The early years of our children’s lives are a temporary opportunity to do a crucial duty. It’s not uncommon to think about duty as the sour occasion of doing the bare minimum, a minimum exacted (or perhaps extracted) from us like a rotten tooth. A cold, begrudged, painful transaction. It whiffs of box-checking and accounting and withholding anything beyond necessity. Like paying taxes. But that is distorted, devouring duty. By the Bible’s measure, God-centred duty is a lively and enlivening pursuit. It’s eagerness to give what’s good, not seeing how little we can get away with. The New Testament shows how Jesus redeems people to be eager, to be devoted, to doing good. Doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus gets our eyes off the floor of acceptable minimum. The Christian benchmark is devotion to doing whatever good is within our power to give.

“Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.” Proverbs 3:27 KJV

(I was reading Proverbs in the King James Version (long story) when I came across 3:27. The meter is so much nicer than the more recent translations, so I’ve stuck with it.)

Proverbs picks up on the veins of goodness God has instituted in human relationships. The fear of the Lord leads us into the wisdom of paying attention to what is due, one person to the next. This wisdom leads us to see that we owe different things in different relationships. If we owe a good, and have the power to give that good thing, then we’re not to withhold it.

As I mentioned in article #4, the good that is owed is defined by God. The person who is owed does not get to set the terms, or make demands. We owe different people differing things because God has designed varying kinds of relationships to come with their own responsibilities and authority. I’ve spent several articles making a case for why, when we’re married with dependent children, our husband and children are the first and prime recipients of the good we owe. As I wrote in article #10,

As God designed it, no one else in the world is so physically connected to a woman than her husband and their children. God made the two one and out of that oneness the children come. This connectedness comes with responsibilities and influence which are unlike the duties and opportunities of any other (more physically remote) relationships. It’s a goodness which can’t be separated from sex and pregnancy and birth and feeding and toilets and kitchens and laundries and money and play. It’s seen, spoken, heard, smelled, tasted and touched. Godliness is not disembodied. This proximity means a mother is uniquely positioned to help her husband and their children grow into Christ-given goodness.

The opposite of helping is hindering. It’s far too easy to do that...The less we are in close physical proximity to these people, the more limited the good we can give. A lot of our hindering comes from not being in the right place at the right time, with an eagerness to do good.

“To whom it is due” will have a wider range than our immediate family, but the good outside ought not be routinely done at the expense of those to whom the most is due. I say “routinely”, because there are exceptional crises when the family is laid out under extreme demands. As many people have said before, exceptions don’t make good standards.

God sets the terms. This means, that sometimes you owe something to someone even if the other person is oblivious, or seems okay without it. You owe the good, not because they want it, but because God says it is right. Sometimes you owe a good to someone which they don’t particularly value—because the due is not defined by them, but by God. Sometimes they think you owe them a due that God doesn’t. God defines who owes what. This is important in parenting, since, we often take our cues from our kids. We look for their leadership on what they want, or we react to their demands, or we just get on with doing what seems right in our own eyes, and assume it’s ok as long as the kids seem alright. How many of our formative decisions are justified merely with, the observation that our kids don’t seem any worse for wear?

Christian ethics is not a case of doing whatever we want unless God expressly forbids it. Christian ethics is love: actively seeking the good of our neighbour, especially those most dependent on us. When our parenting decisions are only asking: 1. Is it prohibited by Scripture? and 2. Is it harmful to the child? we’re missing the most important question, Is it doing them good? That last question means we need to stop being reactive. It requires some convictions about what we’re aiming for, about what God has in mind for parents and children.

We have a few layers to work through here:

• knowing whom we owe

• working out what is good for them

• discerning the power of our hand to give that good

(The first and third of these points have occupied us here at Light Duties from the start. The second point, what is good for children will be what we move towards in the final stint of these articles).

A lovely balance on this idea of duty sits in the second half of the verse, “when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.” The power of our hand fluctuates with circumstances. We do not have the means to give our children every good we can imagine. We owe our children the good we have the power to give, not the goods we can’t. There are good things we might give to our children one year, which are impossible when we are in the throes of morning sickness. There are some good things we can’t do now, but can grow competence in over time. There are good things which another mother gives her children, but which aren’t part of the Lord’s provisions for our family. It’s also possible, that as we grow in understanding, we will actively make changes which expand our capacity to give. The power of our hand is limited, but not in a static way. It is our responsibility to assess and maximise the good we can give, instead of being defined by what we can’t. We trust the limitations are in the much more powerful hand of the Lord Jesus, and get on with devotion to good within the constraints he has placed us in.

