(gentle music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I am excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, I suspect that all of you are now deep into that daily delight of family learning that we were just talking about, and that you are back at it.

Foundations, essentials, challenge students and families working and learning together. And I wanted us to think a little bit as we begin this new year, what is it exactly that we're doing in this homeschooling endeavor? I know we're trying to teach our children to read and to write, to understand what they read, to grasp the facts of history, and understand how to live as godly men and women in the world.

There are academic things that we are practicing and trying to do with their children at home. And then there are character-building things that we are trying to do with our families at home. Today, I really want us to think about the foundations that we're laying with our children, not just foundations as in the foundations curriculum, so what we're doing with our little children, giving them lots of good memory work, things to start building a memory palace, of facts and information, not just that foundation, but the foundation of learning how to think, learning how to put ourselves in somebody else's place, the foundation of learning all that God has for us as he equips us to be his ambassadors in this world that's not our final home, but is where God's planted us for now.

And so we want to look at one of classical conversations, we believe statements, and think about what does it mean for our families, not just in a real philosophical way, which a lot of times is fun to think about, but in very practical ways. Like what does it mean for me as a mom or a dad at home with my child, whether they're five or 10 or 15?

The we believe statement I want us to dive into today is this, we believe that classical education prepares us to accept the responsibilities of Christian freedom. Now, that does sound like a big philosophical topic, and I have got a dear friend with me today hoping that we can dive into this discussion together and that you will enjoy listening along.

Charity Brown, thank you so much for being with us today. - Thank you, Lisa, it's a privilege to be with you again. - Charity works for classical conversation. Charity, tell them what you do for classical conversations. - Well, I work with classical conversations multimedia, and I am the production editor for the Spanish product line that we use internationally.

And she does such an amazing job. I'm in awe of somebody who can think and write and speak a different language and make it so beautiful. And so I appreciate Charity's work as she's very instrumental in helping the curriculum development team pass on the good work that we're doing to other nations.

But Charity is also a homeschooling mom who has graduated one of her children. And so she knows what it is to build not just academic adequacy into her children, but spiritual sensitivity also, equipping them to be God's emissary to a world. So, Charity, one of the things I want to ask you, and this is, I want your honest thoughts about this, what are the responsibilities of Christian freedom?

Like we just talked, I just read you that statement, classical education prepares us to accept the responsibilities of Christian freedom. So what are those responsibilities? - Well, the phrase itself I think is very counter-cultural. - Yeah. - The idea that freedom has responsibilities. When I was in public high school, ninth grade, I believe it was on the back of my English teacher's door, there was a poster and it said, freedom is not doing what you want, it's doing what you ought.

And that just stuck with me over the years. And as I've gotten older, the idea of being able to discern what we ought to be doing, which as Christians, we have two goals, and that is to love God and love others, being able to hone in on that and focus in on how does that look in our daily lives, loving God and loving others, and in obedience to Him, we find freedom.

We find the freedom to please the Lord. And that is such an exciting adventure for all of us. - I really love that. The whole idea of what we ought to do, and that as Christians, what we are called to do is to love God and to love others, and that freedom actually gives us permission to do what we ought to do, but it also calls us to do what we ought to do.

That's really beautifully put, Charity. What kind of responsibilities do you think the Lord puts on us when we come to know Him and we give ourselves to Him as servants, acknowledging Him as our Master, not just as a great God who loves us? - Right, well, the first thing that comes to mind is Ephesians, the very famous passage on Ephesians 2, verses eight through 10.

It says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, "and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God." And so we always start there that our position in Christ, our freedom in Christ is a gift of grace, not a result of works that no one may boast.

We absolutely can do nothing to save ourselves. It is all Him, but I love this next verse because it's often not linked onto the first two. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus," He did this thing in us, "for good works, "which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." And so our response to the grace of God that sets us free is to walk in the good works He has prepared for us, not as a means of salvation in any sense, but as an expression of love to Him.

We often tell our children God's love language is obedience. And that is found, of course, in the passages in John 14 and 15, where Jesus says, "I am doing this thing, I am obeying the fathers, "that the world may see that I love the Father." And so that to me is how Christian freedom is expressed theologically, and our starting point for practical life.

- I love that, obedience, yes, yes. So that's beautiful, and I suspect something that all of us, as we listen to this, all of our listeners are thinking, "Yes, that is what I want to pass on to my children." The grace that God has given us is what we've built our family on, and we want our children to learn that the proper response to grace in love is obedience, and is doing what He calls us to do in the world.

