Let the little children come to me (if they don’t get distracted en route)
Perhaps in your journey to become “good Christian parents” you may have looked at the good book itself for guidance… and soon found…not a lot, unless you count the useful advice in Luke 11 about not feeding your children snakes and scorpions (Thanks for that Luke…) There is a fair amount for the children, telling them to obey their parents and listen to their instruction (see, for examples Exodus 20 and Proverbs 1). But these texts you know; you have pointed your children at them a number of times during moments of disrespect, and they have so far fallen on deaf ears.
The older generation like to point you at Proverbs “Whoever spares the rod hates their children,” suggesting that you should risk social service involvement in order to beat good behaviour and faith into your young ones. Constant discipline and picking battles, is, often, part and parcel of parenting, but it doesn’t give you “peace” as Proverbs 29 suggests. Such a foray into the biblical world of parenting leaves you even more confused as to how we are to start children off in the “way they should go” (Proverbs 22) and what to do they wander off track? It’s all very well the Bible telling us not to worry, but our children’s souls are at stake and you started to suspect that you are fighting a losing battle since you found your todller’s pockets filled with the church’s toys and have since started to despair at their fascination with weapons and death.
Indeed, when Jesus said “Let the little children come to me,” (Matthew 19) surely he was talking about children who wanted to come, not the ones who scream loudly “THIS IS SOOOOO BORING” in church and had to be prised off a lamppost on the way. Are you, then, doing it all wrong? As you ask yourself this, images of the millstone around your neck (Matthew 18) appear in your mind and, then, panic sets in.
On the other hand, maybe there is a reason parenting strategies are not found in depth in any of the 66 books of the Bible! However, hope can be found for parents in Deuteronomy 6 calling on the whole community to pass on faith to the children among them. In other words: get as much help as you can, this stuff is hard! For encouragement remember your own journey to faith and your own parents, surely it wasn’t all plain sailing? Maybe back then you refused to go to church as a young person to wind up your parents, maybe you went to church youth group to wind up your unbelieving parents, or maybe you went because you had a crush on someone there. Whatever your reasons for your faith today you are unlikely to say that your parents are the one and only reason you believe. Stop beating yourself up about your child’s lack of interest, keep trying and it feels too hard: call in the big guy: pray. It seems unimaginable sometimes that our offspring could become the angels of obedience we desire them to be or the giants of faith we hope they will become. But this is a God who moves mountains, who defeated death, and perhaps more incredibly: placed a child in the midst and made a theological point before the child wriggled off or had a tantrum (see Matthew 18)- miracles can happen.
There are a variety of reasons why children become wayward, and it isn’t necessarily fair, theologically justified or even helpful to place blame on the parents despite what the crotchety old man in church tells you. As much as we can guide and parent our little monkeys at the end of the day we must let go and let God. Good parents do sometimes have children who break their hearts, and who lose their way: keep praying!
