The God Our Children Meet First
In 2012, a well-intentioned attempt to restore a deteriorating fresco of Jesus left the original face almost unrecognizable.
The God Our Children Meet First
For most children, God is invisible. Parents are not.
Before children know enough theology to understand what Christians mean when we say that God is merciful, just, patient, holy, forgiving or loving, they're already forming ideas about Him. We tell them He is their Father, and then we teach them, often without realizing it, what Father means.
Nowhere is that lesson more powerful than in what happens when they do something wrong.
A child lies. A teenager tries alcohol. Someone breaks a commandment, gets pregnant, stops believing, sleeps with someone they shouldn't, becomes addicted, questions the family's religion or makes a spectacularly foolish decision despite everything their parents tried to teach them.
And suddenly, all the theology becomes concrete.
What happens now?
Because whatever we have told our children about grace, this is when they discover whether we actually believe in it.
If confession brings humiliation, they learn something.
If questions bring anger, they learn something.
If wrongdoing causes affection to disappear, they learn something
If the family reputation matters more than the wounded person standing in front of us, they learn something.
If repentance means enduring enough shame to prove they're sorry, they learn something.
And if every mistake is met with threats about what God thinks of them, they learn something about Him, too.
The tragedy is that what they learn may not be true.
We can spend 18 years constructing a caricature of God from our own fear, anxiety, anger, expectations, religious culture and desire for control, then write "Jesus Christ" underneath it.
Someday, our child may reject that portrait.
Before deciding that they have rejected Christ, we should ask whether the portrait ever looked very much like Him in the first place.
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Teach Them to Walk With Him
I wasn't raised in a particularly religious home. I occasionally attended Catholic Mass with my grandma, and a great-aunt made certain I was baptized into the true church. I picked up bits and pieces of Christianity from relatives, but nobody handed me a comprehensive theology of God.
There was plenty about my childhood I would never hold up as a model of parenting. But in this one respect, I was given an unexpected gift: nobody shoved God down my throat.
I was taught that He was real. I was taught that Jesus could hear me. And I was encouraged to read and discover Him for myself.
So I did.
I read the Bible. I read the Book of Mormon. I read spiritual books from different traditions. As a teenager, through a book I picked up almost by chance, something unexpected happened to me:
I realized I loved Jesus.
I wanted to know Him.
That desire became far more important to me than having every theological question answered correctly. Years later, when I had children of my own, I wanted desperately to give them something better than I had received.
Naturally, I made my share of mistakes.
At one point, my two oldest boys seemed determined to test every remaining molecule of my parental sanity. I felt completely out of my depth. I had taught them, worried about them and tried to steer them, yet they continued making choices I desperately wanted them not to make.
Finally, I prayed.
What came to me was remarkably simple:
"Teach them to walk with Me.
Teach them to put their hands in Mine.
Then let it go.
Don't worry.
Remember, I love them even more than you do."
That changed something fundamental in the way I approached parenting.
My job wasn't to make six human beings righteous. I couldn't anyway.
My job wasn't to make all their choices for them until they safely reached adulthood. I couldn't do that either.
And my job certainly wasn't to make myself the voice of God in their lives so completely that they never learned to recognize His voice without mine.
My job was to introduce them to Him. To teach them to pray. To encourage them to ask. To teach them to listen. To point toward Christ and say:
Learn to walk with Him.
Learn His voice for yourself.
Put your hand in His.
And then, increasingly, to trust both Him and them.
A Parenting Aside
D · A · D
Direct · Advise · Discuss
I recently came across comedian Jimmy Carr's simple DAD framework for parenting, and I liked it:
D — DIRECT
For roughly the first twelve years, you direct. Children need boundaries, instruction, and parents willing to tell them what to do.
A — ADVISE
During the teenage years, you increasingly shift from directing to advising. You offer counsel, explain consequences, and help them learn to make their own decisions.
D — DISCUSS
Once they are adults, you discuss. You can offer your experience and perspective, but the relationship is now between adults. Their choices belong to them.
Not a bad little parenting philosophy for a comedian.
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When They Leave the Farm
I find myself coming back to the parable of the prodigal son over and over.
The father lets his son leave.
That single detail is almost offensive to the controlling instinct in a frightened parent.
You know what he's going to do with that money!
Apparently, the father does too. And he lets him go anyway.
