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Hustling for Jesus: Christian Home-Based Businesses

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Suzanne, who blogs at Every Breaking Wavehad this to say about her experiences with home-based Evangelical Christian businesses:

One of the things that the ladies kept trying to pound in my head during those early days, besides telling me that I should use “To Train Up A Child” to discipline my very ill child, was that if I was going to be a good Christian submissive wife I was going to have to not work outside of the home. Which was foreign to me, I’d always had some sort of job outside of the home, even if it was part-time, and mostly tried to work at a time when Jim could take care of the kids so that they didn’t have to go to daycare.

This was the first time I’d heard of the family economy. I did this for a year or two, did the quilting, to make some money while I was incapacitated by the fibro. But eventually, I did go back to working outside of the home, to the disappointment and derision of the ladies of the church. I just kept telling myself that they didn’t know any better, none of them had college educations and it seemed like a waste of my own education to not work.

But like any good cult, eventually, the messages being replayed over and over again went into my head and I started seeking a way to do the home-based economy thing, find something I could do. When I started making flags it seemed like the perfect answer, most of what I made was either an air-brushed design or something like a 9 foot long half round lame flag with an inset of glittery chiffon or a specially shaped, painted, stoned, flag that was one of the kind. One of the most popular ones I sold was a half-round flag with a flaming sword appliqued into place and bejeweled and stoned with a hand-worked sword hilt on the flag handle.

What I’m trying to say is that the flags were one of a kind, hand made, designs I’d come up with, more like art work than anything mass-produced. I charged accordingly, because, none of those things I’m talking about are quick and easy. Sometimes I’d have close to sixty dollars in materials alone in the flags.

At first, I sold quite a few, and I’d get contacted frequently to make something special, or perhaps an entire set of flags just for a church. Did so well and had enough orders that I quit my job as a systems admin at an insurance company. Home-based economy, honoring God, etc…

…With the flags and large banners I ran into a snag after a few months, a snag I’ve seen played out again and again and again in the Christian home economies in many different divisions.

It would go something like this. I’d be at a teaching conference, or someone would see my now-defunct website and start asking questions about one of the items. Most of the time this was about the half round 9 foot long flags with a half-round center of glitter bedecked chiffon, not an easy item to make, but one that I’d managed to come up with a nearly foolproof method to make. I had my own pattern I’d made, and my own special technique for appliqueing in the center, while cutting away the solid lame in the center. It wasn’t easy, but it was my way to do it that worked every time.

The problem with this particular highly-coveted flag is that you needed a minimum of 5 yards of very expensive materials. It was usually about sixty dollars for fabric in that particular one. The ones that contacted me proclaiming what Good Christians™  they were also were the very ones that demanded either a) a big discount or b) to know exactly how I made that flag so they could make their own. Why? Because the $90 I was charging was thought to be too much for this item that took lots of expensive fabric and the expertise to make.

Many times I’d give in with a sigh, sketch out how to make one if I was at a conference, or explain via email. Usually what happened is that the person would get so far into the project, screw it up and then demand I fix their mess. For free. Most of the time when I looked at what they’d done I’d have to point out that they’d mangled the delicate fabric so badly that they’d have to start from scratch again. Would have been way cheaper just to buy from me in the first place.

Eventually, I’d sell the pattern, but people would still balk at spending ten bucks for a pattern and demand I explain for free.

And the people who were whining and demanding were also screaming out what Good Christians™ they were so I owed it to them because I was a Christian.

I got to see that Good Christian™ dynamic at work in just about every place, public secular business, or Christian business, people saying that since they were doing the work of the God they deserved a discount or freebie, who would not let up until they got their way. Vyckie Garrison and I have had discussions about the Good Christian discount whine.

To add insult to grievous injury every single freakin’ time I’d come up with a new design, something I’d sketched out, made the pattern for, and then made the sample and posted it on my website within a week I’d see a badly executed copy made from discount fabric of my original design up on Ebay for a cheaper price. To me, that is what separates true artists from the artisans. Artists do it because it’s inside of them, artisans are just looking to make a buck.

Even as sales were decent after awhile I got most burned out by the attitudes of entitlement, the begging, whining, demanding a discount, and the general intellectual thievery. I stopped making flags for anyone but myself, or when someone who’s seen one of mine and is willing to pay without whining. Just readied a big box of flags going on a missions trip to Cuba next month.

