We left a question hanging in our last article on parenting. It was about hypocrisy. As we train our children to be and to behave in a certain way, how can we guard against cultivating Pharisaism, where people do the ‘right’ thing, but for the wrong reason. Linking hypocrisy to Pharisees is something we see Jesus do (Matt.6:1-2, 5, 16; 23:3, 13f, ‘Woe to you, Teacher of the Law and Pharisees, you hypocrites…). So clearly this is a live threat, and real and present danger. How do we guard against it as we seek to embody a Christian view of parenting?

First, let’s take a step back from the immediate question of parenting and interrogate the idea that it is wrong to teach people to be and to behave in certain ways, irrespective of how they feel. This is a cultural virtue (and conversely, hypocrisy - which we understand to mean not being true to who we are - is a cultural vice), and it is so easy to take this on board uncritically, and so to adopt this as an aspiration for our children. The important thing to teach our children, we think, is to be yourself… right? In fact, the idea is fairly preposterous, and it is in some ways downright dangerous - at least when understood in this way. Let’s analyse the idea.

Our culture tends to think that people are at their best when they are being true to themselves. This means that there is total identity between what is going on inside someone and what is going on on the outside. It is good to be ‘authentic’. We praise those who are without duplicity: ‘What you see is what you get’. A corollary to this is that ‘spontaneity’ is the highest expression of who we are, and that we are really at our best and are being most honest when what we do wells up from within us without us having pre-thought or prepared it (with devestating implications for how we engage with Christian worship, but that is for another series!).

Now, obviously there is a destructive and manipulative sense in which we can deliberately decieve people about who we are for various forms of personal gain. Let’s all recognise that is not a good thing (and this is likely the hypocrisy that Jesus pillories in the Pharisees, Matt.6:1). But that aside. To what extent should we buy into our culture’s sense of virtue at this point. Does the Bible teach that this is the best way, the most authentic way, to be human? The answer isn’t necessarily as obvious as we’d think. Perhaps the more like Jesus we are, the more we would want authenticity in this sense. If what is going on in my heart is good, then by all means, let’s ensure that what goes on on the outside matches with what is going on on the inside. If the Law is written on our hearts (Dt.6:6, see also Matt.12:35 etc.), if it is shaping and defining our interior life, then by all means let us live ‘spontaneously’.

But that’s a big ‘if’. And for most of us, we are only too aware of how unlike Jesus we are (and how unlike Jesus our kids are!!). In which case, how do we live? If we are honest with ourselves, and if we pay any attention to our own internal dialogue, then I’d be quietly confident that the one thing we don’t want to do is to ‘be ourselves’. In fact, the Bible teaches us that when we allow our sinful nature to shape us and our behaviour, that is when we are at our least human.

Christ-like humanity is something that we have to learn, and at times obedience to His teaching and example is something that we have to pursue in spite of how we ‘feel’, and what we are like on the inside. There are times when our desire to act externally in a way that is true to what is going on internally would fall firmly within the category of temptation! And to capitulate to it would be sin (jas.1:14-15). So much for our culture’s sense of virtue and vice. As an ethic is turns out to be dangerously inadequate. in this sense, faithfulness rather than spontaneity is a truer goal.

The reality is that we are far more complex as human beings, and even more so now that we are ‘born again’. We have two ‘natures’ within us: our old Adamic nature, often called ‘the flesh’ in the Bible; and our new Spirit-ual nature which we have by virtue being in Christ. Authenticity for a Christian is about learning to put to death our sinful humanity, and to live instead by the Spirit (see e.g. Rom.8:5-13; Gal.5:13-26 etc). These two natures battle for supremacy, and although we are confident as to what the outcome will be in the end, along the way the reality can seem a lot more ambiguous at times. The point is that it isn’t as simple as being true to yourself. For us, the critical question is: Which ‘self’ will we be true to? That is a battle that we must fight at every level of our being.

And it is a battle that we must teach our children to fight at every level of thier being. We don’t want to breed Pharisees / hypocrites; but we do want to ‘bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord’ (Eph.6:4). We do want to teach them how to make sense of their internal conflict, and how to fight for Christlikeness. We do want to teach them how to put to death their sinful nature, and to know the freedom of living by the Spirit. We do want to give them such a compellig vision of Christ and the life He is calling them to live that all else is eclipsed by the beauty of holiness. We want to teach our children to be worshippers first and foremost. To be so captured by His glory that they want to fight to be like Him. We want them to have such a deep experience and understanding of His grace that it ‘teaches them to say No to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age … who are eager to do waht is good’ (Titus 2:12-14). That’s a much greater ambition than teaching our children to be true to themselves. It is teaching them rather to be true to who they are in Christ.

