As parents, we want what is best for our kids. Most parents I know would do just about anything for their kids. It comes from love and protection. Fear the mama bear…..or in my world, after seeing a fabulous Instagram video of a moose chasing down a bear…..fear the mama moose. Many of us would do anything to protect our kids from pain, heartache, struggle. We want them to have better than what we had or didn’t have. We want them to live higher, stronger, better.
I know there are many different parenting styles out there and just because someone parents differently than I do doesn’t mean that their way is wrong…..novel idea these day…..just because we don’t like the way someone else does something doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong…..often, it just means they do thing differently. And, you know what, if they do things differently or even if they are wrong……we can still be friends, and we can still support one another. Over the years I have seen massive, bloodied parenting battles rage over Huggies vs cloth diapers, stay at home mama vs working another job outside the home mama, co-sleeping vs crib, pre-made baby food vs organic homemade baby food, breast vs bottle, homeschool vs public school vs private school and now….vs online school, cell phones in elementary school vs cell phones in junior high vs cell phone in high school, allowing social media vs not allowing social media, sleepovers vs no sleepovers, dating before 16 years old vs no dating, “helicopter”/”bulldozer” parenting vs “permissive” parenting……the list goes on and on and on. Man, do we love to fight.
Parenting is hard work. And those adorable little rascals do not pop out with a user manual in the box. But……parenting is also a gift from God…..and He does give us a “user manual” for life ….and that life for many of us, includes parenting. No, the Bible is not going to tell us which way to diaper our kids or what kind of school to put them in or if they should have a cell phone by 6th grade or not….those are decisions that are culturally influenced. Life and culture in 2023 America look very different than 1100 B.C Israel. We are going to make different decisions on how to do daily life. But just like in 1100 B.C Israel, in 2023 America, we still learn one of two ways: mentorship or mistakes. The Bible is one way for us to know God and learn from Him: mentorship….or more accurately, discipleship. This morning during my time in the Word, one of those mentorship moments jumped out in the book of Judges.
In the of book of Judges, we get a many century span glimpse of generations of Israelites. We see one generation who follows the Lord and “after them another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works He had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10). And, it happens over and over and over all the way to the end when Judges 21:25 tells us that “in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever he wanted”. The Israelites would do what was “evil in the Lord’s sight” (Judges 2:11) and He would allow the consequences for their fool behavior (i.e sin) to affect them. But then, because of His love and compassion for His people, when they would turn away from their fool behavior (i.e. repent), He would help them and send a deliverer (Judges 2:16) (hello……Jesus……anyone……amen!)
Then Judges 2:22 says something that many people don’t like to hear, “I (God) did this to test Israel and see whether they would keep the Lord’s way by walking in it, as their fathers had”. God tests us? Yup. But wait….”we are Christians, God doesn’t test us now. That’s just Old Testament stuff”. Well….. James 1:2-3 “Consider if a great joy, my brothers whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” To sum this up…..God tested us then. God tests us now. Like it or not, your choice. Agree with it or not, your choice. Doesn’t change the truth that it happens and doesn’t change the truth He is God and knows best and thank goodness, we are not god and do not know best….but that is a whole ‘nother blog.
Ok, back to Judges…..and this is what jumped of the page at me this morning…. “These are the nations the Lord left in order to test Israel, since the Israelites had fought none of this in any wars with Canaan. This was to teach future generations of the Israelites how to fight in battle, especially those who had not fought before.” (Judges 3:1-2, emphasis mine)
Ok, let’s back the snack wagon up for a hot second. Based on these scriptures we can see that
1. God loves us and cares for us despite our sin/fool choices
2. God requires us to turn from our sin and turn back to Him.
3. God allows consequences for our sin. Consequences happen both here and now and then and there. Consequences in this world and also consequences of Heaven/no Heaven. Consequences of sin in this world don’t change much even if we have accepted Jesus as this world is still “under the curse” (Romans 8:19-23, Romans 7:22-25). Although our lives should be radically affected by our relationship with Jesus, and we should be striving not to sin once we have accepted Jesus (Romans 6) yet Paul shows us that it’s a daily battle (Romans 7:22-25) so ain’t nobody gonna get it totally right til Heaven. Consequences of sin in the next world, i.e. Heaven are determined SOLELY by our acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice of His perfect life in place of our lives marked by sin (John 3:16-21, Romans 8: 1-11) and NOT by how good we were, how nice we were, how serving we were, how accepting we were, how tolerating we were, or how much we went to church.
