Why Homeschooled Kids Go Woke

Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. This is a short episode. I do encourage you, my first announcement before we get into it is to go check out on Amazon Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

You can get your copy, as I understand it, and you can then leave a review on Amazon.

I'd really appreciate that. I'm gonna talk more about it later this week, but not today.

So just putting that out there for those who would benefit from it, because I think this is gonna help explain everything that's going on.

Social justice movement, Christianity, why it's a false religion, why it contradicts

Christianity, its ethics, its metaphysics, its epistemology, why it's a different gospel, and I name the names.

Unlike any other book that's out there, I name the names. So I hope that helps everyone out as they're navigating this in their churches and in their lives.

Okay, so here's the question. Here's the question. Why do homeschool kids go woke? Now, I'm gonna read for you.

This is a comment I made on Facebook. This is, I don't know if this has happened before. A Facebook comment has turned into a podcast.

But I thought, you know, this is a question that I think a lot of people have. And the reason is I was actually responding to a thread on Facebook.

Someone had written that homeschool kids, when they go woke, you know, they really go woke.

That kind of thing, you know, conservative Christian homeschool kids. And it was something along those lines.

And so I responded, and someone was asking, why is that? And I've seen that in my own life. Some of the most bitter, angry, hardcore social justice advocates

I know are, came from Christian households, fundamentalist households, conservative households, and many of them were homeschooled.

And why is that? You know, you'd think that'd be the opposite, right? But it seems like the ones that are the most vicious against their parents, or they have an ax to grind with where they came from, with the way they were raised, and they just, they're all hung up on all these things that affected them.

They think, they're conditioned into thinking that, at least now that they're adults. They think that, you know, their parents did something to them.

And then, but then they just get bitter about everything. They want to rip down statues, and America's the problem, and Trump's a bad guy.

But it seems like it's rooted in some kind of a personal bitterness. So here's what I wrote. I'm not exactly sure what the main cause is, but there are a few things

I have noticed. First, the associationalism and legalism associated with fundamentalism seems to transfer quite nicely to social justice.

What do I mean by that? I wrote a chapter in the book, Social Justice Goes to Church on this.

Many of the advocates for social justice in evangelicalism originally came from very conservative households.

Why is that? And many of them were on that fundamentalist side. And because there were a lot of extra biblical rules, you know, like you can't drink alcohol, you can't play cards, you can't go to theaters, these kinds of things, they just swapped it out for another legalistic list, and they never changed their attitude.

So the attitude their parents had, that rigid kind of attitude against these certain things that were deemed as worldly, this very black and white, also way of looking at everything, everything gets pigeonholed into either being, you know, of the devil or of Christ or good or bad.

They were raised in this way of looking at the world that was just black and white. And they never changed it.

They just switched out their law. So now instead of drinking cards, gambling, it's equity, diversity, inclusion, right?

Are the things that you, the highest goods that you must follow. And if you break them, then you're a racist, you're a sexist, you're a bigot, whatever.

So bigotry is the worst thing, lack of inclusion, these kinds of things. And they, but they never changed their fundamental attitude.

They said the same attitude their parents do on that is this black and white way of looking at everything. And this obsession with those things.

You know, oftentimes you see in some fundamentalist circles and I'm using the word, by the way, I should really qualify this.

I'm not against fundamental, I would agree with the fundamentals, right? I'm not saying this in a theological way.

I'm talking about a culture and often this term gets attached to it. So that's why I'm using it. Maybe I shouldn't because the social justice advocates really like to use that term a lot.

But I don't know what else, what other term to use. Really hyper conservative household. I don't know, but that, that, whatever that culture is, you know, you have the image in your head, you know what

I'm talking about. It tends to be very rigid and tends to be obsessed with certain things.

The over -sexualize everything. Sometimes like even the rules at some of these more fundamentalist

Bible colleges can just be super strange. But, you know, I remember I was at,

I won't say where, but I visited a friend who went to, you know, Bible Institute, not a bad one, but I remember

I went up and I hugged her and she like freaked out. And this has happened actually at two different Bible Institutes that I remember I visited people and they were of the opposite gender.

And I just, you know, we're friends with them for a long time. And in New York, and I realized the culture in New York is a little different.

A lot of Italians, a lot of hugs. I know that's not that way in every part of the country, but anyway, we were used to it.

So I gave a little hug and it was just like, you know, we're breaking the rules, get away from me.

Those kinds of things. It's an obsession though, it's sexualizing everything. So the social justice advocates tend to like, everything becomes like oppression, power relationships and stuff.

They do the same kinds of thing. They just switch out the metric they're using to evaluate everything.

So they're already equipped with some of the software, I would say, that can run the program, right?

So you put the social justice CD in, they already have the hardware that's able to run it effectively. Second, kids who haven't really gotten a taste of what the world is like and how cruel it can be have a starry -eyed view of it.

And I think that's part of it too, the sheltering. Kids who are really sheltered and don't know what the world's like tend to not realize how dark a place it can be and how bad it can get.

They haven't been betrayed by secular friends perhaps yet. And so they think, they have just a very, grass is greener on the other side.

View of the world as compared to their family and the little holy huddle or home church or whatever their family had.

And the intentions may have been great. Parents wanted to keep their kids sheltered from the world. But what they ended up doing sometimes when you're not preparing them for the world, when it's just sheltering, no preparation is, when they get out into the world and they're on their own and can make their own decisions, they just reject all of it.

Because they realize, man, some of this stuff isn't as bad as my parents thought. And some of these people are actually nice. Look, I met my neighbor, my roommate or whatever, he says they're homosexual and they seem to be nice.

