In 1991, my seventeen-year-old self had just been asked to give up music, jeans (or any clothing that showed too much of my skin), and dating. We had joined the Advanced Training Institute as a family, a homeschooling Protestant, patriarchal, Quiverfull cult, and were at their annual homeschooling conference held in Knoxville, Tennessee during a hot July. By this time we were winding down our week. Surely they wouldn’t ask for anything else, right?
Uh, no.
The next speaker talked about the high places of education. I knew exactly what she was aiming for.
In conservative Christian circles, the answer to the “college question” is Christian colleges. But Christian colleges cost money and a lot of families just don’t have that kind of money (especially if it’s a one-income, mom stays home household, with a lot of kids to boot). I have NO issues with these families at all. I was raised in one. My very dear friends are raising their families this way. Nothing wrong with it.
I admire the move to try to get graduating seniors into Christian colleges. I also admire Christian teens who willingly go to the local community college because there is no money for anything else or enroll in the state university because they want to take part in the academic programs (or who are so incredibly smart, they nail scholarships!). I now realize that no “one size fits all”; there are different “right ways” for every single family.
But to say it’s a sin to go to college at all? I’m sorry, that’s just a load of crap.
But it made sense at the time. These “high places” of education, where incoming students were forced to learn (<cough> brainwashed into) a litany of subjects in order to have “knowledge” when (this dainty, gray-haired female speaker reminded us) all your children really need is “wisdom.” She had piercing eyes and the most flatly toned voice I’d ever heard in my life. When I hear her name now, I immediately feel sleepy! But her talk was the start of many years of believing that we could vault ourselves into a life skill (job) simply by having character. Doesn’t that sound great?
It sure did.
Suddenly, all the fears my parents had about me going off to college and losing my faith in a science class where they taught evolution came into play. And this is a serious fear. In the midst of a massive global discussion now all around our “warming earth” (just read the ongoing fight over last week’s Climategate), how do students who believe in Genesis sit in a class and survive? We heard horror stories about professors who openly mocked creationists. Now the move toward Intelligent Design gathers even more fury from the scientific community. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. The ultimate goal for a college education (we thought) was to strip students of any belief in God whatsoever.
Maybe it still is. I don’t know. (I never went to college!) This woman who spoke of these educational high places scared us all so badly that I immediately removed any ideas of college from my mind. Viola! I was cleared for take-off into character and “wisdom.”
Oh boy. This set me on a path that would effectively shred my high school and college friendships, my life goals, my hopes for my future until I had nothing. No goals, no dreams, nothing.
I watched as friends went off to school (I helped some of them move into their dorms that fall), while I hid safe and sound in my part-time job selling life insurance. Thank goodness I had taken typing classes in high school. Turns out there ARE some things a person must learn aside from “wisdom” or “character” in order to land a job.
And I judged. Oh was I good at that. I spent the next ten years judging everyone else for their life decisions. When all along I sat there scared to death to enroll in college classes or to read books that disagreed with my life decisions. It was in 2001 that I started to inhale every book I could find about oceanography, thinking that perhaps in all those years spent only reading literature classics and “approved” spiritual biographies my brain may have started to stagnate. And I loved the ocean. I would regal my family with information about plate tectonics, the first glimpse of the bottom of the ocean (the 1960 Pickard expedition to the Marianas Trench) and the sole fish with one eye in a part of the planet where there was absolutely no light.
I marveled at how Pickard pointed out the fish to his companion remarking that perhaps the fish was there just because God liked it. My heart swelled. And then my brow furrowed. A scientist that believed in God? But that was impossible! All science hated God. I started reading everything I could about the creation/evolution debate, researched the early rumblings of Intelligent Design, picked up books on physics (The Idiot’s Guide to Einstein; truly the best named book title in history!), and began to wipe away my ill-placed prejudices. My religious high places.
What? I had created my own high places? Yes. I had believed (foolishly) that there was no place in science for a Christian. That there was no place in higher education for Christians. The realization that I had placed these things higher than my faith struck me to the core.
It didn’t take much for the scales to fall off my eyes. By this time my siblings were in community college and most of my fellow ATI students realized that to get jobs and to actually support families one had to have some sort of education and training. I got word of friend after friend going to college (no small feat when you’re in your late twenties or early thirties; eighteen is the age to cram for college finals, not thirty-five; ask any of us).
College isn’t a “high place” for everyone, but it also isn’t a place for “no one” either. What we failed to see at the time was that we didn’t have to trust others’ experiences; we could trust God. We could trust that He speaks to us, if we’re willing to listen.
{ 4 comments }
Brilliant, Trish! It has taken a long time to root out “fear” as being the basis for my decision making rather than a sound mind and love. I just had to LAUGH at the “flatly toned voice!”
That means a lot, Sheree! I think we’ve all come a long way and learned a valuable lesson: your mileage may vary!
Seriously, the woman put me to sleep! I remember jerking myself awake countless times. I think it was the exhaustion of those days. Remember, when we didn’t actually ever rest?
Thank you for posting your memoir. I hope you will continue. Though I was not as heavily involved in IBLP (and not at all in ATI) I can relate to many of your posts.
I always hated the argument that science debunks God. If anything learning more about ourselves and our environment strengthens the belief that a divine creator made everything and that it didn’t just happen by chance. I went to a Christian college, BYU, and while the beliefs are more liberal than the ones held by the members of ATI, I was able to receive a wonderful education in a scientific field and my testimony of Christ never faltered. Limiting the potential of children is more of a sin than college.
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