Succeeding Where Success Matters Most, prt. 2
Your Kids
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
June 19, 2005
You may recall that last week I said that of all areas where it’s important for us to “succeed,” one of the most important is with our spouses. So I placed it first in this series. Our first commitment must be not to our children but to our spouses. Let’s face it, our kids are easier to love sometimes, aren’t they? I mean really, biology dictates that we love our children. We almost can’t help ourselves! But we must CHOOSE to love our spouse, and that’s not always an easy choice, is it? That’s the reason why commitment to spouse must come before commitment to our children. Remember how we discussed last week that only the things that are difficult really build character in us? Remember Jesus words that if we only love those who love us, that’s no credit to us? Well our children always love us, don’t they? Our children, no matter what we do, are there with forgiveness, with a desire to put problems in the past and move on with just loving us and being loved. Do you know what that means? It means that our children already do almost perfectly what the rest of us adults are struggling to learn to do even a little bit – love someone else with unconditional love.
Thus the marriage relationship (if you are married) is the crucible for the formation of God’s character in you. You must choose to love your spouse, you must LEARN to love him/her with perfect love, and from those efforts come the spiritual fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
But I do not want to minimize the parent-child relationship. In a marriage relationship, God is forming each partner as they submit to one another.
Ephesians 5:21 (NIV)
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
But in the parent-child relationship, formation works primarily in one direction – you are forming your child as your child submits to you. Certainly God continues to teach us all kinds of amazing lessons about His love and mercy and grace and forgiveness through our children so I am not saying that there is no formation of the parent – what I’m saying is that the primary formation in this relationship is that of the child. Parents are nothing if not an instrument of formation in the lives of their children. At every level we influence who our children will be, and they will bear the marks of our influence, for good or for ill, for the rest of their lives.
Object lesson here in the form of a question: In what way do you continue to bear the marks of the influence of your parents even to this day? Have you ever fully been able to escape the long shadow cast by your parents? Even the attempts we make to be independent bear the marks of the influence of our parents, for it is their influence we are sometimes struggling to shake off.
I say out loud here what all parents know in the back of our minds –the thing we have learned from experience with our own parents – the thing that if we think about it long enough becomes frightening. Your children will never escape your influence. We pray they will overcome the mistakes we have made. We hope they will surpass our highest achievements. We hope they do not have to spend too much money in therapy dropping some of the baggage we might leave them with despite our best intentions. But ultimately we hope that in some key ways, they carry on in their lives the most essential things we have struggled to pass on to them. In fact that is our exact duty as parents – to pass on to our children the basic attitudes and skills they will need to live life on their own in this world.
Last week we saw that a Christian is a citizen of two worlds – this physical world we live in that surrounds us and so thoroughly overwhelms our senses that it is difficult to pay attention to anything else – and the spiritual world that Christianity teaches is actually MORE real than this all-encompassing physical reality. I leave it to the schools and to experts who have written greats books on the subject of parenting to teach you how to make sure your children grow into good citizens of this world – people who pay their taxes and vote and contribute to society. This morning I want to talk to you about what it means to make sure our children grow into good citizens of the world that is far more important – the spiritual world.
How do we do that? We can teach our children to say please and thank you and to speak to us respectfully. We can show them how to tie their shoes and how to clean up after themselves and how to use the toilet. We can teach them to obey the law and respect the government and care about the environment. But how do we create in our children a healthy interest in the things that matter most – in spiritual realities that will outlive you and them and THEIR children?
There is a way to do this, and I’m going to share it with you this morning by telling you the mistakes I think parents most often make in conveying spiritual things to their kids. This is all stuff I have seen, and far too frequently. So this morning I’m going to give you a list of seven things you can do to make sure your kids eventually lose interest in spiritual things. I’m doing it this way because I want you to have to do the hard work of flipping it around – of saying, “If this will make sure they lose interest, then the opposite of that will create conditions where they stay interested. Am I doing the opposite of that – the healthy thing?” Many of you are doing well already, perhaps most. And if you leave here not really having learned anything this morning but having simply been affirmed that you’re doing a pretty good job with one of the most important duties in your life, then I have served a useful purpose here today. Having said that, let’s launch into our list: seven things you can do to make sure your kids eventually lose interest in spiritual things.
First, teach religion to your kids, but don’t live it out in your own life. Attempt to teach them the details of a world that you personally know nothing about – you’ll be sure to get it really wrong and that will mess with their heads big-time. Ignore the examples of so many of the Old Testament fathers and mothers who were faithful to live out their relationship with God so their children could see it in action. Abraham and Sarah-->Isaac and Rebekah-->Jacob and Rachel--> etc. Because of their faithfulness an ancient faith was begun - Judaism, which after thousands of years led to the birth of Jesus, who founded a faith which itself has lasted two thousand more years so far. Have nothing to do with that kind of integrity. Start when the kids are young. Pull up to the church, push the kids out the car door, and go home and watch TV until time to pick them up again. While you’re sitting at home, think about how valuable it is for the kids to learn about God.
