Disclaimer: Any posts I write based on education are simply there out of context to our lives. I am not putting down other models, as I love and respect many of our friends who do things differently (and very well). We take our academics year-by-year. And with the understanding that our “choice” may change from year to year. But I DO hope to shed light on “another way”, and one which can be viewed at times with perhaps undue suspicion.
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This afternoon is audition day for Anna’s solo. And so I began the morning with loads of laundry piled up from the weekend….and playing through sheet music.
Emma was entirely upset with me, as she was trying her best to concentrate on Dora Super-Babies. It was not happening for her, and the background noise rattled her inside-out and she kept hollering: “I can’t hear Mama!” Bless her soul, her life-concerns are so small.

I had rifled through the many. many boxes my parents store in our basement. They believe these boxes are safer and in good hands as they live downstairs. But we did have a broken pipe burst, shooting sewage through the box-room. And we did have to towel off a few things, books included. I’m just saying these two things happened, and you can draw your own conclusions.
Richard’s Wurmbrand’s book was sitting on top of the pile. Tortured for Christ. Isn’t that the most ominous title of a book ever? I have long desired to page through this particular writing, but my heart has always been too weak to do so. I hate hearing bad news. Or dwelling on suffering that is beyond my control.
Wurmbrand lived through the Stalinist occupation of Russia. As Communism extended itself through the country, many Christians and even Orthodox Russians were locked up- because they veered from the choke-hold of extreme socialism. Collectivism and such ideology flies in the face of protestantism and its emphasis on freedom of thought and enterprise. “We are all the same and need to think and live the same. And own the same things”. It is oppression to the nth degree, stripping down until all are alike. So it is no wonder these out-spoken and bold Christians were seen as threatening, as they voiced dissent.
Many kids from Christian homes were made to walk through Communist schools.

As rampant and man-centered thought took over Russia, Christian parents were forced to either send their children to school or to hide their children away. Circumstances differed, and so some chose the former, some the latter. Tough choices were made, but God gave discernment to families based on prayer and individual lifestyle. My interest was heightened by Wurmbrand’s remarks on those who pushed through a very fallen, God-less educational system.
They survived it. They were subjected to systematic and conflicting thought, and as they emerged, here is what he says:
“During this work we had the joy of meeting brethren from the Underground Church in Russia and hearing about their experiences. First of all, we saw in them the makings of great saints. They had passed through so many years of Communist indoctrination. But just as a fish lives in the salty waters and keeps its meat sweet, they passed through the Communist schools and universities but had kept their souls clean and pure in Christ. These Russian Christians had such beautiful souls!”
After graduating, many of these believers, went on to further the work of the Underground Church in Russia, using their children as a means of sharing the Gospel with friends and teachers. My heart gave a little skip at this thought: Believing so much in freedom in Christ that I would risk my children to gain it? That I would care so much about people and their eternity, that I would place my security and those I would die to protect, in harm’s way, because it was so worth it to me?

I am not there yet: I know this because of how I was inwardly yelling at parents to “Hide them (their kids) away!”.
I pray boldness for my own children. I pray that they will have more compassionate and bold hearts than Pat and I have.
I do not always agree with what they are taught. I am not the school district’s biggest fan of Drug Awareness for 6 year-olds. I am also not sure that children should have much energy committed to sex ed. when they are young. Hello, they’ll find out as surely as sparks fly upward! But, this is the world they live in. These are their peers. These are the adults they will be friends with. This is their context now and for the rest of their lives. It is not how I would like it if I were to re-invent the world, but 2010 is the fallen model I must work with.
We will trust God’s promise that “there is nothing new under the sun”: nothing seen now has not been experienced before. And God’s Word promises a lot. It says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever“. So the God who saved and sanctified two generations ago, is the same God alive and well today. This is my promise and my prayer. Nothing has not existed before. And nothing surprises God: He has seen it all.
And so I pray that no matter how we educate, what environment we are in, that when our children have completed their time in school,we will be able to say: They have such beautiful souls!”