E-note: Wayward Children, Pt. 4

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Now to finish these letters on wayward sons and daughters. And finish we must. We must finish not because I have exhausted all that can be said about wayward children, but we must finish so we don't become too fixated on those same children. And this is really the first piece of practical advice I have for parents on the matter: Let your devotion to Jesus far exceed your devotion to your children. The Lord Jesus said, "Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37). This is more than just a hard saying, it is a shocking revelation of who Jesus is. He calls for an allegiance one would only expect God to call for. Who is this Jesus? Yahweh, the Most High God. Parents, do not let your children be of greater worth to you than Him. Let your child separate from you over your faith, otherwise you will make Jesus small to them, a Lord of no consequence. Separation doesn't mean that you kick your adolescent out of the house nor does it mean that you stop sharing the life of your adult child. But separation does mean that you let your son or daughter see that your faith and practice will not be diluted by their rebellion. Not only will this honor the One who is worthy of supreme allegiance, but it will set before your child something of an omen, a productive sign of what will become of them if they continue their course of rebellion - the loss of everything called life (Philippians 1:27-30). Such an omen has turned many a wayward son around.

For wayward children living at home then, I proffer this advice: (1) Provide them some freedom to partake of and investigate things they think only unbelievers get to partake of and investigate: evolutionary theories, complex moral themes in movies and books, friends that don't believe. The Christian faith is not strengthened by mere isolationism. It is strengthened by an unflinchingly honest, yet developmentally appropriate, examination of those very things that supposedly overthrow it. (2) Provide wayward children at home a broader exposure to Christian communities. Go to concerts at different churches. When on vacation, worship at a sound church outside the Baptist tradition. Send them to a sport camp run by a Christian ministry. Go to Christian events on the Dartmouth campus. Exposure to other Christian communities can soften hardening stereotypes that are too easily formed when living among the same Christians all the time. (3) Keep bringing them to church, but don't ask them to perform for us. When they're old enough to stay home, and want to, still ask them to come. A must-read on this point is Peterson's book, Like Dew Your Youth. (4) Keep clarifying the gospel before them. Scrub away all the schmaltzy, syrupy, be-good-and-prosper false gospels. Let them have to wrestle with the person and work of Jesus. They'll never believe and obey a gospel that isn't real. Help them not confuse your version of home-life or your version of politics or your version of the work-ethic with God's own version of the gospel.

For wayward children no longer living at home, I have less advice. But much of what I said in the above paragraphs applies: let them see that your supreme allegiance is to Jesus. Secondly, everything said in this letter and in previous letters about the gospel applies. Let them see that it is the person and work of Jesus that drives you to live the way you live. And then there is prayer. There always is prayer! I have been greatly impacted this past month as I read Augustine's Confessions. So many times he mentions how his mother watered the earth with her tears for him whenever she knelt to pray. She petitioned and pleaded in all humility and perseverance that her crooked, black sheep boy would be fetched home by the merciful Shepherd. He was. Her faith in the Word of God gave her a holy urgency in prayer. Her Savior in whom she believed gave her back her Son the only way she really wanted him, in Christ.

Yours in Christ, John

E-note: Counsel for Wayward Children, Pt. 3

Dear brothers and sisters,

We've been thinking about wayward sons and daughters these last couple of weeks. You probably noticed that the first two installments in this series of letters was directed at us parents more than our children. This is the way God deals with us. We want to tell Him about all our disappointments over departed sons and daughters and He turns it into a discussion about us and our own departures (see Malachi 2:13-14 for example). God will not run this kind of errand for us: fetch our children back home to be true worshippers but leave us, mom and dad, as we are. The Shepherd of our souls is more generous than that, gathering by grace all His sheep who have gone astray, both parents and children. The eventuality of a wayward child just may be how He brings rod and staff near enough to capture your own heart home. And yes, even when we are "home" we must still lay our disappointments before Him but never against Him. So that's what the last two weeks was about. Now for the next two weeks.