So I guess everything my parents said wasn't true and they reject it. And so you need to, parents need to prepare their kids for some of these things, think through things, talk through things, gradually expose their kids to things.

Don't just throw them into the deep end and after being sheltered their whole life and not being able to swim, cause they're gonna drown once they get there.

And then third, kids who turn from their conservative upbringing or heralded, let's see,

I think that's a typo. Kids who turn from their conservative upbringing are heralded, there we go, as heroes to the world.

So that's an incentive. So the world likes to prop people up. They're like, oh, you're rejecting your conservative upbringing.

And then they're all, they're attracted to you because they think that you justify their lifestyle. Cause you've been to the other side, you've seen what the people who reject them or reject their lifestyle or reject their sin live like.

And you're saying that there's nothing to it. So they like that. So you make friends with the world when you say, oh yeah, like I was raised as a

Christian, but I don't, I mean, look, you know, there's nothing to it. Or they were a bunch of bigots or whatever. You just reinforce the justification they have in their minds for their own sin, because they're at least doing better than those fundamentalist

Christians or those conservative Christians. And then fourth, many homeschool family, many homeschool families are separatistic to the point that they do not have a position, positive identity to confer to their children.

A lot of homeschoolers and my parents' generation came out of the Jesus People movement. I've seen this,

I don't think it's everywhere across the board, but a lot of the homeschoolers did come out of this kind of semi -hippie -ish,

I don't know how to describe it exactly, but that's kind of their background. And they rejected social norms, but did not have a rich tradition to draw upon that gave their children something stable to believe in or to identify with.

They defined themselves by their rejection of something else. For true Christians, Christianity is the deepest of identities and hedges against social justice and all other competitors, but no child is born a

Christian. Parents must pass down a family identity, which may also include a cultural identity.

So what am I getting out of there? What I'm saying, and this is probably the most important point, is that kids need something to understand the world by.

They need a solid foundation, they need a basis. And it's not just ideas, they need heroes, they need a culture to draw upon, they need to know their context and their place and who they are and their purpose.

And that's part of it, why God has put them here, and a place to belong and to call home and to have that sense of belonging.

Now, I think if you're in a very conservative household that has basically just rejected the outside world and just doesn't want anything to do with it, but, and I'm talking about the culture, not the world as in 1

John, blessed of the flesh, blessed of the eyes, boastful pride of life, I'm talking about culture.

If you just rejected all of that, and the only thing that matters is this family and our little holy huddle, then you can have somewhat of an identity, but it's going to be hampered,

I think, because it's like nothing else really matters. You're just cutting yourself off from the things that actually naturally help people know their place, traditions, habits, the culture that you live in, the region you live in, the attachments to the things that are around you, the very tangible things.

If you don't have any of that, if it's just, you're still like a two -year -old, even though you're 11, but you're like a two -year -old, so dependent on your parents, and your parents are the only thing in your world, and you're not involved in other things at all, then

I think, I've seen this so many times, there's just kind of not a stable identity there for whatever reason, and when your parents aren't around, it's like your whole world's gone, and now you gotta swim out on the open sea and figure it out for yourself, and you will find a different identity.

I think one of the things that helped me is in my family, we did have a very big sense of who we were as Americans, as Harris's, our family was into history, so we went to a lot of historical places like battlefields and stuff like that, we were involved in sports,

I was involved in music and band, I was involved in Boy Scouts, very involved in church, involved with my neighbors, just kind of knew my way around, talked to the other family members, and had a lot of jobs, even

I think my first job, I was 15 at a farm down the road, and so that really helped as well, just applying the things that I had learned, the convictions that I had, thinking through things, and with my parents there to help coach me, rather than just going from kind of like a two -year -old complete dependency to then trying to make it out in the dangerous world there is out there, so hopefully that helps explain, this is just some off -the -top -of -my -head ideas that I have for why some kids go hard woke when they're from these conservative, more fundamentalist or homeschool families.

I think the antidote is really just what I said, is to build a strong family identity, cultural identity, identify the good things, the true and valuable things you can in your culture, and then confer those to your children, obviously

Christianity is a big part of that, but if they're not a Christian yet, it has to remain in the culture and in your family, hey, we follow

Jesus in this family, we have this identity and we really want you to come to know the

Lord too, but that's something that only you can, that's between you and God, the family can't make you a Christian, and so some,

I think homeschool families that are Christian, it's like everything is just Christianity, it's the only thing that matters, and that's not the only thing, there are things

God created that, we wear many hats, there are many things that give us a context and a place and identity that aren't just our faith, and our faith is very important,

I'm not minimizing that at all, but I'm saying that if that's all you have and your kid doesn't become saved, then at least, or not until later in life or something, and they've rejected

Christianity, then they've rejected everything, they don't have, it's like they have to walk away from the family, the family's only wrapped up in Christianity and that's it, and they need to know that there's a place there for them, a shelter from the cold outside, but that there's a little more to it, and what else, so I think that helps,

I think obviously coaching kids, preparing them for these things, having discussions, getting involved, and that's a hard discerning balance, how involved should they be where they might have some bad influences, and then, but they need to know about some of those influences so that you can navigate them, so that there is a balance there and you can only assess that based on the individual child,

I think. Those things should help, they should help, but there is no silver bullet, and sometimes a kid goes woke and goes bitter and you've done everything you can, and so I'm not blaming any parents in particular, but I'm just noticing some trends, so hopefully that was helpful, again,

Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, go to Amazon, or I think Barnes and Noble, wherever books are sold, you can probably get it on a lot of different websites, check it out, leave it a rating if you would,