Homeschool

That Evil Feminist Movie, “Tangled”

April 21, 2011
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[Note: For NLQ readers wo have not yet joined the forum, here's a small taste of what you're missing ~ :) ]

by Tess Willoughby

I found this and just about died. As a woman who escaped from my own abuser and “tower” of extreme fundamentalism, I can’t get over this woman’s take on the Disney movie “Tangled”:

Ladies Against Feminism: Mangled Stay-at-Home-Daughters on the Silver Screen.

Rapunzel’s rebellion, anti-domesticity, and general unwillingness to stay put are decried at length. In the movie, Reims states, “we’re treated to an interesting commentary on homemakers and why these captives to domesticity are setting themselves up for eventual disenchantment.”

Say what?

Even though Rapunzel was deceived by her kidnapper, Reims writes, because Rapunzel thought Gothel was her mother, Rapunzel is a sinner for rebelling against TOTAL abuse, control, and slavery when Rapunzel becomes an ADULT! Rapunzel is put in the same camp as Mother Gothel (“If we’re prepared to say that Mother Gothel’s sins are inexcusable, we must be prepared to say the same of Rapunzel’s”), even though Gothel is a textbook abuser right down to the insults with “I’m just teasing” and the use of terrors to control Rapunzel that Gothel herself has manufactured.

I was amazed at the thorough depiction by Disney of every kind of mental and emotional abuse. Like many of the captors whom we in this forum escaped, Gothel only turns to physical abuse when all other forms of abuse fail. When Rapunzel tries to escape, obviously suffering from acute Stockholm Syndrome, Gothel stalks her and creates a crisis to force her back into bondage. The world is evil, keep your light in the tower, says Gothel. Mother knows best. You’re 18, 21, 25? So what.

From this writer’s viewpoint, if you’re in a home, being domestic, it doesn’t matter that home is a prison and you’re being abused. It doesn’t matter that your authority figure has no intention of ever letting you leave, and does not recognize that parental authority has an expiration date or that husbandly authority can be abused until it is invalid. If you leave, at all, for any reason, you’re being sinful and rebellious and anti-biblical.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 2: Purity & Contentment

April 17, 2011
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by Libby Anne
To be pure in body, mind, and spirit is more precious than all the promises the world offers. Young ladies who experience a beautiful girlhood guard their hearts against anything that would rob them of purity and are content to wait upon the Lord and trust the leadership of Mom and Dad.

My mother taught us when we were little that prostitutes are women who sell their kisses. We, in contrast, were to be pure and save our kisses for our wedding day.

I am not sure when I learned that my dad would give me a purity ring the day I turned thirteen, but it must have been fairly early on because I remember thinking “I’m only seven and it will be six more years until I get my purity ring! How am I going to wait that long?” And indeed, I couldn’t wait. Finally, on my thirteenth birthday, mom and dad took me out to eat and gave me the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. It was love at first sight, and from that point on, I wore my purity ring constantly.

When I was around twelve, I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, by Joshua Harris, and loved it. Next I read Jeff McLean’s Courtship. There was a lot of other literature too, most of it from No Greater Joy and Vision Forum. My parents read the literature too, though I am not sure when. What I do know is that I cannot remember a time when courtship was not the expectation. I embraced the idea of courtship as wholeheartedly as my parents, and used to daydream about young men asking my father’s permission to court me.

I never found not dating as a teenager odd, and I think that this was for two reasons. First, I did not meet many boys my age. In fact, I did not have a single male friend. Sure, I saw my brothers’ friends, but they were significantly younger than I and thus not marriage material. Through some strange coincidence, all of the families my family associated with had only girls my age, and their brothers were all younger. So in other words, I never had a guy that I was close to, or even really knew at all, so there was never any desire to date anyone, or even any opportunity to court. But then, I knew that would come eventually. The second reason not dating didn’t seem odd was that none of my friends dated either.

