In the process of writing a memoir, I have been reflecting on the families of two sisters. The first, Joyce, ruled with the iron hand of legalism. Her five kids obeyed a lengthy set of strict rules—“Because I say so, that’s why!” Now grown, they tell me they acquiesced mainly out of fear of punishment.
Joyce’s family devotions often centered on the Old Testament: Honor your parents, Fear the Lord, Stop grumbling. The word grace rarely came up. When her children got married, Joyce told them, “If your marriage fails, don’t bother coming back here. You made a vow to God, so keep it.”
All of Joyce’s children have struggled with self-image problems. They admit it has taken many years for them to think of God as loving, and even now that concept seems more intellectual than experiential. Joyce and her husband have softened into grandparents, but affection still does not come easily to anyone in the family.
Yet here is a striking fact: defying an overwhelming national trend, all five of those children remain married to their original partners. They’ve chosen jobs in the helping professions. All but one are raising their own children in the faith. At some level, strictness and legalism in this family produced results.
In contrast to Joyce, her sister Annette determined to break out of the rigidity of their own upbringing. She vowed not to punish her children, rather to love them, comfort them, and calmly explain when they did something wrong. Her family devotions skipped right past the Old Testament and focused on Jesus’ astonishing parables of grace and forgiveness.
Annette especially loved the story of the Prodigal Son. “We are those parents,” she would tell her children. “No matter what you do, no matter what happens, we’ll be here waiting to welcome you back.”
Unfortunately, Annette and her husband would have many opportunities to role-play the parents of the prodigal. One daughter contracted AIDS through sexual promiscuity. Another is on her fourth marriage. A son alternates between prison and a drug rehab center.
Annette has kept her promise, though, always welcoming her children home. She looks after the grandchildren, posts bail, covers mortgage payments—whatever it takes to live out her commitment of long-suffering love. I marvel at her spirit of grace and acceptance. “What do you expect?” she shrugs. “They’re my children. You don’t stop loving your own children.”
I grew up in a home and church more like Joyce’s. After a period of rejection and rebellion, I discovered a God of love and forgiveness. (More accurately, God found me). I ended up as a Christian writer, piping the tune of grace. My brother, raised in the same environment, tossed faith aside. He now attends what he calls an “atheist church”—a Sunday gathering of humanists who spend much time talking about and opposing a God they don’t believe in—and stocks his bookshelf with works by noted atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
“No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun,” concluded the Teacher of Ecclesiastes. “Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.”
A friend of mine, a wise counselor, says that human behavior can be explained by three things: nature (or heredity), nurture (including family upbringing), and free will. Which, he quickly admits, explains very little, for those ingredients combine in different ways in all of us. Loving, supportive families sometimes produce wounded and rebellious children; harsh or dysfunctional families sometimes produce the opposite. In between lies mystery—and God’s grace.
(I welcome hearing your stories of how family did, or didn’t, provide a nurturing balance in cultivating the life of faith.)
Thanks for your reflections, Philip. As usual, I see you unflinchingly embracing the real ambiguities of the life of faith and the hard questions I often want to shy away from in favor of tidier formulaic answers. What I wanted you to say was that gracious parenting produces well-adjusted children. And perhaps sometimes it does. Just not always. There aren’t any rules, since (as you say) there are so many powerful variables in play–nature, nurture, and free will–any one of which could probably rule the day in a given situation. Thanks for telling us the truth, even if it isn’t tidy.
I grew up in Canada with just my mother until age ten, at which point she married my wonderful stepfather. Both of them were very loving and generous toward me; neither of them had (or have) any substantial religious beliefs, as far as I can tell. Attending church was never even a topic of conversation growing up. Despite the kind and loving way of my mother and stepfather toward me, I was very strongly shaped by the absence of my biological father. My journey to faith at age 24 was tangled up in my efforts to heal from the pain of his leaving me at age one. I have visited him regularly all my life, but I still felt (and sometimes feel) his absence acutely. My early years were spent trying to live up to impossible demands, the achievement of which I felt would somehow win him over and win him back; I tried to earn his love. Strange how even as a faithless child I slipped into a pattern that many Christians wrestle with in relation to God, trying to earn love that, in the end, cannot be earned but only received as grace. I still struggle to experience God’s love, though with each passing year I feel myself opening more to it. I’m grateful for God’s healing.
