OP-ED: Parenting for the Heart!
You know what I am talking about… Parenting, the pursuit where Ideology and Ivory Tower thinking and theories are tried and tested through the gauntlet of human reality, challenged by the presupposition of knowledgeable infallibility that is the offspring of our youth!
Yes, people, you remember the years, the time of your life when you knew everything, and actually believed such to be true! To be sure, too often knowledge and wisdom are absent bed fellows, with their human experiment affirming this for all to see!
Man of Spin has an almost 16 year old Son, and so is not completely blowing chunks, as he is experiencing the ride of youthful dreaming. If I may be Frank (with a change of accent to boot), parenting a teenager could quite possibly be the time where I have learned more about my failings in such a transparent and stereophonic manner, that has made it clear that such a time is a definitive means of God’s grace in my life.
I am thankful for my Son, I am thankful for the joy of stewarding this brute beast of humanity, who like his Dad, is ‘want’ to run after the things of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, and is a baseless being, without the continuing work of God’s grace in his life, mediated through the work of the Spirit.
As I reflect on the gravity and challenge of parenting teenagers in our present context, there is much that can be said and many resources that are worth their weight in God-glorifying Gold, by those who are much more experienced and wise than this thirty-something.
However, in this sort-of brief refrain, I want to focus on a couple of over-arching realities in the pursuit of parenting , which I believe affect and shape the practice of parenting, particularly as the beauty can act more like a beast!
1) Don’t Take the Salvation of Your Child for Granted
Recently, I have started reading Gospel-Powered Parenting, where this point was affirmed. The author, William Farley, affirmed and exemplified the significance of this point with two examples. The first was in a book by Christian Smith and Melissa Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching:The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. After surveying some 3000 American teenagers, they found that their religious beliefs reflected the concepts of Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism. Here is how they describe this concept, and its impact…
These teens believe in a combination of works-righteousness, religion as psychological well-being, and a distant, non interfering god. Ironically, many of these young deists are active in their churches… It is important for every Christian parent to discern MTD from Christianity. A child can be compliant and well-behaved, attend Sunday worship, and socialize with the church youth group, but merely possess MTD. (Page 27).
In other words, your little bundle of joy can be a ‘spiritually’ dead child walking!
The second example underscores how prevalent MTD is in today’s church, with the sexual habits of evangelical children.
The following words deserve sober reflection…
Sociologist Mark Regnerus in his book Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers exposes the the failure of evangelical homes to discern and mold their children’s spiritual values. The author points out that evangelical teenagers are just as sexually active as their non-Christian friends. In fact, there is evidence that evangelical teenagers on the whole may be more sexually active. Those who identify themselves as evangelical teens tend to have their first sexual encounter at a younger age, 16.3 years, than liberal Protestants, who tend to lose their virginity at 16.7 years. And young evangelicals are far more likely to have had three or more sexual partners (13.7 percent) than non-evangelicals (8.9 percent). What about abstinence pledges? Those work – for a while – delaying sex on an average by about eighteen months, with 88 percent of pledgers eventually giving up their vow. (Pages 27-28).
Sobered Up? The last affirmation in regard to pledges exemplifies the problem. No, just before you’re thinking I am going to, without distinction, nay-say this often courageous choice that teens make in front of one’s peers… if you are expecting this, you would be wrong. However, if this pledge is merely an outward act of moral conformity, which it will be if it is not produced from the inside out, it will fail. The human heart being what it is, requires radical change that must come from another, outside source, which is Christ!
The statistics affirmed both show that mere religion is not mere christianity, which means that rules without a new reign within, does not bring new life, but merely a cultural assimilation that looks good for a time, but fails to produce real change that one can believe in!
Most Christian parents assume that church attendance or youth-group involvement equates to new birth. Parents are naive about new birth and its symptoms. (Page 28).
