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sermon: Parenting (Part 1): PrinciplesFoundational Principles of Parenting
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The aftermath of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado has pretty much degenerated into a sometimes very heated debate over who is responsible. I listen to talk radio fairly frequently, and it's still being discussed, whether it's guns, whether it's the schooling, the school administrators, or whether it's this or whether it's that, whether it's violence, movies, video games, or parents.
I'm not here to argue one side or another, but I think it's quite clear from just this that the parenting practices of the majority of Americans leaves much to be desired. There is no real standard anymore. Children basically, it seems, rear themselves in many cases. The parents are too busy doing this and that.
These kids were from a fairly affluent section of town, and they had all the things that they needed, but evidently their parents didn't notice that they were pretty much worshipping Hitler, speaking German, wearing swastikas and black trench coats, and building bombs. How much apathy can you have? So undoubtedly poor or negligent parenting played a role—probably a significant role—in the events of April 20.
People complain that for such an important position, parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual. They have a little fun, and nine months later a baby pops out, and here they go. They don't know what to do, they say. But it does come with an instruction manual, believe it or not. It's the "word of God." That's the instruction manual for all of life. It doesn't matter what part of life you're talking about, the Bible contains the foundational principles of parenting and child rearing. They are all there if we just take a look at them. They will produce good, fair, loving parents, and they will also produce obedient, upright, and happy children. All it takes for us is to search them out, to believe them, and to do them. God hasn't left us without instruction on this.
Today I'm going to begin a two-part series on "Parenting." It's a subject that really hasn't been visited for a least a couple of years—maybe even several years in this body. In a way, we have set it aside for more important matters that have affected the church, because the scattering of the church is a vitally important topic. However, parenting is part of the problem—part of the problem that the church is scattering. So it's one that we have to re-visit on occasion to get our bearings once again on child rearing, or parenting, and head off in the right direction once again.
This is a subject that cannot be ignored. Bringing up our children, as it says in Ephesians 6:4, "in the training and the admonition of the Lord" is one of our top priorities. I don't know if you've ever thought of it that way, but when we marry and we have children, rearing those children to be "godly seed" becomes very important. Our salvation in many respects centers around those relationships that we create when we have children. Most of our practice in being God is going to happen in that environment of parent and child. Of course husband to wife as well, but parent to child is also very important.
You've probably noticed as I've gone through this introduction that I've been using the word "parenting." In the past we've talked about child rearing, but I prefer the word "parenting." You may say, "Well, they're the same thing, aren't they?" Well not quite. There is an emphasis on the word "parenting" that I would like to highlight, because the responsibility for rearing those children is on the parent, not on the child. I think it's important that we look at it that way, that it's a responsibility of the parent to make godly children.
Not only do we make them physically, we make them spiritually in many respects. We make them into whatever adults they will turn out to be. I know it's the old "nature and nurture" debate, but I think the Bible is pretty clear that the end result hangs on how we nurture them. We have to deal with what nature (just to use those terms) has provided, but they don't have to stay that way. They have to be nurtured.
That verse in Ephesians 6:4 in the King James says "nurture." "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." It's very important that we get the focus on the right people—the parents. That's what this instruction is going to, not to the children necessarily. They can listen. They can try to behave and try to obey and help their mom and dad in their job. That's great, but the responsibility hangs on the parent.
In our society we have made children the center of the universe. Just do this over the next year and a half, during the Clinton administration, and if there is a Democratic administration after that, (whoever that happens to be too—Bill Bradley, or Gore maybe. I doubt it.) everyone of their initiatives will have the words something to this effect—"It's for our children." We have made the children the center of our universe. If it somehow adversely affects the children—their freedoms—then we won't do it.
Probably the Republicans will do this too, because they've found the Democrats have been doing this for years, and getting their programs through. But we have grown up in this society that so emphasizes the children that we have a name for it—"The Youth Culture." Everything is centered around people from age 2 or 3 to pretty much about 23, 24. Then they start entering the world of adulthood, and they end up being old fogies.
Television, movies, toys, and just about everything commercial is aimed at that rather actually small percentage of people, because they've found that the children have their parents around their little fingers. And so if they aim something at Johnny, who may be 13 or 14, he'll bug his parents, and his parents will buy the goodie, and somebody makes a sale.
What do you think Star Wars is aimed to? George Lucas and his company has made billions of dollars because they've aimed Star Wars at about 9 to 13-year-old levels. We went into Target yesterday evening to get something there, and what hit us first was three short isles worth of Star Wars merchandise. The movie is not even out yet. They had people trampling each other and getting into fights over the first release of this first-episode memorabilia.
