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Children, obey your parents because you
belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. "Honor your father
and mother." This is the first of the Ten Commandments that ends with a
promise. And this is the promise: If you honor your father and mother, "you
will live a long life, full of blessing." And now a word to you fathers. Don't make your children angry by the way
you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction
approved by the Lord.
(Ephesians 6:1-4 NLV) Every
parent loves the first three verse of Paul’s writing in today’s reading!
It’s that fourth verse that most of us have trouble with! Just yesterday,
David called to chat a little. He ending up our short conversation by saying,
“Dad, I’m sure glad I had you and Mom for parents.” We had been talking
about some of his friends and their parents and some of the “injustices”
they felt they had suffered. Whether they really were or not is always a
debatable position. However, there have been those of others that parenting made
a significant negative impact. For
example, Lynette's father was a little Hitler, a tyrant, according to her
childhood friends. She was not allowed to eat with other children in the dining
room but was banished without reason to the kitchen. She got the silent
treatment often from her father. He disliked her intensely. "Her father's
treatment scarred her badly," an old friend said. "Her mother was too
scared to open her mouth." When Lynette was 16 she was kicked out of the
family home. Charles Manson found her crying in the street and offered to look
after her. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme later attempted to assassinate
President Ford. Or we may look at Joe. Joe's father was a drunken brute who beat
his wife and child savagely and often. The boy took refuge in fantasy and in his
teens discovered a fictional hero called Koba. Koba was the main character in a
popular Georgian adventure story about a young peasant who fought alone and with
incredible success to free the oppressed. Joe always wanted to be the best, the
bravest, the unbeatable comrade who was always right and never wrong ... and if
anyone doubted this was so, he had better beware. Koba's revenge would be swift
and terrible. Who was Joe? You've guessed - Joseph Stalin, who with Adolf Hitler
shares that doubtful honour of killing more people in the 20th Century than any
other individual. Parenting
is very important, and if we have children a successful parent is something we
ought desperately to want to be. But the stronger our desire, the greater may be
our confusion. Should we be strict or lenient, demanding or accepting? Should we
try harder or not so hard, punish or just talk, restrict or liberate our
children? Should we listen to the experts or do what comes naturally? We often
seesaw between the two positions. As one mother said recently, "I'm strict
until I can't stand myself. Then lenient until I can't stand my kids". Many
parents have really tried hard, and still something can go wrong. We all know
the story of the black sheep in the family, a boy or girl who "goes
wrong" to the mortification of their parents as well as the other children
in the family. We must not pass judgment on cases of that kind because each one
is different. It is too easy to blame parents for everything that goes wrong in
a family. However,
there may be room for some improvement in our parenting. With some help from God
we can "rewrite the script" of our lives. What we were in the past,
even in our childhood, need not determine how we will cope in the future. We do
not need to be the victims of our personal history! Christianity is all about
turning to God for help and strength and victory, rather than blaming ourselves
or our parents or the world or the environment we live in. None of us needs to
be imprisoned within our past. In the next few days I will be writing about
eight specific things we can do to become better parents. In the mean time, pray
and ask God to give you wisdom and strength to be the best parent you can be.
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