Read how A. W. Pink describes this needed change-to-believe-in
The new birth is very much more than simply shedding a few tears due to a temporary remorse over sin. It is far more than changing our course of life, the leaving off of bad habits and the substituting of good ones. It is something different from the mere cherishing and practicing of noble ideals. It goes infinitely deeper than coming forward to take some popular evangelist by the hand, signing a pledge card, or “joining the church.” The new birth is no mere turning over a new leaf, but is the inception and reception of new life. It is no mere reformation but a complete transformation. In short, the new birth is a miracle, the result of the supernatural operation of God. It is radical, revolutionary, lasting. (Page 29).
This is what our children need… Which is why you must…
2) Parent for the Heart
This can be easier said than done, and as I feel encouraged to underscore, I am no expert, but with a correct diagnosis of the problem, and a correct understanding of the solution, we would be wise to parent in such a way that reflects and encourages this reality. When parents have a rules-based focus, it tends to externalise the issue, and misses where the focus and nexus of the issue resides.
Yes, the problem may be what they are doing, and I am not suggesting that you don’t deal with these problems, but understand that the solution starts at a much deeper level. To remove a fruit tree from a garden, we would be wise to concentrate on removing the root, not merely picking off the fruit from the tree! When we parent for the heart, we are attacking the root!
For this to be a reality, we must have thought through and integrated the Gospel into our lives, and also into our philosophy of parenting, as our actions will always speak louder than our words, particularly when our actions betray our words. Thereby in our parenting, practice the Gospel, by parenting the Gospel!
If your parenting has a preponderance that focuses on what your children are doing, which fails to deal with why they are doing it, don’t be surprised if your children have an external paradigm, which sadly, has a positive attraction to dead religion… MTD anyone!
3) Say “Yes” to As Much as You Can
These following points may seem more practical, but as a parent of a teenager, theory only thrives-to-survives if it can be practiced!
In another piece of my posting, I recored some words from, R. Kent Hughes, as it related to Fatherhood, which exemplifies and affirms why this point, number 3 is important. Here are some words worth remembering, in the context of overstrictness…
Some fathers exasperate their children by being overly strict and controlling. They need to remember that rearing children is like holding a bar of wet soap – too firm a grasp and it shoots from your hand, too lose a grasp and it slides away. A gentle but firm hold keeps you in control.
We cannot begin to estimate the ravages of overstrictness on the evangelical Christian community over the years. I have had occasion in my ministry to bury people who lived virtually all of their seventy years in reaction to the harsh legalism of their upbringing – lost bars no one could manage to pick up. Others were not so tragic. They came to renounce legalism biblically and theologically, but still wrestled with it emotionally for the rest of their lives.
Why are some fathers overly strict? Many because they are trying to protect their children from an increasingly Philistine culture – and smothering rules seems the best way to accomplish that. Others are simply controlling personalities who use rules, money, friendship, or clout to rule their children’s lives. The Bible, read through their controlling grid, becomes a license to own and dominate. Still others wrongly understand their faith in terms of Law rather than grace. Some men are overly strict because they are concerned about what others will think. ”What will they think if my child goes to this place… or wears this clothing… or is heard listening to that music?” Not a few preacher’s kids have been catapulted into rebellion because their fathers squeezed their lives to fit their parishioners’ expectations. What a massive sin against one’s children!
Rather, we ought to begin our fatherhood by holding the tiny helpless bar snugly, but as it grows, gradually and wisely loosen our grip. As conscientious fathers we have to say “no” to many things. Thus we should try to say “yes” to as much as possible, and save our no’s for the really important situations.
We must be Biblical in regards to our no’s – and as our children grow, be prepared to discuss the rules biblically and principally. We must learn to trust God with our children, realizing they must learn to make decisions for themselves.
Father’s, do not exasperate your children by being overly strict. Learn to hold their lives with God’s pressure and to mold it with His love. (Emphasis mine).
An external focus, which fails to understand the Gospel, grasps rules and regulations like a drowning man grasps hold of a life raft!
Only two to go… Phew, you may be thinking…
4) Ground Your Authority in God
From my perspective, this one has been an important reality as I have thought through parenting a growing son who wants more responsibility, control, and freedom in his life. Such realities are signs of maturity, but as is the case when we grew up, knowledge and wisdom are not synonymous concepts. As I say to my son, “knowledge can come in a moment, but wisdom takes time.” Nevertheless, this intersection can be the cause of friction, as the interaction between child and parent can easily move and morph into a battle of who has the authority, and as the cross-over to give your child more “head” is no scientific pursuit, it can be a cause of confusion for parents!
