Soiled by sin I am a Mark Driscoll, a Bob Coy, a Peter, an Adam, a David. What do I and these men have in common? We are all men created in the Image of God, yet we don’t want to obey and follow him by nature. Adam may have started this sin thing (or maybe it was Satan), but we definitely are keeping up with Adam in his absence. Stained by sin in Adam, we are not just sinners because of his sin, we are sinners because of our own sin too. Yet, I and all these men alike have tasted of the heavenly blessing in Christ, heard the Gospel preached, professed faith, and have responded in obedience to His Word, so why do we still fail? Besides the theologically accurate, “because we still are in sinful bodies” it is also because practically we take the Gospel for granted, ignore the means of Grace that Sanctify us, love the world too much, and ultimately because we don’t have the accountability of the Word being preached to us, by others and ourselves, quite often enough. Other voices and messages often take up the airwaves of communication and distract us from the most important message in the Gospel, yet not all these messages are bad just distractions.

Most recently Mark Driscoll reminds us of the false belief in our Christian Culture: that Pastors are more mature, don’t need to be pastored, don’t need to be shepherded, don’t need accountability, don’t need to be submitted to others who will call them on their sin, and are better serving God when their external fruit is magnificently evident to all. Every pastor (and Christian) should read Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Calling-Confronting-Challenges-Pastoral/dp/1433535823 as he explains many of the reasons why we as Christians fail and why so many pastors struggle with sins in-spite of our placing of them on a pedestal, and the most scary thing is most pastors believe their own press, and the result is the list of men I provided.

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To begin my thoughts on this subject I must first make it clear that I myself am a product of homeschooling, and a fan of it as well. In spite of these facts about myself I do believe there are some problems inside the world of homeschooling. The concern or issue I am going to discuss today is the one regarding homeschooling parents unspoken or often spoken distrust of educated and credentialed teachers. Throughout this post it will be tempting to discuss the much larger topic of education in our culture but I will resist for the sake of brevity.

I have begun to notice a norm among people who homeschool their children, or those who wish they did but currently are unable, they distrust credentialed and experienced teachers. Most often this distrust isn’t explicit or verbal, but is subtle and unspoken. What I mean by unspoken is simply what goes unsaid, or specifically unasked. There is no way a homeschooling parent, unless they have been trained, really know that much about the job of educating children, and yet these same parents do not turn towards trained teachers for assistance and advice but other untrained homeschooling parents. Without meaning to come across offensively, it simply seems to be a situation of ignorance breeding ignorance. In other words I could liken it to untrained volunteer firemen asking other untrained (but more experienced) volunteer firemen how to fight a fire and not the trained (and experienced) fireman standing right next to him, quite preposterous isn’t it. But this sort of things happens every day, a homeschooling parent asking the advice of another homeschooling parent right in front of a credentialed and experienced teacher, without any consideration as to what input the credentialed teacher might have. A side note comment on how this might possibly stem from our current social idea that our own experiences are more true and valid than the experiences of the group, but I digress that point for another time.

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