So, as a parent trying to raise two teenage daughters in the faith, I haven’t really had a Christian parenting model etched on my soul, so to speak (neither has my wife). As a result, we have had to read, think, talk, and pray our way to a parenting philosophy we’ve felt comfortable with. Probably the best way to describe our approach is with the adage, “high expectations, high warmth” (I heard someone use this during the first few years of my parenting and it made sense to me). We have required our children to reach high standards with their behavior and attitudes (they would probably say we were “strict”, though not legalistic), but we have also tried to be very warm, loving, and gracious toward them. Lots of hugs, lots of snuggling, lots of encouraging words, lots of time together, quick forgiveness when needed. They seem to be lovely kids so far; not much teenage rebellion going on, and mostly love and continuing respect toward us as parents. And, of course, it is possible that it all could have gone much worse, even while implementing the very same parenting philosophy. It is indeed a mystery, as you say. In the end, all we can do is thank God for the gracious gift that our children are to us.
Thanks again for your continued work as a truth-teller in God’s church.
Wonderful story, great lesson, thanks for sharing. A variation of it was true in my life, too. Such courage and insight showed you were made of forgiveness and love. More you cannot ask or do.
Mystery indeed! My wife and I are blessed with three adult children, all strong in the faith and living it out as they’ve felt led by the Spirit. From the time they were born, or before, we prayed their future spouse would be raised in a loving, Christian home, strong in the faith and that God would prepare that spouse for our child. We were one for three! Our oldest married a man from a broken home that never darkened the door of a church, but he was surrounded by a group of friends who were/are strong believers and God got hold of his heart and transformed it. Our son married a young woman from a home hostile to religion and faith and, frankly, most people and ideas except their own. She began to recognize their bitterness and God gradually transformed her into a woman of faith and ministry. Only our youngest married a man raised as we’d envisioned. Though strong in faith, as a young man he’d wrestled with how to put his faith into action. Though we didn’t realize it at the time, my wife and I were praying “too small.” God can raise up people we can eagerly and deeply embrace as family, men and women of faith, from any family and any circumstance. For our grandchildren, we are praying that God will raise up and protect men and women of faith to partner with our grandchildren in the good works he created them to do. God’s transformation of people is a mystery indeed.
GW,
I have 4 kids (25, 23, 16, 13) and as have you parented much in the same fashion as how I was raised. They have all accepted Christ as their Saviour yet as with all of us have travelled through the peaks and valleys in our closeness with God. One rebelled but eventually returned like the prodigal son, another believes but questions/challenges, another follows without question, they are all different.. All I can say is to continue loving and praying for your kids, they will often return to the lessons learned in their youth.
The biggest challenge I have faced is that kids growing up these days do not believe in any absolute truths. They question the validity of the scriptures and how scripture is applicable in today’s culture. Everything is grey.. with the exception of extending Christ-like love and grace to everyone, a concept kids accept wholeheartedly which is the basis of the gospel.
I used to be concerned that without having firm convictions about certain ‘sins’ I was watering down Christ’s message, but there is no longer any room for judgement at my house. There is no bible beating.. we accept others as they are, we love, we laugh, we worship, we read scripture but don’t dissect every syllable or phrase looking for hidden meaning. We just ‘are’..
Praying for you and your family.
I have been thinking about the “discipline” versus “grace” issue all Summer long.
Discipline is obviously the better way to live, but collectively, we do it like Alpha dogs bullying the other dogs into submission. The best combination is more like the Dog Whisperer, who understands how to help the broken dogs and angry dogs learn how to belong. He understands that it is almost always an owner who doesn’t understand the needs of the type of dog they have, which causes the problems.