Are You Glad Your Parents Taught You at Home?

"Nathaniel, are you glad your parents taught you at home?"

Yes, I am glad they did! Dad and Mom gave me some rare and costly gifts. They made hard sacrifices to teach me things which go against the grain of society. I want to show you what my parents gave me.

First, they gave me the outlook of a Biblical world-view. They taught me to see the world the way the Bible sees the world. These are not rose-tinted spectacles through which I look.

My parents also poured into my head facts, which they unabashedly taught from a Christian point of view. I am familiar with science and I can support a Young Earth Creation in a discussion. I won't be fooled by theories which sound tickling-to-the-ear, but aren’t supported by Scripture. I know that America has a Christian heritage, that neither the South nor the North was right, and that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb by hard work and an active imagination. Dad and Mom filled me with at least as many facts as they were taught in government school.

But even more than just teaching me facts, my parents taught me the skills of how to learn, and kindled a burning desire in me to know more. They taught me how to research a subject, how to organize facts in a logical order, and how to apply them to the situation at hand. I wish to be my own priest of knowledge and not trust in a class of educated experts to dish out knowledge. It is better, I think, to learn discernment and search out the truth for myself. I will need help along the way, but it is important that I have the ability to discern for myself.

My parents also tried to cultivate some character qualities in me:

I want to be entrepreneur and labor with my own two hands (or with one hand holding a pen). I do not want other people to control what I do. I do not want to wait for my employers to let me reach my goals. I'll take the risks.

I don’t fear being different. My parents were nonconformists, and I hope I am even more radical and nonconformist than they — in the right direction toward the truth. If I know that something is right, the fact that no one else is doing it, or that it will be hard to do, should not daunt me. This is a lesson that is taught throughout history, from the lives of the apostles right down to the Pilgrims. My forefathers braved greater hardships than I can ever understand for the sake of a cause they thought was worthy.

I want to minister to others and share what I have been given – work for a living in a way that will help people.

These things my parents gave me.

But now people come up to me and ask

"So you are out of school. What do you want to do now?"

I used to get embarrassed when people asked me this question. "I don't know, I've been working for my family's business and on a few other things, but I don’t know what I want to do." Now I understand a little more why I felt that way. Life is not a career. I am coming to think of life more as a series of responsibilities which I am challenged to meet, and which I should enjoy watching God work out in me. I think it is all right not to have life all planned out, or a career decided upon by the age of eighteen — or even by age twenty-one! Parents, please don't get upset with me! Maybe this outlook won't impress the grandparents, or give people a good impression. But God, I think, does not care whether I have a career picked out. Rather, whether I am trying to meet the responsibilities He has given me right now.

Still, it is time that I laid out some goals for the future. First, I know some things I do not want to do.

I do not want to go to college.

"What! You don't want to get a college education? Everybody who wants to be anybody goes to college!"

Many scientists, inventors, successful entrepreneurs, respected authors, and honored statesmen, either taught themselves, or learned their skills in a one-on-one apprenticeship. College has been the exception, not the rule. Most of the honored names in history came to be known by hard work, self-discipline and strength of character.

If I am willing to be self-disciplined and teach myself, I believe almost all careers are open to me. Almost every field, from Accounting to Zoology, from Lawyer to Lamplighter, from post-hole-digger to Ph.D., can be learned in books or through the mail, over the Internet or in an apprenticeship.

"But you'll miss the 'college experience'!" Exactly. I cannot look forward to life in a "dorm," rooting loyally for the college team while eating food not even fit for the prodigal son, and franticly studying subjects that have little to do with real life, taught by professors who don't know how to communicate. The University of Iowa, where both Dad and Mom went to college, is close to where we live. We often visit to look something up in the library, or (Dad especially) to comb through the old bookstores. I have a healthy repulsion for the characters I see walking through that place. Even the shops are not normal. Everywhere the most odd ideas are lived out in an immature atmosphere. Right. Missing the "college experience" would be a very good thing!

Until I need a skill that I can only learn in a college, I will only use colleges to look up subjects in their wonderfully big libraries — as I often do.

I also do not want to live the modern American Dream. I don’t want to simply get a job in a factory, earn a good salary, buy a house with a two-car garage and manicured lawn, watch the yearly Super Bowl, and retire to Florida on Social Security. Americans used to dream of the freedom to worship God as their conscience dictated, and by hard work and honest sweat build a country that their great-grandchildren could be proud of.

Here are the things which I do want to do.

I see a goal that is a good goal: my parents, my siblings and I be one color on the chess board, one unit striving toward common goals — that we work with each other's talents and strengths, shortcomings and weaknesses. I don't want each of us running his own separate way — coming together only to keep the household running. I want to be different in an olden way – like families centuries ago.

Another vision I have for the future is this: I want to know and fully understand what I believe about the Bible and the world that is around me. I want to be ready to logically defend what I believe. I want the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively to others what I know. I would like to make a living communicating what I am learning to others. I would like to help build up Christ’s stricken people with knowledge and understanding.

I also have a lot of problems in my character and in my desires which, with God’s help, I need to be solving. I often have trouble seeing through my immediate selfish concerns to a greater vision, and I have trouble focusing my heart so that I can keep doing what is right.

But how will I take these abstract ideas floating-in-the-clouds and bring them down to the mud of everyday life and apply them? I suspect I will be working this out for the rest of my life.

Looking Back

I wrote this article in 1997 when I was twenty-one. Things came together for me that year, and this article helped solidify that process. Looking back now in 2004, I want to thank God for giving me a vision for what He wanted me to do, and today, for showing me how much I’ve grown since when I wrote this article.

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