Here Comes Trouble

A few years ago Tina and I realized that we were headed for homeschool trouble.

It fully dawned on us that soon our oldest daughter would leave home for college after 12 years in our homeschool. We realized that the measure of success for our homeschool efforts would be more than her faith, character, social skills, knowledge, GPA, and SAT test scores. The measure of our success would be more than her acceptance to a good college and scholarships. The real measure of our success would be how prepared she was to face the challenges to her worldview that the college experience will bring.

Almost 30 years ago as a young Christian I left home for a large state University (go Dawgs!). One of the first courses I took was Psychology 101. I was not ready to refute the worldview assumptions hidden deep in the theories I learned. Under the banner of “science,” that professor challenged or ridiculed everything I held dear. I was part of the majority of Christians who “walk away” from their faith within 12 months of starting college.

I don’t think that psychology professors have changed very much in 30 years, so we wanted to be sure that my daughter was prepared for Psychology 101. We searched the catalogues in vain for an introduction to psychology for Christian homeschool students. We searched the web only to discover that many Christian homeschool families reject psychology completely.

We think it is important that she study psychology in college. We think that the study of the human mind, brain and behavior is part of what it means to love the Lord with your mind. We just wanted help teasing apart the science of psychology from the secular and humanistic worldview assumptions that are such a part of “modern” psychology.

I decided to do something about it.

I dedicated a big chunk of the last 3 years to understanding the relationship of a Christian worldview and the assumptions of modern psychology. I earned a Doctorate of Ministry along the way. The result of the effort is Homeschool Psych: Preparing Christian Homeschool Students for Psychology 101. You can preview the result at www.homeschoolpsych.com.