One thing I started to notice during my years at good old Creek Church, the tendency of the Creekers and other Good Christians™ to take advantage of people, press every advantage, and try to drum up business by means fair and foul. For example, just about everyone that sucked up to the Pastor’s wife bought Pampered Chef merchandise and many ladies at the church signed up to sell beneath her every single time she started putting the pressure to people over being Good Christians™ helping out each other.

It was as if none of them thought hard work and conviction was enough, they had to press every advantage and try to game the system each and every time. Some of them still are, hence Mrs. 5 by 5 fleecing two different sets of the elderly she did the books for out of over 20K. Today I saw her with another new senior citizen that has a small business and I’m going to see if I can talk to her newest employer’s relatives before she steals from this woman…

… Here’s what I learned in the last twenty years plus years dealing with Fundigelicals and their businesses/home-based economies:

(1) If they can take some small advantage of you, then they will. If you call them on it they will claim it’s their right as Christians to be entitled to more or they outright deny they’ve done it.

(2) They believe if they can whine, beat you down, demand, threaten or haggle long enough you will give in to their sense of entitlement and give out something for free or deep discount. Why? Because Christian! Because Bible!

(3) If you happen to not totally agree with their flavor of True Believer then they might refuse to serve you and/or jack up the charges.

(4) They act like they have some sort of moral superiority over you all the while behaving badly.

You can read the entire article here.

Suzanne’s wonderful rant and roll got me thinking about my own experiences with Evangelical Christian home-based businesses/Christian businesses, and a church that considered establishing such businesses as a command from God. Let me share several stories with you.

First, let me say I don’t have a problem with people starting home-based businesses. It’s a great way to make money. But, when such businesses are wedded to religious ideology, that’s where I have a problem. While Polly and I were ardent homeschoolers for over twenty years and came into contact with a number of families who had home-based businesses, we never had the desire to have one. The money was a lot better in the “world.”

In 2005, while we were living in Newark, Ohio, we attended Faith Bible Church in Jersey (Pataskala), Ohio. Polly and I really loved this church, and we thought maybe, just maybe, we had found a church to call home.

Faith Bible was a growing patriarchal Calvinistic, Reformed church filled with young families with lots of children. Everyone home-schooled, the women were keepers at home, and while all the men worked, home-based businesses were quite common. I suspect Faith Bible had a lot in common with the church Suzanne mentions in her post.

One day after church, our family was fellowshipping with several families and the discussion turned towards our family. It was assumed that we were like they were, that Polly was a keeper at home and that I was in the world making money to support my family. When Polly let it be known that she cleaned offices for State Farm and that I was unable to work due to physical disability, the air was sucked out of the room and the friendly discussion stopped. It was quite clear that the manner in which we were trying to keep our heads above water was disapproved of, perhaps even regarded as sinful. From that moment forward, everything changed for us. We felt a sense of distance from other church attendees, and it was not long before we decided to attend church elsewhere (we attended Faith for many months).

It was not uncommon for families at Faith Bible to have a lot of children. Polly and I have six children, and in most churches that would be an exceptionally large family. At Faith Bible, we were just one large family among many. With families being so large and women not being permitted to work outside of the home, home-based businesses became an easy way to supplement family income.

Churches such as Faith Bible have a distrust of the government. They are quite conservative, vote Republican, and think the government should stay out of their lives. The Terry Schiavo case was in the news while we were at Faith Bible, and I vividly remember a discussion that went on one night at a men’s meeting. Everyone, well everyone except me, was against allowing Schiavo’s husband to terminate life support. I found it ironic that the men felt the government should step in and stop Schiavo’s husband, yet, to the man, they thought the government should stay out of their lives. I did appreciate the respect the men afforded me, even though I voiced an opinion they considered immoral. I suspect I was quite the topic of discussion later.

What better way to stick it to the man, to get the government out of your life, than to operate a cash home-based business? There are few government rules or regulations that apply to home-based businesses. Often, such businesses fly under the radar. They often don’t have the proper licenses or permits, pay taxes, or file tax returns. This illegal behavior is justified as “not giving the immoral, godless government any more money than we have to.”

