Now, I have lots of people telling me that I'm a great parent. Flip, I even had people telling me that I'd make a great parent when I was still in my teenage years. Nothing like a bit of pressure, eh? But the thing is, these people don't get to see all my parenting, and I can assure you that plenty of it is below par. Downright poor, in fact. The people who DO get to see the full gamut of my parenting are my kids. (Thankfully, Little Boy is a bit too small to discern some of my more minor errors... Big Boy, on the other hand, I think is getting a pretty good grasp of my ineptitude) Therefore, I, like most other Christian parents, (I would say all, but I'm guessing there are probably a couple of deluded ones out there...) sometimes worry that my kids will be put off God by me. The juxtaposition of telling them you love God, and then living in close proximity to them, carries with it inherent risks.
Of course, there's a danger here. Writing a book like this runs the
risk of making people think that if their kids end up hating God, they
as the parents are to blame. But that's absolutely not the viewpoint of
the book. Rather, it's more a question of doing what can be done, and
avoiding what is best avoided, in order to give your children the best
chance to grow up into adults who desire to see their own faith nurtured
and grown. As such, this book is tremendously important. It's written
by Rob Parsons, who's part of the Care for the Family setup. He writes
well, and makes some really clear points about parenting.
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| Two church clones (I spent ages on it) |
One of Rob's first points is to avoid the danger of trying to fit everyone into the same mould. (That's not the green, furry stuff on top of old food, you understand, it's the jelly-mould variety) The point being that God didn't make us identical, so why do we try so hard to turn people into church-clones? Sometimes we need to see and support our kids' strengths, rather than suggesting (verbally or otherwise) that they can only flourish in church once they've got the right look/Bible knowledge/guitar skills/way of praying/etc. Linked to this, there's the idea that we shouldn't be making mountains out of mole-hills. Ok, so a lip-piercing might look gross in our eyes (perhaps that's the wrong phrase - I'm not suggesting having a lip-piercing in your eye...), but Jesus wouldn
't look at them and say, 'once you've sorted out your gross facial adornments, I'd love to save you', would he?! Yes, our kids need to be sensitive to others in the church, but it's not a one-way street. I remember failing in this respect, when I was running the Youth Band and I squashed an idea that probably wasn't such a bad one, because it didn't seem the right way of playing the song... The positive side of this (the do, rather than the don'ts) is to make sure our kids feel they belong in church. It's OUR church, after all. Given some of the sinners that Jesus hung out with, it would be pretty daft to fail to ensure there's a good welcome for our own children in our own church :)
Rob then goes on to talking about five things that could endanger our kid's desire to pursue the with-God life. These are: cynicism, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, over-busyness and over-familiarity. Each of these, in its own way, has the power to rob our kids of the desire to follow God. Each one can result in God getting short shrift from our kids, because of how we seem to live for Him.
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| Arghh, the burning fiery furnace... |
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Rob goes on to say that we should be preparing our kids for disappointment. Disappointment with others, with themselves, and with God. We need to support them through disappointments, not hide them away from them. One of my favourite aspects of many Psalms is the 'and yet' of the Psalmist. Life sucks, yet will I praise Him. My enemies want to kill me, yet will I praise Him. That's precisely what we need to teach our kids. Rob refers to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who say to the king, (slight paraphrase) 'Our God can save us from the furnace, but even if he chooses not to, we're not bowing down to your statue'. They trusted God completely, even without knowing whether or not he would save them.
He finishes by calling us to prepare our kids for the world. The nest might be a safe place to be nurtured, but we've got to teach them to fly. He challenges us to give them a vision. Both we and they need to get a grasp of what they
could be. We need to get them to a point where they will fly without us. Give them a vision and the foundations to realise it. As he says, it's not really our desire to have kids that don't hate God. Our real desire is to have kids that love Him.
I think it's a great book. I guess a fair bit is pretty obvious in some ways, but it's all brought together really well, and could be a really helpful resource.
