Freedom from Condemnation & Parenting

This is part one of a four part series on freedom from condemnation. The four parts ended up being Freedom from Condemnation, Repentance, Parenting, and Drivenness.

I was sitting next to a friend last week in a seminar on age-graded ministry. He currently works in youth ministry; I used to. The seminar/discussion was related to ministry in the church for specific age groups, and striking the balance between offering age-focused ministry and honoring the fact that it was the parents who were called to lead their children spiritually. A few of the pastors in the group seemed to tread pretty close to the, "I tell people how to raise their kids" line, and my friend leaned over to me and asked, "so I'm supposed to watch you parent and then parent my kids the same way?" It was a tongue in cheek question. His kids are older than mine, and he's older than me. He has five kids. I have five kids. We can learn from each other, but it would be foolish to suggest that somehow I've got the one-up when it comes to parenting.

I had been thinking about this idea of freedom from condemnation and how it relates to our parenting. For one thing, there are a lot of parents who feel condemned in their parenting. We live in a day and age when everyone and there mother wants to post on social media about their parenting best practices. We never stop to consider context, economic status, or whatever. It's easy to buy all organic food when you have one kid and are in the top financial tier of society. It's not easy to do that when you have five kids and are surviving on an average salary (or nearly any salary, for that matter.) That's not to suggest that eating organic food is wrong or bad in some way; it's not, and it's commendable if you can do it. You can't hold it up as a parenting law, however, and make others feel bad if they can't attain that standard. That's the condemnation we're supposed to be freed from.

The other related idea, though, is not just how we as parents feel condemned, but how we raise our children without making them feel condemned. How do we teach our children to obey the law, something we are commanded to do, teaching them to essentially live out their lives according to God's ideals, without making them feel guilty and shamed when they inevitably fail?

Here's why this relates to my story about telling parents how they should parent. My role as a pastor is to help people see how the Gospel relates to their parenting; not to tell them how to parent. That fine line is important. If I fell too heavily on the telling people how to parent, I will inadvertently create a law that may or not be in line with God's expectations. I will lead parents into condemnation rather than Grace. On the other hand, if the Gospel relates to our parenting, so that we live in the beauty of God's call on our lives and yet our total freedom from condemnation, perhaps we will find joy in our parenting rather than guilt, both for us and our children.

(For the record, I think the other people in the discussion I was a part of believe that too, but it didn't come across that way. Hence my friend's somewhat snarky comment.)

So how does the Gospel relate to our parenting? I'll address the two that I already mentioned, starting with our own sense of failure as parents.

FREEDOM FROM OUR OWN CONDEMNATION

It takes very little to feel condemned as a parent. We don't call it condemnation. We call it "feeling judged", but it's the same thing. Every time you get "the look" from the patron in the restaurant, you immediately feel it. It's that feeling of failure; it's the knowledge that that person believes they would raise their children better than you would. "The look" conveys what they are thinking. Their kid would never act like that in a restaurant.

And then, of course, the next time you are in a restaurant and your kid is eating their french fries, and someone else's kid is acting up, you can't help but glance over, wondering, "what's wrong with those parents? Why don't they stop him?"

Even worse, some of you just read that last paragraph and thought, "I can't believe he feeds his kids french fries."

You get this condemnation from strangers, from friends, from parents, and from siblings. Every younger sibling who has no children believes that they will raise their children better than their siblings. "My kids will never act that way; I'll never let them get away with _______________". 

Every child feels it from their parent on at least one occasion. Grandma or Grandpa tries to enforce their will on your children, whether you are around or not. "We didn't raise our kids to act like that."

There are two parts to this problem. The first part is that we, as people, are incredibly self-righteous, and we believe that whatever it is we think we will do, we are doing, or we have done, is the right way to do it. That's what "righteousness" is. It's the "right way". And we think we nailed it.