Suzanne mentioned what is commonly called “getting the Christian discount.” Years ago, my Fundamentalist Baptist (please see John and Dear Ann) grandfather operated an airplane engine repair shop, T&W Engine Service, at the Pontiac Airport (now Oakland County International Airport). Tom Malone, chancellor of Midwestern Baptist College — the college Polly and I attended in the 1970s — owned an airplane that was housed at Pontiac Airport. One day, Malone’s plane was having engine problems, and he asked my grandfather to take a look at it (he knew Grandpa was a Fundamentalist Christian). Grandpa did, told Malone what was wrong, and how much it would cost to fix it. Malone asked for the “Christian discount.” After all, he was doing the Lord’s work. Shouldn’t a Christian businessman want to help out a pastor? Grandpa told Malone that there would be no discount. Malone was quite upset that Grandpa wouldn’t give him preferential treatment.

I pastored Evangelical churches for 25 years. I can’t tell you the times I had a business owner ask me if I wanted the “pastor’s/church discount.” In every instance, I said NO! Just because people are Christians or pastors doesn’t mean they deserve discounts. Yet, some Christians and pastors have no problem begging for Jesus. Like Tom Malone, they say they are doing the Lord’s work, and shouldn’t EVERY business owner want to give God’s special people a discount?

While businesses often grant Christian discount requests, it doesn’t mean they like it. They are pragmatists, fearful that if word gets out that they aren’t giving discounts, they will lose customers who are Christians. Pastors can ruin a business just by gossiping about it at “prayer” meeting or mentioning them in a sermon. Maybe they will, but in my view, it’s better to lose customers than to do business with those who try to extort you in the name of God. A political example of this was John McCain being stuck with Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. McCain hated Evangelicals, but fearing the loss of the Evangelical vote, he gave Republicans the “Christian discount” and made the IQ-challenged Palin his running mate. We know how that all turned out.

I, for one, do not frequent businesses that use the fish (ichthys) symbol or cross to advertise their companies. By using these symbols, they are saying to me that Christian business and Christian money has more value than mine. From time to time, I will run into Christians in store parking lots selling their wares. Often, they try to convince me to buy by giving me a guilt-laden speech about the money going to support their Christian family, their church, their youth group, orphans, or overseas missionaries. I NEVER buy from people who use Jesus to make a buck. In fact, I go out of my way NOT to buy from them (and mock and insult them if they try to pressure me into buying).

I pastored one church where I had to ban home-based sales marketing during church services. From Mary Kay and Avon to Pampered Chef and Tupperware to Girl Scout Cookies and Amway, church members tried to get other members to buy their wares or attend their parties. I began to think that the church was turning into the story in the Bible about the money changers in the Temple. I saw myself as Jesus cleansing the Temple. As I look back on this, I now realize that my preaching helped to promote such an environment. I was a complementarian — a traditional-family, women-not-working-outside-of-the-home preacher, so church women, for the most part, didn’t work. This created a huge problem because most of the families were quite poor and they NEEDED two incomes to make ends meet. Wanting to honor the commands of Bruce Almighty®, they turned to home-based businesses to supplement their incomes. Rarely did their home-based businesses generate as much income as they would have made in the evil, sin-filled, secular world.

Several churches I pastored had Christian business owners that also home-schooled their children. In every case, the children became a free or poorly paid workforce. One such business was totally staffed and operated by children. What upset me the most was that the children would be running the business during the times they should have been home doing their school work. Their parents told me that their children did their school work in the evening. They used A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education) materials, so very little parental involvement was needed. This family never properly registered with the state or local school officials, so they were pretty much free to do whatever they wanted. Still, I am surprised no one ever reported them. I suspect one reason they weren’t is that the children were quite engaging, a pleasure to be around. It was hard not to see them, though, as a rural Ohio version of a sweatshop.

Let me reiterate, I am not against home-based businesses. I am all for people making money and providing for their families. What I am against is the religiosity that is connected with many of these endeavors. Putting out a booklet that lists all the home-based or traditional Christian businesses in the area is a sure way to make sure they never get one dime from me. I expect the people I do business with to compete in the marketplace. I expect them to play by the rules, have the proper licenses and permits, and pay taxes.

Just in case some Evangelical is getting ready to whine and complain about my unfair characterizations of home-based businesses, I am not saying that all home-based Christian businesses are like those mentioned in this post. However, many of them are, as are businesses owned by Evangelical zealots.

