Welcome back to Day 8 of my Heart of the Matter 10 Days of… series on teaching values in your homeschool! Today’s topic is about one of my favorite allegories of all time – The Pilgrim’s Progress.
An allegory is a story with a hidden meaning. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, each of the characters in the book represents a different type of person you might meet in this world as you travel through life trying to stay on the path that leads to eternity.
But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Matthew 7:14
One man, Christian, has been urged to leave his town – the City of Destruction – to find the city of salvation, known as Mt. Zion. On his journey, Christian meets many, many people. Some seem to be friends,while others seem to be enemies – many of them wittingly or unwittingly trying to lead Christian off the path that leads to his final destination.
From beginning to end, the book offers a fantastic study of “character qualities” through the many varied “characters” you meet. For instance:
Pliable – who starts on the journey with Christian only to get discouraged and go home
Worldly Wiseman – who encourages Christian to give up his silly fascination with religion and stray from his journey
Demas – who tries to tempt Christian away from his journey with worldly wealth
Evangelist – who first brings the Gospel message to Christian and urges him on his journey to Mt. Zion
Shining Ones – who are guardians to Christian throughout his journey
Faithful – a companion of Christian’s during the journey
As you can tell, each person’s character traits “fits” his or her name. And each character (there are many more) holds a very important place in values training discussions. The wealth of Biblical and character symbolism in The Pilgrim’s Progress is unmatched, in my opinion!
I will admit that the original version written by John Bunyan in 1678 is difficult to read in its Old English writing style. However, there are many other versions on the market. In many cases, full-texts that have been edited to more modern language. You can also find abridged, illustrated versions for younger children. Some of your choices include:
If you’re interested in completing a very in-depth study of The Pilgrim’s Progress, I would suggest the curriculum below. It’s very workbook-like with questions for each chapter of the book, but also unit-study-like as it ties in Bible, history and more.
I’m a huge fan of Christian allegories and there are many wonderful children’s allegories I highly recommend. (Don’t think picture books are just for younger children! I read these with middle and high school kids at church all the time as part of fantastic Sunday school lessons!)
Now it’s your turn! What Biblical allegories have you read and recommend?
Be sure to visit these great ladies during the 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
Welcome to Day 9 of my Heart of the Matter 10 Days of… series on teaching values in your homeschool. Today I’m writing about one of my favorite topics – purity.
How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.
Psalm 119:9
We’ve focused a lot during this series on Biblical values in general, but I wanted to have a full post devoted to the topic of purity because I see way too many Christian homes, even homeschoolers, stumbling in this area.
I’m not going to try to persuade you about the lines to draw for your family as far as things like dating and modesty go, but I am going to challenge you to start early (or now – it’s not too late) in painting a picture of purity for your children. Purity in mind, body and soul. Purity in speech, actions and clothing choices.
I truly believe that issues of purity are some of the easiest ways the devil weasels his way into our children’s lives as they mature. When we start teaching purity early, it’s much easier for our children to grow into the idea that living purely is simply the way of life, not just one of many options.
So where did my husband and I start in teaching purity?
Well, it’s quite a natural part of our existence now, so remembering where we started is somewhat difficult. Maybe a better way to explain is by sharing some habits of our daily life today.
We don’t listen to unwholesome music – ever. Most current music is downright nasty. Don’t believe me? I challenge you to find a top 40 list of pop or country music on the internet. Then take a few minutes to Google the lyrics to at least ten songs. Read the lyrics all the way through – you’ll soon see what I mean. Mindlessly listening to those words over and over again sinks in. I promise. (What do we listen to? K-Love and a local Christian radio station. We only stray from the dial once in a while.)
We pay extra money for a DVR and fast forward through almost every commercial since they are often way worse than the tv shows we watch.
We are very careful about television shows and movies. There’s no iCarly, Glee or Life of the American Teenager in our house. And movies are either previewed before the kids see them or I take the time to read through Plugged In reviews.
We are very careful about books our children read. I almost always search the internet for reviews. It’s so nice when we come across a series or author that we can trust without previewing!
We are very careful about friendships and have discussions often about finding friends who sharpen us and encourage us in our walk with Christ.
We dress modestly. My daughter is a naturally modest young lady, so purchasing the “in thing” has never been an issue for us. In fact, even though we buy a modest one-piece bathing suit, she still covers up with a t-shirt in the pool motivated by her own standards. Boys are easy since modesty is pretty much in style most of the time.
