PART 1: FOUNDATIONS FOR BIBLICAL CHILDREARING1. Getting to the Heart of Behavior
The Scripture teaches that the heart is the control center for life. A person’s life is reflection of his heart. Proverbs 4:23 states it like this: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” The heart determines behavior. What you say and do expresses the orientation of your heart.
2. Your Child’s Development: Shaping Influences
Shaping influences are those events and circumstances in a child’s developmental years that prove to be catalysts for making him the person he is. But the shaping is not automatic; the ways he responds to these events and circumstances determine the effect they have upon him.
The person your child becomes is a product of two things: his life experience and how he interacts with that experience. Shaping influences are: structure of family life, family values, family roles, and family response to failure, family history, and family conflict resolution.
Two mistakes are made in interacting with the shaping influences of life. First mistake is seeing shaping influences deterministically. Second mistake is denial. Neither denial nor determinism is correct. You need to understand these shaping influences biblically.
3. Your Child’s Development: God ward Orientation
Godward orientation is like the set of the sail in a child’s life. Whatever the shaping influences of life, it is the child’s Godward orientation that determines his response to those shaping influences.
Everyone is essentially religious. Children are worshipers. Either they worship Jehovah or idols. They are never neutral. Your children filter the experiences of life through a religious grid.
Parenting is not just providing good input. It is not just creating a constructive home atmosphere and positive interaction between a child and his parent. There is another dimension. The child is interacting with the living God.
There are two issues that feed into the persons your children become: 1) the shaping influences of life, and 2) their Godward orientation. Therefore, your parenting must be addressed to both of these issues.
4. You’re in Charge
Our culture does not like authority. It is not just that we don’t like to be under authority, we don’t like being authorities. One of the places where this is most clearly seen is in our discomfort with authority in the home. We need a biblical understanding of authority. Questions abound. What is the nature of the parent’s authority over a child? Is it absolute or relative? If you don’t answer questions such as these, you will be tentative and insecure in discharging your duty to God and to your children.
As a parent, you have authority because God calls you to be an authority in your child’s life. You have the authority to act on behalf of God. You act at his command. You may not try to shape the lives of your children as pleases you, but as pleases him. Deuteronomy 6 underscores this view of parental responsibility.
Clear thinking about the function of discipline illustrates the importance of seeing yourself as God’s agent, called by God to be in charge. Discipline’s dimensions are not only corrective (not punitive), but also an expression of love. Your objective in discipline is to move toward your children, not against them.
5. Examining Your Goals
There are objectives that direct our choices as we raise our children. Some folks can articulate their goals. Other goals may be implied by the choices parents make. Be careful with unbiblical goals. Parents’ goals in influencing their children could be developing special skills, psychological adjustment, or saved children. Others will think about family worship, well behaved children, good education and control.
What general biblical objectives will guide and focus your view of life and therefore your training of your children? What is a worthy biblical goal? The familiar question of the Shorter Catechism answers these questions. What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. You must equip your children to function in a culture that has abandoned the knowledge of God. Psalms 36 asserts that it is only in his light that we see light.
6. Reworking Your Goals
A biblical worldview dictates that you should teach your children to exercise and care for their bodies as an expression of stewardship for God’s gifts. Abilities should be developed because God has given the stewardship of talents and special capacities.
In a biblical vision, you should instruct your children to entrust themselves to God in the face of unfair treatment. You should teach them the principles of the scripture.
Our children need is spiritual nurture. They need to be taught the ways of God. They need to be instructed in the character of God so that they can learn a proper fear of God. They need to trust him not only for salvation, but for daily living. Repentance and faith are not acts performed one time to become a Christian. They are attitudes of the heart toward us and our sin. Faith is not just the way to get saved; it is the lifeline of Christian living.
7. Discarding Unbiblical Methods
Unbiblical approaches come to us in many ways. Books and magazines regularly address childrearing. It’s all about methodology how to teach and talk to child. They can be using bribery, behavior modification, emotionalism, punitive correction, or erratic eclecticism.
