Disengagement

I read a fascinating--albeit a tad disturbing--blog post today about one man's experience as he lost his faith. I think the post is best summed up in his statement, "I seemingly woke up one morning and realized that my life would be no different, practically, without God."

There were a couple other posts today which also seemed to fit within this theme... but now I can't find them. Sorry.

Anyway, I got to thinking: There are certainly days when this is true of me as well. Not just in regard to the "god thing" either, but many aspects of my life. What's more, I can imagine lots of other situations where, if the conditions were right, I could abandon entire sections of my life without much practical change aside from the fact that "I would have much more time and much less stress" (5th paragraph).

What causes such a shift? Disengagement.

When I'm not living the way God has called me to, it's little wonder that His impact on my life is rather unsubstantial.

Take homeschooling as another example.

Those who spend time reading to their children, answer the endless stream of questions, talk through those "teachable moments" and engage and spur their children onward; those people know what a joy homeschooling can be. But what of the others? Those families who do no more than turn on the lesson--if that--and let their children learn via a video or computer model--never to take part in their child's education; those parents would see very little change, other than more time and less stress, if they abandoned homeschooling in favor of a public school option.

I'm not saying you should never use a virtual tutor or video lesson. I'm not saying that sending your children to public school is the same thing as abandoning them. That's not what I'm saying.

But if you abandon something and feel not ill-effects or loss, it may have more to do with your lack of engagement than the inherent value of the thing.

Think of your exercise equipment. If I owned such an apparatus, I can assure you that getting rid of it would do nothing to my life except free up some space in my house. Why? Because I'd never use it. My abs would be just as buff as they are today whether I owned an Ab-Flex-Master-Pro-HD Extreme^TM or not.

It's little wonder, then, that people who don't homeschool look at us as if we were insane. We're just adding burden and misery to our lives. Right?

Wrong.

Sure, it's not perfect. It's not even that fun sometimes. In fact, it can be down-right unpleasant. But the more we engage with it, the more we see the benefits and the beauty of it.

 ~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Surrogate Father