No Bad People

In church today, I heard a challenging message about honoring authority. By nature, I have a tendency to dislike authority. Outwardly, I have been raised to be respectful toward authority figures. But in my heart, I am often resentful and rebellious. I’ve been exposed to too many authority figures who have abused their power, and it has made me distrustful.

In church, we started with reading a Bible verse, Romans 13:1-2, which says: “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

Already, I started pumping the brakes. Wait, does this mean that God put Hitler in power? Osama Bin Laden? The Pharoah who enslaved the Israelites? What about the president of North Korea? These rulers have done evil things. Most people would call them evil people. Yet God put them in power?

Apparently, not only did God establish their positions of authority, but I am called to honor them. Honoring evil dictators is not something I can easily do, in my heart, or outwardly. I didn’t even know where to begin.

As a less dramatic example, I struggle with honoring President Trump. I didn’t vote for him, I would not have chosen him as the President, and I disagree with the attitudes he portrays, the words he says, and the actions he takes. I believe his actions are immortal, unloving, and against God. How am I to honor such a person?

Well, as usual, I started by researching. I read article after article about honoring the dishonorable, honoring authority while participating in civil disobedience, and the practical meaning of honoring people in general.

The best explanation I found goes something like this. Yes, God puts authority figures in power. No, God does not desire for those authority figures to do evil things, and he does not accept those evil actions. However, he has purposes and plans that we can’t always see or understand.

For whatever reason beyond me, God chose to put Hitler, and Bin Laden, and yes, Trump (sorry for the extreme juxtaposition), in power. We know that his plans are for the good, and that even when evil things are done, he has an eternal perspective and a plan for the good. All we can do is trust him in these situations.

So fine. I can accept that God arranged (not just allowed) President Trump to be elected, despite the immoral things he has said and done both before becoming president and during his presidency. But still, I struggle with honoring him.

Honoring means to hold in high esteem or to have great respect for someone. Respect means to feel a deep admiration for someone. Am I honestly being commanded to deeply admire and esteem President Trump? (Trump supporters can substitute President Obama).

Yes! And it’s not as impossible as it might sound.

We can do this by finding the fine line between our feelings and our choices. We can distinguish between honor and obedience, friendship, agreement, or enabling.

Let’s break this down.

I can honor a person’s position without submitting to their immorality. If the government passes a law that is contrary to God, I can still respect the government without obeying that immoral law. In fact, I am commanded to disobey that law and instead submit to God’s authority.

I can honor a person without enjoying their personality, or supporting the evil things they do.

I can honor a person without agreeing with them.

I can honor a person without enabling them to continue to do evil. I can honor an authority figure while still working respectfully and calmly to remove them from authority, or pursue justice for their evil actions, or affect change in how their authority is used.

So if I don’t have to blindly obey, enjoy, support, agree with, or enable a person to honor them, what do I have to do?

What does it actually mean, in practical terms, to honor somebody?

We can honor people by looking for things to respect. Even if 99% of the things a person says or does are not worthy of respect, we can look for the 1%. There is good in everybody, because we are all made in God’s image.

Which brings me to the next point. We are all made in God’s image, and we are all his creation. We can honor people by recognizing that they are God’s masterpiece.

We can honor people by remembering that God loves them. God loves them so much that he died for them. And if they have accepted Jesus, whether that shows on the outside or not, then they are also children of God, and our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are family. We are all loved by God.

We can honor people by viewing them through a lens of compassion. We are all imperfect and flawed. Yet God extends his grace to us, and we can also extend it to others.

We can honor the likelihood that most people are just doing their best. Sometimes, a person’s best falls far, far short of what we expect at a minimum. But still, most people want to be good people and do what they think is right. They are trying. Sometimes, what a person thinks is right is completely distorted and evil, but they don’t see it. They are blind. Whether they deserve it or not (and none of us do, really), we can honor them nonetheless.

My favorite way is this: we can honor people for their potential. Everybody has potential to be used by God. He has taken the dirtiest sinners and turned them around to do great things for his Kingdom. Nobody is too far gone for God to use for good. We can honor that potential in other people, no matter how much we despise the things they have done in the past and perhaps the things they are still doing.

When it comes to authority figures, from our parents to our bosses to police officers to our President, we can also simply honor the position. We may not know the person well (or like, or agree with them), but we do know that God put them in their position of authority, and we are called to honor that. (Of course, we are also called to use our influence to help bring godly people into positions of authority, and remove ungodly ones. We can still do that respectfully. And whether or not we succeed, we are called to pray for those in power, that God would use them for good.)

I think when we fully absorb this attitude of honor, we will reflect that in our hearts and in our words and actions.

Instead of saying that somebody is a bad person, I can say that they have done bad things. I can honor them as a person who God created, loves, and sees potential in. When I label a person as “bad” it leaves no room for change. When I label attitudes, words, and actions as bad, but still honor the person, I leave room for God to work.

I think that is the key to this command to honor those in authority, and those around us. We do our best to see God in each person, and in doing so, we leave room for him to work.

Schoolin’

Here is a peek inside my Pre-K Homeschool curriculum for Cody this year!

