Raise them Right – Biblical Wisdom for Modern Parenting (Gen. 3:1-7 – Choices have consequences)

Raise Them Right: Biblical Wisdom for Modern Parenting
Genesis 3:1-7

INTRODUCTION:
Rachel and I enjoy tent-camping as most of you know. We have gone camping with several different families in the congregation. A few years ago - maybe 2019 or 2018 - we were camping with James and Patricia. It started raining that Friday afternoon so they invited us to move into their camper, where we played games.

But after a little while, we had to get up and move around and James and I went outside to talk, under the awning and it was still raining. Then Nicholas and Chase came out. James then challenged the boys to go out and stand in the rain - I think it was for 30 seconds, maybe to the count of ten, I can’t remember. So the boys did that. James challenged them once or twice more but then Chase said, “Dad, you go out and do it!” And James did! He went out and stood in the rain for 30 seconds or something like that.

And I thought to myself, “Wow, I failed as a father! I never went out and stood in the rain with my girls!” You can rest assured that if / when Rachel and I have grandchildren, I will stand in the rain with my second effort at “parenting”!

Good parenting, of course, has many different faces and appearances. It is practically as unique as the individual family itself. But there are principles from the Bible that ought to be incorporated into every single Christian family. So, today I am starting a five-part series of lessons that will take us through the end of April on “Biblical Wisdom for Modern Parenting…”

“Parenting” - is defined as “to be or act as a father or mother”

“Biblical parenting” - “to be or act as a Christian father or mother”

WE “PARENT” EITHER INTENTIONALLY OR UNINTENTIONALLY:
When our first child is born, we will begin parenting largely in one of two ways. We might fall back to our instincts which have been nurtured in the home we grew up in. In other words, we will begin parenting from the very first day, the way we were parented. We will become the parents we ourselves had. That might be intentional or unintentional. If we do not parent intentionally, we will parent unintentionally and that very well could be the way we were parented.

Or, from the first day we became a parent, we began parenting differently from the way we were parented. That might be intentional or unintentional. We might parent unintentionally from the way we’ve seen other parents behave - either in our own personal experiences or from TV shows or movies we’ve watched which have parenting in them. Or, we could parent intentionally different from the way we were raised by reading different books on parenting and / or thinking more seriously about what the Bible teaches about parenting.

Personally, my parenting style has been influenced by my own parents - some unintentional and intentional carry-overs from my childhood. My parenting has also been influenced by the time I spent with some friends of mine - Kevin & Lyn Williams. I am close to them; I lived with them for a year when I was in graduate school at FHU. There have certainly been times when I have chosen to do something they did with their boys that was different than the way my parents behaved with my siblings. Third, my parenting has obviously been influenced by Rachel and the influences on her which parallel the influences I have on me. Finally, I have been influenced by intentionally reading books on parenting, especially parenting from a biblical perspective, which have also modified my views of parenting and how I do things differently than the way my parents did things.

I believe we have a national emergency on our hands because of a lack of good parenting. I think the fundamental problem our schools are having is because parents are not rearing their children to respect authority or to respect the process of education. Our mass shootings are not a gun-control issue; they are a parenting issue. Around the 1960s is when everything in the US, from a moral perspective, went to pot and that’s when wacko psychology views took over parenting philosophies learned from our parents and from God’s word.

Parenting is harder today than it was 50 years ago. We are consumed with getting ahead - we are exasperated - we are exhausted. My grandparents were born at the close of the 18th century. They saw a lot of changes in their lives, most notably perhaps were automobiles and airplanes. My parents were born in 1939 and 1943. They saw a lot of changes in the first 20 years of their lives. But, to be honest, child-rearing from the late 1800s into the mid-1950s was not much different. My parents raised me - just as I have raised my girls - with largely the same parenting philosophy and practices, likely, that my grandparents received.

What do I mean by “largely”? I mean the same basic moral standards, the need for adults to contribute to society (civic mindedness), how families should function, how children should be brought up. Children honored their parents by growing up and raising their children the same way their parents had raised them and that “way” was based on biblical principles. Remember, the Bible was taught in public schools up until the 1960s and later. School District of Abington Township v. Schempp in 1963 ruled Bible reading and prayer in public school was unconstitutional. It was an 8-1 ruling.