Deuteronomy 6:5-9 (NIV)
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.
7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Now if you are going to raise kids who lose interest in spiritual things, definitely don’t do that!
Second, use the church, God, and religion to manipulate your kids every chance you get. Tell them how disappointed God would be in their behavior and how they are breaking Jesus’ heart. Look sad. The more guilt you use, the more certain it will be that one day they leave the church and never return. Best of all, pick Christian authority figures in their lives and tell them how disappointed those authority figures would be in them. If your kids ever get a whiff of God’s deep love and grace, it could ruin your plan. Present God this way:
[Clip from Footloose]
Tell your kids how disappointed God would be in their behavior and how they are breaking Jesus’ heart. Put on a very sad face. The more guilt you use, the more certain it will be that one day they leave the church and never return. Best of all, pick Christian authority figures in their lives and tell them how disappointed those authority figures would be in them. That really brings it home and heaps the guilt on. Don’t let them find out about scriptures like:
Matthew 19:13-15 (MSG)
13 One day children were brought to Jesus in the hope that he would lay hands on them and pray over them. The disciples shooed them off.
14 But Jesus intervened: "Let the children alone, don’t prevent them from coming to me. God’s kingdom is made up of people like these."
15 After laying hands on them, he left.
Matthew 11:25 (NIV)
25 At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.
Matthew 18:3-4 (NIV)
3 And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Third, be patronizing about spiritual things. Make sure the kids know a few “religious” things, but don’t let that distract them from focusing on the “real-life” stuff, like money and a good job and a nice house. Look for signs that your kids are taking their faith in God seriously, and intervene as soon as possible. The surest sign is when a child attempts to actually make a decision based on a principle from their Christian faith. DO NOT ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN – that could establish a dangerous pattern that could last a lifetime. After all, kids who take God seriously sometimes grow into adults who take God seriously. Look what happened to Jesus, who had an earthly Father and mother who both took spiritual things seriously. The Bible records:
Luke 2:52 (MSG)
52 And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both God and people.
You’d best avoid taking God seriously, unless of course you want that to happen to your child.
Fourth, allow your children to choose spiritual things for themselves. Don’t make them come to church with you and don’t expose them to any direct spiritual training. Most of all don’t ever allow them to see the contradiction between all the efforts you make to preserve their physical and emotional well-being – like keeping the medicine on a high shelf, not letting them play in the street, keeping them away from guns, teaching them about healthy relationships, etc. – and the laissez faire approach you take to their spiritual well-being. Maybe it’s in their best interest to grow up without any spiritual direction. After all, the Bible says,
Proverbs 22:6 (NASB)
6 Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.
I mean I guess that’s fine for people who want their kids to remain interested in spiritual things all their lives, but we have other goals this morning, don’t we? Yes sir – yes ma’am, if we’re going to raise kids who eventually lose interest in the spiritual world, we need to just let them drift wherever they drift to. Then we’ll just be happy for them no matter where they end up. We should never display any opinions about this one way or another to them – after all, we don’t want them to feel forced into anything. I want to leave you on this point with a passage you’ll definitely need to ignore if you wish to succeed in this area:
Joshua 24:15 (MSG)
15 "If you decide that it’s a bad thing to worship God, then choose a god you’d rather serve, and do it today. Choose one of the gods your ancestors worshiped from the country beyond The River, or one of the gods of the Amorites, on whose land you’re now living. As for me and my family, we’ll worship God."
Joshua chose God for his family. He trained them up in the way they should go. I mean, this guy was just asking to have kids who served God all their lives. People back then were so naïve.
Fifth, be legalistic about spiritual matters. Focus on the external things like certain ways of praying and dressing, particular translations of the Bible to read, specific denominations they must be part of, etc. Use exclusive words a lot. Say things like, “ALL rock music is wrong,” “We NEVER use bad words in this house,” etc. Speak negatively about all churches other than your own. Talk about how the Catholics, the Baptists, the Presbyterians just can’t get it right. Tell your children that they can’t be Christians unless they say a certain prayer a certain way in a certain position. Show a lot of anger too. That should be easy since legalism always results in judgmentalism and anger and will have the added benefit of being very confusing to your children. By the way there is a very upsetting passage in the Bible you’ll need to make sure your children never internalize or it will be difficult to turn them off from spiritual things:
1 Samuel 16:7 (NLT)
7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t make decisions the way you do! People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at a person’s thoughts and intentions."
And some more dangerous ones:
Psalms 51:16-17 (MSG)
16 Going through the motions doesn’t please you, a flawless performance is nothing to you.
17 I learned God-worship when my pride was shattered. Heart-shattered lives ready for love don’t for a moment escape God’s notice.
Colossians 2:16, 20-21 (MSG)
16 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days.
20 So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it?
21 "Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!"
Sixth, make sure your kids think being a Christian is about having all the answers. If you do well enough at the legalism thing, this will take care of itself. Shame your kids for expressing doubt or for struggling with their faith. If you fail on this point, kids might get the impression that faith is a journey, that it is resilient and applies to their lives at all times and in all places. If they are going to eventually lose interest that have to be able to say it “didn’t work” for them. The best way to do this is to make sure their faith never grows to accommodate adult questions and concerns. Keep it shallow and it won’t last long. I won’t quote here, but make sure your kids never hear of a character in the Bible named Job, who suffered greatly and continued to believe. Keep them from really internalizing the fact that everyone struggles, everyone suffers, and everyone always has a choice to make to believe or not to believe. If you keep them from understanding that, then the first time a major crisis hits them, they’ll feel like God has betrayed them and they have outgrown their faith and they’ll likely cast it off and never look back. Make sure they don’t find out that Jesus’ cousin John was killed and Jesus didn’t save him but still asked him to keep believing, and don’t let them discover that Jesus actually promised us that we would all have our share of suffering in this life.
John 16:33 (MSG)
33 I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world."
Let them think suffering and pain and difficulty are for non-Christians, for bad people – teach them that angels tuck them in and nothing bad will ever happen to them – this will set them up for the huge disappointment that is sure to eventually come and when it does chances are good they’ll leave their faith behind. The world is full of millions of people who did exactly that, so if you follow that formula you can’t go wrong.
Seventh and last, always be sure to keep the line very clear between being spiritual and being happy. Teach them that they have to make a choice. Don’t say it out loud, but convey it clearly. Frown on things like dancing, music, sex, deep friendship, and other things that are often correlated with happiness and joy. In this way you will teach your child that anything that brings him or her joy is probably a sin and that the life God most likely wants from them will go in exactly the opposite direction of the people and things they love the most. This will be your ultimate triumph, when you succeed in forcing your child to choose between joy and God, and keep him/her from realizing that God created them to experience joy and nothing delights God more than for them to be joyful. Almost no human being will choose a spiritual (and therefore miserable) existence over a life filled with joy and pleasure, so if you do well on this one you’re pretty much all the way home. If you live grimly enough, your child may read but will never understand passages in the Bible like this:
Luke 2:10 (NASB)
10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people;
John 15:11 (MSG)
11 "I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature.
Romans 14:17 (MSG)
17 God’s kingdom isn’t a matter of what you put in your stomach, for goodness’ sake. It’s what God does with your life as he sets it right, puts it together, and completes it with joy.
John 10:9-10 (MSG)
9 I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for -- will freely go in and out, and find pasture.
10 A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
So that’s how to make sure your kids eventually lose interest in spiritual things. Now if you want them to hang on to their interest in God and spiritual things, just do (or keep doing) the opposite of everything I talked about this morning.
Be sure to live out in your own life what you are teaching, and have taught, to them. Never use God or the church to shame or manipulate. Take spiritual reality seriously and expect them to allow it to shape their daily choices big and small. Teach them this stuff, don’t just hope they’ll pick it up on their own when they’re adults. Make sure they know it’s a heart thing – that it’s not about impressing people. Help them understand their daily fears and concerns from a spiritual perspective – teach them that to be a believer is not to escape suffering but to have the hope of triumph over it. And finally, let your children see how faith brings joy and purpose to your life, and how God created us to experience joy, and how increasing joy will be found as the presence of God in our lives increases. If you focus on these seven things you will make it likely that you will succeed in helping your children to grow up with a desire for God in their lives, and there’s no greater success than that.
Finally I want to say a word to one specific group of people here this morning. Some of you are sitting here this morning thinking, “Man, my parents did that or did that. That was messed up, man.” And I want you tell you, you’re right. And maybe their mistakes turned you off to faith big-time. I’m glad you have re-engaged on the journey, and I hope you have seen a healthy norm this morning. Know that those misconceptions are just that – misconceptions – that God has a purpose for you and wants you to experience joy and to rise above those faulty ideas you were raised with.
And finally, we are all surrounded constantly by parents who are raising their kids in these unhealthy ways, most of the time because that’s how they were raised themselves. I hope you will be able to use what you have learned today to help others get past the spiritual scars of their own childhoods – and that will make a permanent impact on the way they, in turn, raise their children.
You’ll receive a handout when you leave this morning that will give you these seven practices from the positive perspective, along with a list of all the scriptures that God can use to help shape your heart and mind. Let’s pray.