If you have an independent child, then you may perceive what I am saying, but as my son has grown, I have affirmed, for example and where appropriate, that when he has a problem with me as an authority figure, his problem is really with his Creator, as He has placed me in his life as his Father. Such a philosophy helps to defuse any personal battles that can detour the parenting pursuit as our children grow older, but also, ironically, this framing perspective helps to underscore the authority that is a God-given reality in the parent-child relationship.
This can help to take the “personal” heat out of those moments, as we make it clear that our authority is grounded in God’s will, in giving “Junior” his Dad and Mum as his parents. This is God’s wisdom Sonny!
If I may also note that this is not something that you should start as your children move into “those” years. For example, with my five year old, when I am “discipling” him, I will usually say something like the following: You are not honouring and obeying Your Creator, and while You are choosing not to, Dad and Mum will continue to do so, which is why… grounded in Prov. 3:11, 12, which one then goes on to explain what will happen with his “consequences” next!
What, you the parent, are also affirming by communicating in such a manner is that God’s wisdom and plan is the standard and goal for living one’s life, that you are God’s steward in your parenting role, and that His will, should be our way!
5) Remember, God is the One Who Must Work
This is a vitally important final point. While our efforts are important, significant, and mandated, ultimately and finally, it is God who must work in our child’s heart, and it is God who must open their eyes! Such a reality does not diminish our calling as parents, but provides a needed antidote as we consider the huge calling, role, and responsibility, which can easily cause us to wonder how such a role can ever be completed.
God calls for us to be faithful in this calling, and He will take care of the rest!
Conclusion
As a younger man, I was foolishly focused on ministry as something that took place outside of the home. As I have grown older, and a little wiser, I have come to see that ministry in the home, far from being an excursus on the ministry trail, is really the foundation from which all other ministry is validated, underscored, completed, and consecrated!
While this short-ish piece is hardly the end of all speakings on this subject, and I hardly speak from on high on this subject, God willing, it is a start to help you think through this calling!
In 20-10, may we parent with the passion and commitment of our Creator, who exemplifies this each and every day in the saving, keeping, and redeeming of our lives in and under the Son/ Sun.
For the Fame of His Name
Man of Spin
Thanks for the useful points… it will be at least a couple of years before my clone is in rebellious state, but I better be prepared and not be in denial that it will come.
BTW, is it safe to suggest to brighten up the color scheme of this blog?
Well, Anon, while overt examples may not seem like they are forth-coming, rebellion begins at birth, and merely becomes more sophisticated!
Anyway, this was not so much meant for just those who are labelled as “rebellious”, based on given acts or dispositions, as even the most religious people have the most rebellious hearts!
Start Now My Regular Reading Friend! Parenting the Gospel Must Grow Out of Who We Are, Not in What We Do!
You Feel Me!
On the Design… It is definitely safe! I might be precious (said with “smegel” overtones), but opinion control is so passe!
There will be differing opinions on the colour design, or lack thereof, but presently, I am happy with the look! This may develop, but that is prophetic!
Less is More My Blogging Buddy!
How many other sites do you visit with a look like this?
[...] post: Christian News New Zealand » Blog Archive » OP-ED: Parenting for … denton, melissa, melissa-lundquist, religious, religious-beliefs-, searching, smith, spiritual-, [...]
[...] Read the original: bChristian News/b New Zealand » Blog Archive » OP-ED: Parenting for b…/b [...]
Nice piece, and certainly gets to the heart of the matter, which is the heart of the child. At times, I get angry with the selfish attitudes displayed by my own offspring — only then to realize that they are just small images of myself and are practicing the same self-centredness that I am so expert at.
