Category Archives: Articles written by Craig

How Do You Cope with “Emerging Teens”?

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How Do You Cope with “Emerging Teens”?

Growing Smith Clan on Pete & Genevieve’s wedding, 16 February 2008.

L to R: Jeremiah Smith 16; Zach Smith 26 & Megan Smith (nee Schneider, a pioneer home educator from the USA) and baby Cheyenh Smith 4 months (they all live near Peoria, Illinois); Pete de Deugd (a pioneer home educator from Australia) & Genevieve de Deugd (nee Smith) who now live near Ballarat, VIC (with Natalie Elizabeth who was born 20 December 2008); Alanson Smith 23; Kaitlyn Smith 6; Barbara Smith; Jedediah Smith 10; Grace Timmins 2; Craig Smith; and Charmagne Smith 20.

Click on photo for larger image

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by Craig Smith
Over the years we’ve been exposed to what appears to
be a whole new way of looking at this issue.
It bothered me, even when I was a teen, how my own
family was constantly shooting off in a million
different directions…there was no cohesiveness as a
family, no direction, just everyone doing his own thing.
All I knew at the time was that there had to be a better
way.
When Barbara and I set up our family, we fell into the
ways of the surrounding culture, as I suppose we all
do….just followed what appeared to be the norm. Let
me tell you, that all changed majorly when we began
home education. Once outside the box, we began
looking at all things else with new eyes, questioning,
“Why do we do things like this?” “Can this be done
better?” and eventually we simply started asking,
“What is a more Biblical way to do this?”
When our eldest children were pushing into the teen
years and few other home educators were around and
the other teens who were around really didn’t have
much time for these weird home educators…and when I
began to have nostalgic remembrances of my teen
“socialisation” experiences…and when I started feeling
sorry for my own teenaged children, how they were
missing out…I suddenly woke up! Good grief, what on
earth was I thinking about! I had allowed my mind to
go into “pagan” mode, just as it did unceasingly for the
first 23 years of my life. Holding those teen years of
mine up to the light of Scripture was like lifting a long
untouched log off the woodpile: a lot of yucky critters
are seen dashing madly for the shadows.
As a slave of Christ I need to think soberly and
Biblically about what my children require: it is not
helpful to wallow in nostalgia or view things through
rose-tinted glasses. No: my children need to live where
they are with what they’ve got and with what Barbara
and I are able and willing — and commanded — to
provide.
Barbara and I weighed up our own teen socialisation
experiences and saw at once that they had contributed
little of a positive nature but heaps in a negative way.
And, hey, we were popular go-getters as teens,
involved in all sorts of things…totally worldly things.
Some friends pointed out that “teenager” is a worldly,
not a Biblical term. Children are adults in training, and
we do them a disservice to make them think they
should be catered for only as “children” for a while and
then “adolescents” and then as “teenagers” and then as
“youth”, as if the world always revolved around them.
Then I saw how society has this pre-occupation with
youth in advertising, marketing, TV shows, fashions,
even personal appearances, with older folks trying to
dress mutton up like lamb and old crows trying to be
like spring chickens.
No, let’s get real, we figured….let’s train up our own
children with a much more realistic, sober frame of
reference, one with a steady eye to the future of what
we’re trying to produce for our children and in our
children.
So we started taking a more long-term view of things:
what is it we are all aiming for ultimately? That is
what to work for now. This realisation took the shine
off of trying to provide them with the full range of upto-
the-minute popular “children’s” experiences: ballet
and gym and music and swimming and highland
dancing lessons, Saturday sports, label clothes, many
unusual pets, ever-better annual birthday parties, every
new Science Centre programme and museum and art
exhibit and circus and orchestra and stage play to come
to town…not that these things are necessarily bad.
Perhaps just not all that worthy of energetic and
sacrificial pursuit. We came up with an even dimmer
view of working hard to get all the culturally expected
“teen” stuff done while they are still teens:
experiencing a “special” boy– or girl-friend; dating;
going to a formal ball; getting a full driver’s license as
soon as absolutely possible; pajama parties; having a
first smoke; having a first drink; having a first…No,
none of that stuff really has much connection with the
real adult world of work, responsibility, raising
children, preparing them for the future. And, hey, as
our eldest daughter pointed out to us, we are already so
weird and so far out of the mainstream as Christian
home educators, we might as well go for gold!
We had always taught our children that as Christians
and as home educators and members of a family who
are committed to training children who are not just
going to cope with this wicked old world but go out
there and turn the place upside down (that is, right-side
up, re-claiming it for Christ), they were just going to be
considered weird by virtually everyone, including other
Christians and home educators. So get used to it. We
are not flowing with the current but actively working in
a different direction.
That is, we tried to impart a vision that was bigger than
any of us, bigger than our whole family could cope
with. That caused some practical issues to come to the
fore: how does one do that, working so closely as a
family on this conquer-the-world programme and at the
same time follow the good old “do your own thing”,
“Follow your own path” idea that characterises our
society? Well, it became obvious that one couldn’t
combine the two. (Actualy, it took years to even notice
that we were living with these conflicting ideas both
vying for attention in our minds.) So at last we
consciously jettisoned the “follow your own path” stuff
and began to think of ourselves as a committed family
unity, each of us making decisions not based on what
we personally want to do, but based on the family
direction…with Dad responsible for making sure the
direction is Biblical. Now as parents we all do this to a
fair extent already. But we began to fine-tune it a lot
more.
Our oldest sons Zach and Alanson (who had already
left home…see, I’m talking about a long-term process
that was going on, one that is still going on, and one
that Barbara and I are still getting used to ourselves)
had moved too far along the “follow your own path”
scenario to come back. They were right on target
according to the “each of us will take on the world on
our own” ideas we drummed into them. Consequently
they are committed Christians, one flying his colours
from day one at RNZAF bootcamp and the other
working full time for a Christian home education
resource marketing firm. The rest of the family is now
thinking more of how we can pool our resources rather
than each automatically going his separate way and
how to help each other in this common task.
Now, I’m not saying these sons are happy to cut ties
with the rest of the family…I’m saying they are very
keen to make their own way in the world, independent
of what Mum and Dad are doing. This is to a large
extent very natural, and I also believe we must train up
our sons especially to know how to establish and run
their own businesses, enterprises, households and
families. It is just that I could have worked a lot harder
at giving them a boost up by giving them greater
responsibilities within our family “enterprise”. Instead
of just making Zach in charge of mowing the lawns, I
could have put him in charge of the entire landscaping
of the property: I could have said that he could come
up with his own total design, and the rest of us would
help him do it. Instead of putting Alanson in charge of
washing the cars, I could have made him responsible
for keeping track of their maintenance schedules. And
more than these kinds of things, I could have found
areas of responsibility to give to them within the area
through which we derive our family income: the Home
Education Foundation. I could have got them doing the
mail, managing the database, doing the accounts,
indexing every issue of Keystone and TEACH Bulletin.
They have each said to me in recent days that there was
a period of time — and they told me the actual months
and years — when they were particularly waiting for
me to do exactly that. But I missed my opportunity, for
the concept was not fully formed in my own mind as
yet. And so they turned elsewhere for a greater degree
