The death of James Dobson this week has revealed a level of vitriol against him that I did not know existed. The reaction seems to be primarily focused on his 1978 work, The Strong-Willed Child. It is easy to dismiss such criticisms as the bitterness of people who never truly embraced the faith, and that might be true in many cases. But a bit of self-examination in humility is also in order. I have seen parents misapply the Bible in their parenting, which can result in abusive behavior. I do not want to review Dobson’s book right now, but I do want to acknowledge this parenting danger.

The problem is seeking the illusion of control. The balance is parenting in faithful obedience, trusting the Spirit of God to work in the heart of your child.

My wife and I raised five children. We are by no means perfect parents. One of those children would have clearly been categorized as a strong-willed child in the Dobson nomenclature. This child was unusually mentally committed to getting exactly what he wanted and willing to endure significant discomfort and pain in the process. I learned quickly that if I continued to escalate physical discipline to get conformity (much less submission), I would go beyond biblical parenting to abuse. This became a real test of faith for us. Here is what we learned.

We want guarantees.

This is especially true for parents in ministry. My family has to be perfect. When we came to Arizona to plant a church, our first child was on the way. We had these youthful ideals about our perfect family. We had dreams and expectations. I held that little boy in my arms for the first time and an overwhelming sense of responsibility—even dread—filled my mind. How in the world am I going to protect this child from harm? Child drowning is a problem in our city where nearly half the homes have swimming pools. The public service announcements at the time featured this catch phrase.

“Two seconds is too long. Watch your children around water.”

Two seconds? It was an impossible expectation of supervision. Now I understand that it was around water in context, but children can get into lots of danger in two seconds and every parent looks away for two seconds or more—all the time—it cannot be avoided.

I wanted to have a guarantee, but seeking guarantees in child-rearing drives parental behavior to the point of obsession. We want to protect them completely from accidents, evil strangers, sickness, or getting lost in the woods. We want guarantees that they will grow up right, marry the right person, be an upstanding citizen, stay away from drugs, stay out of jail, and so much more.

Unscrupulous people can manipulate parents by selling them false guarantees.

They play on fear. They sell false hope to parents of sick children. They sell devices for monitoring, paranoia about getting (or not getting) vaccines (not taking a side here. Don’t get me into that argument).

The same thing can go for our fear about the spiritual growth of our children. After all, their eternal destiny is more important than their physical well-being. But personal faith in Jesus Christ is just that—it’s personal. It cannot be foisted upon a child. Conformity is not faith. So, the sermons or parenting classes are very popular that provide a process for raising children that produce guaranteed results. But they are not truly biblical and can be dangerous.

False guarantees are harmful.

False guarantees produce a false sense of security.

I have sat with so many parents who said “I did everything my pastor told me to do in parenting my child, and yet this has happened. How can this be? What did I do wrong?” It is folly to think if I follow some biblically based parenting checklist I can relax and no longer be concerned about how my children develop.

Such lists can also become stifling in parenting.

Children sometimes jump the spiritual ship all at once, others fight all the way. As the “guaranteed” biblical cures fail—things like spanking (I am not against it, I am just against the misuse of it), over-protection, and more—parents start to assume the problem is not what they are doing, but how much they are doing. They think the solution is increasing the magnitude—more spankings, harder spankings, more restrictions. This can lead to dysfunction and abuse. The power struggles can be intense. It is true that some parents are so weak-willed that they give up any power struggle to their child. This is a common danger as well, but I am not addressing it at this point. There is no substitute for wisdom and patience in parenting.

False guarantees produce false guilt.

Parents—truly godly and sacrificial people who did an excellent job raising their children—can heap false guilt upon themselves for a lifetime because of the life choices a child makes. That guilt can cripple later spiritual development and ministry for the parents. Such guilt can stifle redemptive relationships with those same children in their adult years.

But what about that verse?

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

Contrary to how it is often preached, this verse is not a promise. It is a life-principle. As with all proverbs, it is intended to express the way life normally works. It is not intended to reflect how life always works. Normally—as in most of the time—training children in wisdom and godliness produces wise and godly children. This does not mean it is a guarantee in every situation. It is no more a guarantee than tithing (Proverbs 3:9) will mean that your barns are filled with successful crops every year (Proverbs 3:10). We trust in the Lord for protection based upon His promises, but know also that martyrdom or hardship could be His will for us.