We talk openly about why the typical dating game isn’t going to be part of our lifestyle. We read books that encourage this and try to find like-minded friends.
I’m sure some of you are wondering if my kids ever balk at these standards. Never. Believe it or not. Maybe when they were little they fussed occasionally, but we’ve always had open conversations with our children about the “whys” of our lifestyle and they all seem to “get it” without argument. There have been times we’ve watched a questionable show together, for example, and then discussed afterwards why the show can’t be on our “okay list” and everyone is typically in agreement.
As I’ve already mentioned, these standards are just part of our family now. However, we didn’t start our family with all these standards in place. In fact, Steve and I were far from holding these principles in the beginning of our marriage. They have each come about one by one as needs have arisen. As an example, I used to listen to popular music all the time. I loved watching the annual awards shows for popular musicians and even viewed MTV once in awhile. (Gasp!) When my first child was born, it was almost like scales fell off my eyes and ears as I started actually hearing the words of the music and seeing the extreme sexuality portrayed on the shows. At that time, new standards for music and tv viewing were set.
I tell you that story to encourage you not to be overwhelmed with all the changes you might need to make. Pray about each issue as it comes up and be ready to make any necessary changes as God leads. One step at a time is better than no step at all. Before long, those steps add up!
Like I mentioned earlier, though, {if at all possible} don’t wait too late to develop family standards. It’s much easier to lay the groundwork when your children are 4, 5 and 6 than when they are 14, 15 and 16. When they’ve grown up knowing where the line is, they are far less likely to balk in those teenage years.
There are so many other areas of purity besides sexual purity, but that area seems to be the hardest for most parents. Partly because our children are literally bombarded with sexuality everywhere they turn, and partly because talking sexual purity can be scary! For those reasons, I’m choosing to focus mostly on sexual purity as I give you references below.
I have included a more exhaustive list of books about purity on my a-store page.
{Always preview these books before you jump in with your children! We are all in different places with what our kids know, need to know and can handle.}
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.
Proverbs 4:23-27
Who has your heart?
I know this is an incredibly long post already, but seeing this the other day reminded me of a purity lesson I did with the older kids and teens at church not too long ago. If you’re so inclined, I hope you will find some way to use it with your children as a concrete example of how dating can be dangerous.
I gave everyone a large construction paper heart and told them to decorate it as beautifully as they could given markers and five minutes. Afterwards, I collected the hearts of my own children (two hearts) and gave them to my husband to hold.
Then, I asked the boys in the room to go stand near any girl. The “couples” were formally introduced to one another as boyfriend/girlfriend {lots of giggling here} and told to exchange hearts. When we date, we typically go into the relationship to give the other person our heart, right?
Uh oh, all of the sudden the relationships all go sour and the couples break up. BUT…before giving the hearts back to the rightful owners, I asked each person to tear a little piece of their boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s heart to keep since memories of that person will always remain with them.
I asked all the boys to pick a new girl to stand next to. Good news! Now everyone has a new boyfriend/girlfriend and THIS relationship is going to last! They exchanged hearts and I had them walk around the room “all lovey dovey” with each other.
Uh oh, even though these relationships were sure to last…they, too, go sour. Again, before returning hearts, I asked everyone to tear a slightly bigger piece from their partner’s heart to represent a longer relationship.
We went through this process another time or two. I had everyone sit down and tell me about their hearts now. Obviously, they were not whole anymore.
Next, I used one girl and boy as an example for the group. I told the boy to go to the girl and ask for her hand in marriage. {More giggling} When he did, she handed him her sad little heart that had already been given away in bits and pieces to so many other boys. THEY GOT IT.
I said, “Wait, let’s see if we can gather the other pieces of her heart from the other boys and mend her heart!” We taped all the pieces together and saw the whole, but highly scarred heart. AGAIN, THEY GOT IT.
Then, I called my two children to the front of the group. They had been sitting around watching this entire activity because they didn’t have hearts. They had been very frustrated being left out of the game.
My husband made a big deal of telling them that, as their parents, we had held on to their hearts until the time was right. Then an older boy came into the room to offer his whole heart and his hand in marriage to my daughter. She was able to offer him her whole, undamaged heart. YES, THEY GOT IT.
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12
If you hung in there with me through this entire post, thank you. I hope it was worth it.
