I was home-schooled by a bohemian, lazaire faire hippy who named her children after flowers. Seriously. When it came to education, she knew no one would care or nurture the spirit of education like she would, foster the agile mind like she could, or take the responsibility of formal education like she should. Ergo, I was taught by a woman whose motto for learning was: Better late than early. Seriously.
Dr. Raymond Moore wrote the book Better Late Than Early and proselytized this doctrine to many homeschool mothers in the early 80s. His belief was that if you let a child naturally and organically fall in love with learning in the later stages of academics, they will not become burned out of the rigors of formal education. Hence, I didn’t learn to read until I was eleven, I didn’t learn my multiplications table until Mr. Turner sat me down in College Preparatory Mathematics 1 when I was fourteen, and never knew the grammar rule i before e, except after c until… well, I still struggle with recieved–uh, received.
All that to say, when Jasmine and I finally learned how to read, we devoured books like we devoured our food (ie voraciously). We loved choose-your-own adventure stories for the simple fact that if you chose to turn to page 36 and didn’t like running from criminals, we could always go back to page 27 and be a spy in Dubai instead [note: I’ve been a control freak since I was a child]. Kevin DeYoung points out that this is fun in adventure books but not in seeking the will of God. It’s like, if I pick the wrong major, marry the wrong person, or wear the wrong color eyeshadow {BOOM!}, I’m running from criminals instead of living in Dubai?!
In case you don’t read Just Do Something, I’m going to pass along Kevin’s five reasons why the conventional way of approaching God’s will is not healthy… and even slightly dishonoring to God.
1. Conventional appraoch to “discovering” God’s will focuses almost all of our attention on nonmoral decisions. The most important issues for God are moral purity, theological fidelity, compassion, joy, our witness, faithfulness, hospitality, love, and faith. These are His big concerns. But we focus on everything else (picking the wrong major, marrying the wrong person, or wearing the wrong eyeshadow color). We spend more time focusing on what God hasn’t mentioned versus what He has mentioned in the bible.
2. Convential approach implies that God is a “sneaky.” The traditional approach of being in God’s will I mentioned yesterday makes God into a tricky little diety who plays hide-and-seek with us.
3. Conventional approach encourages a preoccupation with the future. Our fascination with teh will of God often betrays our lack of trust in God’s promises and provision.
4. Conventional approach undermines personal responsibility, accountability, and initiative. It would be wrong for me to use God’s will as a way to remove my personal responsibility in decison making. “We need to be careful,” says DeYoung, “that we aren’t using God as the trump card in all our decisions.”
5. Conventional approach enslaves us in the chains of hopeless subjectivism. It’s okay to feel a little unsettled about a decision (picking the wrong major, marrying the wrong person, wearing the wrong eyeshadow color), but this doesn’t mean the Lord’s withholding peace about the decision in order to get back at you for a wron
g choice.
g choice.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to repent for picking the wrong major, pray I don’t marry the wrong person, and choose the perfect eyeshadow for work this morning. Why? Well because, I’m Just Doing Something!
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