This question of daughters seems especially difficult in today's context, all the more when you make something of a stand and yet no one else is doing so in your local congregation. In fact, not only will your daughters grow frustrated by all the 'exciting' things the other young women are doing, the other parents are likely to start raising eyebrows at you when your daughters (and perhaps your sons) aren't attending college and moving out. Once again, these assumptions are more about status and middle class respectability than anything else. For them, it's embarrassing to have kids not going to college – there's almost an unspoken assumption that you've failed and they're too undisciplined, dumb, or otherwise incapable of getting through a university programme.
Actually as an aside one of my sons is in college now and my
wife and I are both reeling at how badly the classroom and educational experience
has degenerated. I'm not talking about 'woke' stuff of which he's encountered
almost nothing, but simply the ignorance of these kids that probably shouldn't
have graduated high school and a generation ago would not have even been
considered for college. But it's not about education anymore. It's about money
and profits – yes, there are profits in the non-profit world too. In other
words it's yet another racket and the sad part is many in the administration as
well as the actual teachers will admit it. Frankly, I'm not sure how some of
these people can retain these jobs with any degree of integrity. Everyone is
caught in traps it would seem.
We have marveled over the years as we have observed families
we've known who homeschooled their children in order to protect them and raise
them in the faith and then once they hit adulthood these same parents send them
off with their blessings to join the military, go work in the finance sector,
the insurance industry, and a host of other dubious and sometimes blatantly
un-Christian fields of business. That's what it was all for? That was the
antithesis? – so your daughter could go work for a bank, or sit and smile at
some desk in an insurance office even while she works for an industry based on
usury, manipulation, and extortion? In the American system a threat is not a
threat if it's lawful, and yet is that an application of Christian ethics? Regardless
of whether or not it's 'legal', it's still extortion, pure and simple. I've
been on the receiving end of that and I resent it and it sickens me to think
that the Allstate woman that was threatening me (and by implication my family
and our entire livelihood) may have been a good Evangelical mom, with her kids
in daycare, saving up for their next Caribbean cruise.
Was it a threat of violence? Well, when someone says pay up
or we're going to get a piece of paper from a court and then if you don't obey
its dictates, men with badges and guns will show up and take your possessions
and force you out of your home – yeah, that's violence in my book. Obviously it
doesn't come to that in most cases because people don't let it. But the reason
they don't is because the threat is there. So what did I do? Well, I got my
insurance company involved and since I wasn't at fault, they negotiated a
settlement which was still held against me on my record with the company. They
admitted I wasn't at fault but it was cheaper for them to just pay out $10,000
and make Allstate go away. It was just a shakedown – Allstate looking to lessen
the amount they had to pay out to their policy holder. It happens every day. Is
that justice? Is that honesty? I was outraged at Allstate and my own company
but what can I do? The point is this. It's all rotten filth associated with
Caesar's coin and the business of Babylon. None of it is Christian. I deal with
them because I have to in order to work. But these industries are slime and I
take great exception to the idea that somehow the people involved (always
smiling) are in Church on Sunday morning. Even Don Corleone smiles sometimes.
On this point and so many others, the Christian community
adopts the lexicon, philosophy, and ethics of the world and yet through the
sleight-of-hand known as worldview teaching, they can re-package it as
Christian. And besides, there are always egregious examples of abuse that you
can use by way of a self-justification. We're not as bad as them, therefore we
must be okay.
Leaving aside New Testament opposition to binding oneself to
an inherently un-Christian organisation like the military, I have often been
left stupefied by such choices. The military is a veritable cesspool, a moral void.
In all my life I have never encountered a more wretched and immoral group of
people given over to debauchery and sin. You wanted to protect your son or
daughter by homeschooling them or sending them to a Christian school – then you
send them off to the military? The folly is almost beyond conception. I think
of one couple I know that did this – neither having ever been part of the
military. I suppose one could excuse their brainwashed ignorance. But then I
can think of another situation, one in which a Reformed elder who spent a career
as a Marine then encouraged his son to do the same? Let's just say, that's not
an elder I can respect, let alone submit to in the context of the Church.