So let me ask you this, how does classical education prepare us to do this thing? - I feel like classical education prepares us to walk in love of God and love of others really well. In a practical sense, loving someone means caring about what they care about. That's at least a part of what love is, and what God cares about more than anything is saving the world and making Himself known.

I've just been recently reading through the Old Testament again with my family, and even in the times when he's pouring out his just wrath on the wicked, he keeps saying, "So the nations will know "that I am the Lord. "So the nations will know that I am the Lord." And his obsession from Genesis to Revelation is to reveal himself, to make himself known to the world, to rescue the lost.

And a classical Christian education allows us to show our children, through great conversations and great books and through the study of Scripture, to show our children the truth. And the truth is, we start out lost. The world is lost, that there is a rescue plan, and the only reason a rescue plan is needed is if someone's in trouble.

And so for me, to be able to classically educate my children at home means inculcating, putting into them the truth, the truth of lostness, the truth of God's great obsession with loving the lost and saving the lost, and how we can join in as we experience, even in education, as we experience these ideas and consider the decisions of others, we too can join in his great mission.

And by doing so, express our love to him. And that is a great, great privilege. - And that is the great commission to go and to make disciples. I love the way you said that it's God's obsession that people come to him. He is obsessed with the idea of giving people the chance to know him and to turn from their own selfish desires to him.

So it's God's obsession. And if we love him, and as we love him, his mission becomes our mission. We become his hands and feet. I really like that. And I think you're right, classical education prepares us to put ourselves in other's shoes, to think other people's thoughts. I'm not saying it opens us up to take on their thought patterns.

We certainly don't want our children to join the thoughts of ungodly people or to follow bad leadership. But I think a classical education that shows you the past and the present and what peoples all over the world and cultures all over the world have struggled with and think about and how they express things, I think it does allow us and our children to understand quote unquote, where people are coming from, or to give us an intersection point.

It's really hard to begin a conversation with somebody that you have nothing in common with. Or if you don't know how to ask good questions, to find your commonality. You don't know how to approach people and you don't know how to be approachable. And that makes it hard. I love it.

In the catalog, this we believe statement is listed in the catalog and I absolutely love this paragraph because it sort of tells what the classical educator's mission is with regards to the responsibilities of Christian freedom. It says, we examine the words, thoughts, and actions of the past and present, of Christians and non-Christians, of neighboring and distant cultures, all in order to stand like Paul and be all things to all people with a ready answer for the hope within us.

And so I think it is very, it's far seeing that the classical education is far seeing in that it knows we need a way to connect with people we want to influence. And so that's really cool. I know that for my girls, I loved the classical education we offered them, taught them how to speak well.

And I was glad about that. It taught them how to make their points clearly and succinctly enough that people didn't lose interest before they got to the end. And it taught them how to shore up all of their arguments with good evidence and moving stories. And that was awesome.

But the other thing it taught them was how to listen, how to truly listen to another's point instead of merely using your time to marshal your next answer. It taught them to listen carefully to somebody else, especially an idea that seemed opposing to their current belief. It taught them to listen and sift through the nuances and the fact and to examine it from all areas.

And that to me is a priceless reason to pursue a classical education. - Right, I agree. I think a couple of things come to mind when you say that we don't expose them to these things so that our children are sponges and they soak up all the pagan ideas of the world.

You know, G.K. Chesterton has a quote that I love and he says, "Don't be so open-minded. "Your brains fall out." I would use that on my children occasionally. But the idea of being able to approach people, cultures, ideas, past and present, and you can even predict, you know, our children love to write fantasy or sci-fi, predict the choices of the future.

All of these things, you know, I think sometimes Christians have been afraid to filter other cultures because they're like, oh no, is that judging? Is that what judging means? Not, you know, don't judge. But the biblical, there is a biblical form of judging where we hold ideas up to the standard of scripture.

And I know when the children and I, when they were very little, I would take them to various cultural events. We went to the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival thingy in town. We went to the Indian Food Festival and Dance. We went to the, and we would have these really fascinating conversations where we would, on the way home, we would say, what did you see in this place?

What did you hear that lines up with the values of scripture? And they would say things like, wow, you know, the Asian cultures, they really put an emphasis on honoring the older people and their families. And we would talk about how that was a reflection of the beauty that God had put in their culture.

And then we would say, and what did you see that didn't line up with the truth of scripture? Well, these people maybe worshiped idols. Is that a search for God? Well, no, Romans tells us that is not a search for God. That is the light has been shown in Romans one, general revelation, and mankind has turned and made a substitute and we are wandering in the dark.

