Raising Beloved Children

CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA FOR EW

I'm pretty sure I learned a lot about marriage, family, and parenting from the "Thank Goodness It's Friday" (TGIF) sitcom lineups from the 1990's. Exhausted from the trials of junior high and high school, Friday night became the greatest time of the week. I would unwind on the couch with my brother and a healthy portion of junk food and tear through two hours of comedy and life lessons from the likes of Carl and Harriette Winslow on Family Matters, Frank Lambert and Carol Foster on Step By Step, Danny Tanner, Jesse Katsopolis, and Joey Gladstone trying to raise Danny's three daughters on Full House, and Earl and Charlene Sinclair, giant dinosaur puppets living human lives on the show Dinosaurs.

Reminiscing by watching clips online, I was reminded of how intentional these shows were at portraying family dinners, career advice, sibling rivalry, conflict, school life, blended families, friendships, and societal and cultural issues. These life lessons, played both for laughs and moral conviction, helped to shape a generation. And although many of these principles, like seeking a loving, unified family and denouncing the temptation to make being "cool" the foundation of one's identity, are good and still resonate with many of us, I now realize the greater void TGIF left me with - essentially leaving open-ended the answer to bigger questions like "Are these enduring principles for all people at all times, or are they just personal preferences? Are they rooted in any greater truth or reality? Do they apply in everyday life, or is the goal simply to entertain?"

This is where the rubber meets the road for me in learning about healthy parenting. TGIF was supplementary to learning from my own imperfect family growing up, but understanding all of this from God's perspective was mostly absent until my early twenties when I entrusted my life to Jesus. Since then, God has grown and stretched me in good but often uncomfortable ways as I learned from the Scriptures and others that God is the Author of healthy families, even though our sinful, broken lives struggle to summarize the Author's intention each day. Here are three principles my wife and I have learned from God the Good Father that have helped us be present parents for our son.

Leading Our Kids With a Humble Posture

Parenting may not be thought of as leadership, but it certainly is. Paul's exhortation to fathers to "not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4) may come in a passage giving instruction on parenting as a follower of Christ, but it is no different than the same instruction given to the men who would be overseers in the church in 1 Timothy 3:3-5, "...not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?"

To parent in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4) and to "manage" a household with "dignity" (1 Tim. 3:4) conveys a certain manner in which God calls men to parent their children and love their wives, and the perfect example of this is not found on a TGIF fall schedule, but in the humble, suffering, Servant-Leader - Jesus, who gave his life for us and charges us to "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for 'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble'" (1 Pet. 5:5). Angry, arrogant parenting is not leading according to God's ways; rather, fathers are called to lead like the humble Christ and create an environment for mothers and other families to parent as humble protectors of their children, just like God does with us.

Learning the Hearts of Our Kids

Learning to lead as a parent from the Bible and the wisdom of others was the primary focus for the first few years of raising our son. But since kindergarten and now into third grade, learning our son's personality, joys, passions, fears, and his own self-perception have become just as essential to his healthy growth. Leading through principles becomes difficult when our children begin to realize they have a will of their own and a master's degree on how to push our buttons!

Just as God "who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:27), knows us completely (Ps. 139:1-6), we are likewise called to learn the hearts of our kids to lead them well. What are their greatest hopes? What are their greatest fears? How are they like us? How are they different? What are the best ways they receive love through word and action? As they get older, the way we lead them will inevitably become more focused on how we have learned their one-of-a-kind hearts created in the image of a loving God.

Loving Our Kids Without Reservations

One strength I remember from TGIF was the consistent plot resolution to love and accept our kids at the end of every episode. The common struggles of parents and kids in conflict that dominated act two always moved to a heart-felt wrap-up in act three, giving me enough time to feel like everything was going to be okay while I ran to the bathroom or went to get another brownie before the next show started.

But real life is, of course, never this simple. The selfish brokenness of the Fall recounted in Genesis 3 affects parents and kids alike, and the call to love our kids without reservations is often unrealistic. And this is where the gospel comes fully into focus. The Apostle John urges us to "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are" (1 John 3:1) and to remember the definition of love found in God incarnate, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us..." (1 John 3:16a). Christ has indeed held nothing back from us in His love - grace without reservations!

Imitating God's Parental Grace

We are called to lead as parents, we are given the privilege to learn the hearts of our kids, and ultimately we have the sacrificial power of God's love seen in Jesus and empowered in us through the Spirit, assuring us that we are true sons and daughters. Lord, let this redeeming grace overflow to our children as Paul says in Eph. 5:1-2,

"Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."