godly Christian marriage – Homeschoolers Anonymous

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.

*****

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

*****

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.

Home School Marriages: Shadowspring’s Story, Part Two

*****

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

*****

I am so unhappy with the choice of home schooling magazines available.

I know, I know, why don’t I publish my own if I’m so unhappy, right? Well, how about I have no extra money, no extra time and no publishing experience. That’s a start anyway. I’m sure I could come up with more reasons if I tried.

My biggest beef with the home schooling magazines I know of out there is that they are not honest. Practical Homeschooling is not about home schooling, it’s about legalistic Christian homeschooling. Why not be honest in the title? How about Practically All Religious Extremism Home Schooling? Yes, it is a little wordy, but at least people would know before they picked it up what they were getting into.

I just tried a new one, titled Home School Enrichment. Not. It is also written by and for legalistic Christian home schoolers. Yawn. That is hardly what I would call home school enrichment, though there is an excellent article on study skills by Ruth Beechick and a few other informative articles on obscure subjects that could be interesting. I think one is on the history of the metal can as a food storage method.

However I will applaud the magazine for this: They did touch on one taboo subject in the legalistic Christian home schooling community that really needs exposing. In my opinion the article wasn’t all it could have been, since they chose to only explore two women’s individual experiences and opinions about the what and why of their problem rather than the endemic proportions of the problem. The problem: crappy marriages, and in the Christian home school community there are a lot of them to go around.

I’ve been home schooling for 13 years now, and I have seen a lot of divorces and even more unhappy marriages. Unhappy marriages of course mean miserable home lives for the kids who are in that home 24/7 as well. The levels of hypocrisy on this subject are astounding!

Women who are exhausted, depressed, unloved and at the end of their ropes will insist they are happy and their lives are working well, even though one look and a few minutes conversation clearly exposes their misery. Why? Why do they insist they are happy when it is obvious they are not?

I believe it’s because that’s what the home school magazines say “godly Christian marriage” should be like. The magazines insist that it is normal to be overworked, under appreciated and tired all the time. The Christian home school magazines claim it is holy for a woman to suck it up with a “gentle and quiet spirit.” The fact that they feel no real joy in their lives is seen as a temporary trial to be endured rather than as proof that their lifestyle is not bearing the fruit the magazine prophets promised.

Of course that is a recipe for crazy. Some women will eventually admit this is not working and decide to just chuck it all. For the wisest this means they get rid of oppressive religion and ditch the rigid gender role division and militant fecundity that is destroying them. For others it means ditching home schooling as well, and if they know of no other way to home school then they should ditch it. The children will be better off escaping from that unhappy home for a few hours a day.

Sadly in my point of view, for a few it means ditching Jesus as well. Honestly, since they truly believed all this legalistic home school mumbo-jumbo was “authentic Christianity,” who can blame them? Tragic.

For those who don’t come to their senses, there is only crazy left. The women who refuse to acknowledge the misery in which legalistic religion and strict gender roles in marriage have trapped them will just continue to live in denial. These women will have their unhappiness manifest in other ways: immune systems that buckle under the strain, minds that can’t handle the daily stresses of life. It is also tragic, heart-wrenching and the logical end of living a lie.

Why do these magazines even exist? I submit that if this legalistic home school family paradigm actually worked, they wouldn’t need to keep selling it in the magazines. Neighbors, friends and relatives would be knocking down their doors to find out the secret to these happy, healthy families. True love would result in fullness of joy like Jesus said, and joy is attractive. Joy gives us strength.

The magazines sell because guilt-ridden and unhappy women think the problem is with them, not the whole silly paradigm. The see the happy smiling innocent faces on the magazine cover and then look at their own bored and unhappy children, hair uncombed and house a mess because the baby was up all night and Dad doesn’t help out with “woman’s work”. Instead of rightfully saying to themselves “Those magazine articles are full of crap!” they think something is wrong with them as women. Or worse, they come to believe something is wrong with their precious children.

No, no, no, dear sister. You are just fine. Your children are wonderful. The magazines are a scam. Don’t let them suck you in!

Maybe someday someone will come up with a home school magazine that is about actual home education, rather than this wacko religious subset of home education. I would subscribe to that magazine.

To be continued.