[OBW]

Since we have been through a few discussions about what went wrong with the LRC that affected the young people, it is becoming clear that there is no single cause. It was a collection of events, positions, "ways," etc., that either lost their interest or drove them away.

We discussed some of the very controlling things, but discovered that even though there was control everywhere, it was quite varied as to how it was wielded. We talked about the mixed focus — it is not Christ, but Christ and the church with too much of the focus being on the church and only a better vocabulary surrounding Christ. We haven't talked much about how, even after growing up in the LRC environment, the LRC is mostly irrelevant to the young ones. PSRP'ing does not deal with peer pressure, hormones, or even the very clear words that liberal teachers can use to sway young minds.

As for home schooling, it is a mixed bag. My sister home schools her kids, but mostly because the local school really is bad. But home schooling does not prepare them for meeting the real world. Eventually they need to face evolution, friends who smoke pot, etc. When the first time they even hear the real scoop on evolution (or some other thing) is in college, they will become too aware of how unprepared they are. And the preparedness of the "opponent" is hard to pass off as just Satan. They will either run screaming from the confrontation, or begin to face the new challenge — hopefully with enough will to stand firm as they reassess their reasons.

But this is a problem throughout Christianity. We do not prepare our children very well for dealing with the world. Instead, we prepare them for staying isolated from the world. A recent comment elsewhere on being "in the world but not of it" noted that we were specifically left in the world. Those who try to create isolation from the world in some way are actually avoiding what we are charged to do — be salt and light. You can't be a light to the world from the other side of a dense hedge. And all the salt in salt boxes in the fallout bunker is useless to salting the world outside.