Raising Godly Kids – What About Homeschooling?

Before I start, I want to point out that I don’t feel that homeschooling is the only option for raising godly kids. I have seen many parents and children thrive in a public school environment and for some families this is the best option. I have also known many public school teachers who are truly doing their best to teach and help children in positive ways that those children wouldn’t otherwise encounter. So, I want to state that I feel parents need to make the best decision for themselves and their children.

I’m sitting here with my sisters and I was talking to someone, a young lady around thirteen years old. This young lady has been in church her entire life, but she’s really unclear about a lot of things. We were talking, how do you produce that? How is that being produced in the churches nowadays?

I see so many adults that grow up and they’re just “religious-minded”. They can go to church and the church is a permanent fixture in their life that they do “religiously”, but outside of church they have very little direction and they have very little understanding on what the Word of God says, very little understanding of everything.

One of the things that came up is the fact of school and both of my sisters homeschool. It has become a lifestyle practice to intermingle our faith with our schoolwork, and with everyday things. I’m sure you can hear the kids in the background now because they’re a part of this and so they’re hearing this as well.

But, this has become a lifestyle — more than just a ritual or something to do on a Sunday, or a Tuesday, or a Saturday, or whatever day that anyone worships on.

I think that a lot of things that cause unsureness in a lot of kids that attend school, is that if you had to measure time on weights, they’re in school 5 days a week, 8 hours a day — where as, you’re going to church, maybe, 2-3 times a week for a couple hours. And the church time that they have on a weekly basis wouldn’t even equal up to one day at school.

So, the school influence is going to weigh heavier in their life and in their lifestyles than the church message if they’re only getting it those couple of days a week.

The big thing is, what they’re getting at school is lifestyle differences about different religions, different moral things, so they’re getting that more than their getting the true faith and the true Word. I think that’s where the discourse comes in, I think that’s where the confusion comes in for kids. It’s just outweighed in their household, outweighed in their lifestyles.

I’ve found that very true. And one of the things, it’s not that we’re trying to say “hey, increase the church hours,” because that’s not what the whole thing here is. But the main focus is to make Christ a permanent fixture in their lives.

Oftentimes, what you see is that if you get into that routine of going on a certain day that that day becomes the day, that your kids even, program to perform on. We weren’t called to be performers, that’s what we call in the hood or in the world as being fake or fronting.

What we see today is we see a lot of fronting, we see a lot of “Sunday-believers”, or “Saturday-believers”, or just “religious” people and that’s not what this is calling for. So, when I look at them and doing this from a homeschool standpoint, I see that the children are learning to connect with God on every aspect.

And so school is void from that because you can’t even mention God at school, you can’t pray at school. As a children’s book writer, every time you go to publish a book they’re always going to say that you can’t even mention God in it. That’s what the children are being programmed to and that would explain a lot of it.

We find this all across the board. When you go to college, that’s when the “anti” God comes, you’re teaching about evolution, and you’re looked at as being crazy for thinking like this. Because the young lady was talking about agnostic vs atheist because she has a friend that is and she doesn’t know how to deal with that as a young Christian girl.

Pretty much, the church has failed getting in front of these kinds of issues and I think that ties back into that she doesn’t even know if it’s right or wrong. The question was “was it even right or wrong to be agnostic or atheist” and there’s a clear idea that there was a breakdown of communication and a breakdown of faith in her life somewhere for her not to be able to stand strong and stand up for what she believes because she doesn’t even know what she believes.

That’s why my thought was “where’s she getting the unbelief from?” and I had to think, if she isn’t raised like that and her home isn’t like that, then she’s getting the unbelief from some outside sources.

And then the question is also, how do you, even when you send your kids to school, because a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to homeschool, how do you still implement that faith? And I believe it’s by you being a living example.

You have to be a living example, you can’t just go to church on those three days a week. You have to be a living example. “Bible Study” has to be a lifestyle in your lives, the Word has to come alive in your life because the children will follow you no matter how old they are they’re going to follow their parents, even if they have outside influences of school.

Because a lot of people say, “I can’t homeschool, what can I do?”, and it’s that you have to live that Word that you want your kids to know, to have that faith, you have to live it yourself.

You have to be the light, you have to be the example and the minute you start deviating from those things your kids notice.

My mom use to say “Do as I say, not as I do!” and I grew up doing everything she did, so I think that’s important.

