Fact or Feeling

But these men mock and curse at anything they do not understand,
and like animals, they do whatever they feel like, thereby ruining
their souls. –Jude 10 (TLB)

Two of the priorities of Christian home education is to 1) help our children understand they are sinners in need of a Savior, who is Christ alone, and 2) prepare our children to live in a post-Christian world. This goes far past academic training and equips them to understand their culture. As the sons of Issachar were, so should our children be, “understanding of the times.” (1 Chronicles 12:32) Presently, society is employing numerous “cognitive distortions” that cause them to believe and propagate exaggerations if not outright lies, so says the writers of The Coddling of the American Minds. One such distortion is emotional reasoning or, in laymen’s terms, following feelings over facts.

This is manifesting in young adults by escalating good ole-fashioned disagreements to personal, violent attacks. In other words, if you say something that hurts my feelings—even if it is over a secondary political or social issue—I feel you are attacking me, so I have the right to defend myself by attacking you physically. This is much of the cause of the riots that have taken place over the last few years. The result is that people are now very careful about sharing their opinions in public to the point they are sacrificing their First Amendment Rights. This is especially true on college campuses where people are cancelled when saying the politically incorrect thing.

Now more than ever it is important to teach our children how to think. They cannot wear their feelings on their coat sleeves, coming undone when someone makes them uncomfortable. Many parents think of learning as simply regurgitation of facts, but it is much more than that. One way to teach thinking skills is to have a discussion around the meal table, asking one child to share why abortion should be outlawed and another sharing why it should be legal. Work through the arguments from a biblical point of view as well as a logical or intellectually consistent point of view, always showing graciousness with our speech. This will encourage our children to be more thought out as well as being more aware of those who disagree with them. You could do the same for gun control, the legalization of marijuana, whether or not a child should be allowed to transition before the age of 18, or any other hot topic buttons (age appropriate, of course).

These are the things our children will be dealing with in their generation. We cannot afford to stick our head in the sand. They may even struggle personally with an issue and are not thinking in a biblical, factual framework but rather in emotional terms, going by feelings instead of scripture and thus ruining their souls. It is so easy to content ourselves as parents when our children parrot back our prescribed, canned answers, but if they don’t own it, they will be persuaded by others after they leave the house. We are seeing this more and more in the homeschooling community.

Our children must not be threatened by the untruths in our culture. Furthermore, they are going to have to learn to live uncomfortably in the culture. Third, they must not be governed by their feelings but live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). The result will be a fear of the Lord that gives them a strong confidence (Proverbs 14:26) as well as the ability to be a light in a very, very dark society.