A proverb is also Hebrew poetry and Hebrew poetry can be quite cryptic. For instance, some have taken this verse to be a negative principle or promise rather than a positive one. “Train up a child in the way he wants to go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” In other words, giving in to that child’s will all the time will result in that child being ruled by their own will and not by God’s. This is a legitimate potential translation of this verse. The point is that this verse does not mean what many people think it means.

Biblical principles conflict with the parenting guarantee idea.

If Proverbs 22:6 is an ironclad promise, then the theological implication is that we could override our child’s spiritual will through training, and raise moral robots that are incapable of any major life disobedience to God. Such an expectation is unbiblical. Any of us, no matter how spiritually dynamic our upbringing was, can end up in moral failure.

Good people suffer harm. This is the theme of the Book of Job. It is one of the great questions the Bible answers. If Jesus was crucified. If Paul was martyred, then trouble can come our way as well, and that can be by divine design for His glory. We can do everything right and our child could still get cancer (my brother died of cancer at 18 months old), suffer harm in an accident, or be a victim of a crime.

So, what are we supposed to do?

Parent little sinners in faith, not in fear.

An atmosphere of fear is a horrible environment in which to raise a child. It will produce resentful children and will almost always produce the result that is feared.

Do the right thing in faith.

Imagine your child steals something from the local grocery store while you are doing your regular weekly grocery run. The fearful parent starts to panic. They cannot believe that their perfect child would do such a thing. This is the beginning of the end. The mind of the fearful parent immediate jumps to the future, rebellion, a potential life of crime, family shame, poverty, and hardship. They then over-discipline for the moment. Sometimes the child simply does not understand yet that it is wrong to take something that is not theirs. Or maybe they do understand but are just in disobedience. Rather than being a watershed life moment, it is a teaching moment. Teach the lesson. Be appropriate in the level of response. Let the Holy Spirit drive the lesson home.

Our kids are not born righteous, Christians, or even fundamentalist Christians. They do not leave the faith. If it looks like they do, it’s because they never embraced it. We need to win them to the Christ and to faithfulness just like anyone else. This takes faithful, patient, loving nurturing, and most importantly, persistence.

Keep doing the right thing in faith.

But what if they steal again? Discipline again. Keep doing so. Escalating some is sometimes necessary, but there will be a point where escalating is not the answer. Consistent biblical responses will be. Do not escalate beyond what is appropriate. That is not faith, it is abuse. Just keep doing the right thing–over and over again as each incident occurs.

Do not fear the approval or disapproval of others.

This is especially true for parents in Christian ministry. A young preacher—a dad of many small children at the time—once asked me for one good bit of parenting advice. I told him to discipline his children based upon what he  knows is right before God, and that alone. They should not be treated differently just because he is in ministry. Children of ministry parents who are raised more harshly because of it will eventually despise the service of God. And you need to tell them this. Never tell your child that they are getting this discipline because you are a pastor. They need to know that you are doing what you are doing because you believe it is the right thing before God and you would behave the same way if you were a plumber or an accountant.

Pray for your children.

I just heard it again. A good friend, retiring from a lifetime of military chaplain ministry, looked at his elderly mother sitting in front of him at the ceremony. With tears in his eyes recounted how during rebellious years in his life he woke up in the middle of the night to find his godly mother on her knees in the next room praying for him. That image was more powerful than any spanking or other form of discipline. It is powerful for your children to hear you utter their name, and the longings of your heart for them, before your Father in heaven. It’s not just them hearing it. God hears it, and He answers prayer.

Humbly model the faith for your children.

Do not think that your children need perfect parents in order to prosper spiritually. They need genuine parents who are living lives at peace with God, and parenting by faith. If you have not humbly approached your child at some point and asked for their forgiveness for some sin against them, you are a disobedient parent. There is no parent that will not have some occasion where this step is biblically necessary. We are sinners, and at times we sin against our children. Humbly, honestly, modeling this behavior before them is so much more powerful than demanding that behavior of them in the face of some uncomfortable consequence.

Entrust your children to God.

In the end, we must obey God by faith and entrust our children to the protection of God, the saving power of Jesus Christ, and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. There is something that must happen in them that only God can do, and if we step in and try to do it ourselves, we will only make the situation worse.

Do what God commands you to do as a parent. Do it by faith. Do it consistently. And trust the results to God.

Audio version of this post: Parents Don’t Get a 100% Guarantee, and That’s a Good Thing.

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Photo by 绵 绵 on Unsplash