Preparing Sons for Single Income - Chapter Five

The fifth chapter in "Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single Income Family" by Steven Maxwell is mostly a chance to explain the steps to being "saved" to any readers who have bought this book without being saved already.  I don't much to say on that point except that the idea of having a born-again moment is really bizarre to people who grew up in non-Evangelical circles.  As a Catholic, we view salvation as being the providence of a merciful God whom we show gratitude to by behaving in a moral manner.  We believe that baptism is a rebirth in Christ - and we are very much in favor of baptizing infants.  We believe that we receive the Body and Blood of Christ at the Eucharist.

Coming from that background, the idea of a single moment where Christ is invited into someone's heart is....a bit jarring, really.  From my background, the fact that Christ is the Savior of the World and the fact that you personally need salvation is a basic given that we've accepted since early childhood.  The real challenge is living a life that reflects Christ's Love for all - and we don't find asking people about their salvation status to be a good way of doing that.

Anyway, the Maxwell thesis on salvation is book-ended by a slap at a early mentor of Nathan's in the beginning and the story of Nathan's purchase of a home as a reward for Nathan, Steve and Teri's prayer life at the far end which will be the crux of this post.

The chapter begins with the horror story of "Mike".

Nathan, my oldest son, worked with Mike for a number of months. Mike is single, good-looking, extremely talented, and makes an enormous amount of money. He lives the " fast life", drives high-performance German vehicles, and goes from one fun experience to another. Do Mike's parents consider him a success? Very likely! Most people evaluate their children's success by the amount of money they earn and whether they stay out of trouble. Unfortunately, Mike doesn't know the Lord Jesus as Savior, and unless something changes, he will spend eternity in "the lake of fire". (pg. 62)

Now, Steven mentioned in a section of this chapter that men shouldn't save souls on company time with which I wholeheartedly agree.  How does Nathan know the salvation status of Mike without defrauding his company?  Lots of people enjoy after-work outings with their coworkers - but the next chapter makes it clear that the Maxwell clan are morally opposed to wasteful activities like watching movies,  owning recreational vehicles or viewing spectator sports let alone having a beer after work. 

These sections make me wonder how jealous Steven is of other men's lives.  I've never enjoyed things like bars, clubs or driving sporty cars - but I've got no beef with anyone who does.  To me, Mike works hard and plays hard.  That's a legitimate way to lead a good life. 

Oh, Lord.  I just realized that according to the Maxwell Way I lived a wild, crazy and SIN-FILLED life when I was a young, single professional!  I went out for alcoholic drinks after work with coworkers monthly.  I did ceili and Irish set dancing weekly along with bi-monthly contra dancing.  Afterwards, I would go out for dinner and drinks with fellow dancers.   Sometimes, I would travel with friends to a different county for an Advanced no-call contra dance.    I watched movies, regional professional sports and even - gasps - plays!  (Theater is so horrific that it never appears in the Maxwell lists of evils.) ROTFL!

I wonder what Mike would say about Nathan - or Steven Maxwell.  Does Mike know Steven Maxwell - or is Steven stealing a story about his son's coworker?  (If this is a second-hand story, that adds an entirely new level of skeevy creepiness to the chapter.)

This is where the Maxwell Salvation Plan is inserted.  The chapter ends with a testimonial humble-brag of how praying regularly lead to Nathan getting his first house.

When we discovered the house across the street was going for sale our son Nathan, who was 23 at the time, was quite interested. However, since he lived with us and didn't have plans to move out, Nathan had no immediate need of a house. He started to pray about the house during his quiet time with the Lord.

Nathan prayed for a number of weeks and finally had the confidence that the Lord was telling him to buy it. Additionally, he was surprised to feel that God was also telling him it was time to be married. This may not sound surprising since his age was right, he had a good income, and he was a mature believer. However, Nathan was fully at peace with remaining single until God directed him to seek a spouse. Now it appears that God was directing. (pgs. 70-71)

This is what my brain deciphered the story as: Nathan wasn't sure if he wanted to live across the street from his parents for the rest of his life, but realized that moving farther way was probably going to be vetoed by "the Holy Spirit" (a.k.a. Steven Maxwell controlling his family through what "God" tells him.)  He was about to share that piece of information with his parents when he realized that he was not going to be allowed to move out before he married.  Nathan didn't want to own a house that he couldn't live in so he decided it was high time to marry.

The housing market in that neighborhood had to have been pretty slow - or the house was terribly overpriced at first - for Nathan to get away with praying for weeks on the decision to make an offer.

Nathan told the homeowners that he wanted to buy the house, and they gave him a selling price. There was only one problem. He was about $10,000 short of what they wanted. However, Nathan wasn't troubled by the lack of money because he knew that if the Lord was truly involved, he would provide the finances.

Shortly thereafter, a publisher approached Nathan about writing a book on computer security. It would be used in classrooms where Microsoft Certified System Engineer curriculum was being taught. Since the proposed writing schedule was extremely aggressive, it was another issue to take to his Lord. After praying he felt God's leading to accept the job. My heart affirmed his decision. (pg. 71)

Let me get this straight.  Nathan has watched a house molder on the market for weeks, asks for the selling price and gets an answer that's $10,000 higher than he wants.   We are supposed to believe that rather than making a counter-offer  or taking out a tiny home loan Nathan decides to wait and hope that God will do the rest?  After some unspecified period of time, Nathan gets an offer to write a book and is a bit nervous because it has a tight timeline.  (Allegedly. I am super-skeptical of Steven Maxwell's use of adjectives after the transmission fluid story.)   Nathan and Steven decide to pray on the idea again before deciding that this is probably the answer to their prayers.

I know the take-away is supposed to be "Trust in the Lord and everything will be great!" but the story feels more like "Some people require God to do everything for them so they don't have to take initiative."   And seriously - who doesn't make a counter-offer?  Or explain that he's paying cash on closing which might bring the price down a few thousand dollars?  Or ask the homeowners if he could do a land contract or personal loan between Nathan and the owners to pay off the remaining $10,000 over the next 3-4 months.  Remember, Nathan's raking in good money working for Western Auto and living with his folks; he could literally sign his paychecks over to the homeowners. He could call it a "payment plan" since the Maxwell are extremely anti-debt.

The conclusion to the story is that not only did Nathan complete the book within the agreed-upon time, but the writing's renumeration provided what was needed for him to purchase the house debt-free. That was also the fulfillment of a vision of Teri and me; we have encouraged our sons that one aspect of marriage preparation is that they'd be able to purchase a house debt free. (pg. 71)

My husband and I had church mandated premarital counseling with a state licensed social worker before we married.  The importance of owning a house debt-free prior to marriage never came up.  Not once.  In fact, we lived in a rental house for the first year and are currently paying down a land contract on that home.  The fact we have a monthly land contract payment has not crippled our marriage.  Actually, we've never had a fight about bill payments at all.  Some of that is because we live within our means; most of it is because we've been lucky enough to be gainfully employed in jobs that give us plenty of means to work with. 

Practically, we'd have never been able to buy our house which includes a large block of prime farm land for cash outright.  The cost is too high for the Maxwell trick of a single son working hard as a teenager and young adult banking his income while his living costs are supported by his parents.    On my teacher salary of $30,000 per year, I'd need to live at home until I was in my 60's.  My husband and I together would have had to live with one of our in-laws for 15 years - which isn't conducive to the QF lifestyle beloved by the Maxwells.   By getting a land contract from the farm and having our monthly payment cover both the cost of purchasing the property and rental of a place to live, we own a valuable property outright in 20 years.  But I'm sure we'll hear more about this in their book on buying homes.....