Those who appreciate reading in a more reformed tradition will often gravitate to the Puritan writers of the 17^th century, who were almost universally prolific, thorough, and adamant in communicating their convictions.  They weren’t necessarily right all the time.  Still, their beliefs were well-articulated and bear consideration by us 300 and 400 years later.  For example, Richard Baxter wrote in his Christian Directory (Part II, Chapter 10, Directive III), regarding children and our parenting of them, “Train them up in exact obedience to yourselves, and break them of their own wills.”

     Do you believe that God desires you to break your child’s will?   My first response is to say “No”; I think I remember that James Dobson, or some expert somewhere, told me that to break my child’s will is to destroy a divinely installed defense mechanism in my child –that God makes a child’s will strong so as to withstand the might and influence of the world, and of his or her unregenerate peers.  But Baxter elaborates (as always!): “…suffer (your children) not to carry themselves unreverently or contemptuously towards you; but to keep their distance.  For too much familiarity breedeth contempt, and imboldeneth to disobedience.  The common course of parents is to please their children so long, by letting them have what they crave, and what they will, till their wills are so used to be fulfilled, that they cannot endure to have them denied; and so can endure no government, because they endure no crossing of their wills.”  In his first idea, I want my kids to show me and my wife –their mom- respect.  But, in his second idea, I don’t want them to distance themselves from us; we want closeness in our family that tends toward an admission of vulnerability and recognition of the need for interdependence.  But, in his third idea, I’m befuddled: honestly, I pursue a kind of “familiarity” with my kids –Kim and I want that relationship with them- even while we see this very thing Baxter addresses, that our kids have a tough time accepting decisions that go against their desires, and that that is probably due to our granting of their desires as often as we do!  

     From my own perspective as a pastor constantly interacting with droves of parents –and when taking a tally of my own home- I’d like to suggest that perhaps never in human history has there been a culture (North American) wherein children have so thoroughly come to be in charge, at least in charge of their parents.  How many dads have I spoken with who feel the pressure to include their sons in every possible “opportunity” –and to insure their sons’ success at all costs in those opportunities!   How many moms have I spoken with who remain terrified that their daughters don’t yet view them as a “best friend”!   Personally, there are times when I fear that if I don’t give my kid what he/she wants, someone will hear about it and I’ll get a “reputation,” maybe even a reputation for being “un-Christ-like,” because “Didn’t Jesus love children?!”  Yes, He did.   But He never loved children on children’s terms –by giving them what they wanted when they wanted it independently of His influence upon them- by satisfying what Baxter called their “cravings.”   Tonight, maybe the best I can say is that I’m reminded that God has called me to be a DAD, not a “driver” and not a “besty,” and that I need humbly to be HIS kind of dad as He enables me.

     Baxter keeps writing (of course) in Directive VII: “Speak always before them with great honor and praise of holy ministers and people, and with dispraise and loathing of every sin, and of ungodly men.   For this also is a thing that children will quickly and easily receive from their parents.  Before they can understand particular doctrines, they can learn in general what kind of persons are most happy or most miserable, and they are very apt to receive such a liking or disliking from their parents’ judgment, which hath a great hand in all the following good or evil of their lives.”  In other words, our kids look at us and learn.  They learn what godliness and ungodliness are and which to like and loathe.  Not all righteousness is self-righteousness, but how will our children know that unless we practice the former and damn the latter in our own lives?

     God has said: “You shall teach (these words, which I am commanding you today) diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.  And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:7-9, NASB).”  Pretty serious; we are told to make the Bible benevolently dictatorial in family life.   But what are the preceding verses to this text in Deuteronomy?  “Hear, O Israel!   The Lord our God, the Lord is one!  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words…shall be on your heart (6:4-6).”   I take from that this: the best thing I can do for my son and daughter (and wife!) is to love the LORD that way –with an all-consuming love- and that one proof of the love be that everything God tells me is genuinely, wholeheartedly “on my heart”.  I love God’s words, all of them, because I love God.  I can’t help myself.  God has loved me in Christ and so I just love God.   If my son thinks I’m over the top, or “illogical,” that’s okay; if my daughter thinks I’m weird or too intense, that too is okay.  They’ll come around.  And as a family, each one of us failing at times along the way, we will move closer to the image of Jesus, which is what the father relentlessly, lovingly wants for us, the children of His family.

-Nate Winters