Life Formula Pushers

Beware the person who has become an evangelist for a long series of products.

"Products" here can mean almost anything. A book, a diet, a homeschool curriculum, a supplement regimen, a parenting philosophy. Whatever it was, it changed their life, and so naturally they tell everyone about it. They sell it with the conviction of someone who has seen the promised land.

The mildest version of this person is merely exhausting. They've moved on from CrossFit to carnivore to cold plunges, and whatever they're currently doing is the thing you need to be doing. You learn to nod and wait for the next one.

But the more dangerous type doesn't jump from product to product. They collect them. Each new discovery doesn't replace the last. It joins it. Over time, the collection hardens into a system, and the system acquires a moral weight that its individual parts never had. Miss one piece of it and you're not just uninformed. You're irresponsible. Maybe even a bad parent.

These people become passionate de facto "lifestyle experts" who are genuinely skilled at persuasion. And social media has handed them the perfect platform.

You know the format by now. You were going bald and couldn't catch a break, but then you discovered laser therapy and now your hair is as bushy as a squirrel's and the ladies are lining up. Your kid was lagging behind in math until you found this curriculum, and now she excels. You were down in the dumps, couldn't lose those last pounds, but now you're taking these peptides, avoiding a long list of foods, and you have more energy than ever. The testimonial is genuine and the results are real. That sort of enthusiasm is contagious.

And again, none of this is necessarily wrong. It might even be true. And sharing it might genuinely help someone. But it requires a great deal of restraint to stop there, to share the thing without becoming a salesman for a way of life.

None of this is a case against enthusiasm. There is nothing wrong with being excited about something that has genuinely helped you. Nothing wrong with having strong preferences, recommending what you love, or building a life around what you believe is good and true and healthy. Preferences are fine. The problem is when preferences stop being preferences.

There are real principles worth advocating for. You should pursue a healthy life to the best of your ability. You should provide your children with a Christian education to the best of your ability. These are not preferences. These are genuine Scriptural principles. But there are a hundred different ways to apply them, and what faithfulness looks like for your family may look nothing like what it looks like for your neighbor. The principle is binding. The method is not.

This is a struggle for all of us, and I've seen it a lot among women, particularly mothers. I've warned my own wife about it. There is a type of homeschool mom who has cultivated a very particular culture and has a way of letting you know when you don't belong to it. If you've spent time in those circles, you've felt the disapproving gaze that follows when you don't submit to their life formula. It is a look that says you are not just doing things differently. You are doing them wrong.

What they've built is a form of fundamentalism, usually of the crunchy, earnest variety. It wears the vocabulary of health and intentionality, but at its core it's a set of lifestyle formulas elevated to the level of moral imperative. The problem isn't that the products are necessarily bad. Some of them might be quite good. The problem is the category error, treating things that Scripture does not mandate as though faithfulness requires them.

Paul said that handling regulations about what you touch and taste and handle might look like wisdom, but it's really just the traditions of men (Col. 2:20–23). The form changes across the centuries. The temptation doesn't.