There is one noticeable way in scripture that a child's waywardness is actually a work of God. When I say "a work of God" I am thinking of that "work" that God has begun and that God will surely finish (Philippians 1:6). When God called Abraham out of Ur (Gen. 12:1), Abraham became permanently fixated on God as the most compelling and sovereign reality in his life. Right? Wrong. When God called Abraham out of Ur, where he was an active pagan, the first thing Abraham did was believe and obey, but the second thing he did was doubt and disobey. It's not long before Abraham finds the nearness of Pharaoh and Hagar more compelling and sovereign than the presence of God. Thus began another circuitous, tortuous, slow journey of faith. Read all about it in Genesis 12-22. Abraham's journey of faith, like the apostle Peter's, is far from Disney perfect. Progress in genuine faith suffers significant interruptions. Peter publicly denied Jesus three times, before strangers even! If I were God I would never put up with this bad PR. But God does. Why? Why does God allow the children of faithful parents to make our most holy faith look so unconvincing, so easily discarded? Because God is not out to flatter men - mere onlookers - with cookie cutter, plastic yes-men. He is not making poster boys, but men and women who come to love Him and trust Him. Becoming one who loves God, who trusts God, is a mysterious process, no less mysterious than coming to love and trust another mortal. Nevertheless it is a process that God never fails to complete once He has begun.

So when we see a son or daughter begin to rebel and throw off the faith of their parents, what we may really be seeing are the first signs of a search for real faith. The child may just be pushing beyond the borders where everything has been decided by others. The child may just be rejecting impersonal and institutional glosses that characterize too much of childhood faith training. The child may be throwing off the tidy and apparently safe faith of her parents only to accidentally discover the living God who is always good but never safe. The prodigal who comes home - yes, soiled and over-experienced in sin - may have more love for the Father than the tidy child who never left. As Peterson says in his excellent book, Like Dew Your Youth: Growing Up With Your Teenager: "What the parents must know is that this doubt and questioning and rebellion is evidence that something deeply significant is taking place in the personality of their offspring. Their teenagers are wondering what it is going to be like to maintain adult relationships with God....If parents will not permit the possibility of dissent they also prevent the possibility of a free yes." God is sovereign in the salvation of all men, but His sovereignty does not produce Disney characters who follow our scripts. His sovereignty produces lovers of God, His very own sons, who have been long chastened by their Father, the only One who never took His eye off of them.

Next week I'll proffer advice on practical approaches to wayward children who still live at home and advice for those who don't. Yours in Christ, John

E-note: Counsel for Wayward Children, Pt. 2

Last week I began a series of letters on wayward sons and daughters. In these letters I am specifically thinking of children who have turned from the way of holiness and Christian worship to the ways of the world. I am specifically thinking of sons and daughters who, at the present time, do not count Jesus' love and lordship as great treasures. Their back is to the heavenly Father and they are off to squander their inheritance. I say this to distinguish my counsel from those children, however old they may be, who struggle with the foe called sin yet do so with faith in Jesus' love and lordship. I am confident that the counsel in these letters is useful for all parents (especially the one writing), but it is primarily counsel for parents whose children are presently and obviously turned away from Christ and His church, just like I was when seventeen years-old.

Let's also remember that each child who has turned away from the Lord has done it in their own shoes. None of the many stories that make us the anguished people we are are quite the same story. Each prodigal runs a different path away from the Father (Luke 15:11ff). Even the prodigal's elder brother had left the Father in his own way, though he remained "righteously" at home. So one son's departure is quite different than the other son's, therefore we shouldn't expect an easy, one-size-fits-all diagnosis. Not all have left the Father in pursuit of the same worldly treasure. What is the same in all cases is "a departure", a being away from the Father. What is the same in all cases is "the way" back, the perfect and ever-faithful Son, Jesus Christ.