I have listened to a few Tim Keller MP3s over the break which has been quite refreshing.
http://www.redeemer.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Keller
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Q6Zun2v-8
Keller, assuming that I am understanding him correctly, understands idolatry based in the first commandment as the basis for much of our sinfulness (thus it is the first/primary (meta?) commandment). The sin of the heart then becomes putting something else before God, putting the desires of MY heart before the desires of HIS heart. I think this is a very nice way of teaching and working on our hearts. So often we are in a battle where MY will is done instead of THY will be done.
So the heart is full of very dull shades of grey — nothing like this website of course
[...] Christian News New Zealand » Blog Archive » OP-ED: Parenting for … [...]
Good to hear from you Rob… Is this short for Roberto?
Yes, the heart is an “Idol Factory” as Calvin and Luther both noted, with Luther also affirming that this is the default mode of the human heart!
I will quote some pieces for you and readers from “the Cardiologist’s”… Keller’s new book, “Counterfeit God: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matter,” from the Introduction… which may help to illustrate from Keller, what you are affirming
In the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville recorded
his famous observations on America, he noted
a “strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants . . .
in the midst of abundance.”2 Americans believed that
prosperity could quench their yearning for happiness,
but such a hope was illusory, because, de Tocqueville
added, “the incomplete joys of this world will never
satisfy [the human] heart.”3 This strange melancholy
manifests itself in many ways, but always leads to the
same despair of not finding what is sought.
There is a difference between sorrow and despair.
Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation.
Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among
others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you
can find comfort in your family to get you through
it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes
from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no
alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.
What is the cause of this “strange melancholy” that
permeates our society even during boom times of frenetic
activity, and which turns to outright despair when
prosperity diminishes? De Tocqueville says it comes
from taking some “incomplete joy of this world” and
building your entire life on it. That is the definition of
idolatry…
…It would have been hard to make this case convincingly
during the era of the dot-com boom and of the real
estate and stock bubble of the last twenty years. However,
the great economic meltdown of 2008–2009
has laid bare what is now being called “the culture of
greed.” Long ago, Saint Paul wrote that greed was not
just bad behavior. “Greed is idolatry,” he wrote. (Colossians
3:5) Money, he advised, can take on divine attributes,
and our relationship to it then approximates
worship and obeisance.
Money can become a spiritual addiction, and like all
addictions it hides its true proportions from its victims.
We take more and greater risks to get an ever diminishing
satisfaction from the thing we crave, until a breakdown
occurs. When we begin to recover, we ask, “What were
we thinking? How could we have been so blind?” We
wake up like people with a hangover who can hardly remember
the night before. But why? Why did we act so
irrationally? Why did we completely lose sight of what
is right?
The Bible’s answer is that the human heart is an
“idol factory.”5
When most people think of “idols” they have in
mind literal statues—or the next pop star anointed by
Simon Cowell. Yet while traditional idol worship still
occurs in many places of the world, internal idol worship,
within the heart, is universal. In Ezekiel 14:3,
God says about elders of Israel, “These men have set
up their idols in their hearts.” Like us, the elders must
have responded to this charge, “Idols? What idols? I
don’t see any idols.” God was saying that the human
heart takes good things like a successful career, love,
material possessions, even family, and turns them into
ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of
our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance
and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain
them.6
The central plot device of The Lord of the Rings is
the Dark Lord Sauron’s Ring of Power, which corrupts
anyone who tries to use it, however good his or her intentions. The Ring is what Professor Tom Shippey calls
“a psychic amplifier,” which takes the heart’s fondest
desires and magnifies them to idolatrous proportions.7
Some good characters in the book want to liberate
slaves, or preserve their people’s land, or visit wrongdoers
with just punishment. These are all good objectives.
But the Ring makes them willing to do any thing
to achieve them, anything at all. It turns the good thing
into an absolute that overturns every other allegiance
or value. The wearer of the Ring becomes increasingly
enslaved and addicted to it, for an idol is something we
cannot live without. We must have it, and therefore it
drives us to break rules we once honored, to harm others
and even ourselves in order to get it. Idols are spiritual
addictions that lead to terrible evil, in Tolkien’s
novel and real life.