In the fifth commandment to the Jewish nation: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Exodus 20:12), God promised a stable, secure society if people adhere to fundamental family tradition and honor. But the 1960s saw a significant paradigm shift in a new emphasis on radical egalitarianism and radical individualism.

By the 1970s, TV defined our culture and leftists in society started moving us away from our traditional moorings. TV did for our society in the 1970s what the internet has done in the 2000s and, in a sense, the internet has exacerbated the problem. The 1950s TV reflected traditional American values. But Progressivism holds that new ideas are inherently better than old ideas and so Progressivism rejects tradition (contra Ecclesiastes 1:9).

If your parents had problems with their children, they did not watch TV - Oprah Winfrey or Dr. Phil to listen to men and women with capital letters after their names to get advice on child-rearing. They went to their parents and to their grandparents, to other “elders” in their society, their community, or their church. Since the 1960s, the course of action now has been to get advice from people who, themselves, have read books rather than raised children to be godly Christians and productive members of society.

WE HAVE TURNED TO “CHILD-CENTERED” LIVING:
One consequence of this shift in childrearing, has been to turn families away from parent-centered entities to child-centered entities - Whatever the child wants, he or she gets. Whatever the child wants, he or she does. That’s one reason why parents are so frazzled today - it’s because little Johnny wants this - so we have to go do it; we have to spend money on it. Little Mary wants that - so we have to go do that; we have to spend money on that. There are no over-arching aims, goals, objectives, or purpose in today’s family so mom and dad are running from one activity to the next thinking that simply keeping little Johnny or little Mary occupied is what good parenting is about and they think little Johnny and little Mary are going to grow up productive and active Christians simply because they kept them away from drugs and gangs.

There has been a massive shift toward teaching children, regardless of the consequences, that a healthy self-esteem is what is the highest purpose in life, in child-rearing. One of the biggest fears that parents today have is hurting their children’s self-esteem; hurting their children’s feelings. So, instead of punishment (not necessarily spanking), they talk to their children with the hopes of persuading them to obey. With older kids, that may work, as long as the parent has not already relinquished his or her authority in doing so. But today’s parent talks and talks and talks, and threatens and threatens and threatens - and when the child does not respond, then the parent is in a psychological pickle.

The old way of parenting expected children to accept responsibility for his or her behavior. The new way puts pressure on parents to say the right thing to hit the right “emotional chord” in the child’s heart, to get him or her to obey and act correctly. In this way, the child is viewed as a victim of his or her environment; they are simply responding to what has been going on around them and so they need therapy or drugs or both.

Postmodern Parenting has decided that parents are not the authority; children make the decisions in the family. That’s simply not biblical and our society is seeing the repercussions of that type of parenting.

Just like today, the devil is still undermining God’s authority by putting a “not” in what God said: Genesis 3:1, 5…

“He that spares the rod does not spoil the child” (contra Prov. 10:13; 13:24; 14:3; 22:15; 23:13-14.

HOW DID GOD CREATE ADAM AND EVE?
God created Adam and Eve for a purpose, with intent. He created them to procreate, to create a home, an environment in which they and their children could have a special relationship. He created us with the ability to know Him, to have a relationship with Him. The “big blueprint” of life is to know God and serve Him. That big blueprint is made up of smaller blueprints, one of which is the blueprint for the home, for marriage (other blueprints include how to conduct business, society, and the church).

Both we and our children have free will. And those choices result in consequences. While we are free to make our choices, we are not free to choose the consequences. The ultimate consequence of obeying God is good - good in the family, good in society, and ultimately, heaven. A loving parent does not allow a child to disobey without consequences.

If you depart from God’s plan in any area of your life, you will experience more (and more serious) problems than you would have encountered otherwise.

By the same token, if you adhere to God’s plan in your life, you will still experience sadness, pain, frustration, and heartache (since the Fall, there is not escape from this - 2 Cor 4:4), but you will endure and you will eventually come out on top. That’s God’s promise.

What our intent in this series of lessons to do is to help parents understand and properly align themselves with God’s blueprint for child-rearing.

God does not make anything complicated and aligning ourselves with His teachings will bring relief from troubles, cares, and woes.

When it comes to child rearing, contra Freud, one’s childhood experiences have an influence on the type of adult the child becomes, but that influence is far from predictable. The most powerful shaping force in a person’s life is his or her own free will. Regardless of what has happened in the past, “There are no excuses - no ifs, ands, or buts.” Remember, the only perfect parent who ever existed had two children who both disobeyed and disobeyed drastically. “No matter how good a parent you are, your child is still capable on any given day of doing something despicable, disgusting, or depraved.”

