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Dad's Delightful Duty of Doctrinal Discernment
October 1, 2006
Michael Evans
 
Dad’s Delightful Duty of Doctrinal Discernment
The late Francis Shaeffer once said, “Modern man has both feet firmly planted in mid air.”
If this may be rightly said of the human population in general, then it can probably also be said of smaller subsets of the human population…like those who school their children at home.
If there’s one thing I have learned in our years of home education it’s that one can’t say anything about home schoolers that cuts across the board, other than the fact that we are all human beings who have chosen to oversee the education of our children.
Pigeon-holing this group is akin to giving a good and helpful definition of an electron to the common man.
My dictionary tells me that an electron is “a subatomic particle in the lepton family having a rest mass of 9.1066 X 10 -28th grams and a unit negative electric charge of approximately 1.602 X 10-19th coulombs.” Oh, I get it now!
Since that wasn’t much help, I went to the National Science Teachers Association website where I read an article by Bill Robertson who asks, “Are electrons real? Are atoms even real? Fortunately for us, it doesn’t matter whether or not these things are real.” Uh huh…just as I suspected.
Happily, we can be assured that home-schoolers do indeed exist. It matters that we exist. And, we are very real.
However, we are also an amazingly diversified group. Even in this smaller group of home educators who profess to be followers of Christ, there is much diversity.
For example, I don’t expect each person who reads these words to be as I am, a born again five point Calvinist pastor, who is a political conservative who believes that the Greenhouse Effect may be for real, is purposefully non Purpose-Driven, and greatly appreciates the music of both John Denver and Bob Dylan…in that order.
Nor should you expect me to be like you, in all of your own weirdnesses.
But one thing every Christian home-school father must embrace is the fact that he is responsible to be a discerner of doctrine (teachings about God and the Christian life) for his family.
If Lord Acton was correct in saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then surely doctrine also can corrupt and truly bad doctrine can corrupt absolutely.
In I Timothy 4:16, Paul gives his understudy, Timothy, counsel that transects every age and every follower of Christ.
“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (ESV).
False teachers are careless with important biblical doctrines. Good teachers are careful and pay attention, not only to what they themselves teach, but also to what they are being taught.
By being careful and keeping a “close watch” on our doctrine, Paul suggests that God is pleased to use this in His divine plan of bringing salvation to others, including our own children. Dads, we must be discerning!
I was recently reminded of the vast differences that exist even among Christian families that homeschool.
What follows here is not an attempt to discredit a large ministry. Rather, I am attempting to demonstrate, as graciously as possible, what the title of this article suggests.
In a recent Time Magazine article (Sept. 8, 2006 accessible on line), I came across an article that implicated Christian homeschool families as those who are not careful in their doctrine.
The front cover read like this: “Does God Want You To Be Rich?”
It was an article about a family man who lost his job at an Ohio tile factory last October.
This man, his wife and their four preteen boys, (whom the article said are schooled at home) packed up their belongings and moved to a suburb of Houston, Texas so that they could attend Lakewood Church, the largest church in North America, with more than 30,000 in weekly attendance.
Joel Osteen is the pastor and best selling author of the book “Your Best Life Now: Seven Steps to Living Your Full Potential.”
As the article says, “Osteen's relentlessly upbeat television sermons had helped (him) get through the hard times, and now he was expecting the smiling, Texas-twanged 43-year-old to help boost him back toward success.”
Pastor Osteen told our unemployed factory worker that “…one of God's top priorities is to shower blessings on Christians in this lifetime.”
And so, the unemployed worker marched into a car dealership in their new town and demanded to know what the top salesmen made.
He got the job and within four days sold his first vehicle, a Ford F-150 Lariat with leather interior. He comments that many salesmen take two weeks to notch their first sale. So, he spoke positive messages to himself that he was already above average.
Said he, "You can't sell a $40,000-to-$50,000 car with menial thoughts." “I'm on my way to a six-figure income!”
He then goes on to talk of how he plans to buy 25 acres, horses and ponies for the boys, a horse barn, a pond, and “maybe some cattle.”
“I’m dreaming big--because all of heaven is dreaming big.” He continues, "Jesus died for our sins. That was the best gift God could give us," he says. "But we have something else. Because I want to follow Jesus and do what he ordained, God wants to support us. It's Joel Osteen's ministry that told me. Why would an awesome and mighty God want anything less for his children?"
The problem is not with the idea that it is wrong, or in any way inherently sinful for Christians to possess ponds and ponies.
The problems exist when we begin to think and act as if God’s purposes throughout all eternity are to give us everything we want.
The problems exist, when through an unintentional Mephistophelian ploy, innocents are sucked up into a false gospel of psychological soothings, happy-talk and financial fairies.
Perhaps our unemployed factory worker will, in fact, quickly earn a six figure income and provide his family with all the worldly goods he desires.
Then again he may find out tomorrow that he has cancer coursing through 80 percent of his bone marrow as a friend of mine just recently found out.
What then? What does the land of happy talk have to say to a man who finds out that he is terminally ill with cancer?
What does the land of happy talk have to offer the person who lives in a prison of constant physical pain?
What does the land of happy talk have to offer one whose spouse of 25 years died in a farming accident? The answer: Nothing.
The health, wealth and prosperity gospel is one of the most pernicious false teachings in the Christian world today…and trust me, it is all over the world. Discerning fathers will reject such nonsense.
In the land of happy talk, there is never heard a discouraging word. In the land of happy talk, all is well, even if it is not, in fact, all well.
In the land of happy talk and happy thoughts, if we can only visualize whirled peas they will become that very vegetable of disdain.
But Jesus Christ did not live in the land of happy talk. He called the hypocritical Pharisees “fools,” and “whitewashed tombs filled with dead men’s bones.”
According to Matthew 23:15, Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees, “…you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”
He told the Jewish leaders in John Chapter 8, “You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”
In talking about who goes to heaven and who does not, Jesus said, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14).
In Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven, he quotes a Los Angeles Times survey that found “…for every American who believes he’s going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they’re going to Heaven.”
Indeed we do live in the land of happy thoughts. Trouble is, it’s not real. It’s not true.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for positive thinking. But from my vantage point, what makes all the difference in the world is the focus of our spiritual eyes and heart.
Are we focused on ourselves? Or, are we transfixed by the radiant glory of a sovereign and loving God who sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins?
Is our faith in the impenetrable walls of Romans 8:28 where God’s Word says that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose?
Or, is our faith in the actions of men…either our own or another’s? Outside the walls of Romans 8:28 is only fear and despair.
Even inside the walls, there may be unimaginable, seemingly unbearable pain. But even here we can cling to Jesus’ promise that He will never leave or forsake us…that He will be with us even to the end of the age…that He will allow us to rest in the shadows of the Almighty.
Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
There is nothing that can shake that which is real and true and genuine. The land of happy talk endures for a time, but the land of truth is a bulwark forever.
I urge you brothers to stand firm on the terra firma!
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On the Lighter Side:
Party Animal? Our family was playing the game Cranium Turbo Edition on a recent rainy night when 12 year old Benjamin drew a card where he had to act out the character “party animal.” He proceeded to get on all fours and jump around on the living room furniture acting like a fox or some other small animal. He thought that a party animal was an animal that people took to parties for fun. I love it!
Karla said what?
“After all these years, I would think that you would have learned to do a better job of hiding your emotions” (On June 25, 2006 exact quote after 19.5 years of marriage).
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