Be sure to visit these brilliant women during the 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
Whew. Day 10. Thank you for hanging in there with me these past two weeks! I truly hope you’ve enjoyed this series about teaching values and pray that at least one thing stuck out as a good idea to use in your homeschool. Today I’m going to wrap up the series with two simple comprehensive lists of character training resources that I have found helpful over the years. Some of them have been mentioned in previous posts, some have not.
Sorry for making you click links, but the past two weeks of writing have tuckered me out. Plus, there are simply too many resources to include in one post. So…here are links to my aStore where you’ll find pages and pages of great resources.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:12-17
Before I leave you… Enjoy your children. Soak them in the Word. Pray for them continually. Be a good example. Be merciful. Love God.
Be sure to visit these brilliant women during the 10 days adventure between November 7th-18th!
Many of you probably already know Jimmie, formerly of One Child Policy Homeschool. She has just opened her new blog called Jimmie’s Collage and we know you’ll want to stop by for a visit!
In transferring posts from her old blog to her new blog, she found the following article she originally wrote in September of 2007. Not only is it a wonderful post, but in case you don’t know, Jimmie lives in an urban area of China where nature study can be quite challenging. We hope her thoughts encourage you to work hard at nature study no matter where you might live! Thank you, Jimmie, for allowing us to repost your article here!
Nature Study – the Duty of Christian Homeschoolers
By Jimmie – http://jimmiescollage.com
My daughter is learning a catechism. We’ve been reviewing these for about thirty weeks now and something new just hit me!
Very early in the question/answer series are these:
Q: How do we learn about God?
A: God reveals Himself.
Q: Where does God reveal Himself?
A: In His word and in nature.
God reveals himself through His word; therefore, we must study His word. Every Christian knows that. Christian homeschooling families put a high importance on the Bible.
But this is my eye-opener — God reveals Himself through nature; therefore, we must study nature! There is actually a theological reason to study nature! God reveals Himself (His character, law and wrath) through the natural world that He created.
Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead. . . “
If we neglect to study nature, we will probably miss some truths about Him. I don’t want to miss it! I want to learn all I can. And more importantly, I want my daughter to see God through nature. I would never dream of omitting the Bible from our curriculum. Likewise I should not omit the study and enjoyment of nature.
Psalm 19:1-3 “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.”
I am so excited by this discovery. And now as part of our working on the nature journal the next day at home, I’m going to add this question, “Since God reveals His character, law, and wrath through nature, did you sense any of that on our nature walk yesterday? Did God reveal any of Himself to you during that time?”
DD’s answer this week was, “He’s amazing! He made those insects so beautiful!” Yes! God revealed His Divine Creator character to her through nature.
I’m not talking about worshiping nature here. We understand what animism is, and we don’t fit the bill. I’m talking about seeing up the beam of light all the way to God (as C.S. Lewis said).
You know, I blogged about the nature walks mostly because I knew that if I did, I’d be accountable to my readers to DO it. But now I see that I’m actually accountable to God to lead my daughter in the study and enjoyment of nature!
Remember my post about Walmart and the magazine rack? Well read on if you stand with me on this issue. I had to write a letter to the editor of our newspaper. Warning: It’s NOT for children and graphic at some points!! I’ve tried to add asterisks to keep little eyes safe and to keep the wrong web surfers away.
***
I don’t shop at Walmart anymore. They care more about money than children. I’m not a political activist, only a mom who’s tired of watching the moral decay all around her. But, I never expected Walmart to stand on the side of moral decay.
For about a year, I’ve been very conscious of the magazine covers that are prominently placed in and around every single aisle at Walmart. Many of the magazines continually push the limits of what should be considered inappropriate. For a while, I simply turned the magazines over so that my children (who stand eye level to them) wouldn’t have to view the obscenity. However, recently, what’s on the back of the magazines is just as bad or worse than what’s on the front.
My next step was to pull the offending magazines and place them in a stack near the display, but away from the view of my children. Typically, two to four magazine titles were pulled and almost always the same titles – Glamour and Cosmopolitan the two most frequent. I would talk to the cashier and explain what I had done and why in hopes that he or she would pass my message on to management. In almost every case, the cashiers agreed that my children didn’t need to see the lewd material.
Finally, after not seeing any changes in the content of the magazine racks, I began to ask to speak to managers. After waiting more than ten minutes a couple of times with no manager showing up, I decided they didn’t care enough about the concerns of the customer and I wouldn’t waste my time trying to speak to them anymore.