of training, responsibility and challenge, when I had it
in my hands to give them tons of each of those.
It could have meant they would be closer to home and
may have thrown in their lot with us entirely. Yet in
God’s Providence, Zach is Marketing Director for a
huge Christian home-education-supporting firm in the
USA and has married the daughter of the boss/owner.
He travels all over the USA and handles huge
accounts. He helps us out with information and
obtaining certain items where he can. Alanson comes
over from the Ohakea RNZAF Base nearby whenever
he can to help do building and landscaping and
maintenance projects around the place. That is, they’re
still involved in the family at the same level as they
always have been.
With our daughters Genevieve and Charmagne,
however, our new way of thinking that has developed
has meant that they have turned their hearts
compl e t e l y t o w a r d home — until such time as
prince charming comes to take them away (or perhaps
to join what we’re doing).
Genevieve in fact gets married next month and
will be taken away to Australia. Her stated
objectives and daily occupation over the last
couple of years has been to submit herself more and
more to her parents’ vision, to help her dad in
particular to become successful in his calling.
She has taken on the database, the mail, the
accounts, even most of compiling and editing of
Keystone. (Charmagne and I are now struggling to take
these responsibilities back!) She did this to fulfill the
Fifth Commandment, to honour your father and your
mother, and also to train herself to look for ways to lift
loads from the shoulders of her future husband. No,
she hasn’t sublimated herself so that she has no
individual self left: she has in fact at the same time
developed an international book/tape/CD business and
weekly newsletter ministry called Issacharian
Daughters (www.issacharian.com). Her fiancé Pete is
thrilled that his future bride is committed to taking on
as much of his wood-working business as she can, but
he is also amazed that he — who until now hasn’t so
much as had a girlfriend — will suddenly have a
ministry to young women all over Australia, New
Zealand, USA, Canada and the UK!
I now am focussing on our younger sons, to help them
become part of what Barbara and I and the daughters
are doing, rather than refraining from getting them too
involved “in case they themselves want to do
something else.” It seemed to me, and I’ve heard
plenty of others say the same, that our teens generally
don’t know what they want to do….so I’ll give them
plenty of work, very useful and purposeful work, right
here in the meantime. Man, I’ve always needed a
hand…why didn’t I see this earlier?
What I’m saying is that each of us family members still
at home and able to think along these lines has
increasingly endeavoured to integrate all that we do so
as to aim in the same general direction as a family unit,
hopefully gaining strength and support from one
another, rather than each trying to carve out his or her
own niche and having to mostly struggle on our own or
find companions to help from outside the family.
We’re seeing a little of the benefits of family-oriented
work in this way: we are all on the same page, there are
fewer conflicts of interest, we can pool resources and
save money all round. Sure, both Genevieve and
Charmagne could be out earning megabucks
somewhere — and each has done that for a season —
but then they found their hearts either wandering from
the family and even scarier, wandering from the
standards and values with which they’d been raised; or
else their hearts, minds and consciences were bruised
and hurt by the contrary and hostile standards and
values they were forced to endure as part of the job,
something few of us would normally put up with if not
tied to the job. They also found that at home they
had a lot more freedom and flexibility to pursue a
multitude of other interests and hobbies, something a
regular job mostly prevented due to time constraints
and being worn out at the end of the day.
Barbara and I, as a married couple separated from our
respective families by geography and even more by the
Faith, carved out a niche, and we are now encouraging
and preparing and expecting our children to widen and
expand that niche and make the whole thing more
productive and useful. We do this by focusing on each
child in a different way than when we do to give them
“childhood memory” type experiences: we focus on
their strengths, abilities, gifts…those things they will be
able to use and develop with our family enterprise or
with an enterprise elsewhere, should they be led in that
direction. This is pretty much what families all used to
do….the miller’s son became a miller, the shoemaker’s
son learned the trade of shoemaking. It doesn’t mean,
of course, that each son and each daughter is expected
to stay forever at home, although that is one of the
options we would like them to know is available, an
option I believe is virtually denied most children these
days. (In fact, I personally know two young Christian
women who wanted to stay at home with their
Christian families but whose parents insisted they get
out and get their own jobs and living arrangements.)
There is another aspect of this whole thing: Barbara
and I do not see ourselves ever “retiring”. The focus is
on the family as a corporation and what we can do as a
team, rather than on catering to the individual as if they
were “their own person.” Just as the family farm used
to be handed down to the sons while the dad stayed on
to help out and advise, maybe we can all hand down
more than we think to each of our children, even if we
just earn wages by working for someone else. We can
at least pass on the skills we’ve learned at that job and
introduce our children to the boss and workmates and
the workplace and the work ethic and how that
business ties in with the rest of what’s going on in the
community and the world. We would hope to be
spending our time in the latter years still promoting
home education while also helping to disciple our
grandchildren.
I discovered another benefit to this outlook just
recently: I was foolishly grizzling about shelving my
career prospects years ago to home educate, about
being a lowly door to door salesman for 13 years for
the lifestyle to allow me to do the teaching and how, as
a result, we have no superannuation or retirement
scheme. My daughters stared at me in disbelief and
remarked, “Are you serious? You’ve got eight separate
retirement schemes running right now, and their names
are Genevieve, Zach, Alanson, etc.”
A couple of books that really helped us and encouraged
us along this path are:
When You Rise Up, by RC Sproul, Jr (a committed
home educator in a similar unschooling sort of vein as
we are!)
Bound for Glory, by RC Sproul, Jr
Safely Home, by Tom Eldredge
Uniting Church and Home, by Eric Wallace
Tapes and website material by Doug Phillips of
All speak of integrating our lifestyles so they operate
more like a rifle shot than like a scatter gun; of
simplifying; of taking a familial, multi-generational
view of things.
As we’ve become occupied with looking toward the
future and planning our days with the bigger picture in
mind, the teen socialisation issue just hasn’t had a
chance to become an issue! I guess you could say we
used the old distraction strategy: rather than deal head
on with the “Why can’t I go with Bobbie to the
movies,” “Billie’s folks let him do that; why can’t I do
it too?” we pre-empted much of this by having an allencompassing
vision that spawned a different type of
activity. Yes, we still go to the movies…actually, only
quite rarely now. And sometimes we just have to say
that we hold to different standards than Billie’s family,
and our personal programme for the child asking the
question does not include that kind of activity.
Bottom line: we parents are the boss of the Smith
Family Corporation. We will listen to requests made in
a respectful and polite manner, we are open to
negotiation, but our decision is final and must not be
challenged. To manage this we have found that we
must convince our children that we are devoted to their
best, to giving them many varied and exciting and
edifying activities and experiences so they cannot
claim to be deprived. But all of these things fall within
the parametres set by God’s sovereign Providence. He
has organised some of us to be able to afford only
secondhand clothes, for some of us to fly overseas a
lot, for some of us to be tied to a farm nearly 365 days
a year. And so, rather than rail and complain against
God’s provision, we seek to conform to it and learn
what He is trying to teach us. His promises in this
regard are simply unbeatable:
Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the
desires of your heart. — Psalm 37:4. ?