And so to be able to put those things up and say, we have a standard against which we can view culture. And we have a standard against which we can view the decisions of people which all in mass make up a culture and hold them up to scripture and say, and how does this inform how we should live?

I really feel like the exposure to different cultures and different ideas, if a parent can go at it with scripture under their arm and not with a sense of fear that if my child sees this, they may be drawn to this in careful discernment, it can be greatly used to bring your child closer to Christ.

And we found that to be an invaluable exercise as a family. That is such a super practical way to begin these kinds of discussions, even with your, like you said, when your kids are little, we did things like the Greek festival with the food and the dancing. - All the great food.

- Yes, all the great food. And we took them to other types of worship surfaces so that they could see how other cultures and other peoples, I love that, it's very practical. And I love your injunction that afterwards you ask, so you're asking really them to compare, how is this like what the Lord calls us to do?

What was missing from this experience? But that allows them to both develop their own identity as God's own and see how other cultures are worshiping or are thinking or are forming their thoughts. And that's really important. And here's the thing, our children, God willing in the natural order, in his natural order, our children will leave our home and they will go, and they'll still be in our spheres, but not in our immediate orbits.

And we need to prepare them for the world that is outside our home. I don't want it to be a rude awakening for my children. I don't want it to be the shock of a cold shower when they get out there. I want them to have experience and thought about and talked about some of these big differences between the world that God is calling us to and the world that they are surrounded by on a daily basis.

I can remember when my oldest was in high school, I went to talk to a brand new or fairly new classical conversations community whose parents were up in arms that our young high school students, ninth graders, were being exposed to philosophy for the first time and some philosophies of godless, especially in some minds, godless thinkers of past ages.

And so they were really worried about this and had a lot of pushback. And I had taken my daughter with me because I knew these were issues that were gonna come up. And I asked her to come up and she said, "I had a time, what do you want me to say?" And I said, "I'm not telling you what to say.

"I want you to answer the questions that they give you "from your own experience. "And that's what I want you to say." And so when somebody said, "Didn't it make you worry about your faith? "And didn't it make you question "what you had always known about God and about God's plan "for man and about how things came to be "when you were faced with these other thoughts?" And she said, "No, not really." She was really thoughtful.

I didn't tell her the questions ahead of time that I had been given. She said, "No, it made me realize that God wants me "to think big thoughts and that he is strong enough "to stand up under close scrutiny "and that everything I knew about God "and everything I saw of him in the scripture "is an answer for these other philosophies "and these other ways of thinking." And she said, "Those are dead men thinking "and I have a God who's alive who leads me." And at that point I thought, okay, that's the answer.

That's the answer to why we talk about these things with our children while they're still at home with us. So if it is the ideal for us to raise our children to accept the responsibilities of Christian freedom, what should students be doing? What kinds of things are they supposed to ponder or practice, what would you say to that, Charity?

- Well, I think what you just said actually leads me to my answer for that and that would be, I think that students benefit hugely from the introduction to logic that CC gives them prior to their introduction to a lot of the great philosophers. And the reason I say that is because the logic is presented in a Christian way.

And I remember my son, when he had just finished challenge B, I believe it was, and we had gone through formal logic and we were having a family discussion. I said, "So Alex, what do you wanna do when you grow up?" We were having that classic conversation, right? And he said, "Oh, I wanna be a Christian." And I was a little taken aback.

I was like, "That's awesome, why would you say that?" And he said, "Mom, it's the only thing that makes sense." And he had seen logic, that the logic, the study of logic as applied to scripture just proved again, the orderly, beautiful mind of God. And he had that love in his heart before he hit philosophy, right?

And so it's, I think that as the students dig into logic, and I think as they hold scripture up to logic and they find syllogisms in scripture, they see how God's mind is reflected there, it prepares them. And then they can begin to explore these other philosophers and say, "Okay, well, how did this person approach or deviate from the standard of scripture?" So I think really digging into the subjects of logic and philosophy are excellent preparation for freedom.

Because free people, truly free Christian people have to analyze and filter through ideas to be able to make good decisions. And I think those two particular subjects are ideal for preparation. - I love what you said, Charity, about our students being really equipped in the study of logic to then think clearly about philosophy and not be ensnared by that, but be able to really clearly think.

And I love that my older daughter, who also loved Challenge B Logic, she put that to the test. She actually, I found out later in high school and then in college, she would sit with her Bible doing her daily devotions. And especially when she was reading Paul's writings, she would turn the scripture verses into syllogisms and prove for herself that these are valid arguments.

