On Wednesday evenings, we have a movie night at our house and the rest of the family lets me choose a video for all of us to watch together. I have collected several sets of documentaries and lectures and we’ve enjoyed watching and learning from them over the past several years. When I recently came across the documentary To Be One, I was excited about the opportunity to view and review it. It arrived Wednesday afternoon – just in time to make it the selection for this week!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a documentary highlighting the path to marriage for three couples. There are so many different views on dating, courtship, betrothal, etc., so I was prepared for a reiteration of various principles and teachings that I’ve heard over the years advocating for a specific approach or set of rules to follow. I was pleasantly surprised to find that that’s exactly what this video isn’t. Having experienced close-up the courtship of one of my sisters (a story that I share in my book), I echo the truth that God deals with relationships on a personal level, not according to some set formula. It’s important that we don’t become attached to extra-biblical ideas and expectations, but instead trust that God will work according to His purposes in our lives and relationships.

To Be One does an excellent job of emphasizing the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ and the importance of earnestly seeking Him to guide each of us in matters involving relationships (just as in all else). Each of the three couples that were featured (Jeff and Ashley Baird, Timothy and Brittany Lindvall, and Max and Jenny Parish), along with their parents, shared the very different approaches that ultimately led them to marriage. They each shared specific ways that the Lord led them, making His will clear to them so that they were able to proceed with confidence. A desire to seek the Lord, maintain purity, and honor and involve their parents in the process were unifying themes of each testimony.

In discussing the video afterward, our family concluded that this probably wouldn’t be the best way to introduce alternative relationship practices to someone whose only frame of reference is the dating culture (it might be a bit much – i.e. radical – at points for someone to handle all at once!). But for someone who has already heard about courtship and/or betrothal and is interested in learning more about the heart that undergirds such counter-cultural approaches, To Be One is both informative and inspiring. One thing that especially stands out to me after having watched this documentary is the great deal of thought and care that each of these families put into preparing for and entering marriage. It is a refreshing contrast to the flippant attitude with which most young people today approach relationships. As my Dad declared after watching it, it certainly “provides some food for thought.”

HT: Jasmine Baucham

This new documentary, Homeschool Dropouts, produced by the Botkin siblings looks quite intriguing.

I am particularly interested in watching it because this statement from their website expresses almost the opposite of what my interaction with homeschool graduates has been:

The Botkin siblings have been talking to their peers around the United States, many of whom are planning futures that do not include home education. Is this the first sign of homeschooling failure? This documentary examines the history of the movement and the character that will be required to sustain it into the second generation and beyond.

Almost all of my friends, and other homeschoolers with whom I have spoken, look forward to homeschooling their own children some day. That said, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to be reminded of the vision for the next generation and how homeschooling fits into that bigger picture. In fact, I’ve recently been reading Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and one of the observations he makes is the tendency of those in democratic nations to be constantly charting their own course rather than looking to ages past for wisdom. It occurred to me that with such emphasis placed on individualism and each person figuring out all the answers for himself, we often miss out on the great advances that can be made by “Standing on Shoulders.”

Here is a relevant excerpt from de Tocqueville:

“…I discover that in most of the operations of the mind, each American appeals to the individual exercise of his own understanding alone…In the midst of the continual movement which agitates a democratic community, the tie which unites one generation to another is relaxed or broken; every man readily loses the trace of the ideas of his forefathers or takes no care about them. Nor can men living in this state of society derive their belief from the opinions of the class to which they belong, for, so to speak, there are no longer any classes, or those which still exist are composed of such mobile elements, that their body can never exercise a real control over its members. As the the influence which the intelligence of one man has on that of another, it must necessarily be very limited in a country where the citizens, placed on the footing of a general similitude, are all closely seen by each other; and where, as no signs of incontestable greatness or superiority are perceived in any one of them, they are constantly brought back to their own reason as the msot obvious and proximate source of truth. It is not only confidence in this or that man which is then destroyed, but the taste for trusting the ipse dixit of any man whatsoever. Everyone shuts himself up in his own breast, and affects from that point to judge the world.”

Some food for thought anyway… and all that to say, I’m looking forward to hopefully watching this Homeschool Dropouts documentary soon. If anyone else watches it, I’d love to hear what you think!