Contra parenting books, even Christian parenting books, which teach that children are born with a depraved nature, children are, in fact, born a blank slate. John Gray’s book Children are from Heaven emphasizes that children fundamentally want to please their parents and I have found that to be true. I have used that thought in my parenting. So what do we do with Proverbs 22:15 - “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child”? Is it true that a child is “inclined to do the wrong thing, the self-serving thing, to consider his own interests before anyone else’s”?

No. At least not from a morally-culpable perspective. When they are little babies, the world revolves around them. Mom’s life revolves around them, out of necessity. We give them toys and say, “Here’s your toy.” Is it any wonder that when a friend or sibling picks up their toy, that the child says, “That’s my toy.” That’s not an inborn, morally evil selfishness that’s speaking. That’s life from a young child’s perspective who: #1 Has not yet been taught the virtue of sharing; #2 Has not yet reached the age where he or she understands that not sharing is wrong. If parents do not take that opportunity to teach their children, then “foolishness” will be bound up in the heart of the child.

CHILDREN HAVE TO LEARN THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES:
Children are ignorant of everything. They don’t know that if you tear a piece of paper, you can’t put it back together again. They have to be taught everything. There’s a meme on Facebook of a little girl sliding down a slide and very daintily, like a princess, stepping off the slide. Then shortly thereafter, a little boy, about the same age, comes sliding down the slide headfirst and he tumbles over. I’m not making a comment about that parent’s behavior but I am saying that if children aren’t taught, then they grow up foolishly thinking that there are no repercussions to their behavior and live their whole lives recklessly. They have to be taught certain behaviors can cause broken arms, broken legs, or worse.

If a child says, “I want that” and he means “I deserve it,” then we’ve got to correct that.
If a child believes that punching brother or sister in order to get the toy back is acceptable behavior, they have to be taught that it is not.
If a child acts as if the rules do not apply to him, they have to be taught that they do apply.

Toddlers are prone to slap mom or pull the hair out of other children or push a younger sibling down, just to see him fall and cry. But this behavior is not the result of a sinful nature. It is a result of learning that the world does not revolve around him and he has the choice to bring his behavior within acceptable boundaries by mom and dad or suffer the consequences. The single biggest challenge of parenthood is socializing the toddler. We have to help the toddler realize that he will not get away with “criminal” behavior and he must submit to the civilizing force of mom and dad’s loving yet awesome authority.

Parents must communicate to the child that they will not tolerate hitting, lying, stealing, and destroying property and then enforce consequences that are potent enough to form permanent memories. A two-year-old has about a two-minute attention span so discipline first, then give a short message on proper behavior.

Parents have to establish their authority early and reenforce it often, early on, but then only periodically later. Toddlers have the ability to control their behavior. Parents have to help them understand that point.

Finally, parents have to avoid getting caught in the “self-esteem dictates everything” trap. What did Grandma value? Humility. Modesty. I don’t know how many times I heard my mom tell me, “Son, don’t act too big for your britches.” The Scriptures do not put much emphasis on developing self-esteem. What Scriptures do teach is that God created each of us; we need to be thankful to Him for that. He also uniquely designed each of us and then He emphasizes to each one of us: “Serve other people!” “Put other people before yourself!” Matt. 16:24; 20:16; Luke 14:11.

Self-love is, too often, a stumbling block to serving our fellowman sacrificially as we are supposed to do (Matt. 22:39). Humanity would be better off if they loved themselves much less. People with high self-esteem tend to have low self-control. We don’t just want our children to be leaders, we want them to be ethical leaders, helping other people bring out their best and having a high regard for others. Children need to be taught to contribute to the common good to the best of their ability. Since most people will not be leaders, parents need to help children learn how to be good followers, to take responsibilities given and do one’s best to fulfill them.

As children get older, they will learn and parents need to understand that a child will change his or her behavior only if he chooses to do so. Correct consequences will change the behavior of a dog or a rat. Correct choices will change the behavior of a child.

Biblical parenting is about teaching our children to make proper choices…

Take home message: Parents need to train their children, from an early age, to make appropriate choices that bring the most desired consequences.

Start an evangelism conversation: “May I share with you how and why I obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ?”

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