I have referenced and quoted Denver on this exact point so many times in that I think its worth setting down in full here. Speaking on family and the true nature of agency, he said: from his talk on marriage and family,
"Your children will make mistakes. It is not your job to force them to avoid the mistakes. It is your job to counsel them, and to let them have the experience through which your counsel then makes sense, and is vindicated. You hope the mistakes they make are not too serious, but even if they are serious and they involve lifelong struggles, it is their right to choose. It is your obligation to teach and to persuade, and then to rejoice when they return after they are tired of filling their bellies with the husks the pigs are fed. It is your job to go and greet them and put a robe on their shoulder and put a ring on their hand and to kill the fatted calf. It's not your job to beat them and chain them to the farm so that they cannot go away and behave foolishly. They need to know that your bonds of love towards them are stronger than death itself. They need to know that they will endure as an object of your love within your heart into eternity. Not only your children, but one another, because we all make mistakes. Do not exercise dominion, do not exercise compulsion; but exercise long-suffering, gentleness, meekness and kindness. Some of the biggest disasters come when you did not give people the right to choose freely, and you attempt to coerce them. Be wise, be prudent, be someone who they would respect and who they would gladly listen to. Your children will correctly measure you in the end, even if they do not do so at the beginning."
That is the price, and the gift, of agency.
The father in Christ's parable doesn't chain his son to the farm to keep him righteous.
Neither does God.
This is where parenting becomes strangely revealing. We say we want our children to become like Christ, but sometimes what we actually want is for them to behave in ways that make us feel successful as parents.
Those are not the same thing.
A perfectly compliant child can be very far from God, while a struggling child may be reaching desperately toward Him. We can't always see the difference.
The most revealing moment in Christian parenting isn't what happens when our children obey us. It's what happens when they don't.
When they sin, do they still know they are loved?
When they confess something terrible, is home still safe?
When they disagree with us about God, do we become threatened?
When consequences are necessary, can we allow those consequences without withdrawing affection?
Can we tell the truth about wrongdoing without turning shame into a weapon?
Can we leave the light on?
When the prodigal son finally returns, the father doesn't pretend the journey was wise. He doesn't declare the pigpen a valid lifestyle choice.
But neither does he make the boy crawl home.
He runs to him.
There is a vast difference between calling something wrong and making someone believe that being wrong has made them unlovable. Christians should understand that distinction better than anyone.
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The Caricature
Some people reach adulthood and conclude that they want nothing to do with God.
Sometimes there are intellectual or philosophical reasons. Sometimes there is suffering they can't reconcile with faith. Human unbelief is complicated, and it would be arrogant to reduce everyone's story to their parents.
But sometimes I wonder whether the God someone has rejected was ever really Jesus.
If you were taught about a God who was perpetually disappointed in you....
A God who could not tolerate questions....
A God whose love felt conditional upon your obedience....
A God obsessed with appearances....
A God who needed you frightened in order to keep you righteous....
A God whose representatives controlled, humiliated, threatened and/or shamed you in His name....
I understand why you might want nothing to do with Him.
I wouldn't want that God either.
But before throwing Jesus away with the caricature, perhaps He deserves another introduction. Read what He actually did. Watch where He went. Notice whom He touched. Notice whom He defended. Notice how often the respectable religious people were the ones who misunderstood Him.
Notice how He treated the ashamed.
Notice how He treated sinners.
Notice how He treated people who failed Him.
Peter denied even knowing Him.
Christ's response was not humiliation.
It was breakfast.
And then an invitation to keep walking with Him. Perhaps parents should remember that.
We will represent God imperfectly to our children because we are imperfect people. Inevitably, some of our fears will sneak into the portrait. Some of our theology will be wrong. Sometimes we will mistake our preferences for His commandments, or let our own wounds speak when we think we are speaking for God.
Maybe one of the best things a parent can eventually tell a child is:
"Don't confuse me with Him.
Where I was harsh, don't assume He is harsh.
Where I was frightened, don't assume He was frightened.
Where I tried to control you, don't assume He wanted control.
Where I misunderstood you, don't assume He misunderstood you.
Where I failed to love you as I should have, please don't measure His love by mine.
Go find Him yourself."
I think the greatest success of Christian parenting isn't raising children who never wander. Perhaps it is raising children who, wherever they wander, know how to recognize the road home....
and know Someone is watching for them there.
THE REAL JESUS
We inherit pictures of Jesus long before we're old enough to examine them.
Some come from churches. Some from culture. Some from books, teachers, traditions, people who speak confidently in His name. And some of the most powerful come from our parents.
But every human portrait is capable of getting Him wrong.
So there comes a point when borrowed pictures have to be set aside and we have to ask the question for ourselves:
Jesus on the radio, Jesus on a late night show
Jesus in a dream, looking all serene
Jesus on a steeple, Jesus in the Gallup poll
Jesus has His very own brand of rock and roll
Watched Him on the silver screen
Bought the action figurine
But Jesus is the only name that makes you flinch
Can anybody show me the real Jesus?
Maybe the best place to begin is with Jesus Himself.
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