From Keystone Magazine

January 2008, Vol. XIV No. 73
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

The desires of your heart

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Take delight in the Lord,

and He will give you the desires

of your heart — Psalm 37:4

He will fulfil the desire of

those who fear Him; He

also will hear their cry and

save them — Psalm 145:19

A poor man had wanted to go on a cruise all his life.
As a youngster he had seen an advertisement for a luxury
cruise, and ever since he had dreamed of spending
a week on a large ocean liner enjoying fresh sea air and
relaxing in a luxurious environment. He saved money
for years, carefully counting his pennies, often sacrificing
personal needs so he could stretch his resources a
little further.
Finally he had enough to purchase a cruise ticket. He
went to a travel agent, looked over the cruise brochures,
picked out one that was especially attractive
and bought a ticket with the money he had saved so
long. He was hardly able to believe he was about to
realise his childhood dream.
Knowing he could not afford the kind of elegant food
pictured in the brochure, the man planned to bring his
own provisions for the week. Accustomed to moderation
after years of frugal living, and with his entire savings
going to pay for the cruise ticket, the man decided
to bring along a week’s supply of bread and peanut
butter. That was all he could afford.
The first few days of the cruise were thrilling. The man
ate peanut butter sandwiches alone in his room each
morning and spent the rest of his time relaxing in the
sunlight and fresh air, delighted to be aboard ship. By
midweek, however, the man was beginning to notice
that he was the only person on board who was not eating
luxurious meals. It seemed that every time he sat
on deck or rested in the lounge or stepped outside his
cabin, a porter would walk by with a huge meal for
someone who had ordered room service.
By the fifth day of the cruise the man could take it no
longer. The peanut butter sandwiches seemed stale and
tasteless. He was desperately hungry, and even the
fresh air and sunshine had lost their appeal. Finally he
stopped a porter and exclaimed, “Tell me how I might
get one of those meals! I’m dying for some decent
food, and I’ll do anything you say to earn it!”
“Why, sir, don’t you have a ticket for this cruise?”
the porter asked.
“Certainly,” said the man. “But I spent everything I
had for that ticket. I have nothing left with which to
buy food.”
“But, sir,” said the porter, “didn’t you realise? Meals
are included with your passage. You may eat as
much as you like!”
Lots of Christians live like that man. Not realising the
unlimited provision that are theirs in Christ, they
munch on stale scraps. There’s no need to live like
that! Everything we could ever want or need is included
in the cost of admission — and the Saviour has
already paid it for us! (From: Our Sufficiency in Christ,
by John MacArthur, Jr.)
I think Brother MacArthur may have waxed a bit lyrical
on that last line when he said, “Everything we could
ever want or need…”, because it leaves the door wide
open for the deceitful heart of even us redeemed Christians
to make demands that are totally self-centred
rather than Christ-centred. Never underestimate the
sinfulness of sin or the deceitfulness of our own hearts.
(See Jeremiah 17:9 and I Corinthians 10:12). We have
not been perfected by our conversion, and if we say we
are without sin, we deceive ourselves (I John 1:8). Our
sanctification toward perfection in heaven is a life-long
task.
However, we must agree with what MacArthur is saying
because the promises of God prove true, and He
has promised us “such blessing that there will not be
room enough to receive it,” (Malachi 3:10). I don’t
know about you, but I am definitely a starter for that
kind of blessing.
So how do we cash in? What do we have to do to inherit
all these goodies? Perhaps we had better stop right
here and realise that I have already asked in the same
spirit as the rich young man who approached Jesus and
left quickly and sadly when he found the price too
high. He didn’t want to give up that which he could not
keep for that which he could never lose. (See Matthew
19:16-22).
Look at our opening verses. Note that these promises,
like virtually every other promise of God, have conditions
attached to them. You see, our Lord and Saviour
is not a big sugar-daddy in the sky just waiting to write
us out blank cheques whenever we want them. He is
King of kings and Lord of lords, Absolute Sovereign of
the entire universe. We play by His rules or we are out
of the game. Here is the One to Whom it is quite correct
to say, “Your wish is my command.” But here also
is the “secret” to inheriting all He has: When we take
delight in the Lord, when what He wants is what we
want, when my inmost delights and desires come from
seeing His will accomplished in my life, in the life of
others, in the society around me, then I am assured of
receiving the desires of my heart!
You see, it is clear that whatever God wants, God gets.
Now we know from Scripture that His time frame is not
what we would organise, but we know that no person
or being or circumstance is going to thwart God’s
will….He will get, He will accomplish that which He
desires. If we are totally in tune with Him, our desires
will be the same as His….and just as He gets what He
wills, so will we! Now we may not see some of these
things in our life times. But they will come to pass, and
we can know the joy of having contributed to the
accomplishment, the furtherance of His purposes on
earth, even though we may not live to see some things
come to fruition. Have not most of the saints through
the ages lived and laboured in exactly such hope? Do
not go around praying for or proclaiming that thus-andso
will take place because you’ve been praying faithfully
for that…you may well be setting yourself up for a
faith-shattering disappointment. Which of these attitudes
are we displaying for our children to emulate?
Which of these are we training them to have?
This does not mean we do not plan big or expect big in
this life. You bet we do: set goals and have your 5, 10,
20-year objectives in mind. And pray about them, that
they be in the will of the Lord. One of the biggest mistakes
I ever made was to piously “wait upon the Lord”
for several years as a young man and let career and
educational opportunities slide right on by. Then Proverbs
16:9 came crashing through: “A man’s mind plans
his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” See? The
promise has a condition. He will direct our steps, but
we must at least make some plans for moving
in one direction or the other, not just sit there.
You cannot steer a car, a ship, a horse or anything
until it is moving. Are we teaching our
children to be pro-active in seeking out God’s
will? Do they see us doing that?
Since my will is to do His will, when He directs
my steps in a completely different direction
than I had planned, I don’t get all frustrated,
bitter and twisted (well, not for long,
anyway!) because I know this change of direction
is from the Lord! I mean this change
of plans may not be the least bit convenient.
It may actually cost me money, seem to have
wasted time mucking about in this other area
I am now leaving and even make me look a
bit inconsistent or indecisive in the eyes of
my peers. Well, just call to mind the lives of
people like Moses, John the Baptist and even
Christ Jesus Himself.
Years ago, when single, I was planning a trip
to South America. I had saved up a nice sum
and was praying that God would confirm it. I
was also shopping for a car and had decided
on the size of down payment I could handle
and therefore what price vehicle I could afford
to look at. I found the perfect car: one
owner, a little old lady who only drove it on
weekends. As soon as I signed the papers —
and for some reason, not until then — it
dawned on me that she wanted the full payment
not just a down payment. It took all the
money I’d saved for my trip plus a withdrawal
penalty fee plus all but $20 of my next pay to
buy that car. Well, God clearly confirmed that I was to
have that car but that I definitely was not to go to
South America. Maybe that doesn’t sound like too
spiritual an experience, but I want you to know, I had
total assurance and peace of heart that God had organised
every detail. Recall events like these from your
own life and recount them again and again to your children.
This is how we are to train up our children, in the fear
of the Lord. Note how our other verse above promises
fulfillment of desires to those who fear Him. We do
what He says, not because we are afraid but because
we don’t want to do anything else! I’ve lived long
enough now to know that when I obey the Lord, I am
the one who gets blessed, not the Lord. I am not doing
Him a favour. No, No! He is doing me the favour by
graciously allowing me to know His will in His statutes,
ordinances, commandments and precepts in the
Bible. As parents it is our duty to ensure that our children
perform what is right. This is non-negotiable. We
must strive to so train them in consistent obedience to
God and His word that they take delight in it and know
no other lifestyle.
By this we will set them up for a life of true blessedness
to themselves and of true blessing to others. We
want them to be fit for use by our Master as instruments
of Righteousness in His hands, doing those good
works for which they were created (Ephesians 2:10). ?

From Keystone Magazine

November 2007, Vol. XIII No. 6
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100