4. God allows His people to be tested through trials. Some of those trials and testing are allowed by God, some are of our own making and some just happen to us, because…yeah, since Genesis 3, we live in a sinful world, y’all. (I think many times we read the Bible as God’s original intent for this world and our relationship with Him and each other, rather than as His heart for His world and His people that live in a muddy pit of sin and shame ever since Genesis 3. If we want to know what God’s original intent for this world and our relationship with Him and each other was, we have to go back and study Genesis 1-2. Genesis 3 and onward is how to live in relationship with Him and each other in a sin filled world. But once again…..that’s a whole nother blog as well)
5. Sometimes God allows enemies/trials/evils in the world to remain in order to teach future generations how to fight in battle……..but a thought before we go off on a wackadoodle “Onward Christian soldiers (un)holy war” rampage and start tearing down and destroying other humans (that God made) and burning all the books we don’t like and sending “hate “fighting the enemy” email and social media posts……. whenever God called the Israelites to fight in battle it was more about them doing the thing EXACTLY how He told them to and their reliance on Him more than the battle itself (see….well….the whole Bible, especially the first 5 books of our Old Testament…the Torah). Biblically, learning how to fight in battle is learning how to follow God in every step and as Jesus taught us, learning to turn the other cheek in humility and loving others.
Honestly y’all, we could take all 5 of these points and discus and apply to all areas of our lives. But for this blog, we’re gonna go with parenting.
So, let’s go back to the premise of “mama moose” and doing everything possible to protect our kids from pain, heartache and struggle. Here’s the thing with “mama moose”…..it’s exhausting, it’s frustrating and it’s defeating. No matter how much we love those rascals, they are just that…..rascals. They are as sinful as each of us. They are going to make mistakes like each of us do and no matter how hard we try to force other people/communities/governments/etc to follow our particular set of morals, this world will remain under the curse of sin until Jesus sets foot back on Earth in the Second Coming. It’s hard to see it when your little bundle of joy is a bundle, snuggled up in your arms, but then they grow and their will comes out. Will? Yeah, will…..that stubborn “Do self”, “My way”, “NO, MAMA!!!” of the toddler, elementary and teen years. Ok, let’s be real again…..of the whole life years. Oh, the stories of asshattery (New Texas girl version of the Bible’s word for sin) in the Marsh Big Top are legendary! But then again, the stories of the asshattery in the Marsh Big Top’s parents (being me and my big, bald, good lookin’ man) lives are legendary as well. Apples don’t fall far from tree.
Sadly, many of us take on our kid’s sin, our kid’s bad choices, our kid’s behavior and try to explain it away, cover it up or even bulldoze the teacher, the officer, the boss into taking away our kid’s school consequences/bad grade/ticket/firing that they earned through their fool choices. We spend our lives putting fires out in the name of love (is it love, or is it fear and control? Just throwing the thought out there to ponder) without dealing with the behaviors that are causing the fires……and we are exhausted and frustrated and often bumfuddled by the seasonal hot messes in our kid’s lives.
Let’s back that snack wagon on up again and apply those 5 things we learned out of the book of Judges….
1.God loves us and cares for us despite our sin. We can love and care for our kids, despite their fool choices….their will….their asshattery…..their sin. Loving someone is NOT dependent on their life choices. God loves…..we love. And yet, love does not mean we love every aspect of their choices or actions, especially when those choices or actions are asshattery/fool choices/sin. I do recognize that it is often very hard to separate a person from their asshattery/fool choices/sin thus making it a hard and painful choice to love and love in humility. This is why we need a daily walking, talking relationship with Jesus. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a great soundbite that has sadly done more harm than good because only Jesus knows how to put that into action the right way. Left up to us, we often tell someone that we need them to know up front that we hate their sin, but bless their hearts, we really do love them. Really, what we mean is that we know they are sinning and they need to know we know that they are sinning they need to get rid of their sin to prove that they are worthy of that love, but aren’t we fabulous humans to love others who are so sin filled (forgetting that we are also so sin filled)…..and that, campers, ain’t God’s way.
2. God requires us to turn from our sin and back to Him. Here’s a hard one because we ain’t God….even to our kids, we ain’t God. We want to be and we act like we are, but we ain’t. We are parents and it’s our job to disciple (don’t read too fast…..I said DISCIPLE.) our kids and teach them over and over and over that God loves them and He wants them to turn from their sin and back to Him. Just like God did with the Israelites, and God does with us….He is God the Father, after all.
3. God allows consequences for our sin. This one is SO hard and something, in our culture, we often fail at as parents to allow consequences to take place. We feel guilty that those rascals we made and love will feel the hurt or even discomfort of consequences for their fool choices. There will be consequences, y’all. Why….. because fool choices/asshattery/sin mean consequences. But there is a vast horizon of difference between forgiveness and consequences. Fool choices don’t mean unforgiveness!!!!!! God forgives!!!! Through Jesus, God has forgiven me of every sin I have committed or will commit….how can I not forgive another? (see Matthew 18:21-35 for an “oh dang” parable from Jesus about this – you could use this parable to argue for no consequences, but I would disagree and say this parable is about forgiveness of an unpayable debt which is reflective of the sin in each of our lives and I think applying it only to consequences in this world is to take it out of context with the rest of the Bible). But God does allow consequences for our actions.