And they are also true arguments. And so it shored up her faith, and that was beautiful. And she learned to think well and think clearly. And that is a great benefit of all of the classical education that our students receive. And we've talked a lot about what we give them in the challenge years, but there are great skills of thinking and listening that our younger students get.

Even in foundations, our little kids learn to listen well when they have to listen to presentations in foundations. They are taught to listen intently and to think of good questions to ask about the content. So from a four and five year old age, they are being trained to be good listeners and good presenters and good thinkers.

And so yes, logic skills and clear thinking skills are great, but so are the skills of asking good questions. And those actually, those kinds of skills of asking good questions are what we want citizens to have. We need our children to grow up and be able to ask good questions of the leaders of our country, of the leaders of their local government.

All of our children are gonna have two jobs. They are gonna be citizens of heaven and citizens of the city and state and country in which they live. And so we are equipping them to be good citizens when we equip them to think clearly, to listen well, and to ask good questions.

That's really important. So that's what our students should do. You've already told us that as parents, one thing that we can do is study our scriptures and know what we believe and why we believe it and to bring those scriptures to bear as we lead our children to study.

Are there other things that you think we as parents should do and think about and practice? - Absolutely. I think the concept of teaching our children to ask good questions is crucial. When you ask a good question, then the truth is revealed, right? If you don't know how to ask good questions and you're just reacting to things, then it gets all muddled.

And so I think teaching our children to ask good questions is really, really important. And I think that's best modeled by a parent. When the child comes up and says, "Well, I think blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," which can be full of foolishness as we know, the first question of saying, "Why do you think that?

What support do you have for that?" And just allowing them to hear good questions being modeled. My husband is an expert in question asking. I would say I'm a novice, but he's done a lot of that. And the other things that come to mind, two things. One is that as parents, we need to give our children freedom gradually.

What I mean by that is when they're four and five, they should not be being asked what type of math curriculum they would like to pursue. They can barely decide not to eat a crayon. So I feel like if you give your children gradual freedom, gradual independence, gradual decisions, instead of giving them too much and having to retract.

So the way this looks like in our house is that every birthday, our children as part of their birthday celebration, get one new privilege and one new responsibility. And by the time they graduate, they have this freedom. I remember when Catherine, a few years ago, like around age 16, 17, 16, 15 maybe, we had been kind of watching her grow and how she chose food.

Like what is a healthy, balanced, nutritious diet? And just kind of watching her ability to balance these things. And so for her birthday, her new freedom was, we were not going to tell her what she could and couldn't eat that she had that freedom. Because the truth is when they leave home, they've got that freedom.

- Absolutely, and some don't know how to use it. - I know, so that was her new freedom because we had watched her and said, "She is ready for this new freedom." And so we didn't police her at the table, right? And so our son came to us and he was two years younger and he said to me, "Mommy, please don't ever give me that freedom.

"I will be, I will be as big as a barn, please don't ever." He saw that freedom coming and said, "I don't have the maturity to handle it." And that has changed as he's gotten older. But the truth is we have gradually given them freedom. And I think parents who are just like, "Well, children need the experience "of making all these decisions for themselves "on whatever level." They often have to retract and we're taking away this device and we're taking away this privilege and the child becomes angry.

And so it's been much more natural and edifying for us to do a gradual freedom, freedom and responsibility growing gradually in our children. And the other thought that comes to mind on little people is that we used captive car seat games all the time when our kids were little in the car.

And so what we did that pushed them toward, thinking about choices, decisions, books and stuff in the future is we would play, and I may have told you this before, I don't know, we would play the kind unkind game, the wise unwise game, the truth lie game. And so when they were really, really tiny and it was always very silly, this is like pre-read, this is pre-reading, this is like four year olds, right?

They're in the car and I would say, "Sissy is wearing a pink shirt." And they would say, "True, the dog likes to eat flowers." And they'd say, "Lie." And so we would work on truth and lie. Then as they got older, we would, a little bit older, this is still very little, we would do kind or unkind.

Your Grammy bit the preacher's hand when he tried to shake it. (laughing) Those kinds of silliness, but it allowed them to say, "Oh, that's unkind." Or, "This is respectful or disrespectful." And later on, "This is wise or unwise." And we were training them to look at things and make a judgment call.

And that did a couple of things. One, it prepared them for now when Catherine, gone away from home, looks at an option she has. She can say, "Does this fit the repository "of wise things I know? "Or does it fit the repository of unwise things that I know?" But it also, it made parenting easier in the sense that when I would say, "You need to be kind to your sister." There was a whole group of ideas in their minds of what that might look like.