Over the years, numerous Christians have called me up to schedule an appointment to share with me a wonderful, God-honoring way to make shit-loads of money — okay, they didn’t say shit-load. A.L. Williams, Amway, Excel, and more vitamin-weight loss-better health MLM programs than I can count. In every case, they are no longer in business. Evidently, God failed to bless their hustling for Jesus.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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17 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Becky Wiren

    I’ve wasted money on Amway, and Amway is full of Dominionists and the richest people making the money off everyone else are leading in the Dominion movement. I have a friend who wasted what little widow’s money she had left, and lost her house and is now homeless. But today she messaged me that she was visiting in the home of her upline Diamond in Florida. She’s 60, mentally, emotionally and physically disabled, but because of her Christian philosophy she believes God told her she was going to be wealthy in Amway. Oh, and she isn’t any good at convincing people of anything, only manipulation. No point in telling her the truth, she blinded by what “God” tells her.

  2. Avatar
    Troy

    I wasn’t raised in the IFB (sooo glad I wasn’t) but now have relatives who are in it (by marriage). I always knew the obsession with homeschooling came from the church but never made the connection with multilevel marketing (pyramid schemes). I’ve been seeing how she uses the church family to pawn off this overpriced overhyped stuff people don’t need (vitamins) or could get cheaper/better (cleaning supplies). I find it very interesting because as you noticed with your congregations these really are bad ways to make money and they’ll keep you poor (as the previous comment attests to). I think about DeVos making so much money in Amway what a racket.
    As for the “Christian Discount”, that must be very frustrating. I guess you’d almost have to raise the price just to lower it again. I wonder if a good retort would be, “oh I thought you were going to give me a Christian Premium and pay me a little more!”

  3. Avatar
    Dale

    When my young family and I began attending our last church, we were befriended by one of the deacons. We were the same age, had children pretty close together in age. My wife and his wife began socializing and I would hang out with the deacon.

    One Sunday afternoon, I received a call from this deacon who wanted to discuss a career opportunity and was I interested? Heck yeah! Then he began with the “We’re looking for some sharp young people to learn and operate a system that will make you as successful as you want to be” spiel. Right away, I mentioned to him, maybe too bluntly, that I had already been approached several times over the years about this “opportunity” (It’s Amway, folks; don’t know if they use the same spiel now) and I wasn’t interested.

    Talk about a change in the friendship dynamic. We were snubbed by both deacon and wife from that point on. My wife called his wife about their normal get-together on Wednesday mornings and was told that she couldn’t make it that Wednesday and basically given a “Don’t call me, I’ll call you” statement.

    Funny thing is the deacon eventually abandoned the multi-level marketing thing, but we were never good friends after that.

  4. Avatar
    Oan

    We attended a church where all the men but two sold Kirby vacuum cleaners for the same upline person. On the week that commission checks came out, you could see the tension in the competing men. They were all typical salesmen, so they all wanted to be the best. I doubt there was much Christian love at those times.

    My wife and I have been sucked into MLM products a couple of times. If you are the seller, the prices aren’t too bad, the end user gets seriously gouged. We would always become distributors so we could use the products and sell to anyone at our cost.

    I know people who did well selling different things and I knew people who could hardly make a buck selling. I’m not sure why.

    • Avatar
      Becky Wiren

      I’ve been in Amway 2 or 3 times. Last time, they were touting Quixtar. I saw I wasn’t going to have the energy (literally) to do it, so I dropped out, AFTER getting soaked for buying products. My girlfriend has been in it for almost 10 years and hasn’t made any money. The people above her haven’t made any money. I even got some product as a settlement for a class action suit.

      I used to think Amway was dishonest. Well, the reality is all corporations are somewhat dishonest, in that the people at the top make BIG money while those at the bottom make little. (And it’s the little guys/gals who are actually making whatever product the company has, and/or selling said product.) Amway and other MLM schemes have to rely on many, many people who join, buy lots of product while hoping they can get others in, and then they drop out. Then more people are recruited…well,you get the picture. It’s built into their system which you find out when you progress high enough. (I didn’t, but I read a LOT.)

      The reality is, it’s not easy to do MLM. Because once you run through everyone you know, then you have to try to recruit strangers. Still, a college classmate of mine sells Mary Kay and she can afford to live in Oregon. And I can only afford to live in Ohio…so she’s doing all right. And she wants me to be one of her people, and with the power of the internet, her being in Oregon isn’t much of a problem. I’m not going to do it, but I no longer think doing MLMs are bad. Still, too many people join having been told that “all you have to do is work 15 hrs a week.” Uh, no, not if you want to succeed at all.