A Struggle with the Faith

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A Struggle with the Faith

by Craig Smith

I want to share a bit of my personal testimony, not to
push our denominational bias down your throats, but to
illustrate how struggle and patience in the struggle
helps growth, both in ourselves as parents and in our
children. Barbara and I both personally struggled with
issues of the Faith when we saw or felt inconsistencies
or hypocrisies. We are particularly sensitive to these
because we know how prone each of us is to being
both inconsistent and hypocritical…being this way was
standard procedure when we were unbelievers, and old
habits die hard. We made no secret of our struggles
around the family meal tables, and we believe our
openness and honesty about these things with our children
was helpful, allowing them to see our frustrations
and disappointments with situations and with people
(but without the usual character assassinations that go
with this kind of thing…we had to be particularly careful
of this, for it is so damaging to our own credibility
in our children’s eyes). We all rejoiced together in our
excitement at new discoveries in the Scriptures. We
struggled together in our efforts to obey and conform
to the Scriptures, including our fears and excuses of
not wanting to go through with it. We shed tears of facing
the implications of what being Biblically consistent
would cost in terms of status in the eyes of men, in being
shunned by people who were our best friends. At
the end of the day, because of these struggles with issues
of the Faith, we can say that we know what we
believe and why we believe it. More importantly, so do
our children! We are all much stronger for it.
When I first got converted in Christchurch in 1974 and
first began to read the Bible on my own to learn for
myself what it said, and having never before heard the
words “dispensa tional ism”, “covenant”,
“Arminianism”, “Calvinism”, “Pre-, Post- or A- millennial”
or any such theological terms, I came to some
interesting conclusions. First, that Jesus is Lord. Not of
some, but of all. He is sovereign over all areas of life,
over every square inch of the universe and over every
human being and every human institution. Second, that
the devil is a liar and the father of lies. So when he
says to the Lord in Matthew 4:8-9 that he (the devil)
will give Him (Jesus Christ) all the kingdoms of the
world, I simply laughed at the whopper of a lie the
devil just told and at what a complete idiot he obviously
was (and is) to try and tempt the Lord Jesus with
kingdoms over which He already rules!! (See Psalm
24:1). (OK, we don’t think we see the Lord ruling over
them presently, but nothing happens without His say so,
and He will come to claim them one day.) Third, I
learned that, as Romans and Galatians make clear, we
Christians are the real Jews (because we are Jews in-
wardly, not outwardly – Romans 2:28-29), the real descendants
of Abraham (because we share the faith of
Abraham – Romans 4:9-12, Galatians 3:6-7)), the real
inheritors of the promises (Romans 9:6-8, Galatians
3:27-29). And fourth, I learned that the promises include
inheriting the whole world in Christ, (see Romans
4:13, Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8).
Barbara and I were both discipled by the Navigators in
Christchurch for several years. The training we received
with the Navigators, to take the Scriptures seriously
and to study as did the Bereans of Acts 17:10-11
to see if what any speaker said was so, and especially
to apply what the Bible said to our personal lives…
these things set us up to be true disciples of Christ, not
just SMO Christians (Sunday Morning Only). Even
with the general evangelical emphasis on personal
evangelism, the Navs were not popular. I guess it was
because they took the Faith far more seriously than
most. They did not stop at conversion, but wanted to
see new believers firmly established in the Faith.
After getting married, we made our home and raised
our children in a well-known, evangelical, Biblebelieving
church denomination. This was our first and
only spiritual home for the first 14 (fourteen) years of
our married life. Since they did not see it as good stewardship
to polish the brass on a sinking ship, they
thought Christian schools were nutty and that home
education was simply madness …. after all, the Lord
was coming back any day now, maybe this afternoon…
but certainly in our children’s lifetimes. And besides,
our taxes paid for these lovely schools we have all
around us, and shouldn’t our (unconverted) children be
in the schools to evangelise the lost there?
I always wondered why these things never seemed to
harmonize with the conclusions I had come to in my
own Scripture reading when I was first converted. But
I figured I had a lot to learn yet, and the people around
me were as godly and as serious about the Faith as any
I knew of, and many had themselves come to Faith
through struggles.
And here was one of our first struggles: is the Lord
coming so soon that I need not care too much about the
raising of my children, for they will surely not see
adulthood; or is it possible that He may tarry a bit? We
came to the conclusion that we need to be prepared for
Him to return tomorrow but to train up our children so
that they can train up their children to train up their
children and so on, in order that they all be overcomers
and conquerors of the world through the Faith (I John
5:4-5, Revelation 2 & 3, the message to each church).
So it was not an either/or approach but a both/and.
Anyway, after about 7 of those 14 years we noticed
some discrepancies between the orthodoxy and the orthopraxy
of the saints at this church (between what
they said they believed and what they actually did in
practise). Now, lest I appear harsh and critical, we have
since found that this is a universal and common problem
with all churches and with all believers. But we
were new Christians, newly married, with rose-tinted
glasses and thought all Christians would at least desire
to be consistent if not perfect. We found it isn’t so.
I’d been studying the differences between a consistent
Biblical worldview and a worldview directed by purely
secular or humanistic thought, such as one would find
in the average unbeliever. The disturbing fact was that
many of the brethren at church thought and acted like
humanists…that is, their vocabulary was different than
an unbeliever’s, and they went to church on Sundays,
but much of their everyday lives were indistinguishable
from the way unbelievers thought and acted. By that I
mean their politics were all over the field; their economics
were heavily socialist; they had no problem
about being in debt; their standards of (im)modesty
were not quite the same, but followed at a respectable
5-year distance; virtually anything was allowed in the
name of entertainment on TV (including immorality,
nudity and blasphemy); and apparently the Scriptures
had nothing to say in the areas of law and justice, education,
economics, social welfare or medicine, especially,