While I knew I believed in courtship, I had very little idea about how it would unfold in practice. I guess I figured that my father would handle it when the time came. Every time I saw an article on courtship in No Greater Joy magazine, I hoped my dad would read it and take notes. At some point, dad gave me a list of requirements that a candidate for my hand would have to pass. While his list was not very long, it did include the basics. My list, in contrast, was much longer.

When I was sixteen, my dad made me a hope chest. I was thrilled. I proceeded to fill it with a variety of items, including linens, kitchenware, and books on homemaking. I was very proud of my hope chest, and I could hardly wait to be a wife. I would open my hope chest and smell the cedar, and just know that my future would bring me much joy. I could hardly wait.

To Train Up A Child: Michael Pearl’s Dangerous Child Training Advice and Renal Failure

April 10, 2011
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Pearl Method Problems and Kidney Disease Detection: How Many More Zariahs Will Go Undiagnosed, Untreated, or Unreported?

The autopsy report of Lydia Schatz indicated that she died from a condition called rhabdomyolosis, the rapid release of excessive amounts of broken muscle fragments into the bloodstream. Because the body cannot process such large amounts of these fragments, they end up lodging in the kidney, blocking the fine network of microscopic tubules that filter dissolved waste products from the blood and turn it urine. When medical treatments fail to open up these blockages within the kidney created by the muscle fibers fragments, the tiny tubules die and do not regenerate.

Due to the severity of the spankings with [Michael Pearl's recommended] plumbing line, both Zariah and Lydia Schatz suffered renal failure because of rhabdomyolysis. Had Lydia survived, we may never have learned anything about the extensive injuries in both girls, and they may never have been diagnosed and treated. Other children who develop rhabdomyolosis may sustain kidney damage that is not severe enough to cause full renal failure symptoms. If extensive and chronic, this damage can develop into “insufficiency” of the kidney which does not produce immediate symptoms and can be detected through laboratory testing. We only know the details about both children because of the publicity surrounding Lydia’s death, a matter of public record, but disease in children like Zariah will likely be missed because there may be no obvious, immediate symptoms.

Jocelyn Andersen reported on Blog Talk Radio on April 2, 2011 that she had been informed about another case of renal failure in a five year old girl within the Mennonite Community related to child abuse and the Pearl Method. Because individual States in the U.S. maintain their own Child Protective Service Agencies, prescribe different laws concerning child abuse, and limit the amount of information concerning child abuse cases because of privacy concerns, we may never learn the details about new cases of Pearl-related kidney disease unless it is reported by the families of the survivors.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Part 1: Faith & Fortitude

April 7, 2011
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by Libby Anne

The spirit of beautiful girlhood is alive in the girl who, with courage and fortitude, perseveres through the many challenges of life. She realizes that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” and consequently, strives for the principled course of action.

My parents saw us children as empty slates, and held that we had been given to them as gifts from God. At the same time, they believed that babies were born full of sin and ready to lead destructive, miserable, evil lives if allowed to develop without training. Therefore, my parents believed that it was their duty to shape and mold us into godly men and women, and they took this duty very seriously.

When we were little, my parents, following the teaching of Michael and Debi Pearl, trained us children to obey their simplest commands. My parents said they believed in house proofing the baby, rather than baby proofing the house. This meant that they would intentionally leave enticing objects within reach of a toddler, and then spank his or her hand and say “no” each time he or she reached for it. Similarly, they would call a toddler to come, spank the child if he or she did not come immediately, and then try it again. In this way, we were forced to submit our wills and learn obedience. After all, my parents told us, disobedience was rebellion against God.

My parents also worked hard to instill their faith in us children. We were expected to spend personal time reading the Bible and praying each morning before doing our chores. After chores came breakfast, and after breakfast, Bible time. My mother read the Bible aloud to us and then we discussed the passage and had group prayer. God was included in nearly every one of our homeschool subjects, including history and science. We learned that God had guided the founding fathers as they wrote the Constitution and that science properly understood shows that God created the world in six literal days six thousand years ago. Before bed, my parents gathered all of us together and prayed with us. God was a given, a part of our lives, and Jesus was a personal friend.

