#44. If Your Theology Stops Obedience…
Common cultural ideas might stop us from teaching our kids to obey Jesus, but sometimes our Christian conundrums paralyse us:
Should we expect children will learn to obey when we know they have a sinful nature? Is it even possible this side of Genesis 3?
Should we expect obedience (and give consequences for disobedience) when the Bible tells us that “no one is righteous, not even one”?
Will teaching obedience to Jesus leave kids thinking they merit God’s favour by their own goodness?
Will training our children to obey Jesus make them think they don’t need God’s forgiveness?
When I’ve told my child to put her bowl in the sink, and she doesn’t, am I correcting a very young Christian or a very young unbeliever? Does it make any difference?
When I pray with my child, should I expect she will learn to pray with me, or just listen in? Is it wrong to teach my children to pray when I don’t know if they are actually Christians? Does God welcome their prayers? Is it teaching them to be presumptuous?
Should we teach kids to say sorry to others and God before they understand the significance of what they’re doing? Isn’t this teaching them formulaic hypocrisy?
Will teaching obedience make Christianity distasteful to them, leading to rebellion against Jesus down the track?
Isn’t obedience the same as legalism—the thing which undermines the gospel of grace?
Isn’t our job just to teach the Bible, then kids will work out obedience for themselves eventually?
Doesn’t behaviour follow belief? How can children behave a certain way if they don’t believe, or are not yet cognitively able to understand the ideas which Christian belief is made from? If our children haven’t come to the place of independent belief, how is it possible for them to obey Jesus?
If it is only God’s work which can change our child’s heart, what could parents possibly do to help their children obey?
Since we’re saved by grace, why should we care about teaching our children to obey?
In the parenting struggle, some partially formed doctrinal ideas circulate, possibly as a way of trying to understand, explain or console ourselves in the difficulties of raising children. The paralysing questions tend to pop up when we have enough doctrinal awareness to explain where the problems come from, but not so much that we know how to proactively proceed in helping our children towards obedience in Christ. For example, the doctrine of total depravity takes the shock out of the fact that our children can come up with ways of sinning quite apart from us. No one needs to teach them this special skill set. But, while that is true, it is an incomplete picture of what is going on when our kids are sinning. When parents don’t act wisely, their children can often express their sinfulness in ways that are worse than they otherwise might have. The doctrine of total depravity doesn’t show us what to do about it. We need the rest of Scripture for that.
We often take a Bible truth and draw the wrong conclusion. We isolate single doctrines (like total depravity, God’s sovereignty in salvation, the need for regeneration by the Holy Spirit) and come up with the wrong “therefore”. Instead of tasting all the flavours in the delicately balanced dish, our seared taste buds focus only on one. We start with a doctrinal premise, rationalise and then come up with a distortion that misinterprets the way things actually are. The distortions stop us from teaching our children to obey Jesus, usually because we use some parts of Scripture to persuade ourselves that it isn’t possible. We ignore other parts of Scripture that tell us we must.
Some of the questions above had me paralysed for a while. To work each conundrum through to a satisfying resolution would take another 50 000 words, which would interrupt the overall flow of this Light Duties project. Rather than answer the questions which hinder us, my goal is to encourage you to recognise the ideas that are blocking obedience in your family.
If we have a theological or doctrinal position that is stopping us from doing the work of teaching our kids to obey Jesus, that barrier needs to be dismantled. We need to work out why our theology leads us away from obedience. As we notice incongruence between ideas we hold dear and the full-palate flavour of Scripture, it’s time to repent and reform. And it’s not Scripture that needs to budge, but us. We don’t need less Bible, but more. Not just the “big ideas” of each passage, but all the layers of meaning in every part. We need more of it soaking beyond our intellect and into every millimetre of our existence.
When the Bible says, “children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right”, God actually means that children ought to obey their parents and that parents are responsible to help their children learn to obey. These imperatives aren’t provided just so we have provocative things to discuss in a Bible study group. It is a commission which will end up giving shape to how we spend an awful lot of our lives. Only an incorrect or immature theology will stop us from doing what we’re told. The Bible holds together both the ideas we get stuck on, together with the instruction for parents to raise children in obedience to the Lord Jesus. It’s unproductive and foolish to prise apart what God holds in unity. We need to be able to agree with Scripture about the total depravity of our children even while we teach them to obey everything Jesus commands. We need to be able to agree that God is the one who brings spiritually dead people to life, even while we teach our children to obey us as they grow to obey the Lord. We don’t need to know how they all fit together.
In the next article I will comment on a few of the half-baked ideas that cause us to equivocate. But mostly, as we keep our Bibles open, in prayerful consideration, the Holy Spirit will lead us to the conclusions we need to find. Of course, we need to notice what he makes plain.
