We saw last time that one of the deepst insights the Bible offers about what it means to be a parent is the modelling of God to our children.  I suggested this solves a huge number of parenting-related dilemmas at a stroke. It helps us to evaluate any number of parenting theories that are proposed and to chart a secure course in the midst of our cutlure’s confusion, our own sinful tendencies and our reactions to our own experiences of being parented.

At a crude level, it challenges behaviours such as simply giving into our children when they nag, or cry (or worse… and why do they do it public!?? Maybe because they know it works?). Or training our children in ‘delayed obedience’. Sometimes you see parents - OK sometimes we - tell their children to do something, and then start counting. Is this how we want our children to learn how to relate to God? When you articulate it, you begin to see how unhelpful it will be for them as they grow up: ‘When God tells you to do something, it’s OK not to do it first time and straight away… or to only do it reluctantly, or resentfully. It’s OK to carry on doing what you were doing for a while longer, and only eventually (grudgingly?) to obey Him’. Wouldn’t it be much better, and much more in line with the Bible’s vision for your role as a parent to teach your children a joyful and immediate obedience that is born out of trust and delight in our children’s relationship with us? Not only will that dramatically affect our experince of parenting, but it will teach our children how to joyfully respond to the commands and teaching of their God.

Another example of how reflecting on the Bible’s vision for parenting as preparation for a child’s own relationship with God can help is the way it highlights the dangers of warning chldren about consequences of their behaviour and then not following through. We’ve all heard parents (and been parents!) who endlessly list off an increasingly severe series of potential repercussions, when everyone, including the child, knows that none of them will be acted upon. Again, the question comes into sharp focus when we consider how well this would prepare our children to make sense of their relationship with their God. Will they experince God as someone who gives empty warnings as to the consequence of behaviour? Does that resonate well with the Bible’s teaching? …or our own experience? What will our children’s reaction be when they discover that God is not like us (or better: we are not like God)?

It also gives the lie, for example, to pretty much any version of ‘child-centred parenting’. As this is so prevalent, it is worth a slightly more sustained consideration. Child-centred parenting (as a conscious model of parenting) has been around in one form or another for about a century, and began life as a reaction to what was perceived as overly-authoritarian and controlling models of parenting (stereotypical ‘Victorian’ style parenting). It is rooted in the idea that parents had no inherent, or even legitimate, authority over their children, and so not intrinsic right to set famliy rules, make family decisions, or establish expectations on children’s behaviour and porcess of maturing. Already we can see how dissonant this would be with the Bible’s mandate for loving and protective authority.

As a model of parenting it has proven somewhat naive in its vision of children as self-directing, moral and empathetic bundles of initiative. Whilst not calling into question a parent’s love for their child(ren), we can suggest that love can be misdirected, misinformed and lacking in discernment. As one psychologist recently explained: ‘It is true that children act out of curiosity, but without parental guidance, children cannot learn to go beyond their comfort zones and learn about things that do not interest them. It is true that children need loving parents who are sensitive to their emotions, but they also need adults who teach them how to cope with hardship, struggle and failure. And it is true that children have rights, but these rights do not make them equal to adults’ (Dr. M.Mascolo).

Children do not come into the world mature and complete. Of course they need love and nurture, they need empathy and compassion, praise and support. And of course they also need training and instruction, investment and structure, discipline and challenge. Mascolo goes on: ‘Child-centered parenting runs the risk of producing entitled, narcissistic children who lack the capacity to persevere and cope with difficulty’.

Knowing what we do about the Bible’s teaching, we can understand why. When we parent in a ‘child-centred’ way we are teaching our children to relate to God in a pattern that runs coutner to reality. It can be deeply liberating for a parent to realise that they can parent in a way that is profoundly sensitive to their child, without having to abdicate what they instinctively know to be necessary in their role. In the same way as God relates to us in a way that perfectly integrates love and authority, discipline and compassion, support and direction, so parents can aspire for a vision of their role that reflects this faithfully into the lives and experiences of their children. Children need this full spectrum of God-like relating to them if they are to grow into the men and women God is calling them to be. Until they learn how to stand themselves in godliness, they need parents who will put the scaffolding around them to support them as they grow.

These are difficult (and controversial) areas to think through as Christians. But think them through we must if we are to pick our way through the maze of competing pressures and ideas that are offered to us day by day.