My son, keep your father’s commandment,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
Bind them on your heart always;
tie them around your neck.
When you walk, they will lead you;
when you lie down, they will watch over you;
and when you awake, they will talk with you. | Proverbs 6:20–22
This Sunday, we looked at Paul’s household rules, focused on the issue of parenting. As I made clear then: the difficulty in talking about parenting is that everyone has vested interest. Even if you don’t have kids, you have been a kid. From what I have experienced, not having kids doesn’t mean you don’t have an opinion about how I should parent mine.
I preach and write on this topic with a hint of trepidation, not sure whose toes I will step on. I continue to do so because the raising of the next generation is such an important issue, both biblically and societally. The way that we raise children and who they become is what shapes the world and will image God (faithfully or in a distorted way).
For this reason, we must consider how our parenting shapes children to either follow or fight against God. While He is the one who changes hearts, we put our children in a place to think of Him in positive or negative ways. Our parenting can make the idea of having a Father in Heaven seem like a good or bad reality.
One of the key contributors to this is how we establish the idea of authority. There is no question that the Bible is more comfortable with authority structures than we are. This is not just a cultural thing, because Paul is actually writing to confront the wrong ideas present in Ephesus (they had issues with it as well). As parents, we should affirm the authority that we have been given as we strive to live this out so that our children experience good leadership. How do we establish this authority?
The best example comes from the way that God introduces His authority to His people. If we look at the narrative of Scripture, we get a model for how to reinforce our God-given authority.
In Genesis 1, we see God declare His authority through the act of creation. While parents should not think of themselves as the creators of their children, there is an authority that is designed into the created order. In this sense, authority is not something that needs to be proven or earned – it just is. Parents should not be afraid to set lines and boundaries for their children, because this is the responsibility that they have been given.
As God creates man and woman, He gives them a very simple to understand and define rule: do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. When children are very small, we should have a few, easy to grasp rules for them. They will not understand how we want them to act in all situations, but they can understand: do not hit, stay with me (come when I call), or sit down when you eat. Many parents either don’t have any rules for their kids, or have far too many ambiguous ones. You need a few clear rules to teach your kids obedience. They will test these lines (you can only defend so many fronts at one time). You need to respond to this disobedience by making it clear that you are the authority.
This is what we see from God. As Adam and Eve sin, God disciplines them, connecting the consequences to their act of rebellion. By following God’s example, we are revealing to our children that there are real repercussions for their actions.
The next thing that we see God do, this is a hard one for parents, is allow His people to learn the natural consequences of sin. The way that we do this with our kids is to allow them to try and fail – even to get hurt – following their own will. I am not encouraging you to let your kids get seriously injured; the good thing about letting them do this when they are young is that this can be in a controlled environment where the risks are very low. Giving them space to experience some of the pain that comes from being their own authority will strengthen yours, and remove the allure of ‘getting to make all my own decisions.’
One of the ways that God acts through the stories of Cain/Abel, Noah, and Babel is that He makes His presence felt. He may not act right away, but God does make it clear that He is present and cares.
We see these even more as He makes promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In this, God is making it clear that He is acting toward a bigger picture than they currently have. We can do something similar by walking our kids through why we have drawn lines. Not because you need to defend them or convince your child, but because you want them to understand that while they are thinking of this moment, you are acting for their greater good.
God proves this greater good when He rescues His people from Egypt. Rather than keeping them from all harm, He allows them to get into a predicament and then rescues them from it. This shows His people where to turn when they have no way out of the situation they have made. Similarly, as parents, we can pick the moments to come in and ‘save’ our kids when they have backed themselves into a corner. We need to be selective with these, because we don’t want to free them before they have felt some of the struggle. What we are trying to do is show we are using our authority for their best, but we want to be wary of a relationship where we simply become the means for them to avoid the consequences of their actions.
Everything that I have laid out so far should be how you are establishing obedience and authority in the first three of four years of their life. Once they are cognitively able to handle a larger set of rules, you can provide them with a foundation for morality. This is what we see God doing as He leads His people to the foot of Mt. Sinai and gives them the law. This is a comprehensive structure for their lives that teaches a worldview and protects them. Our rules should do the same. We should have a plan for how the rules of our household are establishing virtue and reinforcing God’s morality. These rules should be set firmly, as clear right and wrong.
As parents, we know that living out a black/white law gets a bit grayer as we apply it. There are situational subtleties that need to be accounted for. This shouldn’t keep us from setting down clear cut rules. The nuance will be added as the kids mature and we walk with them through why it was okay for Rahab to lie to protect the spies even though the law says: thou shall not bear false witness. Kids need a starting point to build on; we should establish the norm and add the complexities later.
The rest of the Old Testament is God doing all of the steps we have talked about up to this point: setting rules, disciplining His people, rescuing them and showing His presence and love through it. In the New Testament, authority gets an injection of grace. Not that grace was not present the whole time, but in the gospels it takes center stage. To people who understand the law, Jesus makes it clear that while the law shapes and guides, we should understand authority primarily through how we receive.
As your kids grow, if you have done the work of setting rules and holding lines and developing trust, the teen years become about wading through the complexity of living out God’s morality in a sinful world and how grace removes the condemnation that comes from knowing we are not who we should be. Grace does not do away with the law, but it expands it. The rules become the ways in which God has protected us from pain, prepared us for salvation, and taught us how to worship.
In the same way, as kids grow into adults, they will look back on the rules that you set, the same ones that they fought with you over, and see them in a different light. If you have done your job as a parent, they will see how you chose their long term health over their happiness in the moment; how you were willing to sacrifice for their good. They will both respect you for it and raise their kids in a similar way.
As I made clear in my last post, this is the ideal. There are a lot of reasons why this can become difficult to impossible to implement. We should continue to try. Failing as parents gives us another reason to turn to our Heavenly Father for rescue, trusting that He cares for and loves us (and our children).