  5. Avatar
    Karen the rock whisperer

    I have a friend with three daughters who’ve given him grandchildren. Daughter #2 lost her husband very young to heart failure, and remarried. Husband #2 was a complete jerk, who annoyed my friend no end. But the thing that angered him most was that the husband decided to run a pizza place, and that his two teenage stepchildren should be indentured labor. The entire family worked long hours at the place, and the kids had a hard time getting schoolwork done… much less were able to do after-school activities. Their mother never objected. The pizza place lost its lease, the kids went off to college with loans, and have as little to do with their step-father as possible… and their relationship with their mother isn’t all that good. Sad ending to a situation that never should have happened.

  6. Avatar
    Joyce

    MLMs destroy finances and lives, only the top 1% makes money and the rest is all hype. Pinktruth.com covers Mary Kay, I’ve been reading over there and wow, the con is deep, pervasive and problematic. Also? if I was trying to actually sell something I would want a protected sales territory, not be converting my customers into my competition!

    I feel for the lady with her flags, here she puts her heart and soul into making a beautiful thing and all people want to do is get it cheaper!

  7. Avatar
    darcyinsatx

    “…demanded … to know exactly how I made that flag so they could make their own. Why? Because the $90 I was charging was thought to be too much for this item that took lots of expensive fabric and the expertise to make.” Now, THAT part is true of a lot of lousy handicrafters who are not willing to take the time to learn and put in the money for high-priced fabric.(Does that sound like any cell phone camera “photographers” you know, Bruce?) That’s not a specifically Christian or fundamentalist attitude. I do wonder if there is some relationship between handicrafters who want to take shortcuts and fundamentalists who don’t want to ask hard questions, who don’t want to dip a toe out of their comfort zones. Or maybe it’s late at night and I’m reaching too far for meaning?

    • Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      Don’t get me started on cellphone “photographers” and mommies with cameras offering $40 photo shoots, complete with prints. They are one of the reasons I retired. People either wanted me to work for free or work so cheaply they made be feel like a $20 trick. I bought $3,000 worth of lenses last year — which I would have bought business or not. But, at $40 a crack, it would take 75 $40 photo sessions just to pay for my equipment purchases.

  8. Avatar
    BJW

    It seems like most of those home based businesses are MLM. So the ones making the money make their money from the people on the bottom. I remember how the Amway dude explained, “Well if you get 10 people, and those 10 people get 10 people…” Of course the math was never done because then we’d have realized that that many people were never going to sign up.

  9. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    There’s a general contractor in our area who has the Jesus fish and a cross in his logo, so guess who I will never use for my construction needs? Is he an evangelical? Possibly, but he has signaled a lot about himself by putting those symbols in his logo.

    Don’t get me started on MLMs. Argonne went through the mom group in our area a few years ago, and all those moms gave it up after a year or so because it just didn’t work.

    My grandfather worked for Sears as a refrigeration repair technician, working in refrigerators, freezers, air conditioning, etc. People at church were always hitting him up for special off-books work. He had to set boundaries about that early on.

  10. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    I am not, in principle, against home businesses or home schooling, In fact, I used to say that if I were to have children, I would home-school them. not for religious or political reasons, but because I believed, in my youthful arrogance, that I could teach more than the schools could.

    About home businesses: A fellow I met on a training ride years ago was an Amway distributor. Thankfully, I resisted his attempts to recruit me.

    In one of the more exquisite ironies of my life, I also knew his wife. But, at the time, I didn’t know she was his wife. (I met her in an entirely different situation.) She was a “rising star” in her company, where she would eventually become a vice-president. He, on the other hand, bounced from job to job. That’s why he decided he needed to be his own boss–which he believed he could do with Amway.

    I don’t know how religious he was before Amway, but he bought into some combination of right-wing politics and Christianity that was, apparently, part of the Amway gospel. As I would learn later from his wife, he came home one day and announced that, as the man, he was in charge and would make all of the decisions.

    “OK,” she replied, “I’ll quit my job.”

    He didn’t want that. He just wanted her to go to her office, make money, come home and shut up.

    You might have guessed, correctly, that their marriage ended long ago. The reason, though, was not the Amway cult, at least not directly. You see, as he was making himself the king of the castle, he was sleeping with female Amway reps–and her friends. She found out about the latter by accident before catching him in the act with an Amway rep!

    A good Christian man he was, wasn’t he?

  11. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    In my previous comment, I said I’m mot against home-schooling. I want to clarify: I am not against it in principle. For some kids, it might be better than regular schooling—as long as the parent (or whoever is instructing) is knowledgeable enough, has the right temperament and isn’t trying to push a political or religious agenda.