I was told, since our taxes to the secular state
took care of all these things. I was shocked at my fellow
believers for holding such ideas, but the fact is, I
too held them and was only becoming aware of how
closely they matched the worldview of secular humanism,
which is anti-Christian to the core. I was shocked,
in other words, at how close my worldview was to rank
unbelievers. Surely the Scriptures call us to something
entirely different. Doesn’t Romans 12:2 say not to be
conformed to this world? Doesn’t James 4:4 say that if
we get into a state of cosy friendship with the world
that we make ourselves an enemy of God? I was worried
and spiritually dissatisfied. I began to seek for a
deeper understanding of the Scriptures.
One day I listened to a tape by an old buzzard with a
terribly dry monotone voice who nonetheless said the
most exciting things I’d ever heard: that Scripture is
God’s word, that God’s word is eternal, that God
(being God) speaks to every area of life. That is, the
Bible is relevant – nay, is essential – to me as a believer
to guide me in all that I do: my politics, my economics,
education, journalism, music, entertainment,
family life, relationships, ethics, philosophy, history,
mathematics, my calling, my vocation. He also
unapologetically proclaimed that Jesus is Lord of all
things, both visible and invisible, and that He and the
Gospel will have total victory over all things in human
history as well as at His return. His bottom line was
that the answer to all problems in the world, both the
macro and the micro, were found in Christ, in His
Word. His wisdom and righteousness and salvation and
redemption are to be made effective on planet earth by
the REGENERATION wrought by the Holy Spirit, in
lives sanctified by living in obedience to the King of
kings, and not, emphatically not, by any REVOLUTION
wrought by man, whether that revolution be by
bullets or by the ballot box. Now this is the kind of
Saviour/God worth worshipping, I reckoned, One Who
really did have the whole world in His hands. And it
matched the Saviour/God I read about all the way from
Genesis to Revelation, Who is active in human history,
raising up and bringing low, and Who always gets the
victory – I Corinthians 15:57-58, II Corinthians 2:14.
This old buzzard was Rousas John Rushdoony of Chalcedon
Institute in California: Calvinist, Reformed,
Post-Millennial, Theonomist, Reconstructionist. I soon
found out that in my church, these were dirty words!
People would back away from you as if you had the
plague if you mentioned them in any tone of voice that
was not dripping with contempt. (After reading Rushdoony’s
monthly publication and listening to his tapes
for 20 years, I have also learned that he is hated and
feared by a number of evangelicals, some of his fellow
Calvinists, also by atheists, New Agers and other assorted
heretics….and that his teachings and writings are
shamelessly misrepresented by people who do not
agree with him.)
As for me and my house, we would go where the Lord
led. For the next seven years we investigated these
things. We did not want to simply go somewhere else
because it was the flavour of the month. We needed to
do what was best, what seemed most consistently Biblical
to us, as far as we could ascertain it. That’s why we
took seven years: I had to know why we would leave
the church we were currently in (if we needed to leave
at all), and we had to know why we would go to whatever
church we ended up going to before we made any
move at all. Seven years of struggle.
In the meantime, listening to Rushdoony, Al Martin,
Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, etc., and
reading the Chalcedon Report, I must say that Christianity,
the Faith, Christ and His Word the Bible
increasingly became the most relevant, exciting and
challenging things in our lives! God’s love became infinitely
deeper and higher and broader. His Grace
was more unbelievably immense. His Mercy toward me
so much more unmerited as to be humanly, logically,
rationally unjustifiable. The richness of the Christian,
Biblical Faith, we learned, was so much more vast and
superior than we’d ever before understood: Christianity
alone is fully able to present a worldview that is comprehensive,
coherent, consistent and complete. And my
sins! Oh, as I read and listened to these preachers listed,
my sins were so much more horrendous, so totally
abominable, and God’s holiness and righteousness
and grace and mercy in redemption were so supremely
fantastic and so utterly and totally undeserved that I
was and am continually driven to the foot of the Cross
for cleansing, for forgiveness. I cannot neglect prayer,
fellowship and the reading/memorising/meditating
upon the Word, for if I do, the world, the flesh and the
devil so resonate with my old nature, that they would
soon have complete sway over me, deceive me and
make me a disgrace to His Name.
Rushdoony also said something that really grabbed me:
that most of us have a “smorgasbord theology”. We
pick and choose according to our personal likes and
dislikes. This is essentially what Eve did in the Garden,
with Adam’s silent assent, the DIY mentality that condemned
all mankind to hell. This was so obviously true
of me and the folks I worshipped with, I determined to
find the opposite to that, whatever it was. At last I discovered
“systematic theology”, one that takes every
line of Scripture seriously, from the opening of Genesis
to the closing of Revelation. It is a theology that believes
that the Scriptures are an organic whole, like the
robe of Christ, woven from top to bottom without
seam. It is one that believes that man shall not live by
bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the
mouth of God, and that includes both the Old and the
New Testaments.
The result of those seven years of research was that we
left the only church family we had ever known and
joined ourselves to a church with a systematic theology,
to a bunch of mostly strangers. We worked our
way through a couple of other big issues by reading
widely on all sides of the arguments. We’d heard it
said that “doctrine divides, but love unites,” and at first
we wondered if we’d fallen victim to that very thing,
for some of our old friends turned cold shoulders to us,
people for whom we still had the greatest of feelings.
We now see that it is having a love for Christ Himself,
for His doctrines in the Bible and for His people that
truly unites.
So please let me encourage you to tackle things of the
Faith that bother you. If Christianity is worth believing
and following, it can stand the hard questions. Do not
be afraid to investigate things that don’t seem right,
even when you can see it could make you unpopular
simply to investigate it. Some of you know what it’s
like: you didn’t want to look into the home education
option for fear that you’d become convinced about it…
and sure enough, you got convicted, started home educating,
it has been costly in terms of friendships and
lifestyle and other plans and dreams that were shelved.
But it’s all been worth it, hasn’t it? ?