They had people making very threatening gestures and saying threatening words at store managers who told them truthfully that "We've run out! You can't get your Darth Maul doll because they're all gone." You'd better find me one, or I'll ...! It's that sort of thing. And why are they getting them? For their kids! Or if they're adults, it's because they are kids still.
Our whole culture is centered around the youth. We have old people who try to be young again. What is a mid-life crisis? Mostly it's men trying to be eighteen, because they think that they're not going to be accepted by people in our culture unless they act like a child—an immature youth.
When God says, "Rise up before the hoary head," a man of that age should be known for his wisdom. We've got things turned around. We over-emphasize our youth. So now they have more influence in this culture than their parents.
Look at our President. He still acts like an eighteen-year old. Russ Limbaugh said a four-year old. But that is how he runs this country—by his hormones, not by his gray hair. He has plenty of it if he would just use it. That's all we ask. So we see the American family crumbling at a very rapid rate, because everything is upside-down.
I think the last figure I saw was that about sixteen percent of families can be considered "traditional" anymore, where the father is the breadwinner, and a mother who stays at home and watches her biological children who live with her, and no other steps, halves, or whatever in the family. A traditional nuclear two-parents—a man and a woman—a man who works, and a wife who doesn't, and their biological children.
There is more to it than that. There are other factors that have added to the eroding of the American family—everything from illegitimate births, to a Dr. Laura term—"shacking up" (living together unmarried), adultery, and then divorce.
Women in the workforce have played a significant role in that and many other things. I think we can safely say parenting is under siege. I'm sure that Satan the Devil would just love to see it fall altogether. He'd love for millions of children set loose without any supervision. He'd love for our society to degenerate to the point where there is no authority in the parents at all.
I think we can trace much of this assault on one of Satan's most obvious characteristics, and that is his selfishness. Think about it. Selfishness makes people prioritize poorly, because instead of someone else being at the top of their list, it's themselves. If you have yourself on the top of your priority list, where is God? Obviously He's got to be farther on down the list somewhere. Where's the family? Well obviously somewhere farther down the list. Our choices then are self-serving and self-centered rather than outgoing. What did Mr. Armstrong always say about love, about it being outgoing concern for the other person? So the real order of things is flipped again—self-serving instead of outgoing.
Rather than God and family being on the top of the list, it's "work" in our society. I include under work all our financial success, because it's by work that we get gain, and so we work in order to get, and we get in order to please ourselves. It's not saying that working hard is wrong. We're going to get to something about that in a few minutes, but it's the wrong priority to have on the top of the list.
Also very high on Americans' priority list is "play." "Play" can be any kind of entertainment, whether it's actual sports play, or whether it's video-game play, or going-to-the races play that I like to do, or going to a rock concert, or it could even be a classical concert. When work and play are on the top of the list and God and family are not, we have this flip again of the natural, God-created order of things. When that happens, spiritual and family life stagnates, or even stops, depending on how radical the poor priorities are, and then all of life from thereafter suffers because things are upside-down.
It's these first two qualities—God and family—that regulate our quality of life. If they regulate our quality life as parents, it's going to regulate the children's quality of life as well. That is why the responsibility is on us as parents to make sure that our priorities are right so that it can trickle down to the children. "Trickle down" is kind of passive. Rather that the children be taught by our direct example.
It has come to the point now that many American families want somebody else to rear their children. Some people want the government to rear their children. They have all these things that they lobby the government about, whether it's a "B" chip to put in your television so that your children won't watch violent shows, or whether it's the same thing for the Internet, or the computer, to how they regulate Day Cares, whether they mandate bicycle helmets, whether they allow certain children into movie theatres or sporting events or whatever without the supervision of an adult. All these things they want the government to do for them, when they have it within their power—or they should—to determine those things for themselves.
If it's not the government, it's the schools. Bundle those kids off as soon as they can to pre-school or whatever, so they don't have to take care of them for eight or nine hours of the day, or more. Here in Charlotte kids get bused out at six o'clock in the morning in some places. They don't get back till five o'clock at night. That's eleven hours they're gone from home.
If it's not the government or the schools, it's the police. Within the past two or three years here in Charlotte, they've passed a curfew law. Now it's the police's job to round up your children if they are out past the curfew time.