Last week I emphasized the importance of keeping Jesus at the center of all your hopes for wayward sons and daughters. This week let's emphasize the repentance required of parents. Yes, repentance is what takes place when we are first confronted with the love and lordship of Jesus Christ, but repentance is also what takes place every day after. Repentance is the practice of forsaking anything that does not conform to the will of God--habits, traditions, thoughts, hopes, etc--and taking up those things that do conform to the will of God, all for the sake of Jesus Christ who has redeemed us. What might parents need to forsake especially in the event of a wayward son or daughter? Some parents may need to repent of a deep desire to see their children stay within the rules and within the boundaries but without Jesus. It is in a child's rebellion that his parents may first discover that what they really desired for their child was not a life of faith, hope and love in Jesus, but a life that didn't embarrass mom and dad. Some parents may need to repent of their long refusal to train and instruct their children in the fear of the Lord. It is in a child's rebellion that her parents may first discover that they themselves have been rebelling against a sober life of God-centered faith and practice. Some parents may need to repent of a presumption that their children would stick with the Lord because they, the parents, were always doing the right thing. It is in a child's rebellion that his parents may first discover that their years of faithful service to God were really for God alone and not a series of down payments on a life uncomplicated by wayward children. Children are saved by grace not by the good works of their parents. Moreover, God himself, who does all things well, has not lived a life uncomplicated by wayward children (this is us, mom and dad). Those He foreknew He also watched run from Him knowing all along He would have to pursue them with a fierce and costly love.

Praise God, there is one thing we do not have to repent of - last week's Fighter Verse and the promise therein revealed: "Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!" Next week we'll look at one way a child's rejection of God can actually be the work of God in their life.

Yours in Christ, John

E-note: Counsel for Wayward Children

Dear brothers and sisters,

These past couple of weeks the cries of many parents have risen before the Lord as they watch stiff-necked sons and foolhardy daughters shun the Lord and go their own way. The bitter tears and anguish of soul caused by wayward children comes with a force akin to the worst kinds of grief. Love is as strong as death, said Solomon. Spouses feel it and parents do too. In many ways I feel too short-lived to give wise counsel on such grief. But God is the Ancient of Days and He has spoken. So let me use a few lines here to provide some solid footing for us all. I say for us all because these heartaches do not belong just to a mother or a father, they belong to the church too. As the church of Jesus Christ we carry each other's burdens--the burdens of personal sin and family sin--and in so doing we fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). It is inconceivable that we could walk closely with other believers without having to shoulder their sins and without having to lay upon them our own. The only communities Jesus makes are gospel communities like this. So, for the next four weeks, I'd like to address this concern of wayward sons and daughters at four points, one each week. It seems an especially appropriate time, for in our Lent readings right now Augustine is confessing the sins of his youth. So may the following thoughts of the following weeks help us all keep one another's eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of saving faith.

One. It is absolutely necessary to keep Jesus and the salvation He alone provides at the center of all our hopes for wayward sons and daughters. A well-ordered American life may be a blessing but it is not salvation. A well-ordered American life may bring us relief but hide the lostness of a soul. Parents must guard their own hearts against wanting a "salvation" for their children that is no salvation. Laboring to rescue wayward children from the obvious slavery of drugs, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity is hard work. Laboring to rescue children from the more subtle slaveries called the fear of man, the lust for financial stability, and satanic indifference is also hard work. But none of our labors should ever obscure the true gospel of grace: Jesus alone--through His love and lordship--is the One true deliverer. Moral straightness as opposed to the crookedness of all kinds of corruption is the fruit of life but it is not the source of it. Jesus alone is the source of an abundant life. Let's help one another resist the temptation to replace Him before our children with counterfeits and substitutes. The old story about Jesus Christ crucified for sinners is still the only grace that makes men new. Next week, a point closely related to this first one: the repentance required of parents.
Yours in Christ Jesus, John