Mother’s Day
May 19, 2004Next week we begin a new series of evotionals titled Body Language. We’ll explore a theology of the body and a theology of sexuality.
PG: Parental Guidance Required
This evotional isn’t just for parents. You are who you are, in large part, because of the family of origin you grew up in. This evotional will help you make sense of your childhood. But I also hope it is preparation for parenthood. And, of course, this evotional is for the parents who are already on the frontlines day-in and day-out raising their children.
I love parenting. Last week I was out of town a couple days and when I got home there was a note on the front door from my kids that said, “Check the bathroom door.” So I walked in the house and checked the bathroom door and there was a note that said, “Check the fireplace.” And there was a note on the fireplace that said, “Check the basement door.” And there was a note on the basement door that said, “Go downstairs.” Downstairs my kids had set up what can only be described as “an altar to their father.” It was amazing. My kids had a fruit plate complete with grapes and banana. And a vanilla coke—my drink of choice. And there were notes with lots of cute misspelled words. And inside one of the notes was a dollar! I felt like a million bucks!
I think there is nothing that brings more joy than some of the moments I have with my children. But let’s be honest. Parenting is good old-fashioned hard work. We have three kids and the way I think about it is this: my joy is multiplied by three and my energy is divided by three. There is so much more joy. And there is so much less energy!
The Parental Portfolio
Deuteronomy 6:5-9 is a portfolio for parents. “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and your gates.”
Let me say something that every parent here needs to hear with both ears. All of us have made poor parenting decisions. All of us are afraid that we’ve said things or done things that will scar our children for life. We’ve disciplined in anger or modeled the exact opposite of what we want our children to become.
The bottom line is this: you’re going to make lots of mistakes. But you need a fall-back position and I Peter 4:8 is it for parents. “Love covers over a multitude of sins.”
Let me share with you what I believe is hands-down and far-and-away your most important role as a parent. It may not sound “parentish,” but I think it is where godly parenting begins. Here the most important key to parenting: love God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your strength. And your love of God will compensate for what you did or didn’t do as a parent.
Boundaries
Verse 6 says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” Moses is referring to the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. Let me redefine “commandment” because it doesn’t hold much water in our culture. I’m afraid it is one of those words with lots of negative connotations. Think of commandments as boundaries.
The first three commandments deal with spiritual boundaries: respect God. The fourth commandment deals with time boundaries: respect the Sabbath. The fifth commandment deals with family boundaries: respect your parents. The seventh commandment deals with sexual boundaries: respect your spouse. And the sixth, eight, ninth and tenth commandments deal with personal boundaries: respect others.
Can you imagine life without boundaries? We wouldn’t know where anything stops or starts. It would be utter confusion and chaos. Boundaries give structure.
I can’t imagine playing a game of tennis without knowing the boundaries. You’ve got all these lines that define what is inbounds and what is out-of-bounds. And without the lines it’s not even a game anymore. The boundaries help make the game more enjoyable. The Ten Commandments are ten boundaries that define what is inbounds or out-of-bounds as we play the game of life.
I think one of your most important jobs as a parent is to help your kids know how to play the game of the life the way God designed the game to be played. So a good starting point is establishing godly boundaries—defining what is inbounds and what is out-of-bounds.
Call them limits. Call them boundaries. Call them rules. Call them guidelines. Call them whatever you want—they establish expectations.
Listen parents. You aren’t doing your kids any favors if you don’t establish boundaries and exercise discipline. If your kids can get by with little things as kids they’ll try to get by with big things as adults. If your kids think they are bigger than boundaries as a kid they’ll think they’ll bigger than boundaries as an adult. If they can get by with cheating as a kid they’ll try to get by with cheating on their exams or cheating the IRS or cheating on their spouse when they are adults.
I like the way Dr. Henry Cloud says it. “Do not rob your children of limits. Otherwise, they will have the lifelong burden of thinking they are God. That is a role at which they are sure to fail.”
Does that mean your kids will then obey you at all times and never go out-of-bounds? Of course not. Dr. Cloud says, “Training moments occur when both parents and children do their jobs. The parent’s job is to make the rule. The child’s job is to break the rule. The parent then corrects and disciplines.”
Consequential Thinking
Let me zoom out and make an observation about the book of Deuteronomy. I think I can summarize the book pretty accurately in two words: natural consequences. If you disobey you will be cursed. If you obey you will be blessed. It is so straightforward.
You can’t break natural laws. You can jump off a tall building and try to defy the law of gravity but you’re going to fall. You can’t really break it. In fact, it breaks you.