When we stop and think about it, in spite of the rhetoric, we don’t want our children to be true to themselves… and to be honest, we’re not always thinking clearly enough to want them to be true to Christ. Too often we settle for the much more superficial (and easily managed and measured) goal of good behaviour.  What we actaully (think we) want is well behaved children.  The plaintive cry of many a hassled parent is ‘Why can’t you just behave yourselves!’. But hopefully we are beginning to see how superficial, and dangerous that could be - after all, Pharisees are immaculately well behaved, but their heart is untouched by the beauty of His holiness.  Pharisees know how to behave, but not how to love, or how to worship.  Our concerns must be deeper than behaviour as an end in itself. In this our culture’s concern for resonance between heart and bahviour does have something to recomment it. We desire the hearts of our children to be turned to Christ.  A heart captured for Jesus is the key to Christ-like behaviour.  And that is a much deeper vision for the children and young people in our midst.

Our families and our Church must be communities of redemptive grace in which children hear the call to faithful discipleship.  Like their parents, children and young people need to be encountered by their God and redeemed through the work of Christ and by the Holy Spirit.   As parents we cannot be content with merely managing and controlling behaviour.  We do have responsibilities here, but if we settle for that there won’t be lasting change, and as soon as our children move beyond the sphere of our influence (and so our structures of control), there will be nothing to restrain them any longer.  As parents we must parent the heart and not (just) their behaviour. 

Jesus captured this powerfully in the image of fruit-bearing tree in Luke 6: 43-45, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. ...  A good person brings good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart.

Behind every behaviour there are attitudes and desires of the heart.  THis is the irony - we always act ‘authentically’.  What that means is that lasting change in behaviour always comes through a change of heart.  Authority and discipline are needed (however they articulate themselves in your family) but always in the context of getting at the issues of the heart.  The danger lies in the fact that managing behaviour (often through threat, intimidation or manipulation) achieves more immediate results.  It’s tempting, because we want lasting change to be instant.  But it isn’t – it will be a process for them just as it is for us. It will be a growth in their understanding of themselves and in their understanding of God (on which more in coming articles).  The process of touching the heart is a spiritual thing.  As parents we have to recognise that it is fundamentally beyond our reach.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit.  That said, we do have the responsibility to set up what Paul Tripp calls ‘a transaction with God’ as part of our culture of discipline in the family.  He suggests five questions that can structure a conversation that has the potential to touch the heart.

1.       What happened?

The aim to help a child simply recall the events they have been a part of.  Tripp suggests we don’t worry too much about the inevitable bias there will be in the account – after all, we all have a perspective.

2.       What were you thinking and feeling as it was happening?

We want the child / young person to recognise that they were not passive, but that they interacted with, and formulated their response to the situation as it developed. 

3.       What did you do in response to the situation?

Help the child / young person to recognise that our words and behaviour come from the heart (what we thought and felt about the situation).   Our behaviour is not formed by the situation, but by our hearts response to that situation. 

4.       What were you seeking to accomplish by doing what you did?

This helps to identify motives, goals, purpose, desires…  what is really driving us.

5.       What was the result?

Help the child / young person to recognise the consequences of their behaviour, including the fact that they are now in trouble with their parents!

The aim is to help children and young people to connect their behaviour with their heart, not with the external circumstances of their situation.  Obviously the sophistication and self-awareness develops over the years.  But as we prayerfully embark on this process again and again, we are looking to compare and contrast with the Bible’s teaching about what we should think and feel and how we should act by virtue of who we are in Christ.  In this we are teaching our children / young people the art of repentance and of being conformed to the image of Christ.  We are not teaching them to simply behave well; nor are we teaching them to be uncritically ‘true to themselves’. In these questions, we are teaching them to be faithful to Christ, and in so doing to be transformed by Him so that their new nature in Him becomes increasingly dominant in shaping their thoughts and words and deeds.

Actually, these are pretty good questions to work on for ourselves as adults.  As we do, we find we are modelling the process for our children through our own commitment to growing in Christ, and we will find we are ‘shepherding them with integrity of heart’ (Ps.78:72).