If it's not any one of those three, it's the Day Care. Well, my kid's not old enough to go to school, so I'll trundle him off to the Day Care. He'll stay there just as long as the children who go to school. The parent gets off work at five or five-thirty, goes pick up the kid who's been there since six or seven o'clock in the morning, whenever the parent had to leave for work, and the kid, I'm sure, hardly knows who his mom and dad are, not being gone for twelve or thirteen hours a day. And then they go home, they eat, they get a bath, they play for a little while of "good quality time," and then they go to bed. They maybe have four hours a day with their parents. Isn't that nice—to give four hours of quality time to our children?
If it isn't the Day Care, it's the church, or it's grandma. How many children in this country have been reared by grandma, because her son or daughter, or his or her spouse, is out having the good life, or making the money, and grandma is at home, making sure her grandchildren at least get some training.
Maybe it's the tv. How many children have been reared by the Brady Bunch and the A-Team, and afternoon soap operas? I don't know.
But parents these days want more time to work, more time to play, more time to enjoy their hobbies or their pastimes. They don't want Bobby and Mary in the way, because they want to "have it all,"—to "live it up." They don't want to sacrifice time, because they want to pursue the American dream. I'm here to tell you the American dream is bunk unless God and family are at the top of the list.
People who think this way, who think that they want to "have it all," think that parenting is a chore, and it is. It's a difficult task—24/7—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You never get away from it. Not until that child becomes an adult and leaves the home is there any relief at all. But they're still your children, and you still care, and you still try to impart advice. I haven't reached that point yet, but I've seen enough people who have, and I know how they feel.
We recognize this idea—that parenting is a chore and a drag and boring and it keeps us away from all the fun things—as a cop-out. It's just an excuse. It's a way to sloth off our responsibilities, because we don't want to tackle them. It's something we should think about, this idea have we come to think that way, even in a small way, to have this selfish desire for more, and doing it at the expense of our children.
How much time do we spend with our kids? Not quality time. I mean "time." How much time do you spend instructing your children? It doesn't have to be a classroom-type instruction. It could be sitting there at the workbench whittling away on a piece of wood, or teaching them how to fix the toaster, or teach them basic woodworking, or showing them how to use a hammer properly, or a chisel, or a drill. This is mostly speaking of things fathers can do.
Mothers can also teach their sons and daughters to cook and to sew, and to tend the garden, and to keep their place clean. There are lots of little things that can be done in instructing children that take some time, but it gives lots of good benefits in the end.
How much time do we help them get through their math homework, or their project for school, or help them to fix their own bike, or what have you? How much time do we actually train them in certain things? I mean drill. We should train them in whatever comes up where we think we need to help them learn something.
You say, "Okay Johnny, I'm going to teach you how to cut the grass. This is how you do it. First, let's check the oil. Make sure it comes between these two lines. Make sure you wipe the dipstick off, put the dipstick back in and check it. Then you put your gas in. Make sure you don't overflow it and get it all over the manifold. Make sure you fill it up when it's cold. If you have to fill it up after it's warm, let it cool down for awhile." It's little things like that—training, and drilling, and teaching, and instructing.
How much time do we do that? How much time do we discipline? That's not something we want to spend a lot of time doing. I'm speaking more in the manner of punishment. But even in terms of punishment, it shouldn't be a quick thing—Whack! Whack! and good-bye. Two seconds and it's over. It's another time that one should take some time. We'll get into more about that sort of thing in the second sermon.
When God set us up on this earth, He expected parents and children to be around each other a lot, to spend time with one another so that the wisdom of the parents could be passed on to the children. And not only wisdom, but skill and ideas—ways of thinking, and good habits. All those things take time.
I'd like to spend the rest of the sermon just showing how important parenting is. I've already said a lot on that, but I want to go through the Bible and show some Scriptures of God's mind on this, and show how God has really placed parenting at the top of His priority list, and how it should be on the top of ours as well. I think that as we go through these principles you will see this very clearly.
There is nothing in the Bible that is going to take away from this principle, because the whole thing from beginning to end—from the time God said, "Let there be light" to the very end of the Book where He says, "Here's eternity"— it's all about parenting. It's all about HIS parenting. That means that our lives should have that same principle, that same feeling of importance about parenting in it.
I think that we'll see that if we begin to neglect parenting, we're beginning to neglect our own salvation. It's that important. Like I said before, parenting and the principles and all the things we're supposed to be doing, is tied up with our making it into the Kingdom of God, because we're supposed to be doing what God does, and learning His mind. His mind is all about parenting—bringing children to glory.
