It has been a difficult year for fans of the TLC’s celebrity Duggar family. The show “19 Kids and Counting” reaches a lot of constituencies. Quiverfull fecundity fans, conservative Evangelicals, Arkansans, debt-avoiding coupon-clippers, and hash-brown casserole fans all alike can find something entertaining in the show. Alongside all of these, the show also has a strong following among homeschoolers—particularly those who reside in the general neighborhood of Tier 2. For the people in this last category (and perhaps no less to the others), the scandals surrounding Josh Duggar can evoke more emotion than just the tsk-tsk of a casual bystander.
As a homeschooling father and a man who has consumed untold hours of the Duggars via Amazon Prime, would you permit me a moment to reflect upon these shameful revelations?
Josh Duggar’s public fall confronts homeschooling parents not only with someone’s bad behavior but also with some good theology that we should all take to heart. If your purpose for homeschooling is to protect your child from the sinful environment of the world, you’ve missed something important. Sin is not an “out there” problem; it’s an “in here” problem. Homeschooling as a strategy to reduce the surface area of temptation for your child ought not to be equated with discipleship. If you think that in homeschooling you have found a solution to the sin problem, then Jesus went to an awful lot of needless trouble. But He didn’t, because homeschooling can never accomplish the inoculation of children against temptation.
Judas Iscariot, after all, was likely the product of homeschooling and private religious schooling. It doesn’t always work.
I think there’s one good reason to homeschool: It’s a way to invest more of yourself into your children. That investment can pay off academically (and usually does). It can also pay off in character, not because you prevented your children from being tempted, but because you invested yourself in training them in good ways to deal with temptation. But it will never wield a scalpel sharp enough to excise the sinful nature out of our children or to hold at bay temptation forever. Homeschooling becomes more or less valuable to the degree that you invest more or less of yourself into your kids.
Truly, for all of us parents (homeschooling or otherwise), we do well to remember that there is such a thing as discipleship, that it is a matter distinct from (although related to) Bible classes or worldview training or MPAA-rating limits. Discipleship is personal, and it must include character formation and training for spiritual warfare (which is what temptation is), or else it is not discipleship.
Perhaps our God, who works even the worst things together into His plan for good, will use this tragic story to remind homeschoolers not to depend upon a false panacea. Perhaps we will all rededicate ourselves anew to the task of discipling our sons and daughters.
Bart, spot on in the final conclusion!
I must admit that home schooling is the best thing we ever did for our son, but was also was a tremendous amount of work when compared to his sister who went to a local public HS. My daughter did great in the public school, but the six years in between her and my son, the public school went straight downhill academically and became a very dangerous place. Homeschooling is fairly mature in Tennessee (probably because the public schools are so bad as a whole), so finding a great HS organization was not very difficult….but, the difficulty is how much time and work it takes….although well worth it!
I must admit I had not heard of Josh Duggar until he hit the news. I sort of new about the family, but never watched the show (I’m not much for television/cable, except to catch up on news and a few sports).
You could not have said anything any clearer than it “is” discipleship that always makes the difference! Sin is everywhere, whether HS or PS. Discipleship is necessary all the time and in every way. With HS we were able to spend much more time with my son in all sorts of educational endeavors. Even had a field trip to Paris, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Rome, Italy. But, spending time and discipleship are keys!!
Good stuff, thx Bart
Good word, Bart. Very true.
I’m thinking we are a Tier 4+ family as our children attended public school once they reached high school age. Currently have two in college (public high school graduates), two in public high school, two elementary age at home.
We are considered oddballs (or heretics) by everyone.
In the last year, I have noticed quite a bit of push back on home schooling, particularly that of the Tier 1 / 2 variety. People are sharing their pain of raising little Pharisees that have wildly different personas away from the public eye.
As a public school graduate myself, I saw this in myself and my peers. I guess that’s the point all home schoolers should take to heart.
I constantly barrage my older kids about where they are in Christ. At the very least I want them to be honest with themselves. Understanding the heart should take precedence over viewing the behavior.
I wish this place had an uber like button – I would press it a million times for your post, Bart!
Great word!
“Discipleship is personal, and it must include character formation and training for spiritual warfare (which is what temptation is), or else it is not discipleship.”
A good word Bart. We should never leave our children solely to the mercy of a discipleship curriculum, as good as some of them may be. As parents, we should never abandon personal mentoring in favor of church curriculum. Training children in the way they should go is our direct responsibility, not only as fathers but as spiritual fathers. Discipleship curriculum should only be used as a supplement to personal spiritual mentoring, parents-to-children. And, indeed, we should instruct our children on spiritual warfare – one of the most neglected elements of discipleship, but absolutely necessary training to equip our children for the battles ahead.