From Keystone Magazine

November 2007, Vol. XIII No. 6
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

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post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

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The Excellence of Home Education

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It is time to remember…

The Excellence of Home Education

by Craig Smith
“The homeschool parent who assumes the role of tutor
is providing the best known, longest-tested approach
known to educational history. That is the reason
homeschool children are now welcomed at every
university in the land. Homeschooling produces young
men and women who are literate in the best sense, well
mannered, normal and self-confident. The myth is that
they miss the benefits of “socialization” and
“democracy” in unsafe schools with prejudiced
teachers, unruly crowds and biased lessons. In
contemporary America nobody can escape rubbing
elbows with every race, every ethnic background and
every level of citizen. It is best to have this experience
when one is equipped to discern the difference between
ability and pretense, morality and stupidity,
propinquity and friendship. And when one can defend
what one knows and believes. It is, after all, crucial to
understand and respect differences, but first one must
establish one’s own identity. Education is slow;
socialization is quick.”1
Otto Scott is here using the term “socialization” in its
most exact and precise meaning: being integrated into
the officially sanctioned, officially recognised and
officially supported group. State schools exist to
socialise education in the same way hospitals are there
(in New Zealand at least) to socialise medicine by
bringing it all together into one group under state
control. State schools exist to socialise children’s
character and personality development in the same
way the Ministry of Social Development is there to
socialise community support services by bringing them
together in one large, centrally organised group under
state administration and financed by the state. That is,
the concern about “socialization” in relation to home
education technically means how can we “rebels” dare
to keep the educational, character and personality
development of our children to ourselves where
they’ll be separate from the official group,
different from everyone else? How dare we
deny that our children do not belong to the state,
that we deny the socialist state the opportunity
to inculcate the concepts and experiences of
socialism the state schools provide?
For so many of us, having seen the official state
school version of child socialisation generally
either running riot in the streets or more often
following mindlessly behind the one in front, we relish
the opportunity to develop something more exciting
and varied and service-oriented in our own children.
We tend to dismiss the query about the “socialisation”
of our home educated children as a total non-issue.
But you know, the way the term “socialisation” is used
by most people, it is important. They wonder if our
children’s personalities and characters will be able to
cope with meeting and interacting in a civil way with
others. Most people naturally and automatically
recognise that personality and character development
are definitely more important than academic
education. That’s why it is usually the first question on
their lips.
President Teddy Roosevelt

