One of the sticks that Christians tend to whack each other with is the biblical club. One group of Christians defines their understanding of parenting as biblical parenting. By necessity then, everyone who disagrees with them is practicing “un-biblical” parenting. Rhetorically this tends to work out in language that denigrates anything anyone tries that does not agree with the biblical “principles” discovered or promoted by so and so. Perhaps, you thought rewarding your children for good behavior was similar to God rewarding his people? Depends on who you ask. One author might call that bribery or manipulation. Another might call it godly wisdom.
Mind the Gap in Charity
Part of the problem arises from two sorts of being “unbiblical”: The first way is that the Bible must be bridged from its original language and situation to our context. We don’t speak Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. We don’t live in Corinth or Bethlehem. Our language, cultural patterns, habits of mind and so forth are not identical to the original writers or recipients of the Bible. Modesty in Corinth in about 60 A.D. has overlap with Baltimore in 2012, but they are not identical. I am unbiblical in that I am wearing kakis rather than a toga, but biblical in that I am attempting to please God.
Let me illustrate this from yesterday and today: Richard Baxter (1615-1691) saw the susceptibility to sin in terms of body temperature. We tend to see susceptibility in terms of genetic predispositions. In as much as neither Baxter nor we use the current thought patterns to excuse sin or violate the Bible, we aren’t sinning. Yet we are both thinking and applying God’s words using thought patterns that are somewhat foreign to the Bible and to situations to a degree different then found in the biblical record.
The “unbiblical” nature of application means that we all must have the proper humility when speaking to other Christians about applications of Scripture. Applications can’t be as normative as God’s Word unless the biblical situation and current application are identical. Biblical principles on child rearing can never become the Bible.
Out Right Sin
All ages are also unbiblical in the sense of having ungodly blind spots. Every age allows some sin to be respectable and minimizes portions of God’s Word. Augustine should have married his concubine. Luther’s trust in God’s grace was sometimes an excuse for vulgarity. Wesley needed help with his wife. Modern Christians look back in horrified amazement at the American record of racial slavery. And in all likelihood, our children or grandchildren will look back at us with a similar and completely accurate disgust.
We sin. And part of the way that we can stop sinning is by reading the applications of Scripture by other Christians. We’ve got to be open to being convicted of our sins and the possibility of blind spots. We are really good at spotting Baxter’s sin, but miserable at seeing our own, and so we’ve got to think with care. We need to think with Christians of the past and modern Christians, because we are all trying to serve God together.
Modernity and the past aren’t safer or better—just different. There’s no need to fear anything but God. While we need to be wary of modernity and we need a proper sobriety towards our responsibility of raising children, we also need to “Rejoice always!” And we need to believe, Psalm 127:3-5, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.”
God’s Gifts Are Good
God gives us children because he loves us. “For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). And the thing God wants us to do is to raise up our kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and enjoy it. Really, I am not kidding. It’s supposed to be fun to have kids, not constantly hilarious or entertaining but a godly delight. So much so that when God talks about prosperity, he writes this way, “And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets” (Zech. 8:5).
In God’s eyes there is something delightful, wholesome, and good about streets filled with playing children. Every “good” parenting book I have begins by soberly reminding us that our children are all potential axe murders or totally depraved, and then that they must be converted. Great, God agrees and so do I, but the whole council of God includes streets “full of boys and girls playing”; and “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.18:3-4). There is something delightful about children, so much that God gives them as a good gift to sinners and believers (Pss. 17:14, cf. 127). They’re something to rejoice over and in, but we can only do it if we trust in God’s grace and not in books or this blog about childrearing.
We can’t cure our fear and trembling over modernity or the responsibility of being parents by reading the right books; we can only do it if we trust in God’s grace and trust in God’s Word. You don’t want to purposely sin, but you also don’t want to be anxious. You will sin, but God has fixed all of this on the cross. We can cry out with David, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son” (2 Sam. 18:33). But we don’t ever want to cry out in sorrow, “But we did everything according to The Duties of Parents.”
Back to the Blog
Having said all this, and perhaps rambled a bit more than I intended, let me come down to the nitty-gritty of this series. I understand my calling as a pastor to help people worship God by understanding the Book and the lesser book of creation—which includes lots of even lesser books and blogs, some about childrearing. In the coming weeks, I hope to think through the books I’ve listed in the first blog, so that we might worship God better by delighting in him and the job he’s given us to do.
Yet, I did want to put this out again: “Read your Bible. Love your kids; play with them. Be consistent with rules. Disciple them when they need it. Every kid’s different.” And I want to add one thought, “Don’t be scared. He’s a good God. ‘For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself’” (Acts 2:39).