Child Abuse

I was talking with a father of a teenage son. "Well," he told me, "perhaps we haven't done the best for him." He told me about how their son was irresponsible, unmotivated, lazy, and uncontrolled. "He just knows how to push the right buttons and his mom and I will do whatever he wants."

I put this in the category of child abuse. "Abuse? Really??" Indeed. The parent(s) that have to live with it have obvious negative repurcussions, but the outcome for the child is not good either. This late-teen kid is about to be unleashed on the world with the belief that everyone owes him whatever it is he wants and no one should have the right to deny him whatever that might be. The concept of "earn your way" is nowhere to be seen. The notion of actual consequences for choices is not present anywhere. Oh, sure, over his lifetime they did the token "discipline." Take his phone when his grades weren't good enough. That sort of thing. Except, of course, the promised consequences -- "We're going to keep your phone until you get your grades up" -- never happened and the message was clear. "At worst, I just have to wait a little while until all my desires are provided." So this kid is going to be entering adulthood without having learned the value of work, without even passing high school, and expecting everything to be handed to him. What could go wrong?

Someplace along the line something went very wrong. It was once expected that fathers would discipline their children (Heb 12:9-10). According to Hebrews, the father that does not discipline his child does not love him (or her). By this measure, a significant number of modern American parents don't love their children. The text in Hebrews says, "The Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives." (Heb 12:6) That "chastises" is obviously related but slightly different than the "disciplines." The "discipline" term means to train, to instruct, to teach. Oh, that's easy enough, right? But the "chastise" term means "to flog or scourge." "Oh, now, hang on!" our modern sensibilities tell us. "That's not right!" Except that it's exactly what it says and it specifically refers to "the Lord" and not some bad dad. "You know, doing that in this country might get you put in jail." Right. Because loving your children in a biblical way is no longer acceptable in America. That's how far we've come from "Train up a child."

It is somewhat naive to think that this will work out well for our kids. Since we don't expect parents to teach them responsibility and discipline, someone else will. Maybe it will be a kindly neighbor or church that steps in. One can only hope. More likely it will be a gang leader or a police officer. And hopefully this learning to submit won't be fatal. We're not doing our kids any favors by trying to be their pal when what they need is loving, responsible parents who are willing to do the hard stuff to prepare them for life as adults. They have lots of friends, but for too many, they have no functional parents. I call that child abuse.