Instead of being lauded and elevated, the man needs to be rebuked and sent back
to doctrinal and ethical kindergarten.
I've mentioned it more than once but there is a reigning
schizophrenia in Reformed circles about these questions and in particular with
reference to daughters – the Evangelicals on the other hand don't really
struggle with this at all. In the Reformed world there are strong middle class
assumptions and thus you want your daughters to have a college education – it
would be too embarrassing otherwise. And yet once they pursue that education,
if not married, they immediately launch into careers. In the more conservative
circles there is then the assumption that they will stay home or curtail their
career once children come along – especially if the plan is to homeschool. And
yet some of these women can't quite let the career go and I've seen it generate
tensions in marriage and so forth. And then of course there are the financial
issues and pressures. For most people it's hard to live a middle class life
(let alone an upper middle class one) with only one income.
In the larger Evangelical sphere they wrestle with these
questions, not in Biblical terms (which are not even on the table) but in
cultural and therapeutic terms – women wrestling with their value, worth, and
identity, dealing with depression and so forth. The embrace of the Magisterial
Reformation's doctrine of Vocation has attempted to arrest this, but given it
is unscriptural, one wonders how much success it really has.
The Reformed (broadly speaking) seem to have some notion of
domesticity but it's really rooted more in tradition than an application of
what the New Testament is saying about the Christian home and family economy.
The Evangelicals as with most things aren't interested in following the New
Testament. They want to factor it in, and have it function as a component
within the framework of argument and consideration, but on more points than can
be counted they are quick to set it aside. More often than not they don't even
bother to appeal to the New Testament when making their points, or do so only
in passing. Their real drive is marketing and statistics and so they turn to
the world to affirm and confirm the arguments they would make – which interplay
with Scripture but only in a broad sense.
The fact that some have abused and distorted the New
Testament teaching on these points and fallen into misogyny – while unfortunate,
does not negate the actual message, though many use these distortions as a
means to counter what the apostles teach. And then having rejected the abused
and distorted doctrinal frameworks of some of these groups, they err by
immediately assuming the contrary – in good pendulum-swing fashion.
We have wrestled with all of these questions. We are not
particularly keen on college – my wife does in fact have a college degree
though she has not worked outside the home since the day we were married – and
does not intend to even after our children are all out of the house. That's
another thing we've encountered a lot in recent years – probing and invasive
questions about my wife's activity and day now that the children are grown.
Half in jest, she just says, "Oh, I'm a retired Christian
homeschooler."
I have always stated that I'm more than happy for my sons to
grow up and be garbage collectors (or bin men for those in the UK). It is
honourable work and far more respectable in my book than a loan officer,
insurance agent, or the like. Success to me is Biblical faithfulness, the fact
that my children are all in the faith. That's all that matters. Almost everyone
agrees with me when I say something like that, but few mean it.
College is tied in with common notions of success and many
fields of employment are effectively wed (in a substantial way) to the system
and its evils. There is no way to draw clear lines on this point or develop a
diagnostic tool or method that helps one to delineate which jobs or fields are
moral and acceptable for Christians, and which are not. As I have previously
suggested, these are questions that have to be worked out on an individual
level and within specific contexts. Each situation is different, and there may
even be legitimate differences with reference to the person making the
decision. People's attitudes, desires, and temptations work differently in
different contexts.
That said, there are many who operate under the 'ignorance is
bliss' paradigm and in some cases willingly shut their eyes and refuse to see
the bigger picture regarding what they're involved in. It's easy to always
blame the immorality and corruption on someone else rather than realize that
you're part of it and if you have any integrity (now that you're aware) you
need to act. And it may involve a cost. So it is with all who would follow the Lamb
whithersoever he goeth.