day seventy-three: understand the recipe for rebellion—an example to put it all together

                                                  Recipe for Rebellion

                                        Rules Without Reasons
                                        Rules Without Response
                                        Rules Without Repetition
                                       Rules Without Relationship


So how does this Recipe for Rebellion play out in our homes? What do these ingredients look like in action? I will give you an example of how we have applied this "recipe" in making a rule in our home and the result of those applications today. From this, as well as other times we followed the "Recipe for Rebellion," we have determined that some of our rules were not biblical, were man-made, were illogical, or were inconsistent. The rule in this example is not a bad rule in itself. The reasons it was a bad rule for us are because we made it based on isolated Scripture verses (not considering other similar verses); we were inconsistent in applying it; we were hypocritical; we didn't allow the children to respond to it; etc.


If you have this rule in your home, we are not suggesting you drop it. We are suggesting that when you have rules in your home, you give logical reasons for them, if possible. And that your rules, whatever they may be, do not contain the four ingredients in the "Recipe for Rebellion."


EXAMPLE: RULE WITHOUT REASONS; WITHOUT REPETITION; AND WITHOUT RELATIONSHIP…..LISTENING TO NON-CHRISTIAN MUSICIAN


One rule I made over a dozen years ago involved music. As an older teen, Joshua got a cd collection of Disney movie songs. Upon closer examination of it, I discovered that Elton John had written and performed many of the songs. Now I knew from my teen years that Elton John had lived an immoral life, and to my knowledge (obviously, I did not have first hand info on this), was not a Christian. I forbade Joshua from listening to this (we even had him get rid of it entirely) because it had such a blatantly non-Christian (from my teen years anyway) artist singing some of the songs. The problems with this rule were the inconsistencies (Rules Without Repetition), not letting him talk to us about it (Rules Without Response), and lack of relationship (Rules Without Relationship):


1. The verses that I found for my rule were applied incorrectly. I had a book about why contemporary music and rock music were wrong--and it listed reasons with Bible verses like some of the following:

a. Contemporary music is addictive, with the verse "My son, incline thine ear to my teaching"
b. Contemporary music has a bad beat, with the verse "Flee from evil"
c. Contemporary music causes rebellion. with the verse "Heed my instruction, my son."


The verses simply did not match the reasons!




a. If my "he's not a Christian" rule was to work, we would have to eliminate anything not done by a Christian.
b. Thus, we would not use practically any Christian literature course as nearly all of them study the "greats" in literature, Christian and secular (and we read a wide genre and list of secular authors in our homeschool).


3. My kids did point out number two above to me, and I said that they might be non-Christians, but Elton John was known for his ungodly lifestyle (during my youth; I am unaware of his lifestyle at this time).

a. Of course, this logic could not stand up because many artists and classical composers (who were okay to listen to according to our rules) lived ungodly lives.
b. Many of these composers are ones whom we had been advised in our curriculum to listen to because they were classical composers--and classical music was more accepted than contemporary music in many circles.

Now, if we had other reasons for these rules, or if we just felt the rule was right, but we were not sure why, and we told our children that--that is another story.


But instead we had the following ingredients from the Recipe for Rebellion:


1. Poorly applied Scripture (Rules Without Reasons)

2. We had illogical thinking in that he was more of a "non-Christian" than other non-Christian artists and authors (Rules Without Logical Reasons)


3. We had no consistency in our rule--reading non-Christian authors (Rules Without Repetition)


4. We did not listen to our kids when they tried to discuss it (Rules Without Response)


5. We built walls between Joshua and us due to those ingredients (adding the ingredient of Rules Without Relationship)

Again, there are many families we know and respect who do not allow any music in their homes besides classical and sacred music, and they have rules that their children accept and understand concerning this guideline. It is not the guideline/rule itself that made this not work for our family. It was that we did not have logical reasons, consistency, and openness about the rule that made it a problem. In short, we made a rule using all of the ingredients in our Recipe for Rebellion.


But, as my daughter always says, “It’s all good.” Truly, I don’t want to leave you with this negative recipe. Join us tomorrow as we switch from this unhealthy recipe—and instead learn how to create closeness and harmony with our children by following the “Ingredients for Intimacy.” 2. We watched movies written by non-Christians, read books written by non-Christians, viewed art created by non-Christians, and much more.