is parenting about behavior?
13Feb10
or is it about gospel? Read This. I’ll let you know what I think about the book after I read it.
(HT: Vitamin Z)
or is it about gospel? Read This. I’ll let you know what I think about the book after I read it.
(HT: Vitamin Z)
a-freaking-men to that post!
what a relief to know that parenting isn’t the one area of life where we aren’t allowed to fail and where sin can still condemn us!
praise God for the Gospel!
I completely agree. Our greatest task as fathers is to display the gospel to our families. Our kids will be drastically more effected by our brokenness, our grief, our sorrow, our pain, over our own sin and shortcomings.
I just finished the best book on parenting I have read yet, “Gospel-Powered Parenting,”by William Farley. This book was very empowering has I realized a few things in particular, first the most important things we can be is gospel-men, displaying the Christian life (loving, repenting, sacrificing, worshiping) for our families. The second, the gospel teaches us to lavish our kids with love. Our love for them is unmerited just as God’s love for us is. We can feel freedom to show them grace, show them love, and give them rewards they don’t deserve.
I agree with, Matthew. The only caution I would add to what you said here is that there is a fine line between “lavishing with love” and indulging your kids. David and Absolom come to mind here. Eli does too. Many of the patriarchs also had a habit of “overprivileging” older children or favoring certain children, almost always to their harm. I’m also thinking of the sad case of Frankie Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer. Part of the challenge of being a parent is to demonstrate the justice side of God as well as the nurturing. We also do well to remember that holding our kids to a high standard is one of the most loving things we can do for them.
derek, the comma is not necessary after “with.”
and to your point(s) about david and absalom, are you trying to say that it was because of david’s “lavishing love” upon absalom that absalom tried to take his father’s throne and slept with his wives/concubines?? i’m not sure i understand the logic. if we learn anything from God’s history with Israel it’s that God’s love (which we are, of course, incapable of perfectly replicating) will always win out in the end because he took out “the justice side” on Himself.
i think i understand what you’re trying to say, after all, we should try to teach our children wise and prudent ways to live their lives, but we can never spank into them a true (salvation-granting) recognition of their own sin. no amount of “holding our kids to a high standard” is going to teach them that they are utter failures in life without a real, personal relationship with God Himself.
further, matthew didn’t say that his comment was intended to address all possible concerns one might have as a parent, but merely that our greatest task as fathers is to display the gospels to our families. to summarize even more (with the hope that the real substance of what he said can be commented on and heartily agreed with) two ways to display this gospel are 1) be “gospel-men” ourselves, and 2) lavish unmerited love upon our children.
if you’d like to “caution” against lavishing unmerited love upon one’s children, a better justification than “the patriarchs … had a habit of over-privileging older children” will be necessary here. i seriously doubt that matthew intends to only extend this abounding and Christ-inspired love to his firstborn.
Trev,
I meant to type, “I agree with you, Matthew”. It was a typo, kind of like the way you don’t start your sentences with capital letters.
Absalom is a perfect example of what happens when you indulge your children. You can observe from Absalom’s behavior and David’s various responses that lack of discipline fed into his outrageous behavior. We’ve all seen the parent who will make any number of excuses for Johnny’s behavior. Yes, I know it seems counterintuitive that this ultimately breeds contempt, but that is this dynamic ultimately leads.
Proverbs 13:24 says “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” Part of my point is that lavishing love on our kids means that we do discipline them and allow them to experience the natural consequences of sin and disobedience. Of course, the ideal form of discipline in Scripture is always restorative and relational in purpose. Hebrews 12:8 says “If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.” We should be deeply grateful for the grace of God for his discipline, which theologians sometimes refer to as the “severe mercy” of God. Discipline is a blessing when it is done in the parameters Scripture provides.
My point with the Patriarchs isn’t necessarily how we might treat the eldest born. What I’m getting at is that parents do well to acknowledge that we are human and we CAN have a tendency to spoil children, or even on the flip side, be overly hard on our children. Put another way, we have blind sides that we are often unaware of. These blind sides, if not corrected, can become major problems and can manifest themselves in tragic ways. One of the great things about Scripture is how accurately it reflects what happens within the family unit and a study of the Patriarchs can be extremely helpful to parents. I know it has to me.
- Derek
Derek,
Even if that is what you intended to write the first time, the comma is still not necessary, and typos are unintentional mistakes, my lack of capital letters is an intentional device used to save time, but touche nonetheless.
As to the parenting discussion, I think we may just be talking past each other. I completely agree with you that it is loving and good to discipline our little ones. I am also the lavish recipient of much of God’s “severe mercy.”
But what prompted my response to your comments was not a disagreement with you over the definition of these things, or their importance in the father’s life. What prompted me to respond (perhaps unknowingly) was a knee-jerk reaction to stop you from moving away from what I believe to be the heart of what Matthew was saying, back into the ole’ familiar ground of trying to balance our responsibilities and be the best parents we can be for our kids. You see, you didn’t say this, and I am by no means trying to put words into your mouth, but Matthew’s point (as I read it) is that to be the “best” fathers, we have to know and love Jesus more. Yes, all those great things like wisdom and sanctification and fruit in our lives will come as we know him, but I think that we always say “The Gospel solves everything!” but then we’re TOO QUICK to say “Okay, so then what.” Yeah, Matthew said you should lavish unmerited love upon your kids only as one of a million possible examples to mimic the way God deals with His children, and sure (Matthew would wholeheartedly agree) you should be faithful to discipline out of that love, BUT LET’S NOT MOVE AWAY FROM THAT MAMMOTH TRUTH THAT DOMINATES ALL ELSE before we start picking apart the finer workings of how we can implement, and improve, and work work work that Gospel into our practice. It’s enough to stop at the Gospel as a means and an end in itself. I think that his point was to say to be the best father you can be, Go to the GOSPEL. Stay there. Don’t move on. There’s nothing to move on to.
I realize I’m being a little theologically simplistic, but it’s to really emphasize my point: the Gospel is sufficient. As to your comment that we should “hold our children to high standards,” that statement definitely gives me pause. I’m not sure what exactly you meant by that, so if you could explain it better that would probably be better than me going off on a 200 word rant about something you didn’t even mean.
Finally, (and perhaps this is fuel for another fire) but I would caution
against falling into the trap of looking too heavily to the mistakes of the Patriarchs to see how to head off our own problems, and rather to remember that the main purpose of their narratives is to tell us from whence came the only solution to any of our problems: the Christ.
Thanks for the conversation, it’s good for us all.