I was recently asked by a friend about my view of what it means to raise children in grace, so I discussed the topic with my wife, Sue, and tried to distill the major elements of our philosophy down to a bite-sized summary. Our simple answer is that raising kids in grace means - more than anything else - immersing them in the gospel. While this may initially seem like a trite, "Sunday School" answer, it carries deep and often controversial implications. And at the risk of sounding too relativistic, the way particular people work this out in their own parenting styles varies widely, and we must be careful not to assume that our methods are the best. But that being said, here are some of the grace-related principles on which we tried to focus while parenting our birth and foster children:
- Start from a proper posture of humility. The primary threat to your children in these complicated times is not technology, social media, smartphones, gender fluidity, peer influence or any of the other dangers of secular culture - it is you. The reality of sin is that you will do some damage to your children. In humility, we need to accept this as a primary fact and indicator of our need for grace in parenting. By this grace, however, we can also experience joy in being used in our fallen state as instruments of grace to our children and be thankful for every good characteristic we see in them as a gift from God. It's really easy to slip into self-righteousness when our kids do well, but this has everything to do with God's grace and little to do with our own effort apart from him.
- Make sure that they see your sin...and your repentance. In a home full of the grace of God, setting a good example for your children is not only about behaving well in front of them - that is moralism. If you want to communicate the gospel to your children, let them clearly see your sin, your confession, your repentance, and your thankful acceptance of God's forgiveness at every possible opportunity. This is the gospel. Of course, you may need to protect them at certain ages from knowledge of specific manifestations of sin, but your primary temptation will be to hide what you should actually bring into the open. A lot of Christian parents underestimate the danger of moralism - it is an insidious and easily-ignored threat to your children's faith development.
- Find any and every way to expose kids to grace. God uses "ordinary" means to administer grace. Expose kids to every possible activity where they would encounter the grace of God at work - worship services (even as toddlers), family worship, prayer, family disasters/trials and "interventions", Sunday school, youth group, bible studies, service activities, foster care, missions trips, entertaining friends & extended family, etc.. If they resist, gently insist.
- Expect, but don't assume spiritual growth. Hold them to a high spiritual standard at all times, as befits the privileged members of the covenant family. Be patient with doubt and let them question everything, but don't make the mistake of setting their bars too low for fear of driving them away. If they choose to date unbelievers, get in there and explore with them the wayward heart condition that would allow them to think that this is OK. If they don't want to go to a Bible study or on a missions trip, find out exactly why and explain how these things will bring them closer to God. Expect God to save them, but pray for their salvation until you are absolutely convinced by their profession of faith that he has done so.
- Emphasize preparation over protection. Protecting our children is important, but much less important than preparing them to live as bold instruments of grace in a fallen world. Our goal should be to raise kids that are willing to walk into danger for the cause of Christ. The skills of being "in the world and not of it" should be instilled from birth, but many Christian parents make the mistake of thinking that protecting children while they are young gives them a "firm foundation" for dealing with the world when they are older. We think that exactly the opposite is true - exposing them to the world in manageable chunks while they are young is the best way to foster in them a concern for the lost and to help them develop the survival skills they will need as adults. The time to be most concerned about a child's spiritual protection is actually when they first leave the safety of the home (usually college).
- Pride in your children is still pride, and pride is sin. Emphasize thanksgiving for what God did/does through your children over being proud of them. I know that many parents are really just expressing thanksgiving when they say that they are proud of their children, but I'm not sure this generally translates as such to the kids. Kids can easily get the idea that they are special because of their own accomplishments & behavior, and this is not the gospel.
- Teach them that they own nothing - not even their own minds, bodies, and abilities. The joy that we can experience from being thankful stewards of God's possessions is a particularly sweet manifestation of his grace to us. From a material perspective, teach them that they should not "own" anything that they cannot freely share, loan, or give away - especially money. When a pre-schooler takes a toy from someone and says "mine", it is right to correct them with a reminder that it is actually God's toy and ask what they think he would want them to do with it. If your older children demonstrate pride in their intellectual or athletic abilities, remind them that these, too, are gifts that could have been given to someone else, but also remind them that it's good to enjoy and be thankful for them.
- Give your kids safe spaces to "rebel" - Nothing overpowers the "aroma" of grace more than the stink of unnecessary rules and overreactions to certain behaviors. For example, while use of certain "bad" words may embarrass you, they may have very little to do with the state of your kid's heart. A therapist once told me that everyone eventually goes through some kind of significant level of rebellion in their lives as a normal part of separating from their parents and developing their own particular worldview. Providing safe places and activities for children to engage in harmless mischief will help a child along this path and lessen the likelihood of a more destructive rebellion later in life.
- Loving discipline sets clear and consistent boundaries - Most parents intuitively grasp the fact that excessive, harsh discipline can do psychological damage to a child. What they don't often understand is that the opposite error of excessive permissiveness produces the same result. Children that see a clear and consistent behavioral fence under the guard of loving parents will find freedom to blossom and grow. When they don't see that fence, they will be imprisoned by insecurity and anxiety that is then magnified by the outside world's reactions to their disruptive behavior. Proverbs 3 tells us that God disciplines those he loves. As his instruments of grace in parenting, we must model the same behavior with our children.