Cultural moments like the one we are in provide us
with an opportunity. Many people are now more open
to the Bible’s warning that money can become much
more than money. It can become a powerful lifealtering,
culture-shaping god, an idol that breaks the
hearts of its worshippers. The bad news is that we are
so fixated on the problem of greed, which we tend to
see in “those rich people over there,” that we don’t realize the most fundamental truth. Anything can be
an idol, and everything has been an idol.
The most famous moral code in the world is the
Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. The very first
commandment is “I am the Lord your God . . . you
shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).
That leads to the natural question—“What do you
mean, ‘other gods’?” An answer comes immediately.
“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of
anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or
in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them
or worship them. . . .” (Exodus 20:4–5) That includes
everything in the world! Most people know you can
make a god out of money. Most know you can make
god out of sex. However, any thing in life can serve as
an idol, a God-alternative, a counterfeit god…
…What is an idol? It is anything more important to you
than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination
more than God, anything you seek to give you
what only God can give.9
A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential
to your life that, should you lose it, your life would
feel hardly worth living. An idol has such a controlling
position in your heart that you can spend most of
your passion and energy, your emotional and financial
resources, on it without a second thought. It can be
family and children, or career and making money, or
achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and
social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer
approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable
circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political
or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even
success in the Christian ministry. When your meaning
in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “codependency”
but it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever
you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have
that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I
have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.” There
are many ways to describe that kind of relationship to
something, but perhaps the best one is worship…
…The way forward, out of despair, is to discern the
idols of our hearts and our culture. But that will not
be enough. The only way to free ourselves from the
destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back
to the true one. The living God, who revealed himself
both at Mount Sinai and on the Cross, is the only Lord
who, if you find him, can truly fulfill you, and, if you
fail him, can truly forgive you. (Emphasis Mine)
To read all the Introduction to Keller’s new book, this link will download it…
http://www.wtsbooks.com/pdf_files/9780525951360.pdf
As it relates to believers, Keller also talks about “functional” idols, which is a great way to frame, understand, and communicate what happens at such times in a believers life. In those moments of sin, we functionally turn to something else, functionally, something other than Christ, and say, “I need you, I must have you in my life, I need you to find functional redemption.”
As Christians, this is where the nexus of the issue resides, and one of the reasons why believers should get hold of Keller’s resources!
http://iamjonnyking.com/if-martyn-lloyd-jones-is-the-doctor-then-tim-keller-is-the-cardiologist/
http://iamjonnyking.com/150-tim-keller-sermons-for-free-download/
http://iamjonnyking.com/tim-the-cardiologist-keller-on-doubt-for-the-christian-skeptic/
Check out these posts for some directions!
[...] In the first Op-Ed on the new and improved CNNZ, Man of Spin covered some points that, God willing, will help you Parent for the Heart. Before you read this post, I encourage you to read this post first HERE! [...]
[...] wise up to reality, and be pro-active in the fight… You could start by reading this post on Parenting for the Heart, which outlines the sexual habits of “Evangelical [...]
[...] own life, is a title that our offspring desperately need to read. If you have not read this post, I will affirm these figures that the Man of Spin has read in Gospel-Powered Parenting, that [...]
[...] Christian News New Zealand » Blog Archive » OP-ED: Parenting for … [...]
[...] You see, the answer to this question and this issue is not another counterfeit god, but the True God of the Bible, which is another reason why we must Parent for the Heart… Read more about this HERE! [...]
Interesting article, thanks.
May I give you details of my website which gives features my recently published book DID GOD MAKE THOSE BANANAS? The book is the story of our family and includes many practical ideas for Christian parents who want to lead their child to a living faith. It includes faith-building activities, seasonal celebrations, guidance for prayer-times and a peep behind the scenes on our Family Night. I can be contacted via the website susanrichards.org
Greetings Susan,
I am sure you wouldn’t leave some words to self-promote!
However, as I am guilty myself on certain occasions, I will look the other way!
Leave your response!
Nano-Blog News from around the world
NZ CHRISTIAN BLOGS
NZ CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES
PLACES TO VISIT