In the same sense, you can’t break the Ten Commandments. You can’t violate them or defy them or get around them. All you can do is experience the consequences of obeying them or disobeying them. A lion share of spiritual maturity is just becoming superb consequential thinkers. We think about the consequences and make a decision to do what’s right because it is in our best interest. And that starts in childhood.
Maturity
Let me give you a definition of maturity: maturity is when we stop demanding that life meet our demands and begin to meet the demands of life. Immature people go through life as victims. They want someone else to solve their problems. Often that is the result of a parent who solved all their problems for them and never let them experience the real consequences of their actions. So they never learned the law of consequences.
Barbara Colorosa says, “Let kids make cheap mistakes. If your ten-year-old daughter feels cold because she forgot her sweater, she’s learned more than if you reminded her one more time to bring one along.”
You’ve got to let kids do it themselves. You’ve got to let kids fail. You’ve got to let kids make mistakes. You’ve got to let kids solve their own problems.
Wendy Mogel says, “By continuing to make miracles on demand, we are unwittingly slowing down the development of our children’s strength.”
Internalization
Verse 6 says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.” The Message says, “Get them inside you and get them inside your children.”
Let me share a broader spiritual principle and then turn it into a parenting principle. I’m amazed at how many people I meet who went to church as a kid, but they walked away and end up back at NCC after a five or ten or twenty year hiatus. In almost every instance I hear different circumstances but the same storyline. Here is what happened. They grew up in the church, but they never internalized or personalized the faith. Their faith was never their own. It was like hand-me-down or second-hand clothes. They had a second-hand faith.
I thank God that my parents took me to church and a foundation was laid in my life, but the great danger for those of us who grew up in church is that we can talk the talk but our faith isn’t ours.
Everybody’s journey is different, but my faith was internalized or personalized when I went to the University of Chicago. My faith was challenged and it wasn’t good enough to know what I believed. I had to know why I believed what I believed. And it was during that season that my faith became my faith. It was internalized or personalized.
You can see this process of internalization in John 4. The Samaritan woman at the well goes and shares her newfound faith. John 4:39 says, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days.” And something happened during those two days. Their faith was internalized or personalized because verse 42 says, “We no longer believe just because of what you said.” That is second-hand faith. Now we have heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” That is first-hand faith.
As a parent I don’t want my kids to believe because I believe. I want them to believe because they believe. If anything scares me it is my children growing up and walking away from the faith because it was my faith and not their faith. They have to go through the same process of internalization or personalization that I went through.
Conscience
Internalized boundaries equal what the Bible calls the conscience. That is what Romans 2:15 says. “The requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, and now defending them.”
As a parent you’re a shaper of your child’s conscience. If you let them get by with anything and everything they will have an underdeveloped conscience. No discipline equals no conscience.
You have two choices as a parent. You can try to control your kids for the rest of your life. Or you can help them develop a finely-tuned conscience that becomes an internal parent in a sense. It is like Onstar onboard—an internal compass.
Here is my goal as a parent: I want my kids to do the right thing for the right reasons even when I’m not there! And that doesn’t happen by controlling your kids. It happens by setting boundaries and letting them experience the consequences of going out-of-bounds via discipline.
Let me explain it this way. I took my kids bike riding last weekend and Summer was just learning the tricks of the trade so I spent most of the time running behind her and beside her. She would start tilting one way and I’d catch her. Or she’d start slowing down and I’d push. After fifteen minutes I was exhausted!
That’s how some of us parent. We never let go so we’re exhausted from trying to run behind and beside and keep our kids from falling. We hover. We control. We try to catch our kids or balance our kids. And it’s exhausting.
I think I realized at some point that I have to just give her a big push and let her spread her wings and fly or fall. Kids need to fall—in the right situations. Because they need to learn how to get back up! I finally just gave her a big shove and she took off and made it all the way across the playground. It was awesome!
The conscience is the thing that keeps us from falling off our bikes to the right or to the left.
Proactive Parenting
Verse 7 says, “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and your gates.”
I think these verses are about two things and these two things are the key to being a proactive parent. These two things are the difference between playing defense and playing offense. The two words are intentionality and consistency.
There is so much intentionality in these verses. And there is so much consistency. The way children develop a conscience is via parents who intentionally and consistently establish godly boundaries and help kids experience the natural consequences of their attitudes and behaviors—good or bad.
Closing Thought
Parenting is hard work. All of us are works-in-progress. But no job is more important than shaping a child.
This week I read an interview of a congresswoman whose name most of you would recognize. She said that her political position isn’t the pinnacle of her fifty-five years on earth. She said, “It’s wonderful to pursue this stage of my life, but the earlier part of my life was more important. Then I was shaping four little human beings. It’s as awesome responsibility to mold a child’s life. The best job I ever had was being a full-time wife and mother.”