My mother used God to teach us to behave. If two of my siblings were bickering, they would be told to imagine that Jesus was standing right there with them. A child who was sulking would be asked, “do you think you are making Jesus happy right now?” If one of my siblings did his chores sloppily, my mother would quote from the Bible: “Do your job cheerfully as unto the Lord.” If one of my siblings needed an “attitude readjustment,” they would be sent to their bed with their Bible and told to read it. Another frequent punishment was copying down a verse from the Bible by hand, fifty or even a hundred times. In this way we were told a million times a day to make sure that our behavior conformed with what God would want, and of course, what God wanted—for us to do our chores thoroughly, to have a cheerful, loving attitude, and not bicker—was what mom and dad wanted.

Once we reached high school, my siblings and I took an apologetics class with a professor of theology my parents knew. I loved learning the fine points of doctrine, and I loved thinking about Christian theology. My parents often discussed theology around the supper table, helping us children understand what we believed and why. I frequently checked out books from our church library and read about a variety of subjects. The more I read the more convinced I was that my parents’ beliefs were right. I was devoted to my faith and dedicated to my Savior. Like my parents, I believed wholeheartedly that demons were real, that the rapture was coming, that the world had been created in six days six thousand years ago, and that anyone who had not asked Christ as their savior was destined for hell. This instilled me with a deep sense of mission – I had a purpose and a destiny.

Family Man, Family Leader: Created to be His Help Meet – Help I’ve Created a Monster. Part 1

April 3, 2011
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by LivingForEternity

My husband and I met at work. We were both recovering from failed marriages, and were friends for a long time before we started dating. After having a failed marriage we were both determined not to let another one fail.

We had two kids within nineteen months. That was fine as we wanted several children. He worked a lot of hours so I was a very capable manager of our home. I could feed babies and fix water leaks. I did not find it necessary to ask him about every single thing I did. If something needed fixing or doing I took care of it if he wasn’t able to. We were partners. However, as the children began to approach school age I began to question whether I wanted them to go away every day. I had quit work by this time, and really loved my kids.

It was decided that I would home educate them. Both of us are college educated, and we felt confident that this would be possible. I was not into a whole bunch of character stuff. I just liked my kids and wanted to be with them. As I began to get involved in a local home school group I was introduced to some ideas I had never heard of before. I met a lot of women who were very different from me. They seemed to be so calm with their many children. They had never worked and many were not college educated.

As I said before I was very independent. I was in no way co-dependent on my husband. I was a very capable person who could take care of most anything I had to. My new “friends” saw this and sought to “help” me. One of those helps was Created to Be His Help Meet.

The Beautiful Girlhood Doll ~ Introduction

March 29, 2011
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Print Friendlyby Libby Anne My parents started out as fairly ordinary evangelicals. My mother intended to go back to work after I was born, but once she held me in her arms she decided she could not bear to leave me with anyone else, and so she stayed at home. When I turned five, my mom could not bear the thought of sending me off to kindergarten. I was still so little, after all, and what did kids really learn in kindergarten? She had heard of homeschooling, and, though she was still skeptical, she decided Full post …

When Promises Become Dreams: Doing Marriage God’s Way

March 27, 2011
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by AfricaTurtle

The title of Sierra’s Post “When Dreams Become Promises” stirred thoughts in me of another Dream, of other Promises that have brought their own dose of pain and disappointment and reality into my life: Dreams of an enduring, godly marriage and the Promises I made to God and myself in order to lay hold of that dream.

I made my first promise at the age of 14. “I promise to never date a non-christian”. It was the call to action given by a speaker at the summer church camp I attended that year. I knew it was right, I knew it was what God expected of me. How can “light fellowship with darkness”? Why would I build a life with someone I couldn’t hope to spend eternity in heaven with? What a heartache that would be! What a burden to bear, to be “unequally yoked”! I knew that God wanted what was best for me. I knew I could trust him. I knew I would never “compromise” my walk with God by dating a non-Christian.