The second part is that we, as people, have all these little areas that we haven't really embraced the freedom of the Gospel, and our parenting is one of those little (or not so little) areas. We want to be free from condemnation, but every time we feel that look there's a part of us that thinks they are right, and we really are a failure.

The Gospel re-focuses our parenting so that we can keep first things first. In my initial post on freedom from condemnation, I said that one of the things that this freedom allows is that we can evaluate expectations that we our others place on us and decide whether they are really relevant and worthwhile. Most of them aren't. Freedom from condemnation gives us a filter to judge what is really important in our parenting, since we are now free to examine what God desires of us, without the need to feel like the people around us will think we are a failure if we disagree with what they desire of us.

Surely, there are expectations of the Christian parent. We are called to raise our children to love Jesus. We are called to teach them the ideals of God. We should desire that our children understand God's word and grow to love God's word. We should be concerned with our children's  "heart, soul, mind, and strength". We should ensure that they are healthy in their mind, their spirits, and their body. They have been assigned to us, by God, so that we can show them the good news of Jesus and the greatness of their Father God, to the best of our ability.

In spite of all of that, or perhaps because of all of that, we are free to live without condemnation, even when we mess up or don't live up to the expectations. The Gospel is the reminder to us that we can't save ourselves, and we can't save our kids. That's God's work. So even when we mess up, we can have the confidence that we couldn't do any of it without God anyway.

As for other's expectations on us, it requires a two-way grace. First, the grace to apply to yourself to remind you of your freedom, and then the grace to apply to them, to realize that they are still a self-righteous work in progress as well.

FREEDOM FROM CONDEMNING OUR CHILDREN

This is the freedom with which we raise our children. The unfortunate reality is that many, many people have grown up under the pressure of "obedience" without the pressure-release of "freedom from condemnation". Such was the case for much of my childhood. The attitude I experienced wasn't, "we want you to learn to live according to God's ideals because of God's love for you"; the attitude was, "we want you to live according to our ideals because otherwise we'll be embarrassed." One of those is obedience based on freedom; the other is obedience based on guilt and shame.

I could recount moments of "shaming" disguised as discipline, but it's not worth it. Must more important for us is understanding how we can raise our own children to be disciplined without being shamed. I've mentioned the "pendulum" of culture before. In a lot of cases, if parents grew up in a shaming household, they go the total opposite way and try to raise their kids boundary free. The wrong-headed belief is thinking that the opposite of shame-brought-on-by-law is absence of law. In other words, get rid of the law, and we'll get rid of the shame. Boundary-free, no limit parenting is the wave of the future. Even gender remains up for debate. It's "whatever you decide", and as a result, we think, there will be no guilt and shame.

Of course, it never works, in part because the law is a deeper reality than some external restrictions. We can remove external boundaries all we want, but we can't remove the internal ones. And if we could, we wouldn't want to. If we truly lived our lives as if rules and boundaries didn't matter, it would obviously be chaos. Shame doesn't get removed because we remove the law.

The Gospel actually handles it exactly the opposite of culture. If culture says, "get rid of law, and we'll be rid of shame", the message of the Gospel is, "get rid of the shame, and enjoy the law." It isn't absence of law that brings freedom, it's absence of shame. When the shame is gone, we are not only free to obey without the fear of condemnation, we are also free to receive loving discipline that keeps us on the path when we don't obey.

When my son misbehaves, therefore, what I want him to understand is that whatever consequence he may face as a result has zero impact on how I view him as my son. I don't love him less when he misbehaves, and I don't love him more when he behaves. (And just to be clear: I'm a sinner, so yes, when he misbehaves I'm annoyed with him and when he behaves I'm grateful. I feel the need to say that so that you don't think that I have this down, like the Heavenly Father loves us. If there is loving discipline in our lives from God our Father, it has zero impact in God's view of us, because he actually is perfect and loves us with a perfect love. But I digress.) When I discipline my son, I want to make sure that he knows that the reason I'm disciplining him is because I love him. When he is disrespectful to me or my wife, there are consequences. And the reason there are consequences is because I honestly believe that it is better for him to be respectful than it would be to allow him to continue in his disrespect. It's love that leads to discipline, not lack of love. It's for his good, not mine. I love him no matter what.

