind glorify the Lord (Philippians 2:2).

Once we have that relationship down smooth, we will revisit the scriptures on marriage. It could be a while.

(Karen Campbell uses the term “one anothering” in many of her teaching about the Christian home and family. You can find her website at that mom. But it is the Lord who first coined the phrase and the concept.)

I urge anyone reading this post to hold up the totality of any marriage teaching they hear to the light of the one anothering verses, remembering that one another is a two-way relationship.

I encourage you to speak the truth in love to your spouses, spur them on to love and good works. Go to your brother who has sinned against you in gentleness and respect, seeking true repentance and restoration.

I encourage you to always be honest, and never pretend to be someone you are not.

To be continued.

Becoming My Own Person: Judah’s Story

HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Becoming My Own Person: Judah’s Story

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Judah” is a pseudonym.

I consider myself fortunate compared to most because I was not raised in an oppressive household. With a few exceptions, mostly those dealing in forms of magic, such as Power Rangers for example, I was not restricted on what I was allowed to watch, see, or listen to. My parents just made sure I had a firm grasp on my faith and were open to talking about things I had questions about.

"It wasn't until I deployed to Afghanistan that I truly became my own person who could stand up for myself."
“It wasn’t until I deployed to Afghanistan that I truly became my own person who could stand up for myself.”

It wasn’t until I started doing speech and debate tournaments that I saw the oppression other families placed on their kids. Some of my experience is second-hand, simply observing what other people went through. Some of my experience was first-hand in things other families did that directly affected me. There were times when my mother had to stand up for me because other parents did not approve of me for reasons I never understood and still do not understand to this day. This most affected my friendships with people in such families as they were forced to cut off contact with me.

One very prominent family in particular had a special hatred of me. They tried to get their youngest daughter to cut ties with me and it seemed they would stop at nothing. One of the family member’s threatened a restraining order against me on the girl’s behalf. For years I tried to understand and ask why they hated me but they would never give me an answer.

I eventually gave up and stopped asking.

In another instance, I was in a relationship with a young lady who had a similar family. I was required to meet with her father before we were even allowed to consider ourselves in a relationship and even then it was very restrictive. It was also short lived as the girl’s parents took to lying about me because they wanted her to be in a relationship with someone else, whom she did not even know.

After I graduated highschool, I went a little ways off the deep end and ended up living with former drug dealers for about a year before I moved in with my mom for a few months until I joined the Air Force in June 2008. Despite having lived with some questionable characters, I was still very much sheltered and had little knowledge about the world around me except for what could be seen on paper.

I spent a little over a year at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA which is where I was thrown into a culture shock. Not only was I in class with people form all walks of life, I was now learning about life in Afghanistan, along with its culture and religion. Previously, I had nearly no knowledge of Islam and now I was immersed in it. Still, I wasn’t able to completely break free of the stigma my homeschooling experience had placed on me. Namely, the idea that if I dared to make waves of any sort, the hand of God would smite me.

It wasn’t until I was deployed to Afghanistan that I truly became my own person who could stand up for myself.

Today I fully believe in God and Christ and everything the Bible teaches. However, as Ghandi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” This is precisely how I feel toward the majority of Christians, and those in the extreme homeschooling subculture in particular.

For the media: Former homeschoolers rally against abuse

HA Editorial Team13 Comments

For the media: 

Former homeschoolers rally against abuse

March 16, 2013

A group of former homeschoolers are joining together to bring awareness to, and healing from, different forms of abuse in extreme homeschooling subcultures. The organization, Homeschoolers Anonymous (HA), is being coordinated by former homeschoolers across the United States, including California, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington.

According to recent surveys, approximately 2 million children are taught at home in the United States. The total number of home-educated kids doubled between 1999 and 2007. While some are being homeschooled in non-Christian families, the National Home Education Research Institute claims almost three-quarters of those 2 million children have conservative Christian parents who aim to pass on their moral and religious values to their kids through home education. This makes religion the primary motivating factor behind this form of education.