They lead to superficial parenting, rather than shepherding the hearts of our children. They only address behavior. Hence, they miss the point of biblical discipline. Biblical discipline addresses behavior through addressing the heart. Remember, the heart determines behavior. If you address the heart biblically, the behavior will be impacted. Superficial parenting that never addresses the heart biblically produces superficial children who do not understand what makes them tick. They must be trained to understand and interpret their behavior in terms of heart motivation.
8. Embracing Biblical Methods: Communication
Methods and goals should be complementary. You want your child to live for the glory of God. Your methods must show submission to the same Lord. A biblical approach to children involves two elements that you weave together. One element is rich, full communication. The other is the rod. In the book of Proverbs we find these two methods side by side. (Proverbs 23:13-19, 22, 26)
Communication is dialogue, not monologue. It is not only the ability to talk, but also the ability to listen. The finest art of communication is not learning how to express your thoughts. It is learning how to draw out the thoughts of another.
Your first objective in correction must not be to tell your children how you feel about what they have done or said. You must try to understand what is going on inside them. What is important in correction is not venting your feelings, anger or hurt; it, rather, understands the nature of the struggle that your child is having.
You want to understand your child’s inner struggles. You need to look at the world through his or her eyes. This will enable you to know what aspects of the life-giving message of the gospel are appropriate for this conversation. If you are going to understand and helping your child to understand himself, there are skills you must develop. You must learn to help your children to express themselves. You must learn to facilitate conversation.
9. Embracing Biblical Methods: Types of Communication
Communication must be multifaceted and richly textured. It must include encouragement, correction, rebuke, entreaty, instruction, warning, teaching, and prayer. All of these must be part of your interaction with your children.
Children need communication designed to inspire and fill with hope and courage (encouragement). Sometimes a child needs to be brought into conformity with a standard (correction). A rebuke censures behavior. Sometimes a child must experience your sense of alarm, shock, and dismay at what he has done or said. Entreaty is communication that is earnest and intense. It involves pleading, soliciting, urging, and even begging.
Instruction is the process of providing a lesson, a precept, or information that will help your children to understand their world. Because your children’s lives are fraught with danger, warnings put us on guard regarding a probable danger. A warning is merciful speech. Teaching is the process of imparting knowledge. It is causing someone to know something. Prayer is not communication with the child but with God. It is nevertheless and essential element of communication between the parent and the child.
10. Embracing Biblical Methods: A Life of Communication
Communication not only disciplines, it also disciples. It shepherds your children in the ways of God. I have used the phrase “shepherding the heart” to embody the process of guiding our children. It means helping them understand themselves, God’s works, and the ways of God, how sin works in the human heart, and how the gospel comes to them at the most profound levels of human need. Shepherding the hearts of children also involves helping them understand their motivations, goals, wants, wishes, and desires.
11. Embracing Biblical Methods: The Rod
What is the nature of the child’s most basic need? If children are born ethically and morally neutral, then they do not need correction; they need direction. They do not discipline; they need instruction. Since Bible told us that children are not born morally and ethically neutral, so his problem is that he is a sinner. The rod functions in this context. It is addressed to needs within the child. In Proverbs 29:15 God says, “The rod of correction imparts wisdom…” Elsewhere, the Proverbs connect wisdom with the fear of the Lord.
The rod is a parent, in faith toward God and faithfulness toward his or her children, undertaking the responsibility of careful, timely, measured, and controlled use of physical punishment to underscore the importance of obeying God, thus rescuing the child from continuing in his foolishness until death.
12. Embracing Biblical Methods: Appeal to the Conscience
Your correction and discipline must find their mark in the conscience of your son or daughter. God has given children a reasoning capacity that distinguishes issues of right and wrong. This God-given conscience is your ally in discipline and correction. The central focus of childrearing is to bring children to a sober assessment of themselves as sinners. They must understand the mercy of God, who offered Christ as a sacrifice for sinners.
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