It always makes me squirm just a bit, wonder a little. I come across these testimonies of people who have fled out of big family, homeschooling culture, people who feel like it really damaged them, even ruined their lives. And I always ache for them when they tell of the harsh emptiness of trying to keep up appearances without really getting a chance to know God. Some of them are finding Him far away from the skirt-wearing, bread-baking world of their youth. And others don’t believe in Him at all. Most of them are bitter. And all of them are hurting.

I don’t want that for my children.

And so I listen. I try to figure out what happened in those families. One big problem, as many of the ex-legalists describe it, was that they were sheltered, kept away from the “normal” world (or, depending on who is writing the testimony, that they tried to shelter their kids). “My parents wouldn’t let us watch TV.” “We had to wear frumpy homemade dresses and look like freaks.” “I never got to go to slumber parties.” And I always think, hmm, sounds a lot like my house, only I buy most of my frumpy dresses online.

And sheltering is bad, the story goes, because it is based on fear, fear of God’s displeasure, and most of all, fear of the negative influences of the world. But, as the ex-legalists who still love God are quick to point out, “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The solution they offer, the way back to God and His grace, is to quit running from all those things the sheltering crowd is afraid of. You know, watch a few vampire movies, buy some cute jeans, maybe send your kid to public school, or at least find a church with a youth group. Get free. Heal. Stop being afraid that if you put on a tank top or read a romance novel that God won’t like you anymore. I always think hard when I hear stuff like this. I really do. Because I’m a big-time shelterer, and having children is a huge responsibility. These are human beings, real people, and I could seriously mess them up. How could the stakes be any higher than another person’s life?

It’s just . . . I grew up wearing cute jeans, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the path to God. Actually, wearing frumpy dresses isn’t the path to God, either. (Although, if you want to have a little fun, pair a cape dress with a white headcovering, go out in public, and watch everyone fall all over themselves with respect and God-bless-you’s. You’d be tempted to think you were Mother Theresa or something until your kids started bickering and you found yourself announcing to them that you were about to scream. Not that I have any personal experience with that or anything.) Where was I? Right. Frumpy dresses are not the path to God. But I actually have some reasons for wearing them, and in fact, I have reasons for nearly all of the “sheltering” I do with my children. So when I read these genuinely sad stories of people who claim to have been scarred by the very things I’m doing in my own family, I have to ask myself, is sheltering dangerous? Is stuff like not watching TV or not frequenting public pools inherently harmful? Are those things in and of themselves what hurt these people, and in some cases even drove them away from God? Or was it something else? What does the backlash really mean?

Here’s what I’ve come to so far.

First of all, everyone shelters. It’s the nature of parenting. We love our children. We want to surround them with good and limit evil as much as possible, and so we shelter them. We shelter from crack cocaine, from kitchen knives and chain saws, from walking home alone at night. Some of us shelter from pesticides, rBST, and artificial colors. Others shelter from stupid cartoons and poorly written literature. And even the parents of the kids at the hippie school my husband’s family used as their legal umbrella for homeschooling back in the days before HSLDA, the parents who let their kids sit in the middle of the street for school and “experience” the yellow line, even they were sheltering their kids from the mind-numbing, soul-crushing sameness of a life constrained by the social norms embraced by the public schools.

Second, the problem with sheltering can’t just be the fear. Consider this: No one is terribly concerned about whether we fear crack or chain saws. Very few people are quoting 1 John 4:18 to parents who don’t want their third graders walking the streets alone after dark. Carefully reasoned avoidance of danger is always prudent. It’s when the herd doesn’t think there’s a danger that the accusations come out, and the seriousness of the accusations is directly proportional to the number of herd-members who don’t see the danger. The mom who won’t let her kid play with a chain saw because she’s “afraid” he may saw off a limb is wise and reasonable. The mom who who won’t let her kid eat conventionally grown strawberries because she’s “afraid” of pesticides is a little loopy. And the mom who doesn’t let her kids watch TV because she’s “afraid” of exposing them to sex and violence is downright oppressive and needs to understand grace. So really, “you’re just afraid,” might better be stated as “you’re just different.”

I’m pretty sure that simply being different does not wound souls, that having a higher threshold for what you believe is safest in life does not automatically scar children. But what’s the real problem? What actually caused the suffering in these lives? I believe that it’s something you don’t hear about a lot in the sheltering debates because the debates are almost always focused on externals. Should kids be allowed to go out with their friends? Is it wise to have a TV? Is homeschooling better for children? And we tend to put people into two categories based solely on superficial checklists. Ankle dress? Stand here, please. Look like a mannequin from the mall? You’re over here. Desired family size greater than five? You belong with these people. Less than five? You go with this other group. Want to join our group? Get yourself a handbook and a uniform, and you’re in. But looking the same on the outside doesn’t actually say anything about who you are on the inside. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Anybody can put on a modest dress, toss out their birth control, and buy a used edition of Saxon math. Anybody. Even people who don’t look very much like Jesus. There really are two kinds of people in this world: those who are walking with the Lord and those who aren’t. A given practice may be more or less prudent all other things being equal. But if all other things aren’t equal, all bets are off.

The real problem is that some conservatives are fake. They say they love Jesus, but they’re living for themselves. They’re brazenly unrepentant about being angry, power-hungry, obsessed with appearances, or addicted to lust. And all the long skirts and homemade bread in the universe can’t keep them from hurting their children because selfishness always hurts other people.

Sheltering fails when it is empty, like a wall with nothing inside. We may admire our friends’ stately stone walls around their castles, but constructing an identical wall around a vacant lot still leaves our families exposed to the rain and cold, with nothing but weeds to eat. But we’re OK, we tell our shivering children, because we have a pretty wall. Can we blame cold and hungry people if they run away and tell the world that walls are bad? But really it wasn’t the wall. It was the vacant lot.

Those of us who are sheltering more than the herd really should be concerned when we read about people who have fled big families, or homeschooling, or anything else we’re doing with our families that we truly believe are best for them. But their pain should not send us all running to the Gap for cute jeans. It should cause us to examine our hearts and make very sure there’s a passionate surrender to God inside that impressive stone wall.