Most of the modern parenting books that I’ve come across have at least a tone of anxiousness if not hysteria. Many of the Christian parents I’ve meet are anxious as well—and that includes me in my worst moments. The general consensus of modern writers is that things are getting worse in the church and in the wider culture.
The fear and trembling may have some legitimacy: a bunch of historical events including technology, secularism, and capitalism, means that godly folk wisdom and beneficial cultural structures have faded away while at the same time our exposures to possible “wisdoms” has increased. So instead of just attempting to correct the mistakes and sins of our parents and potentially our childhood pastor and follow them in what was godly, we must analyze and respond to Rousseau, Dr. Spock, Oprah, Gothard, Trip, MacArthur, and Plowman. Modernity has dislocated us. Capitalism has created the childrearing juggernaut of books and videos, and we are suddenly having serious conversations about “nipple confusion” among infants and facing the fact that spanking is now illegal in places. It is scary and it seems unmanageable.
The second grounds for fear is that we are responsible to teach our children the gospel, to do our best to make sure they survive childhood, and to train them to become productive citizens. It’s a big and scary job.
And this brings us to the sin issue: part of our fear and trembling is over the fact that we don’t trust God and we aren’t listening to him. God’s word says in Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” Modern life has its problems, but fundamentally it’s no worse or no better than the past. There were and are advantages and disadvantages to both.
Modernity’s a Mess
We do need to be wary of modern things. Part of the reason for this is that modern things haven’t been tested. And even when the theory is right, untested things can be potentially dangerous because of unintended consequences. New technology, practice, and ideas all carry a threat within them.
For instance, moderns eschew corporal punishment for children but are indifferent to the progressive militarization of our police force which is required to deal with little Bobby when he finds the appetite for say heroin. Somehow it’s become acceptable for the police to wear body armor and carry automatic weapons, but Daddy better not paddle his son. Goodness no, we’d rather let him be tazered by the police officer patrolling his middle-school.
The Past’s No Better
But we also can’t assume that old things are good as did one of the above authors in recommending Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory: “We have long waited for a purely biblical treatment of the spiritual ills and cures of men which is untainted by the views of modern psychology. Since Baxter lived about 200 years before modern psychology arrived, his deep work is completely void of this encroachment.” The author is saying this about a book that recommends bloodletting and either enemas or self-induced vomiting or both to reduce “inward, filthy lusts” (335). While Baxter didn’t know Dr. Spock or Skinner, he was overly influenced by ancient Greek medicine and the theory of bodily humors—neither of which are found in the Bible. And I doubt that our modern author recognizes how influenced he is by “modern psychology” any more than Baxter thought through the implications of writing “the temperature of the body hath a great hand in this sin” (Ibid.).
Modernity is nasty, but the past is a mess as well. One of the greatest spiritual shocks of my childhood was reading Davey Crockett’s autobiography at about the age of ten. “The king of the wild frontier,” and my erstwhile Disneyfied hero, took so many “squaws” that I lost count, ate potatoes cooked in human fat, and campaigned for congress by passing out whiskey. He makes Bill Clinton look like an innocent. And by the way Wilberforce was addicted to opium, Jonathan Edwards owned slaves, John Wesley was abused by his wife, Augustine put away a concubine with whom he had a child instead of marrying her, and so forth.
There’s enough sinful examples and teaching in the past to destroy any child and their parents just as there are in the present. The only safe source of information about parenting comes from the Bible, but we have to interpret and apply it and in so doing we expose our own weakness, bigotry, and sinfulness. And so what shall we do?