So, for the last four months or so, I’ve been removing the offending magazines (from my aisle only) and kindly delivering them to the customer service desk with a simple message, “Would you please tell management that these magazine covers are offensive and my children don’t need to be subjected to such material? Thank you very much.”
Before I go on, I’m sure you might be questioning just what about the content of these covers is so offensive. Well, a short list would include: women whose n*pples are about the only thing covered, h*m*s*xuals French k*ssing, seductive poses, women almost n*ked together in group pictorials, and bold magazine phrases such as “Things He’s Thinking When You’re N*ked”, “Org*sm Q&A”, and “S*x He Craves”. I could literally go on and on.
In Walmart’s defense, one of the offending magazines has a plastic cover that’s supposed to block the outrageous article titles from view, but rarely have I found the plastic cover to actually be in use. Not to mention, the cover photo left exposed by the plastic is still typically very offensive.
On February 24, 2011, I knew something was different when I made my trip up to the customer service desk with a small pile of magazines. Every single cashier watched me as I seemed to walk in slow motion. Upon returning to my aisle, I told my daughter that something was up. And, sure enough, immediately an employee was putting the magazines back on their racks. When I mentioned kindly that I had just removed them because they were not things my children needed to view she told me I would have to speak to a manager.
I ended up speaking to two managers that day. One, a front-end manager whose name I didn’t get, the other an assistant manager named _______. It was very clear that “the crazy lady who brings magazines to the customer service desk” had been a topic of recent employee meetings because both managers came at me with their fighting gloves on. Neither spoke kindly to me from the get-go. I was prepared to have a kind conversation with them, but was attacked immediately with comments about “freedom of speech” and “not having the right to remove merchandise from the shelves.”
As for magazine covers having freedom of speech, I completely agree. However, last time I looked, freedom of speech has limits, especially when it comes to p*rn*graphic material. Whether or not these magazine covers fit the definition of p*rn*graphy isn’t a question in my mind when I consider the following definition:
From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
P*rn*graphy
1. the depiction of er*tic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause s*xual excitement
2. material (as books or a photograph) that depicts er*tic behavior and is intended to cause s*xual excitement
3. the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to ar*use a quick intense emotional reaction
As for me not having the right to remove merchandise from the shelves, I had to chuckle at first. How is anyone supposed to purchase merchandise if they can’t remove it from the shelves? At any rate, I not only have the right, but responsibility to protect my children.
Films, television shows, video games, etc. are given a rating to help me decide whether or not they might be appropriate for my children. I have the responsibility at that point to either allow or not allow the material. But, I HAVE A CHOICE! No one is telling me that my children HAVE to look at something because I have the right to turn it off or not purchase it. At Walmart, however, I apparently don’t have that right. There is no rating system for magazines, so whatever the “powers that be” decide is appropriate will be what my children are forced to view. No matter what some people might say, when these lewd magazines are front and center in every single aisle, my children will see them no matter the distractions I attempt.
When I suggested to the managers that the store’s dedicated magazine section might be a better place for questionable material, would you like to know what I was told? Very plainly it was stated that these magazines are huge money-makers for the store and are purposely put there for impulse purchases. So, there you have it – money before children.
When I suggested that unless there was a change I wouldn’t be shopping at Walmart anymore, would you like to know what was said? The manager asked me, “Where else are you going to shop?” Walmart, you don’t own America yet. Every single item you sell in your store can be purchased somewhere else in my town, where I will likely not have to deal with obsc*ne magazines and rude managers. And, unless things do change, you will no longer get any of my business.
I wrote this as a letter to the editor because I want to do more than berate Walmart. I want to ask: Christians, where are you? Parents who care about the morality of your children, where are you? Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, where are you? Teachers and school administrators who stand for abstinence, where are you?
I was told I’m the only person to ever complain about the magazines as p*rn*graphic. I find that so hard to be true. But, if it is, I believe that saddens me more than any part of this story. I’m proud to stand up and fight this issue for my children and I’m happy to fight it for your children, too. I can’t do it alone, though. I challenge each of you to stand up with me, so together we CAN make a difference.
***
The good news…
My local newspaper only publishes 300 word letters to the editor, but printed this at 1200+ words!
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback in my town and there’s even talk of starting a petition.
The KY AFA (American Family Association) is very interested in the issue!
It would take only a small number of us to contact our store managers about this issue to make a difference.
God is on our side!
What will you do to fight inappropriate magazines where you live?
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Many of you probably already know Jimmie, formerly of One Child Policy Homeschool. She has just opened her new blog called 