And when it comes to “religious people” and when you see that breakdown in their kids, being hellions out in the world, it’s a lot of times, because the parents are living double-standards.

I don’t think that’s in every case, but double-standards will kill us. And one thing that I feel, if you’re a young mother or a young father, and you’re wondering “where are these things coming from?”, you have to understand that everything around you, and everything around your children are suggesting “anti” Christ — the music, the TV shows.

If you let your kids watch Nickelodeon and Disney, they’re talking about boyfriends and wanting to kiss and all those different things — those things are teaching your kids the opposite of what you’re trying to instill in them.

All of the music that the kids are listening to, with me working at school, these kids are singing songs from people who are 30-40 years old! Beyonce and J-Z are in their 40’s and they know “So Crazy in Love” and all these different songs. And they’re doing Chris Brown moves — Chris Brown is an adult that can make his own decisions about what he wants and with women, and these young boys are singing that.

You have to look at the track record. You also gotta look, conversations can be so simple. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to open up a conversation with the little girl. But, how often do people genuinely ask kids questions? They tell the kid to stay in the kid’s place.

“If you’re not asking my opinion, how can I be open to asking questions, even about my faith? Is it really my faith or is it my parents faith?”

So, if you don’t ask them certain questions or you don’t allow time to talk with them then they won’t ever really have their own faith, they’ll have examples of what their mom did or their grandma did. God can be very powerful in their life, they can stay up all night and pray and you’ll never know why they could be sleeping for school.

These are subtle attacks that you won’t know unless your parents explain it to you.

And that’s one of the things we had to tell her was that there’s no right or wrong answer here, don’t just try to give me the answer that I want to hear. I want to know how you feel, I want to know what your feelings are on these subjects.

This is not just performance, I want to know what’s your take on this. And when she told me the take, I didn’t scold her for it. I just explained to her, if you believe this way, then this is what you believe. This is what the scriptures say about that. If you believe this way, this is what the scriptures say about that.

This is coming from a healthy understanding of “yes, we’ve gotta start talking to them,” and getting the idea of how they believe and not just assuming.

To go back to the music and the things that we put in front of our kids, I feel we also have to take a look at, yes, a lot has changed as far as the music industry, but a lot has really stayed the same. And if you think about when we were teenagers, there was a lot of music that was around back then we probably shouldn’t have listened to — and where did it get us?

It got us to be doing things contrary to what we should have been doing.

I remember SWV had that song “Weak”, “I get so weak in the knees,” — all the kids were singing that.

All of the kids were singing that and shouldn’t have been singing that, we were in junior high!

And now as I’m older and I really break down that song in the way it was really talking about, there were so many sexual innuendoes.

We were bringing on all of that over us, singing it over and over.

So, the music has not really changed too much, but it has gotten worse. You have to understand, the same thing that is coming over your kids is the same thing that was trying to come over you.

And quit trying to be like, “Aw, just let them do it,” because where did that get you?

When you do have things like that, you gotta realized that certain things that we say out of our mouth are either blessings or curses. You’re either going to bless them by what you say and what you do, or your going to curse them.

I don’t know why people don’t believe that it’s the same thing for themselves. If I sing this music over me, I’m inviting the same problems. That’s why we associate so well with music, we can find one about any way that we’re feeling. So, if I’m sad — I’m going to turn on some sad music, if I’m happy — I’m going to turn on some happy music.

That’s why God said that songs come out of the spirit, because the spirit that’s behind these songs you won’t find out until it’s overtaken you, and you’ll be like, “man, this music is crazy, why am I feeling like this?”.

It shouldn’t be like gospel music with a hip-hop rap beat. There has to be a separation, if you’re going to be holy for Christ. You can’t be double-minded, you can’t be having double-standards, for you or your kids.

We’ve always had this conversation because music has always been such a huge part of all of our lives. That’s the universal language, music is, so that’s one of the biggest things that’s going on as far as influence in our children today. And the music has gotten so much worse and so much more explicit, and we’ve gotta do our part.

But, I wanted to talk about this because there’s definitely a breakdown in today’s “Christian” or today’s “believer” compared to what we see that the scriptures say that it should be.

In talking with one of the kids, who’s 4 years old and he picked up from the talk “Nickelodeon”, so you see just in conversation you have to be very careful about what you say around your kids!

TW Bright