And that’s because character and personality
development definitely are more important than
academics. I believe it was President Teddy Roosevelt
who said, “If you train a man in mind but not in
morals, you have trained a menace to society.”
Without proper training in morals and values –
unchanging, non-negotiable standards of right and
wrong – then the creature you drill in academic
acumen will be no more than an educated barbarian.
This is especially true if you do as is done so often in
state schools today: run a “values” programme that
ultimately says values are determined pragmatically by
the group: rape, murder and theft are socially and
democratically determined to be undesirable for it is
not how you’d like others to treat you, and in the
exercise of your rights and freedoms you must be
careful not to infringe upon the rights and freedoms of
others.
This is diabolical, straight from the lair of the evil one.
You see, if there are no ultimate standards of right and
wrong for which each and every one of us will be
judged when God wraps it all up on Judgment Day,
then if I can get away with things, I win. If pillage and
murder cause chaos and grief to others, what is that to
me if I profit from the pillage and murder by
increasing my property and reducing my competition
and/or adversaries? If these evils are not ultimately,
unchangeably and always wrong, and if I am not going
to suffer for committing them unless I get caught…
well, I am arrogant enough to reckon I can easily get
away without being caught. And because I stand to
gain so much easy wealth and/or perverted pleasure, it
is worth the gamble. In fact since getting caught means
I’ll suddenly have the most expensive 24-hour-a-day
security looking after my physical protection, free
housing, clothing and food as well as access to
education and entertainment for only a few years
before being back out in society, the gamble starts to
take on a compelling and tempting logic. If
you add to this the typical evolutionary
philosophy that there is no meaning to life
and existence apart from whatever meaning
you care to impose upon it, then existence in
society as part of a traditional family; as part
of a hedonistic, drug-soaked gang; or as a
maximum-security prisoner all hold the same
ultimate value and worth: nil, apart from
whatever value or purpose I assign to it.
We see from the breakdown of discipline in schools,
youth crime and suicide rates, rising crime and divorce
and drug and alcohol abuse that more and more folks
are coming to precisely this conclusion.
Not so Christian home educators. We do not see life as
circular or cyclic, like the buzzard circling over
roadkill or the flow of sewage down the tubes. Life is
linear, starting with God creating it all in Genesis
Chapter one; progressing through our personal
conceptions and births; being born anew by God’s
Spirit at conversion; being set upon the straight and
narrow by faith in Jesus Christ, His Works for us and
His Word; doing all we do in this life for God’s glory
since we are appointed as ambassadors for Christ in
the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; and
arriving Home to be with Him forever and ever. This is
progressive, improving, onwards and upwards:
“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to
what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize
of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” (Philippians
3:13-14, RSV). We know we have total victory,
because we’ve had a sneak peek at the end of the
Book, and the vanquishing of the foes and the victory
celebrations are even better than we imagined! We are
emboldened to have a go, even when we feel far from
qualified or up to the task, because our Commander in
Chief says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My
power is made perfect in weakness,” (II Corinthians
12:9, RSV). We are not afraid to make mistakes
because He Who knows the hearts of men says we “are
not under law but under grace,” (Romans 6:14, RSV).
We do not make excuses that our puny efforts won’t
make any difference at all because the Judge of all the
Universe says, “In the Lord your labour is not in
vain,” (I Corinthians 15:58, RSV). ?

Note:

1. From the foreward of Otto Scott’s Great Christian
Revolution: How Christianity Transformed the World.
The Reformer Library. Windsor, New York 1995.