We do underestimate the good we’ve got at hand, though. I mentioned this briefly in article #21. These days, where I’m from, women have been given much. There are good things within our power to give which most women who have ever lived haven’t had. Almost all Australian women can read and write. We have had more years in formal education, or at least access to it. We choose whom we marry. We regulate our own work in and out of the home. We have a generous healthcare system (without it, many of us would be dead or impoverished already). We have a stable society with no war on our doorstep. We have access to almost every book which has ever been written. We don’t have to labour all day, raising our own produce, so we can merely subsist. Time and energy is saved by appliances. We have the Bible in our own language and we are free to read it. We live on a planet full of wonders to see and understand and enjoy and use. We have the leisure to read articles on mothering. Our hands are heavy with abundance.

Most women across history have had far fewer resources to give. Yet, we’ve had a couple of generations of women who have been particularly hesitant to give to children. Our abundance has not overflowed towards them. There is good we often choose to withhold because we prefer something else. We avoid harm (they’ll be fine; they don’t mind), but we have trouble proactively pursuing what is actually good for them. Sometimes we just don’t know what’s good for very young children. Other times we know, but would rather be doing other things.

When I look back across nearly 17 years of mothering, I do see good things I withheld—especially from my older kids when they were little. Plenty of times, it was out of pure selfishness. I didn’t like going outside to play, so I avoided taking them out to meet the elements God had laid out for their early education. I didn’t want more mess than we already had, so I often said ‘no’ to some really wholesome delights (involving flour, eggs and paint - though not always at the same time). I wanted some uninterrupted thoughts, so left the TV on for longer than was wise.

Often, withholding good was out of self-preservation. I was scared that to give was to be irretrievably spent. I was quite convinced I would run out of resources if I gave them away too freely to the people who were there—insatiable—all the time. There are some good things I give my children now, which I could not have given in my earlier days. Some I didn’t know about. It would be wrong to waste time berating myself for good I didn’t do, which I could not have done. They were not good things I had power to act on. Good motherhood repents for sin we know to be sin, grows into knowing and doing better, as we can, but trusts Jesus’ forgiveness and the Holy Spirit’s enabling to do the good in front of us now.  

My desires only changed as Jesus showed me more of how he uses his authority to sacrificially serve his people, and that it’s his delight and joy to do so. God entrusts us with authority so we can do good, not so we can arrange life for our best convenience. Wise, purposeful, good giving doesn’t doom us to eternal depletion. It is still costly, but it’s a different kind of spending. Withholding good we could otherwise give, instead of preserving us, diminishes us and tends towards atrophy. Like the end of Psalm 90, we pray, “establish the work of our hands for us, yes, establish the work of our hands.” In Jesus, he does.

Nineteenth-Century author, George MacDonald wrote in The Princess and Curdie,

“ 'What do you come here for, Curdie?' she said, as gently as before.

Then Curdie remembered that he stood there as a culprit, and worst of all, as one who had his confession yet to make. There was no time to hesitate over it.

'Oh, ma'am! See here,' he said, and advanced a step or two, holding out the pigeon.

'What have you got there?' she asked.

Again Curdie advanced a few steps, and held out his hand with the pigeon, that she might see what it was, into the moonlight. The moment the rays fell upon it the pigeon gave a faint flutter. The old lady put out her old hands and took it, and held it to her bosom, and rocked it, murmuring over it as if it were a sick baby.

When Curdie saw how distressed she was he grew sorrier still, and said: 'I didn't mean to do any harm, ma'am. I didn't think of its being yours.'

'Ah, Curdie! If it weren't mine, what would become of it now?' she returned. 'You say you didn't mean any harm: did you mean any good, Curdie?'

'No,' answered Curdie.

'Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of harm. But I try to give everybody fair play; and those that are in the wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right: they can afford to do without it. Therefore I say for you that when you shot that arrow you did not know what a pigeon is. Now that you do know, you are sorry. It is very dangerous to do things you don't know about.'

'But, please, ma'am - I don't mean to be rude or to contradict you,' said Curdie, 'but if a body was never to do anything but what he knew to be good, he would have to live half his time doing nothing.'

'There you are much mistaken,' said the old quavering voice. 'How little you must have thought! Why, you don't seem even to know the good of the things you are constantly doing. Now don't mistake me. I don't mean you are good for doing them. It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but you don't fancy it's very good of you to do it. The thing is good, not you.'

Curdie laughed.“

Posters are jpg files if you’d like to print one! (thanks Taire!)