Book List

Bible:
Children’s Bible – 101 Favorite Stories from the Bible by Ura Miller
Memory Verses – My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God’s Word in Little Hearts* by Susan Hunt & Yvette Banek
Devotional – A Little God Time for Kids: 365 Daily Devotions
Language Arts:
The Random House Book of Fairy Tales by Amy Ehrlich & Diane Goode
The Big Purple Book of Beginner Books by various authors including P.D. Eastman (There are also Blue & Red editions with stories by P.D. Eastman)
The Big Green Book of Beginner Books by Dr. Seuss (There are also Orange & Aqua editions with stories by Dr. Seuss)
Any treasury story book that you and your child enjoy will work well

Reading:
First Thousand Words (in English) by Heather Amery & Stephen Cartwright
LeapFrog LeapReader (electronic pen) with Learn to Read 10 Book Bundle

Art:
The Art Book for Children by Phaidon Press
Art Lab for Little Kids by Susan Schwake

Poetry:
Eric Carle’s Animals Animals
A Treasury of Mother Goose Illustrated by Hilda Offen
The Random House Book of Poetry for Children by Jack Prelutsky
National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

Science:
The Berenstain Bears’ Big Book of Science and Nature
Is the Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is? By Robert E. Wells
How Do You Lift a Lion? By Robert E. Wells
What’s Smaller than a Pygmy Shrew? By Robert E. Wells
What’s Under the Sea? By Sophy Tahta
Why Do Tigers Have Stripes? By Mike Unwin
How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World by Faith McNulty
Science Learn and Explore Pre-K by DK Workbooks

Social Studies:
People by Peter Spier
Then and Now by Heather Amery
Things People Do by Anne Civardi
Stories from Around the World (Retold by Heather Amery)
Workbook: (pre-writing, thinking, numbers)
School Zone Big Preschool Workbook

 

How I Chose My Curriculum

Originally, I planned to use a pre-organized curriculum by a company called Sonlight. They create Christian, literature-based curriculum packages for preschool through high school. After ordering my package, I received the items and started out following the very well-organized Instructor’s Guide. Each week has a memory verse and a song of the week, and each day has a Bible story, along with selections from the various books included in the curriculum. There are also optional activities that can be done.

As I started out, I quickly realized that the books included are for the most part, quite old. I understand the value of classics, but when the majority of the books in a curriculum are published in the 1980s, I think it might be time for an update! Additionally, many of the books are by the same authors or publishing groups. It makes me feel like I’m only exposing my child to one person’s way of thinking, instead of teaching from a variety of sources.

So, after only a couple of days of that, I decided to keep what I liked and choose different books for the rest. I quickly ended up with my own curriculum, and have only kept a few things from Sonlight, mainly because I don’t want to go through the hassle of returning them for a partial refund, and I didn’t want to further delay our start of school by waiting for all new books.

I started out by deciding what subjects I wanted to study with my child. The core subjects I came up with were Bible, language arts, reading, science, social studies, and math. Since Cody is still too young for true math, we are learning the basics of numbers this year, and we do that mainly through his workbook. Bible is the subject we study every day, and we also do something in the reading category daily. That left me with three subjects to rotate through. I decided to make it five, so we can study one subject each day and go through all of them in a week.

Because I actually enjoyed the poetry selections from Sonlight, I chose that subject and picked a few new books. To round out the curriculum, I chose art as our final subject. (Next year, for Kindergarten, we will study Spanish and Math as a full subject, so I will have to rearrange accordingly).

After choosing our subjects, I simply went shopping for books I liked. I chose a few for each subject, based on what I felt was needed. Some books are large collections we will work through over the course of the year, and others are ones we will read for a few months, or perhaps only once.

 

What Homeschooling Looks Like for Us

Every day we review our memory verse for the week, then we read the Bible story for the day. We are currently using the Sonlight Instructor’s Guide for our Bible verse and story selections, but next year we will use My ABC Bible Verses, which can be reused for several years, and read chronologically through the Read and Learn Bible, which we already have.

He repeats the Bible verse (in short pieces), and I remind him briefly what it means. While reading the story, I ask him questions to help with comprehension and keep him engaged. The stories are short, and the pictures are lovely, so that helps.

Next, we choose a subject to focus on for the day. We have a jar with popsicle sticks, and each subject written on one stick. He chooses one and moves it to the “done” jar, and that’s the subject we study that day. The options are: Stories (Language Arts), Science, Art, Social studies, and Poetry.

For each subject, we typically read a few pages from one of the appropriate books, and possibly do an activity. We have the freedom to choose which book we want to read that day, and how much we want to read. I keep an eye on his attentiveness, and stop when I’m satisfied we’ve done enough and he’s beginning to lose focus.

Then we do some reading practice. We either look at a few pages of First Thousand Words, and practice reading the words and finding the objects in the pictures, or we read through one of his LeapReader books using his electronic pen.

We end by doing a few pages in his workbook, one of his favorite parts of school. I flip through and try to pick a variety of activities, and he likes to pick which ones to do as well. I usually have to tell him when we’re going to be done, because even though he loses focus, he says he wants to do more.

That’s it for our “formal” schooling during the day time. It usually takes us 20 minutes or so to do all of that, not including any activities we might do. We also have a devotional we read together as a family at bedtime.

As homeschoolers, we also see life skills as an important part of our children’s education. While he’s a bit young right now, we plan to teach cooking, cleaning, money management, nutrition, fitness, self-defense (through karate) and any other subjects they show an interest in.

The formal part of homeschooling sometimes seems intimidating to people, but I’ve found that at least at this early stage in our journey, it’s actually quite fun to choose books and subjects you want to explore together. Then you just start! One day at a time, they learn. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and Cody enjoys it too.