From Keystone Magazine

September 2007, Vol. XIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

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Feminist Dogma Debunked

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Feminist Dogma Debunked

by Craig Smith
L-R: Craig and Barbara Smith, Kaitlyn 6, Charmagne 20, Zach 25,
Jeremiah 15, Alanson 23, Jedediah 9 and Genevieve 27. Absent: Grace 2
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For years elite opinion has maintained that women are
happier in marriages that represent a union of equals and
where spouses share identical responsibilities in the
workplace and at home. Even as very few couples actually
live this way, a study by two noted University of Virginia
sociologists debunks the feminist spin, finding that women
— even those who espouse egalitarian ideals — are far happier
in marriages that have a traditional division of labor.
Looking at a subsample of 5,000 couples drawn from
the second wave (1992-94) of the National Survey of
Families and Households, Bradford Wilcox and Steven
Nock measured women’s marital happiness, women’s
satisfaction with the emotional attention they receive
from their husbands and the time husbands spend with
their wives against a number of independent variables
associated with various theories of marriage.
Their findings reveal that women are happiest when
they tend to hearth and home and their husbands bring
home the bacon (earning at least 68 percent of family
income). This did not surprise the researchers because
they also found that men who were married to
homemakers are more likely to spend “quality time”
with their wives. These traditional wives also
expressed greater satisfaction with their husbands’
emotional interaction with them.
In contrast, women who aspire to having “companionate”
marriages, thinking “equality” will deliver what they really
desire — the emotional engagement of their husbands —
actually end up spending less time with husbands than
their traditional peers. And these wives are less satisfied
with the understanding they receive from their husbands.
Also contributing to women’s marital happiness is a
dynamic generally missing from egalitarian marriages:
a shared commitment to marriage as a social and
normative institution, where each spouse views
matrimony as a binding commitment that “should never
be ended except under extreme circumstances.” Wives
also reported higher satisfaction with their husbands’
affection and understanding when couples share high
levels of church attendance.1
As we have traveled from Cape Reinga to Bluff (and
fairly large swaths of the USA) over the past 20 years,
talking to hundreds of home educating families as well
as local, state and national home education support
group leaders, a couple of things have become clear: if
dad is alive but not involved, mum is working against
major obstacles. Everything becomes more difficult:
not just the home education endeavours but also the
discipline of the children, getting their cooperation,
maintaining motivation or momentum or consistent
standards, etc. And when dad becomes involved,
exerting his authority (using effective methods, not just
a loud voice and intimidation) as head of the
household, there is an immediate increase in
orderliness and cooperation. And when mum and dad
are both committed to the same vision of training,
educating and discipling their children, working as a
unified team on the same projects, their effectiveness
increases again.
After 28 years of marriage, Barbara and I can say
without a shadow of doubt that it is the commitment to
each other and the children…and the massive amounts
of selfless work which that entails…every bit of it
made possible by the grace of God, that has given us
all more strength of character and satisfaction of life. I
met a heart-breaking loser on our honeymoon, an
emergency dentist in Sydney who was getting married
the next day. When she heard I was on my honeymoon,
she downed tools, pulled up a stool and asked if I ever
had any second thoughts about the marriage. “No
way!” I said. She said she and the boyfriend had been
living together for three years and had decided their
marriage would be based on the understanding that, if
at anytime in the future, one or the other decided –
unilaterally – that the spouse was restricting his or her
character development, the restricted one was free to
leave. I confess that, mindful that she was about to drill
my teeth, I choked back what I really wanted to say
and should have said: that if they wanted to see real
character development they’d commit to each other “til
death do us part.” We all understand that trials and
hardships build character, though we all also
understandably avoid unnecessary trials and hardships.
Great things are achieved through personal and family
disciplines. The Scriptures have been teaching these
things for millennia: “Count it all joy, my brethren,
when you meet various trials, for you know that the
testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let
steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be
perfect and complete, lacking in nothing,” (James 1:2-
4, RSV. See also Romans 5:3-5 & Hebrews 12:3-11).
The effectiveness of every family member being
committed to the same vision can be enhanced by not
letting “good” things stop you from getting your teeth
into the “best” things. Barbara was plowing untold
efforts into the local home education support group.
This is good. Very good. I was giving my all to the
Home Education Foundation. This is also good. Our
daughter Genevieve, having been home educated, was
pursuing a legal career and the big OE. I remember
thinking that the Feminists and other critics could only
have a go at our Christian faith, but not at our division
of labour and individual pursuits and the fact that I –
the head of the household – wasn’t telling them what to
do. A fascinating series of events caused Barbara and
Genevieve to see that their efforts and mine could be
multiplied if we joined forces. Our second daughter
Charmagne was even quicker to jump in and commit
herself to the “Smith Family Corporation” which
includes our calling for each of us to be full time
working for the Home Education Foundation.
Being thick as a brick, I was the last one to see it. I
partly didn’t want to see it. It came into our
conscienceness somewhere along the line that when
Barbara and Genevieve and Charmagne brought their
efforts back home to make them completely available
to what I had been called to do, that we were starting to
match up with the Biblical model of wives being
subject to their husbands (and by implication, to their
husbands’ calling); children obey your parents (and by
implication, their parents’ calling); and husbands, as
head of the wife, love her as Christ loves the Church
and train up the children in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord. Our Lord does not leave us to our own
devices: He gives us the Scriptures and expects us to
do as it says. To love my wife and train my daughters
means in part to give them the directions of how to be
my help-meet and help-meets in training. I had
swallowed feminist poison for so long that it took ages
to see that encouraging my family members to get out
there and “do your own thing” was neglecting my
responsibility to shepherd them, especially when it was
so easy to get them involved in my calling. Since then
I’ve been trying to take up my responsibility as head to
lead, to provide the guidance and direction required for
three full-time workers apart from myself. It is hard
work: neither my mind nor my shoulders are used to
the increased load, and I am still affected by the
feminist poison I’ve ingested for so long. But the
increased cooperation and effectiveness have been
remarkable. And the unity of vision makes not only the
future but each new day exciting…we enjoy getting
out of bed and tackling each and every day, difficulties,
unpleasant duties, challenges and all.
The extra load feels right. I like the idea that I’ve
relieved my wife and daughters from stresses and
responsibilities they don’t need to carry. More things
seem possible now, for I know I can count on this
massive backing of three of the most profoundly
capable and committed people I know: my wife and
daughters. (And the one adult son in NZ comes home
from the RNZAF most weekends to help out as well!)
I tell you: this home education movement is the
greatest thing in over 100 years at least. The acid is
decidedly not on the children…it is on us parents. We
are forced to get our act together, a very painful but a
very good thing. It is also the best self-improvement
programme you will ever enroll in. Not only does the
acid burn away the junk, you are way outside the box
as a home educator, if not exactly shunned by others
then at least treated to the raised eyebrows and the
pursed lips. But once outside the box, and once you
learn to ignore the negativity of others, you start
looking at other cultural “sacred cows” and are just not
as likely any more to swallow what the feminists and
homosexuals and Marxists and media moguls and other
assorted special interest groups tell you. Indeed, we’ve
started believing what we’ve confessed for years —
that the Bible is our faithful guide through life — by
actually doing what it says and conforming to the
patterns of what it says are the norms. We love it! ?
Notes:
1.W. Bradford Wilcox and Steven L. Nock, “What’s Love Got to Do
With It? Equality, Equity, Commitment, and Women’s Marital
Equality,” Social Forces 84, (March 2006), as quoted in The
Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, World
Congress of Families: Family Update Online, Vol. 8, Issue 1, 2
Jan 07.

From Keystone Magazine

September 2007, Vol. XIII No. 5
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order a subscription to Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100