And it was taken out of the disciplinary, out of the stressful moments, into a game. And so, I think for little people, that was our saving grace for learning those first beginning skills of discernment and freedom. - And absolutely, it gives the children a huge sense of confidence and non-nervousness.

They are, I can remember having friends who thought I was absolutely crazy. Mike, we would practice responses in advance with our girls. So, we are having a birthday party and people are gonna bring you gifts. If you get something you already have, what will you say? - Right. - If you get a present that you absolutely hate, what will you say?

If somebody doesn't bring you a gift, what will you say? If somebody says something unkind about another person's gift. And so, we would role play those. We would come up with, what could you say that shows you appreciate that person and the thought that they had in bringing you a present to celebrate your birthday, even if you either have this already or hate it.

What will you say? You will clearly not say, "I hate it," or, "I've got one." - Right. - Or, "I'm gonna take this back," or, "Do you have a receipt?" But it put them at ease because here's the deal, little people who want to do the right thing in the heat of a moment don't always know what to do.

And so, sometimes a very, even to them, an appropriate thing will come out if you don't practice. And so, I love that as a super practical way of beginning to grow kind, compassionate, merciful, gracious humans. So, let me ask you this. You've given us some, what it looks like in the short term, you know, at home, being able to choose your own food.

We did something very similar to that in being able to choose your own bedtime or to choose your own clothes or to choose what books to choose at the library or books to read. As they were growing up, they got different freedoms based on their obvious readiness for said freedom.

What will be the result, do you suspect, if we do not teach our children about the responsibilities of Christian freedom? What if we don't lead them to accept them and manage them well? What will happen? - Well, I think if we do not teach our children how to manage the responsibilities of Christian freedom, they are going to be taught.

Children don't just stay a blank slate and someone's gonna teach them something. And I think the world is very, very happy to come along with a counter message. And, you know, I was just thinking about this the other day, I heard Alistair Begg preaching and he referenced the Bob Dylan song, "Gotta Serve Someone." I think is what it's called.

- Yes, yes, I think so. - And how the story goes that he became a believer and he wrote this song, you know, it may be the devil and it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve someone. Well, the story goes, and I don't know how accurate it is, but that John Lennon found that very offensive and he wrote a counter song.

And in his counter song, it was all about, you gotta serve yourself. And I think that's a beautiful example of the fact that, and a sobering example of the fact that the world has an alternate message. It is being pumped continuously out there and our children are going to encounter it.

And so I think if we do not teach our children how to manage the Christian responsibility, the responsibilities of Christian freedom, they will just follow the world. They will serve themselves. They will make it about themselves. And if they're not surrendered to the Lord, then they are gonna be surrendered to someone.

And that's not an option. We are gonna serve someone. So I think the sobering thing is that they will be taught and they will follow someone. And so the intentionality that we have as classical Christian educators is a beautiful and sobering task. - That is, that's great. That is an awesome, put the period to the discussion.

I love that. Thank you so much, Charity. It's so funny, as you were talking about, you're gonna have to, your children will make a decision and they will follow the right values or they will follow the selfish world. It reminds me, I was gonna tell people today about a movie that's coming out.

It's called "Miracle in East Texas." It kinda goes along with, are you gonna serve yourself or are you gonna do the right thing? This movie's coming out in October. The end of October. And it is about doing what's right. And it's a movie that your whole family can enjoy.

Okay, so you won't be embarrassed to have your little kids watch it. It is the true story. It's a true story. It's about the biggest oil strike in the history of the world. It happened right at the dawn of the Great Depression. The story, it's kinda fun. I mean, I can't, I sorta now can't wait to see it.

It follows the story of two con men who are gonna convince investors to invest in these worthless oil rigs but then they discover these oil rigs are not so worthless after all. Maybe this would be a really good teaching tool. It would definitely bring up a lot of good discussions and families.

It's called "Miracle in East Texas." It is a Kevin Sorbo film. It is coming to a theater near you, we hope, October 29th. If you wanna get tickets now or find out where it's coming, you can visit sorbostudios.com. That's Sorbo Studios, S-O-R-B-O, studios.com and find out more information about that.

Charity, thank you so much for being with me today. This has been a fun topic to think through with you and I appreciate both your deep insights and your practical tips. - Thank you, Lisa. It's always fun to hang out with you. - I love it. Okay, listeners, take the good from this and go be everyday educators in your own home and I'll see you next week.

Bye. (gentle music)