Furthermore, I'm not shocked when he misbehaves. I don't think less of him when he misbehaves. I already knew he was going to misbehave, and I knew it from before we got into this parent/child relationship. 

I know he's going to misbehave.

I don't love him any less because he misbehaves.

I correct him because I love him.

That's the Gospel. If there is loving correction from God, it has nothing to do with whether or not he needs me to behave. He doesn't. In his eyes, I'm already perfect. If there is correction, it is for my good and ultimate joy.

As a result of this, we are free to discipline our children without leading them into shame and guilt. We can at the same time teach them that there is a way to behave, and not shame them when they fall short.

I fail at this all the time, but I'm trying, and by God's grace, I'm okay, and so are my kids.

Angels & Demons

One of my boys has been curious about Angels and Demons lately. He asked me the other day what Satan’s name was when he was an angel in heaven. “Lucifer”, I told him.

On the way to school today he mentioned to me that there were Angels outside of the car, flying as fast as they could to keep up with us and keep us safe. My other son chimed in, “and they are with us on the playground.”

Then one of them asked me, “where is Heaven?” To which I responded, “that’s a good question, buddy.” And left it at that.

Most of us are at least curious, and at time fascinated, with the spiritual realm. We know that Angels and Demons exist; we know that there is more going on than what we see. What we don’t know is what exactly that looks like or how exactly it works.

The popular novels “This Present Darkness” and “Piercing the Darkness” set the tone of the conversation when I was growing up. I remember the fascination that I had, and others had, with the idea that if we could just look hard enough, or distort our view in some fashion, we’d be able to see the demons nearby or the Angels singing along with us while we worshiped. We treated the spiritual realm like one of those computer generated posters that you have to stare through until suddenly, at just the right angle, a 3D image pops out and you have a whole new perspective. Like those posters, the hope is that once you’ve seen it, you can’t not see it.

I remember talking to a woman once who had just lost her job at a Christian School. She was convinced that there was some impropriety going on, and that there were folks who were out to get her and that, eventually, those folks got to the right people and she was let go. As she passed the school, she said, she looked up and swore that she saw demons circling around the top of the school. The school and it’s administration, it seemed, had been possessed.

Of course, this is a person who had just lost her job from that very same school. I gathered quickly that she was extremely upset about this, but seemingly couched her feelings in spiritual talk rather than admitting the hurt. I don’t know whether or not she saw something that looked like demons, or if in her hurt she wanted so badly to believe that she was right and the school was wrong that she subconsciously fabricated something to be true. I doubt that she saw actual demons floating around the top of the school. Not because it’s not possible, but because it’s highly unlikely that the school was 100% in the wrong and that she was 100% in the right, so that they were somehow possessed and she were somehow righteous. If the school was possessed by demons, leading them to operate improperly, then she must have been possessed by demons too, since there was no doubt that she operated with some impropriety as well. If she saw demons floating above the school, I wondered why she didn’t see them over her head when she looked in the mirror.

The truth is that most of us don’t need demons to mess around with us to get us to act wrongly or to do evil. We are fully capable of making those choices on our own, and often do. Even Christians continue all the time to make wrong choices. That doesn’t suddenly mean that a demon has captured them; it does mean that we are constantly and desperately in need of a savior.

I’m not saying that demon possession doesn't exist. If it happened in the New Testament, it can certainly happen today. I don't think that a Christian can be possessed by a demon, however, because when the strong man moves in, the other strong man gets booted (Matthew 12:29). 

I’m also not saying that my sons understanding of Angels was incorrect. Surely, they protect us in the same way that demons surely tempt us. Were they flying next to the car? Are they on the playground? I don't know where they are. What I do know is that the next time I'm praying for my son, and somehow he doesn't slip when he could have slipped or he falls and doesn't get hurt or a mis-thrown rock doesn't hit him that could have hit him, there's a high likelihood that an angel has intervened, protecting the children of God.