    That said, I have to wonder about people like the parents Bruce mentioned: the ones who used their kids as un- or under-paid workers and instructed the kids after they worked. Even if the parents were up to the task of instruction, you have to wonder how well they’d do it—or how well the kids would learn—when they’re tired.

    And if the kids are being homeschooled for the purpose of inculcating them with fundamentalist (in both the religious and political sense) dogma, what education in other areas might they be missing? I am thinking not only about academic work, but also those things that allow for understanding of, let alone empathy for, people of different backgrounds, let alone ideas.

    In brief, while I am not against home-schooling in principle, I worry that if it’s done by parents (or others) who don’t have the skills or resources—or who are using it as a way to isolate their kids from “evil” influences—the kids will be unable to function outside the “bubble “ of their families and churches. Then again, that might be the goal!

    • Avatar
      Matilda

      I agree, when fundy, we briefly considered homeschooling our 3 girls. Dad was a science teacher and I taught 5-11yos, so we could probably make a reasonable job of it. But we had a small house in a small town, what would the girls do for hours on end when they finished their allotted daily ‘schooling’? We didn’t want them staring at screens all day. There was one swimming pool, one park and one library to entertain them otherwise. More importantly, we wanted them to be able to function in the real world, to learn the discipline of leaving the house at 8am daily whether they felt like it or not. We wanted them to learn to take orders from teachers – then later in life – bosses they didn’t like or who made unreasonable demands on them. After all, we told ourselves, the ‘great commission’ told us our children would be little evangelists out there in secular schools and probably reap a ‘great harvest of souls’ if we prayed enough. That never happened of course, no friend ever got converted IIRC, but the 3 of them all went to university, two have more than one degree and they have good careers, and ones which benefit society too.

  12. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    I have mixed feelings about homeschooling, mostly negative feelings. I want to keep an open mind about it, but I have a hard time thinking that anyone other than a trained educator should try to take it on alone. People are talking about remote education in the time of pandemic as homeschooling, but it isn’t. Even when my students were home learning as they were in the spring, or as they are doing partially this fall, they still are having interactions with their trained educators and working from lesson plans of trained educators. None of my friends are homeschooling students on their own – that is, selecting lesson plans and teaching their kids one on one.

    I personally know two cases in homeschooling that Shape my limited ideas about it (plus, I am married to a teacher). My biological father had 6 other kids with his common law wife. Both were basically irresponsible people who just wanted to party and didn’t work much – the family lived off government assistance much of the time except when my bio dad would get sober for awhile and get a job. Anyway, they decided to “homeschool” their kids because they didn’t want to bother with schedules, getting them up and out the door, etc. Homeschooling consisted of taking the kids to the library, checking out books, and telling the kids to read. That went on for a couple of years until my oldest 2 sisters told their parents they wanted to enroll in high school. Our bio dad told them they were too dumb for school, but eventually the girls enrolled. They were grossly deficient in math, science, history, pretty much everything except reading and comprehension skills. Both girls were in remedial classes and spent a lot of time getting extra help from teachers in order to graduate. Both feel like they were cheated by their parents with regard to education.

    Another family we know are both trained educators. They had a lot of trouble with fertility, ended up having 2 sets of twins. They decided the mom would homeschool – that’s what she wanted to do. They are evangelical Christians but live in Massachusetts which regulates homeschooling to some extent – she has to submit lesson plans to the local school district, and the kids have to pass a competency test each year. They live near Boston so she takes them on cool trips to museums and historic sites. The oldest 2 are freshmen in evangelical colleges, and the younger 2 are high school age. While I know they don’t believe in evolution, I don’t know if she taught it to the kids – probably not as they were sent to evangelical colleges that don’t teach it. The kids are really nice, but I feel like they were way behind my kids of similar age with regard to maturity. They seemed younger, more innocent and child-like. Maybe that isn’t bad, but I don’t see them being able to leave their bubble easily.

  13. Avatar
    Sage

    I work in IT. One Sunday an assistant pastor approached me and said “Hey, you work with computers, right? I thought to myself..here it comes.. but replied “yes, I do.” He then then explained all the symptoms his computer was having, didn’t even ask first if I could help. So, I replied “wow, I know, my computer does that all the time too and it is sooo irritating.”

    He just looked at me then made and excuse and walked away. That was the only time he asked for my help.

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