Let's start in Psalm 127 and get the proper foundation for this. My Bible says Psalm 127 is by Solomon. Others think it may have been written later on when the Jews returned from the Exile. It's not important really to this. I can see how it could go with either of the two. This is a very foundational psalm on family life.
Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:1-2)
This is really a very interesting couple of verses. I spent a lot of time searching into what this really means. First of all, it sets the foundation for our lives. Unless God is in it, we live in vain. Unless God is the bedrock of everything that we do, we're just living out our time. Solomon said in the book of Proverbs, "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity." That is what life is without God. He ends the book by saying, "This is the sum of everything: Fear God and keep the commandments, because this is the whole duty of man."
Everything is bound up in God, and that is where we've got to have our parenting practices founded—in God. If we don't rear our children with God in the front of our minds, then we're not going to produce godly seed for Him. It will just be a chore. We'll go through the motions, and who knows what we'll produce out on the other end.
This is interesting too of the two figures he uses here. He talks about a house and a city. This is very interesting in terms of what Darryl has been writing about in the Bible Studies on the back page of the Forerunner in the last few months. He's been talking about symbols of the church. Both of these symbols—house and city—are also symbols of the church.
"House" is the normal Old Testament word for "temple." We use that term—"God's temple." In the Old Testament, in Hebrew, the word that is normally used is "house." It's the "house of God." So we can look at this in this physical/spiritual way. Unless God is in the building of our families, our work is all in vain. Unless God is in the building of the church, it's in vain.
A city, or a nation, let's say, is just families grown large. The city of Jerusalem is a type of the church. Many think that Solomon wrote this as Jerusalem was being built in his reign. So we've got to look at this in this physical/spiritual light here.
It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; (verse 2)
This is interesting too. What he says here is that no matter how early you get up in the morning, and no matter how long you work, no matter how many meals you miss because you're trying so hard to get this project done, ...or let's say "rearing your children," ...no matter how much time you put into rearing your children, it's going to be totally in vain if God is not in it.
You can get up at the crack of dawn and get those children into line and start off doing whatever it is that you want them to do that day, but if God isn't at the base of your parenting principles, there's no telling what's going to be produced. Those children might have a very good work ethic—rising early and going early to bed and being healthy, wealthy, and wise, but if God is not in it, they're not going to be godly children.
It's the same thing for staying up late. In the Hebrew this literally means, "delay sitting down," because you do most of your work when you're standing up. It could mean to even delay sitting down to eat. That's why I mentioned that a few minutes ago. You sacrifice your meals to get this thing done—parenting, or project, building a city, building a house, or whatever it happens to be, it doesn't matter. If God is not in it, all you're doing is a physical work.
To eat the bread of sorrows. (verse 2)
This is very interesting too, because it means you're eating the bread of anxiety. You are so overwrought with making sure that what you produce is good, or whatever, and you get all nervous. Everything that you do just becomes a real chore, because you're so thinking about getting your project done, whatever it happens to be. That's what it's going to be if God's not in it. You're just going to make yourself anxious. You're going to be distraught, overwrought, worried, nervous, frightened. You're going to lose your sleep because you're getting up early and you're staying up late to try to get this done. It's going to consume your life, and what blessedness or happiness is there in that?
Remember, we're talking about these situations without God. This is what happens when we live without God, when we parent without God, when we build a house without God, when we build a city, or whatever it happens to be. We end up destroying ourselves. But then he says:
For so He gives His beloved sleep. (verse 2)
There are two ways of looking at this, but the most natural one that I see is that those who really love God, and are loved by Him, can sleep. They don't have these cares. They don't have these anxieties and fears. They can rise up early just like the other man can, and they can stay up late just like the other man does. And they can eat bread like the other man, ...but he can sleep peacefully. He can get rest because he has laid his burden on God, and he knows that because he has made God his foundation for all that he does, that it's going to work out.
It reminds me very much of the end of Matthew 6—"Have no anxious thought." It's almost like Jesus was thinking about this when He was talking about that, because doesn't He mention Solomon in there, that "the lilies of the field were arrayed more than Solomon"? I don't know. Maybe He was thinking about that. But don't have an anxious care. If you really love God, there is no reason to get all out of whack about these projects that we're doing, because God is working with us and helping us through them.
There is another way of looking at this, and that is that God blesses us while we sleep. It's kind of an interesting way to look at it. But here we do all our labor, and then God fills in the rest, while we rest. God makes up for our lack while we sleep. There is even a German proverb, that God blesses us while we sleep.