The second promise came only a few, short years later, at the age of 16. “True Love Waits” was the name of the campaign. It was pretty popular that year in various area youth groups and on a national level. I still have the card that I taped to the inside cover of my Bible that year: ““Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.” Signed and dated. For my 16th birthday I even asked my dad to buy me a “purity ring”, a ring I would someday give to my husband to show him how I had saved myself for him, and him alone.

Then as I went through high school and built friendships with other “like-minded” and “strong” Christians, we started talking about “casual dating”, why it wasn’t good, the emotional repercussions and so on. We really believed it was important to only consider dating someone who we believed we could actually marry. By this time I knew I had a call to foreign missions so this drastically reduced any dating “options” for me. Not too many guys I knew were interested in heading off to live in the jungles of Africa!

I believe it was also around this time that Josh Haris’ book “I Kissed Dating Good-bye” started to appear in Christian circles. I had pretty much already concluded that casual dating was not for the “mature” Christian. My father had no interest in “choosing” my spouse for me. (Not that he was unconcerned, he just always said “you’re the one that has to live with him, not me! ) So while I never committed to courtship, in the purest sense, I was, nonetheless, convinced God would lead me to the “right man” at the “right time”. This was something I was leaving in his hands. I didn’t “trust” myself with a decision this weighty, I definitely knew I needed God’s guidance, direction, and seal of approval.

Justice is No Lady: Chapter 5 ~ In Pursuit of Biblical Theology

March 25, 2011
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Warning: This story series contains descriptions of physical abuse.

by Defendant Rising

Hannah was born at home in spring of 1996. By this time, Nate had a better job at a personal injury law firm and we were able to get a three-bedroom house.

Satan must have followed us, because now there were lesbians having sex in the mailbox and Nate had no idea how the pervert porn peddlers got his name and address again.

I was still in a stupor, still worshipping my cult leader. The lights were on in my brain but no one was home. I think, however, that my brain’s doorbell started ringing in 1996, and Tess’s Good Sense began its three years of patiently knocking, waiting to be invited back in. Doubts, in huge bold type, slipped under the door and were increasingly hard to shove back out onto the doormat of my mind. Even a Branch Davidian or a card-carrying member of the Manson Family would begin to get suspicious when the porno people guessed their leader’s name and address twice.

Nate’s theology had more twists and turns than a ‘coaster at Busch Gardens. I could not keep up, and the numbers of True Christians with whom we could associate grew smaller and smaller.

By degrees, Nate became:

1. A Reformed Baptist—a Calvinist who holds that only “the elect” are predestined to be saved and he’s one of the “elect,” only Nate was the Baptist brand of God’s chosen few, as opposed to the more common Presbyterian variety.

2. A Reformed Baptist Theonomist—all of the above plus embracing Old Testament Law. Nate forbade me to serve bacon, ham, or shellfish. We wore only 100% cotton or other natural fibers.

3. A Reformed Baptist Reconstructionist—all of the above plus a belief that the Old Testament Law as given to Moses should be the one and only law of the United States. This would reconstruct America. In Mosaic Law We Trust.

4. A Reformed Baptist Reconstructionist Polygamist—ditto, with the possibility of the reconstructionist taking multiple wives, the better (and faster) to reconstruct America, my dear.

This was a bit much.

However, Nate was quick to assure me that while God would have no problem with Nate “using his freedom” to take one or more mistresses and call them wives, and while Nate had no problem with polygamy per se—he was actually pretty comfortable with the concept—I, Tess, was so loved by Nate that my husband would set aside his liberty in Christ to sleep with other women out of his great love for me.

Nate did not understand why I was not bowled over with love and gratitude. After all, “God’s Law says . . .” Look at Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon.