Parenting as a Child of God
Some time back, there was a case of a church being rapped by MOM for the wrongful dismissal of a pregnant female employee. The church maintained that there was no wrongful dismissal because her behaviour was against the church’s values, and she had refused to repent from her actions.
There are two issues which I wanted to bring up, from the perspective of a christian parent:-
a) True love requires Justice
I became a christian when I was a teenager, but I only started to really understand God after I became a mother. Being a mother helped me to understand both the love and justice of God.
I have written previously before, that becoming a mother allowed me to understand what it means to love someone unconditionally and sacrificially, to the extent that I would give my life many times over for the life of my child, no matter what he has or has not done. I think every mother would understand that.
As my child grew, however, I realised to my dismay that my child was not perfect. He behaved badly, and he made mistakes. I wish he would be well-behaved all the time, so that I can do nothing but love and enjoy him, but alas! that was not to be.
There were many instances when he crossed the line, and I had to decide – do I let him go, or do I impose the consequences? I know that I will always love my child, but I know too, that other people will not. If I love my child, I must help him to become lovable. That often means imposing the consequences, against my strong desire to just hug and kiss him and say : it’s ok, mummy loves you, don’t do it again. I DO NOT enjoy punishing my children. If my child can learn without consequences, I would not impose it. But I have learnt time and again, that without consequences, they do not learn.
I was once asked whether I would allow my child to go to jail. When I said that if my child breaks the law, yes, I would let him go to jail, I was ridiculed and accused of not loving my child.
I could not understand why. As a child, if he breaks his brother’s toy, I would expect him to apologise and to fix it, failing which he would have to use his savings to compensate his brother. Is that not the right thing to do? How else will he learn? How is allowing my child to experience the consequences of his mistakes not loving?
I love my children tremendously. I want to be proud of them, I want them to grow up to be great men of honour. I train them up according to God’s way, because God is their Creator. He made them so he knows how they work, and what will make them successful and happy. The bible has many promises which are for their taking, if they would just trust and obey. I KNOW it works, because I have experienced it in my own life.
It is not easy of course, and it requires a lot of hardwork, and much pain along the way, but that is the natural and necessary process of growth. Leading my children into maturity, despite the stumbles and the pain, is not unloving. Shielding them from the reality of unwise decisions and stunting their growth is.
b) Responsibility requires authority
There are times when my husband and I would need to go out at night, and leave the children at home. We would put our oldest boy in charge. But sometimes after we return, we would find many things in disarray and the children having misbehaved. Once I rebuked our oldest boy for it, and he complained that he could not get his brothers to obey him, because he has no authority. What he meant was that he could not really impose any punishment on them.
Fair enough.
Similarly, as a parent, if I am given the responsibility to bring my children up well, should I, also have the right to bring up them up according to my convictions? I expect the answer to be Yes. Should I, then, have the authority to impose consequences on my child so that he can learn from me? I expect the answer to be Yes, too. How else could I ensure the outcome if I do not have the authority?
Back to the church’s case.
There are two perspectives we can take towards the issue. We can think that the church is a heartless parent, who abandoned her child the moment the child erred. We can also think that the church is a loving parent, who did what she could but to no avail, and in the end had to resort to drastic actions in the hope that the child would learn.
That is how I would act as a parent. I would impose the lowest consequence, and hope the child would learn. If the child does not learn, despite teaching and warning, and everything that I can do, I would have to increase the consequence. I would have to keep increasing the consequences till the child learns.
I believe that most of us would do the same. We would impose the highest of consequence only if she is still not learning. Why would the church be any different?
Yet in this case, the church was considered as being too harsh by some, and had its freedom of operating according to its convictions taken away (which is effectively, what MOM did). If a church can have its authority to operate according to its convictions taken away, will I one day, as a parent, have my authority to parent according to my convictions, taken away too? It may sound ridiculous to you, but to me, it is a natural extension of the same thing.
Recently at a course, I was asked this question – what are my expectations for my children – are they high, or low?
My answer was that my expectations are high. I have extremely high expectations of my children. They are not academic expectations, but they are expectations of behaviour, courage and conviction. I expect them to live out the Sermon on the Mount – to be salt and light, to love our enemies, and to enter through the narrow gate. I expect them to stand up for what is right and true, at the cost of their own lives.
I expect the same of myself.
This is not to say that I am living that way. Far from it. But I do not change the standards just because I cannot reach them. The standards make me look bad, yes. But the standards are beautiful. I want to achieve them. They are worth striving for.
What kind of world would you like to live in? A world where we all do what we want, so long as it feels good, and where we live by the lowest standards – to please the whims and fancies of any man? Or would you like to live in a world where we do what is best for everyone, and where we live by the highest standards – to strive to be the best of man?
I would choose the second, because whatever it might mean to other people, I know that I would respect and like myself better if I was that way.
Therefore I would raise my children by the highest standards, and fight for a society which strives to live by the highest standards. I would do it, whether by the simple act of picking litter, by teaching dyslexic children to read, by fostering a child, or simply by writing this post on my blog.
Because to bring up children without high moral convictions is to make “men without chests”. That is certainly what we do not need. That is what I will never be able to live down.