Let’s say you and a friend had a falling out because the friend plastered all over social media something personal that you shared in confidence. That friend has committed asshattery/foolishness/sin and proven themself unworthy of your confidence. The relationship is altered. Because you have received forgiveness from God through Jesus, you have no right to withhold forgiveness from that friend. So you must forgive. But, the consequence is, you would be wise to not share personal things with them until time and their action have restored the relationship.
Forgiveness does not have to do with long term change in the other party. It has to do with your choice to release the other person from the debt of pain that they caused you. Does forgiveness mean they could hurt you again….yep. Sure does. Does it mean that they don’t have ask for forgiveness because they are too blind to see that they need it….yep. Sure does. Does it mean that we should wait to give forgiveness until they ask it or at least see the need for it….nope….not how God tells us to operate. Does it mean, if we also took part in fool choices/asshattery in our response to this situation, that we should ask for forgiveness for our part even if they refuse to ask for forgiveness for their fool choices/asshattery? Yep….sure does. But using wisdom after forgiveness would allow consequences to occur to protect ourselves and hearts from immediately openly giving them space and trust in our hearts and our lives. These days we prefer to call these “boundaries”, but really, y’all…..boundaries are just modern, God help up “less offensive”, vernacular for consequences.
Restoration is based on people seeing the wrong/the pain they caused, turning from it (repentance) and changing their ways. Forgiveness has to do with your heart. Restoration has to do with both hearts. Forgiveness should be automatic. Restoration comes by way of repentance and growing and changing, often through consequences for sin. Honestly, we can live in relationship with people where we personally choose to live in forgiveness, but consequences must remain because there is no repentance from the other person and sadly, we may not always get to the point of restoration. It takes two to get there. Sometimes one party chooses to stay blind. (I would say not getting to the point of restoration is not how we are to parent….at least until our kids of an older age. But it does happen – what’s up, prodigal son Luke 15:11-32….and even there, the dad waited but the son repented and there was restoration. Praise God!) We are to forgive our kids, no questions asked. And then work on restoration. Then, we come along side of them to help them learn how grow and mature and be restored. That’s part of our job as parents….to help them learn to grow and mature.
4. God allows His people to be tested through trials. This means that our kids WILL be tested! This means they WILL go through trials. God allows it and based on James 1:2-3 that we looked at earlier, it is to produce endurance and maturity and completeness. So, hard question…..when we do everything possible to control our kid’s worlds and prevent trials….are we stunting their growth? I’m NOT saying, don’t protect our kids. That’s not right, ok or biblical. What I am saying is, if we mama moose them their whole lives, we cannot be shocked and shaken when they are dysfunctionally immature at ages when they should be more wise and mature adults. In place of mama moosing them, how about we come along side of them through the trials and disciple them and show them the heart of Jesus and show them how to choose to grow and mature.
5. Sometimes God allows enemies/trials/evils in the world to remain in order to teach future generations how to fight in battle. This one is what hit me first and brought about this ridiculously long blog. So many of us as parents get so frustrated at the state of our world. We desperately want things to be better, even perfect for our kids. What if some of the things going on in our world now are being allowed by God to teach our kids and then future generations how to fight in battle…..remembering that whenever God called the Israelites to fight in battle it was more about them doing the thing EXACTLY how He told them to and their reliance on Him more than the battle itself. Can you imagine the freedom that comes with the revelation that God is the only one in control and we don’t have to live in the delusion that we are. And can you imagine the change in our world if we would realize that, learning how to fight in battle is learning how to follow God in every step and as Jesus taught us, learning to turn the other cheek in humility and loving others.
Ok, so what are the take aways?
What if biblical parenting looks more like teaching our children the heart and love of God and freedom in Jesus and how to walk through life as a disciple of His rather than attempting to make their world a false bubble of perfection free of pain or trials that we have no control over to begin with. What if biblical parenting looks more like walking through the life trials with our kids, loving and forgiving them when they make fool choice while also allowing the natural consequences to happen instead of trying to shield our kids from them. Thus, allowing them to grow and mature.
What if biblical parenting looked like teaching our children to “Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind and strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” because if we do those two things, we are fulfilling God’s commands (Matthew 22:24-40). And teaching them that loving our neighbor is sacrificial (see the parable of the Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37). And teaching them our lives were not meant to be lived as self-involved, self-worshipping, idolatrous wanks (that one’s in the Nex Texas girl version of the Bible :->)
Parenting is exhausting! Why make it harder by grabbing at the wind and trying to control things that we can neither control nor have any business even trying to control. How much more energy would we have to invest in our kids if we invested in our own personal relationship and discipleship under Jesus so we could teach our kids how to be a disciple of His too. We can’t make disciples unless we are disciples….and after all….isn’t that the Great Commission?
Then Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority have been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have comanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20
A Beautiful Mess 