“I’d be a proud father if my son serves in the armed forces.”
That’s where I was ten years ago when my first boy was born. Then I turned
off the news. I didn’t want my baby to be exposed to all the negativity,
violence, and intensity of the world. I still listened to Rush Limbaugh and
read Drudge Report every day, I was an adult after all, I could handle all the
negativity, violence, and intensity of the world. I relished in what I thought
were intellectual battles around camp fires, on Twitter, and in blog comments.
I thought that was how one tested his knowledge and sharpened his mind.
When I was alone with my son I was different. I listened to him and watched my speech for tone and content. I only wanted to share truth with him. I wanted it all to make sense, to be clear, and to help him become the best possible kind of man. I discovered contradictions in my arguments. How had they not been exposed in all those verbal battles? My wit was quicker than my brain. That’s plenty of fun when you’re at a bar and care more about in a social setting than actually getting things right.
Now I had two sons and it was well past time to get things right. War was my
first stumbling block. I had supported a lot of violence through my writing and
speech, I honored friends who served and died in combat, and one of my best
friends was a Marine sniper. How could I now teach the Golden Rule to my sons
and justify military interventions overseas?
A lot happened when I left my job as a proofreader to care for my sons full
time. In a moment of curiosity about homeschooling I started listening to Tom Woods. He’s a homeschooling
parent, Libertarian, and Catholic. I didn’t know this type of person existed.
He introduced me to the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). From
FEE.org: “One version of the NAP states that while it is legitimate to
use physical violence in defense of one’s rights, initiating violence against
another person is wrong and can be met with proportional violence in
self-defense.”
I try to apply this principle to my politics, parenting, and approach to the
world.
Through Woods I found other homeschool voices and my wife, Mary, and I started the conversation to begin our own home education journey. We slowly looked at our own pasts and realized how the school system had been, and remained, unsuited to us. I linked my years in school to my years watching cable news and began to uncover assumptions I had adsorbed over that time. It was this process of deschooling that would fundamentally change my life and save our family. “Deschooling” is exactly that, the process of analyzing internalized assumptions and separating what is useful and what is holding you back from learning. It was the birth of my self-improvement journey and taught me how to face circumstances that I had never imagined.
I reconnected with the inquisitive learner inside that had been neglected.
Initially, this was simply to model an energetic learning environment for my
children, but I soon found myself experiencing personal enrichment.
It was about this time that Mary questioned me about faith (I said a lot was happening). I had long been acting out and defending Christian ideals from a practical perspective. I saw them as a good set of rules to live by, a recipe for success. But I had not seriously considered what God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit meant to me. Mary embodied an easy faith and I was a hard nut to crack. She was patient as I began to study the Bible, listen to commentaries, and spend hours talking and thinking about Jordan Peterson’s Biblical lectures. I put assumptions aside and took a clean look at the Word. There was a quiet moment during a men’s Bible study meeting when I accepted Christ into my heart. I’m still working on what that means for me, but I began to find peace in that moment. I began to find that love trumps rules and that I didn’t need a prescriptive regimen, but a path towards loving more fully.
It was less than a year from that moment that my wife suddenly died. I had
yet to learn how much self-love I was lacking. I had yet to become the man that
Mary deserved. I was on my first steps toward realizing my potential. Seventeen
months later, assumptions continue to be burned like deadwood, the smoke chokes
and blinds me with tears. I feel God with me on this journey. I feel that He
has called me for this, even if “this” remains obscured from me.
It has been quite the decade.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason
After practicing their lines for an upcoming play and having an on-the-fly lunch, they made a new friend as I battled through one of the toughest soccer matches of my summer. We rushed home to let me get cleaned up and pack snacks for our evening adventure.