The Job of Parent

Someplace along the way the job description has changed. It used to read, in brief, something like this: "Train up a child in the way he should go" (Prov. 22:6). It used to include things like discipline (Heb. 12:7) and instruction (Eph. 6:4), keeping children under control (1 Tim. 3:4), "exhorting and encouraging and imploring" (1 Thess. 2:11), and correction (Prov. 29:17). Oh, sure, there is the absolutely necessary "love" and the keenly important "do not exasperate", but it seems to me that the job description of the position of "Parent" has changed. Today it is more like "Be a buddy" and "Remove any obstacles that might prevent them from growing into whatever they might want to be." The old "Lines are our friends" has become a laughable concept, and real, loving parents today are required to set their children free without guidance or limitations to be all that they really want to be, regardless of what that may be.

I suppose I'd laugh if it wasn't so tragic. "All that they really want to be" -- that's the goal. If that means a mass murderer or drug dealer, so be it. You can't impose guidance or limitations on them. That only prevents them from growing. Did you know that there are some who would even prevent parents today from expressing religious beliefs to their children? They are calling it "child abuse" because parents burden these poor little minds with concepts like this before they even have the chance to develop their own ideas. You beast!

Look around you. Parents everywhere are surrendering their parental duties and seeking desperately to become their child's friend. It is abundantly clear most places you care to go where children and parents are found who it is that runs so many households -- the children. Parents are baffled at how to get them to behave. I was asked when mine were little, "How do you get them to mind you so well?" When I told them it takes love and discipline, they would say, "I spank my child, but it doesn't do any good." I would suggest that's because so many have bought into the "child abuse" line. You don't want to hurt them; you just want to get their attention. A little pat on that diaper-padded behind ought to do. Who's kidding whom?

The Bible disagrees. Solomon, considered a wise man, wrote appalling things like "Do not hold back discipline from the child. Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die" (Prov. 23:13) and "He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently" (Prov. 13:24). Of course, they're only appalling in today's "kids rule" atmosphere. So Christians have to decide. Are they going to side with modern philosophies of child-rearing ... or with God's opinion of how to train the beings He created?

I know where many will immediately go. "Look at the horrible child abuse we see because of this kind of teaching." I'm with you there. But abuse of a concept doesn't nullify the concept. And spanking a child (where their backside actually hurts) -- applying the board of education to the seat of learning, so to speak -- isn't abuse. It's only abuse in today's perceptions. I actually heard a parent say that it is child abuse to take away a toy from a child who is banging a sibling over the head with it. Child abuse? In what sense of the word??

Parents are defecting in grand numbers. They are bugging out of the fight. They refuse to follow God's prescription for raising children and have decided instead that it's better to be nice. Diplomacy is the best approach. You don't "train," "exhort," "discipline," or "correct." These are all too unkind. If you ever hear your child tell you, "I hate you!", you've failed. Use a tool that would actually cause pain on a child???? That's wrong, likely criminal, and surely abusive. But why, oh, why is this new, kinder, gentler set of parents not producing better offspring? Why is it that their "time outs" aren't producing more contemplative, compliant children? Why is it that the only lack of limitations so many kids with this upbringing seem to have is the lack or moral limitations? If the modern perception of how to raise kids is right ... why isn't it working?

Of course, the real question here is not for the general public. The real question here is for parents who are Christians. Are you going to buy into current perceptions or will you choose God's stated concepts? I ask because when you argue, "Oh, spanking that poor little child is abuse", you're arguing, "Oh, God is abusive!" Are we as humans and parents going to tell God, "Yeah, you were okay for awhile, but we've finally figured out a better way. Nice try!"? Or are we going to say, "Yeah, I have been trying to do this by methods that are lies and I need to start doing it the way God intended."? And the Number One job of every parent is teaching our children the truth about God. Handing that off to Sunday School or someone else is an abdication of our God-given responsibility.

"Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deut. 6:4-9).

Will that make you popular with your kids? Likely not. Will they like it? I doubt it. But if we don't discipline our kids when they need it with the discipline God commands, and teach our kids the truth "when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up," the consequences to them, to you, and to all if us will be dire. The rewards, on the other hand, are grand.

You choose. Parent or buddy. God's way or the world's. You decide.