A Quick Course in Parenting - Pt 1

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:1-4 ESV). Every parent loves the first three verse of Paul’s writing in today’s reading! It’s that fourth verse that most of us have trouble with! Recently, as I was talking with Aaron, he expressed how happy he was that he had Mary and I as his parents. We had been talking about some of his friends and their parents and some of the “injustices” they felt they had suffered. Whether they really were or not is always a debatable position. However, there have been those of others that parenting made a significant negative impact. I read the following examples not long ago. Lynette's father was a little Hitler, a tyrant, according to her childhood friends. She was not allowed to eat with other children in the dining room but was banished without reason to the kitchen. She got the silent treatment often from her father. He disliked her intensely. "Her father's treatment scarred her badly," an old friend said. "Her mother was too scared to open her mouth." When Lynette was 16 she was kicked out of the family home. Charles Manson found her crying in the street and offered to look after her. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme later attempted to assassinate President Ford. Or we may look at Joe. Joe's father was a drunken brute who beat his wife and child savagely and often. The boy took refuge in fantasy and in his teens discovered a fictional hero called Koba. Koba was the main character in a popular Georgian adventure story about a young peasant who fought alone and with incredible success to free the oppressed. Joe always wanted to be the best, the bravest, the unbeatable comrade who was always right and never wrong ... and if anyone doubted this was so, he had better beware. Koba's revenge would be swift and terrible. Who was Joe? You've guessed - Joseph Stalin, who with Adolf Hitler shares that doubtful honor of killing more people in the 20th Century than any other individual. Parenting is very important, and if we have children, a successful parent is something we ought desperately to want to be. But the stronger our desire, the greater may be our confusion. Should we be strict or lenient, demanding or accepting? Should we try harder or not so hard, punish or just talk, restrict or liberate our children? Should we listen to the experts or do what comes naturally? We often seesaw between the two positions. As one mother said recently, "I'm strict until I can't stand myself; then lenient until I can't stand my kids". Many parents have really tried hard, and still something can go wrong. We all know the story of the black sheep in the family, a boy or girl who "goes wrong" to the mortification of their parents as well as the other children in the family. We must not pass judgment on cases of that kind because each one is different. It is too easy to blame parents for everything that goes wrong in a family. However, there may be room for some improvement in our parenting. With some help from God we can "rewrite the script" of our lives. What we were in the past, even in our childhood, need not determine how we will cope in the future. We do not need to be the victims of our personal history! Christianity is all about turning to God for help and strength and victory, rather than blaming ourselves or our parents or the world or the environment we live in. None of us needs to be imprisoned within our past. In the next few days I will be writing about eight specific things we can do to become better parents. In the mean time, pray and ask God to give you wisdom and strength to be the best parent you can be.