Those who put God first in their parenting will receive blessings beyond what their mere labor or their method can produce on their own, because God is in the parenting. It's not to say we shouldn't try to have the best method—the one that He prescribes, and it's not that we shouldn't work at it, because we should. But what we lack, God makes up. He gives His beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is His reward. (verse 3)
I don't know if the wording is very good here. If I were doing it, I would probably say, "Behold the children are an inheritance from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb a reward." In My Bible, the words "is His" in the second clause there are in italics, meaning they are not in the original. What He is saying is that it is a parallel phrase here—heritage and reward—and they both come from God.
Another thing to look at here is these are not things that we deserve. Children are not something we deserve. They are an inheritance. They are a gift. They are a reward, not a wage, not something that God just normally gives. They are something that He gives out of His free will, and something He wants to give to us. We can't earn children from God. The sense is that God gives children, not because we are deserving, but because He is good, and He wants to give us these children so we can raise them as godly seed.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate. (verses 4-5)
Children, in God's way of thinking, are precious additions to any family, and what they give to the family are strength, joy, and confidence, and honor, if they're brought up well. They are resources that can be used by the rest of the family to make life better and easier, especially as the parents age. That is why it says there they are "like arrows in the hand of a man," especially the ones that he has in his youth, because as he is aging, his children are reaching adulthood, and they are able to shoulder the load as their strength declines.
The idea here then is that a strong family—one with children that have been brought up, make the family into a refuge. They are like a castle, let's say, that has strong walls, and they provide a place for the rest of the family to have peace, to know that they're safe, to have the joy of one another's company, to get along, and to do those things that are mutually pleasing to each other.
When enemies come from the outside, they are also safe. They can rally around one another, and grow and use each other's strength to keep their enemies at bay. This could mean they're talking about physical enemies, or spiritual enemies. It doesn't matter. The family is a strength in either case. At the end it says, "They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate."
This word "speak" has more of a contentious side to it, that someone has brought an accusation against one of the members of the family, and they all bond together, and as a family speak to defend their member that has been accused. A righteous family then will most of the time be in the right in that case. Normally they should be able to solve the problem because of the strength of the family. One commentator said even judges quail at strong families, because they know they have to take on them all, and not just one. A three-fold cord is not quickly broken. That's the idea here.
We can think back on this analogy of the physical and the spiritual house again. A church is as strong as its families. A church composed of strong families is a strong church, and knowing that they are themselves a larger family under God makes them even stronger, because now it's not just individual members, it's bundles of families. I'm thinking of the three-fold cord analogy, or the arrows in the hand of a person. You take one stick, and you might be able to break it over your knee. But if you take three, or four, or five, or six and try the same thing, it's probably not going to break. Then if you get bundles of these and put them all together and try to break those, you're not going to break anything. Your knee's going to break. That's the way the church has to be.
That is why it is important for the church to have strong families so that the church can band together during hard times and be impossible to break. Not only are there strong families making up that church, but there is God at the center who is supporting all those strong families, because they are living their lives based on Him. He says that such people will be blessed and "shall not be ashamed."
Let's look a little more then about how God thinks of parenting. Go to John 1:1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1-2)
What this tells us is that there are two. There was God (as Mr. Armstrong used to explain it) that was the family name; and there was One who was not the Word. He was known as God by the family name. So there was God and the Word.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (verse 14)
So now we know what the other One is called. He's the Father. And the Word is called the Son. That's a parent/child relationship. The Word didn't become the child—the Son—until He was born of Mary.
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (verse 18)
What was one of Jesus' major purposes in coming to this earth? To reveal the existence of the Father—to let everybody know that the purpose of God is to have a family, just like this—a Father and a beloved Son.
All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. (Matthew 11:27)
Do you understand what that says? This world still doesn't know that God is a family. Only those whom the Son has revealed this knowledge to know this. We do. Do you remember how much grief Mr. Armstrong got from the world when he preached that God is a family? They think it's just an analogy. That's wrong! It is not an analogy. Mr. Tkach and his son, Joe, Jr., laughed at Mr. Armstrong about this, and they called it "an analogy that he took too far." It's in some of their writings, especially under the idea of the trinity, because if you have a trinity, you have a closed godhead. You don't have a family. The Holy Spirit is not a mother. So they had to debunk the idea of God as a family—and they tried hard.
The Bible overwhelmingly shows that God is a family. There is a Father. There is a mother. That's the church as a whole—Jerusalem above. There is a Son—a Firstborn—Jesus Christ. There are many sons and daughters that are going to come into that family as firstfruits. And then that family will grow as peopl
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