Here’s another lesson: Homeschooling your children to protect them from the evils of the world while simultaneously allowing them to become television celebrities may not be an effective strategy.
There are a lot of great nuggets in there, Bart. And here I thought you were going to talk about the Duggars. In many ways, we all are like the Duggars, and their biggest critics are like them in ways that they won’t often admit.
I feel badly for the Duggar family. The humiliation must be unbearable.
I have never watched an episode of the show, but from what I am told and the show’s general premise, the entire enterprise seems very unhealthy.
I really have no problem at all with people who want to live the way the Duggars purport to live. If friends of mine want to pursue a large family, then I will support them as friends.
I also have no problem with the concept of homeschooling. From a legal standpoint, I am a huge fan. Parents have the right to school their children as they see fit, and homeschoolers have fought some brave legal battles in that regard.
The problem I have is the overt or subtle proclamation that having 19 kids or homeschooling are “biblical” or “more biblical” than other options.
Also, I have a problem with the show’s premise, and the things that I hear from devotees is the idea that what was presented was normal and healthy, and something to be recommended to everyone.
A couple cannot raise 19 children without substantial fiscal resources, and not everyone is going to be on TV. I understand that with the cancelation of the show, the Duggars are struggling financially. This should come as no surprise. Jesus said to count the cost and he told a parable that is famous in that regard. Before a couple embarks to have a family with an unusually large number of children, they should count the cost. There is nothing unbiblical in that. In fact, I believe it is biblical to do so.
Also, a mother and father will have substantial problems truly spending time with 19 children. I have seen situations in large families, often homeschooled, that reinforce this. The oldest children often do well. The younger children suffer because they do not get the energy and investment from the parents that the older children received. They are often cared for by the older children, as surrogate parents. It’s great to have older siblings help and all, but not as stand ins for parents.
Finally, I believe that the show presented a white-washed picture of this family, as most TV shows do. Viewers received a scrubbed presentation of this family. I have even read that there was the “real” kitchen off cameral that was a mess, and a TV kitchen that looked awesome for the show. When Ward and June Cleaver had a spotless house, people knew that was a production for TV, that Hugh Beaumont and Barbara Billingsley were not married, that they did not live in that house etc. With the Duggar show, my belief is that people thought they were actually seeing what raising 19 kids looks like. I am not sure the viewers saw reality, even though it was portrayed as such.
Finally, if I have my timeline correct, it seems that Josh Duggar molested his sisters and a friend either before the show came on the air or during its existence. I am not sure the Christian community has really come to grips with the seriousness of that matter. One of the molested daughters said Josh was a teenage boy who was a little too curious, which is incredibly naïve. Other Christians I see kept emphasizing that “Josh had repented” etc., which when it comes to pedophilia, is also incredibly naïve.
I believe that molesting one’s sister is a serious matter in and of itself, but also that it is not normal behavior for a 15 or 16 year old male. I have known many many families in my years, and I have known and seen a lot of dirty laundry. I have never known of a case personally where a 15 year old son molested the little girls in the home, and a female friend of the family. This is not a 15 year old looking at porn (which is normal). This is a 15 year old molesting his little sisters. This is not normal behavior. I have read that the reason brothers and sisters have no interest in each other sexually is that in normal psychological development something occurs as we grow so that we are not normally interested in our siblings. Something happened in Josh where this did not occur.
I am all for using the Bible to counsel people, but where there is aberrant psychological behavior like this, I believe that professionals should be consulted.
And so we have an odd situation in that home among the children, and yet, the parents have a TV show to proclaim to the world how great their family is.
There is something deeply disturbing about that.
Bart wrote a great piece about the Duggars from a homeschooler’s perspective, and I think that what he said is spot on.
But there are many other things that about that show and what was being promoted that cause problems for me.
Despite what I have said, I am not for piling on the Duggars. I hope they can recover. Josh’s wife should run for the hills, in my opinion. The level of his deception is so pre-planned and intricate that when coupled with child molestation, he is in the best circumstance looking at years of reparative therapy that will be a struggle. Statistics would say that he will struggle with this for years.
But I am for Christians becoming more discerning and not to try and package and promote and replicate oddities that they see on TV that are sold as “biblical” when by the simple application of logic and human experience they are not. Now we have actual data that shows the situation was not “biblical” at all. If we did not have this information, the show would continue portraying many things that were not true.
I recently finished a 17 week study on “Growing Kids God’s Way.” Even though I am well past that part of my life, I found it to be both practical and biblical. The things that it suggests are things that most of us can readily do.
Thanks Bennett, Like you, I am past that stage, but I’m in the grandparent stage and it sounds like this would be useful.