HA’s creator is R.L. Stollar, who was homeschooled from K-12 and currently resides in Eugene, Oregon. He has a Master of Arts in Eastern philosophy and religion and is a freelance writer. Stollar says he came up with the idea for HA after realizing that many of his homeschooled peers suffered from some of the same emotional, mental, and physical problems that he does. Stollar says,

“I started talking last August to someone I knew in junior high and high school about some of the issues we both struggle with today. And it was interesting to see these similarities and that we both attributed them to the same things from our backgrounds.”

Stollar realized that many of his peers had stories like this. He decided to created Homeschoolers Anonymous to bring awareness to these stories and to inspire others to speak out. He intends for HA to give others courage:

“I think, for a lot of us, we are afraid to say what we feel, to say we have changed. A lot of us perceived the message of our world as ‘shut up, get in line, and prepare to take back the culture.’ That makes us, even as adults, timid and maybe even scared of community backlash if we were to say, ‘You know, I’m a different person now. I grew up, I’m an adult, and I have my own life.'”

Stollar connected with old friends on Facebook and made new ones. He found a community of people who shared the same vision. One of those people is Nicholas Ducote, who grew up in a family immersed in Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI). He has his Master of Arts in History from Louisiana Tech University and is currently working on a book about lumber development in North Louisiana.

Ducote considers his upbringing to be a form of fanaticism. To him, fanaticism is any manifestation of an ideology that knows no compromise and uses children as vehicles of ideological advancement. Ducote says,

“The quaint, happy, innocent life of a child can quickly be replaced by the stark absolutes of fanaticism. Muslim, Christian, and Jew are one in the same monster. Their fanatics take different names, they act in different ways, but they are all the same.”

Stollar, Ducote, and team of others are eager to see the launch of their vision. Homeschoolers Anonymous has partnered with a number of well-known bloggers to help bring greater visibility to their stories of abuse and healing. These blog partners include Libby Anne’s Love Joy Feminism, Heather Doney’s Becoming Worldly, Vyckie Garrison’s No Longer Quivering, and Julie Anne Smith’s Spiritual Sounding Board.

About the blog partners, Stollar says,

“I’m really excited to be partnering with these individuals and groups who write about, among other things, their homeschooling experiences. Honestly, they’ve directly inspired [HA] because of what they do. They’ve really paved the way to speaking out about abuse within certain cultures.”

One of the blog partners, Julie Anne Smith, is a homeschooling parent herself. Smith has over 20 years of experience homeschooling her children. She believes HA will help both current and former homeschool kids, even other parents:

“Homeschool students and their parents have become part of a unique culture yielding a mixed bag of results. The first crop of homeschooled students are now adults, establishing their own lives and families. It’s important to take an honest look at homeschool history by reading personal stories — describing the joys and even disappointments of those who paved the homeschool trail.”

While HA hopes to talk candidly about abuse within homeschooling and provide methods of healing from that abuse, the group is careful to point out they do not oppose homeschooling itself. Stollar notes that,

“This isn’t anti-homeschool in any way. At the end of the day, this isn’t even about conservative politics or Christianity. It is more about anywhere and everywhere that communities and adults use religious or political ideology to deny children their humanity and freedom to be for the sake of advancing that ideology. That’s a cult mentality. And wherever that mentality exists, you create emotional, mental, physical, and even sexual abuse and trauma for children. We want to be a strong voice in opposition to that mentality through our life stories, through education and information.”

Homeschoolers Anonymous will be launching their website tomorrow, Sunday, March 17.

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This news release may be reprinted without permission in part or in entirety for promotional purposes.

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 Media Information / Contacts

Official website: http://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com

Twitter: @HomeschoolAnon

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HomeschoolersAnonymous

Media contact: R.L. Stollar, homeschoolersanonymous@gmail.com