First, my wife educates our children at home.
Second, the faddish curricula denounced by the author in her post below are indeed poisonous.
Third, something is extremely wrong with the Bible-believing Protestant outlook in the United States when Voddie Bauchman becomes an expert to anyone about anything (then again, he didn’t invent the idea of spanking little kids constantly for each minor infraction).
While Ed Stetzer and others try to revitalize churches in the U.S. through studious engagement with missiology and evangelism, they remain silent about the plethora, the hoards, the multitudes galvanized by dangerous kooks. It takes a certain amount of brainwashing, “groupthink,” or “social proof” for the galvanized multitudes to exist, but meanwhile, outsiders look at the child-rearing beliefs propagated by the dangerous kooks and intuitively know those beliefs are horribly misguided.
Let me be crystal clear: I’m not equating Stetzer and Bauchman.
But I’m not sure how Stetzer and his well-intentioned followers will distance themselves from people like Bauchman. Apparently, on the surface level, in the sense of daily language, the former believes nearly the same theology and doctrine as the latter.
I doubt there will be much success for Stetzer and his cohorts when “Christian” means everything from child abuse to self-help tips, and when the Bible can say anything, when any slender biblical phrase becomes an adequate foundation for a crazy interpretation — which sounds like a caricature of Freudian literary interpretation! Bauchman, Freudian literary critic — who knew? (Be sure to read the accompanying post below.)
The message of Christianity cannot be “spank your kids a lot, for every infraction.”
Also, consider: Maybe Stetzer would have more help today if Christian adults hadn’t years ago wrecked their children by following egotistical, over-confident men with Bibles and a smug sophomore’s ability to assemble proof from a text.
CAN YOU BUILD A MOVEMENT THAT CONSTANTLY POISONS ITSELF?
No — but don’t stop believin’.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Julie Anne Smith’s blog Spiritual Sounding Board. It was originally published on June 17, 2013.
One of the traps that we got ourselves caught in was looking to religious leaders for guidance on how to raise our children. It’s ok to seek guidance, but we didn’t always check what we learned with scripture. We read a lot of books and went to parenting seminars/classes over the years: Train Up A Child, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, Titus2.com, Ezzo’s Growing Kids God’s Way, etc.
We weren’t the only ones. Some of these books/classes were trendy and many churches across the states would jump on the bandwagon. During the mid 1990s, I spent time visiting homeschool forums online and I’d hear of new parenting books/programs popping up…
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