It seems, though, that unless there is a specific message that God wants to send to you, it is highly unlikely that you are going to see one. The same goes for demons. We are living in a world that was once under the rule of the Devil, and is now slowly coming under the guaranteed rule of Christ. The Devil has been overthrown. The New Strong Man is here, and the minions of the devil have no power over us anymore.

In the meantime, there's a lot going on around us that we have no idea about. And some day, that dimensional curtain will be torn back and the world will be renewed and this world will fully coincide with that world and we'll see what has been going on all around us the entire time.

But not yet.

Changing Dreams →

Legit. Worth the read.

“Our home is beautiful. Everyone who sees it tells us. And we happen to agree.

When people come to visit they settle in quickly. Even if it is their first time there, they feel at home.

And now we are doing something probably even fewer people do. We selling our dream home.”

— Jeremy Statton

Teasing & Grace

Our kids know that they aren't supposed to tease each other. They understand that if they do it, they are being disobedient. Nevertheless, the regularity with which they tease one another must border on legendary. Twin boys, age 6. A younger sister, also age 6. Three kids ten months apart, all of them in their teasing prime.

So there they are. Knowing that "obedience" and "behaving" is a positive quality that we would like to help them learn. And yet, battling daily with their internal desire to tease. On the way to school each day, it is nearly inevitable, except on those rare days when God is gracious to us, that at least two of the children will begin to tease one another. The third will be silent. We will remind. We may scold. Finally, we may yell. And when we are close to silencing the teasers, so that three children are once again in line with our expectations, the third will finally speak: "Daddy, I'm the only one behaving." He may as well add a "nanny nanny boo boo" for effect.

And thus, all three children descend into rebellion.

Someone said that God gives us children so that we will understand what it is like to create someone in our own image who denies our very existence. It isn't that they pretend we're not there; they just completely ignore our "sovereignty" over the situation as parents. They know the rules, they just have a really hard time keeping them. The internal push to do the wrong thing is too strong. It's almost worse than pretending we weren't there. They look us in the face and do exactly the opposite of what we asked them to do, and what they know they should do.

Of course it really is just a microcosm of our own rebellion. It's the reason that religion doesn't work. The internal push to do the wrong thing is too strong; the rules only highlight our desire and make it worse, like someone telling us "not to look" at something. Our first reaction, without even thinking, is to look. Had no one ever told us not to look, we may have never looked, or at very least, we wouldn't have known it was wrong to look. It's when we hear the law of not looking that our desire becomes evident and we do the one thing we aren't supposed to; we look. But the problem is deeper.

Even if we don't look, and we don't descend into obvious rebellion, we still end up in the wrong spot. We say, "See, I didn't look." But our heart (and our tone!) reveals what we really mean: "see, I knew I was better than all those lookers; all those rebels." It's a much more subtle form of rebellion; an implicit rebellion; a rebellion couched in righteousness. A rebellion that elevates our selves and denigrates others because, after all, we really are better than them.

Religion creates rule breakers and rule keepers and neither of them are righteous.

The only one righteous is the one who not only kept all of the law, but loved keeping it, not because anyone would notice, but simply because he delighted in God and delighted in keeping his ideals. There was no self-interest involved; only God-interest. He fulfilled the law not because he was a law-lover, but because he was a God-lover. He loved God fully, so he loved others fully. So love is the fulfillment of the law.

What does that mean for three kids who tease each other incessantly? I don't really know. But what I do know is that they need grace more than they need law, and I need grace more than I need another parenting manual. That doesn't mean I don't help them to behave, it doesn't mean I don't give them rules, and it doesn't mean that they don't have consequences. It just means that the first thing they get when they get to school is a hug and an "I love you", and that's the first thing they return to every day. And they get it regardless of whether or not they teased each other in the car.