Christian Parenthood

Bruce Narramore

   An airline pilot on a nighttime transcontinental flight spoke over the intercom saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have some mixed news for you tonight. Some of the news is good and some is bad. First, the bad news — we are low on fuel, our instruments don't work, and we have lost our way. Now for the good news — I am happy to report that we are making excellent time!"

   I believe many modern parents share this pilot's mixed emotions. They have an ideal goal or destination for their children, but they are not sure how to get there. At times they feel completely lost. In spite of poor directions, however, they know they are making excellent time. In a few short years some destination will be reached. Their children will be grown, and the opportunity to make an impact on their lives will be forever lost. Looking back, many of these parents will see they needed better guidance.

   Those in places of Christian leadership are in excellent positions to offer this direction. To do this, however, we must have a deep sensitivity to the problems parents face and a clear understanding of ways to help them cope with the demanding tasks of parenthood.

   As I travel around, I find certain questions consistently on the

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minds of Christian parents. Parents of rebellious adolescents most often ask, "Where did we go wrong?" or "Why do teenagers from 'fine Christian families' rebel?" From slightly less-conflicted families I hear questions like, "How do you get a teenager to communicate?" Parents of younger children ask about practical daily hassles: "How do you stop a temper tantrum?" "How do you get children out of bed and off to school each morning?" "How do you get a finicky child to eat a balanced diet?" "How do you stop children from fighting?" and "How do you get children to take out the trash or feed the dog?" I also hear a whole range of questions about behaviors that border on the pathological: "Why is my child so withdrawn and unable to communicate?" "Why does one of my children have such an uncontrollable temper?" and "Why is our teenager flunking when we know he has at least average intellectual ability?"

   Inherent in these questions are several primary concerns. Christian parents are really asking: How can we insure our children's moral and spiritual growth? How can we handle daily family conflicts and frustrations? How can we help our children grow up to be emotionally healthy? These are important questions. The church should be able to help it's members insure the future emotional and spiritual stability of their youth, and it should be able to help parents cope with the frustrating daily hassles that occasionally trouble us all. But I believe there is one more basic question: Does the Bible give us a realistic set of guidelines for raising children, and if so, what is it?

   During the past twenty years great changes have occurred in the attitude of the church toward the parents in its assembly. Prior to that time there were practically no good books on Christian parenting. Our Sunday school curricula, while occasionally dealing with the subject, typically overlooked this crucial area of life. Parenting was thought to be a tangential concern. It was elective material (not really to be placed in the center of study), but with the growing influence of psychology and a national concern for the family, all of this is changing. Books on the family are consistently among the national religious bestsellers. Psychologists, educators, pastors, and members of dozens of other professions have started ministering to the Christian parent.

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   Frankly, I view this movement with mixed emotions. It is clearly responding to the deep and vital needs within the church today, and much of the material is helpful. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, the emphasis on the family is growing to almost faddish proportions. It seems that everyone who has had a child (and some who haven't) now fancies himself or herself an expert in the field. In preparing this paper I read through several relatively recent Christian books and papers on rearing children. The lack of consensus was amazing. One pamphlet (published in four languages) purporting to give a biblical view of discipline has this to say about physical spanking:

My obedience to God to train my child requires that every time I ask him to do something, whatever it is, I must see that he obeys. When I have said it once in a normal tone, if he does not obey immediately, I must take up the switch and correct him enough to hurt so he will not want it repeated.¹

In contrast another Christian writes: "There are too many people running around with a biblical two by four who really don't know very much of what the Scriptures teach regarding discipline."² Regarding motivation, one author said that fear was the one great emotion to which children would respond.³ Another felt that love should be the primary motive.⁴

   Needless to say this kind of contradiction leaves the man on the street in a very confused position. What is really right? Who holds the correct answers? Is Christianson right? Is Dobson right? Is Gothard right? Is Hendricks right? Is Lovett right? Is Narramore right? The truth is that no one is entirely right. Each of us approaches the task of childrearing from personal biases and preconceived notions. As much as I hate to admit it, this is certainly true of me. While I try to be sensitive to my own needs and biases, I cannot claim infallibility for my perspectives on the parent-child relationship. This focuses on one major problem in rising to the needs of Christian parents. We must carefully avoid taking either our own subjective experience or the subjective experience of secular psychologists and baptizing them with selected verses in order to claim the authority of God.

   This leads to my first specific suggestion for changing the

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quality of living in the Christian home. We desperately need a theology of childrearing. No longer can we be satisfied with a three-point theology that says, "Husbands love your wives; wives submit to your husbands; and children obey your parents." While important, these commands contain only a very small part of the biblical view of family interactions. If we are to constrain our tendency toward subjectively derived childrearing approaches, we must arrive at a thoroughly comprehensive and biblical view of parenting. There are over five thousand references in the Bible using the words father and son. On top of this, one of the Bible's central themes is God's fatherly relationship with Israel. In the New Testament a number of passages speak of the parallels between earthly fathers and the heavenly Father. Surely all these passages hold a rich treasure for the parent of today, but I am not aware of one truly comprehensive biblical treatise on parenting that takes most of these Scriptures into account. The following discussion illustrates the type of scriptural insight I believe is available.

   Christian parents are to look at God's relationship to them as a model for their relationships with their children. Passages like Hebrews 12:3-11 and Matthew 7:9-11 point out this parallel. If we carefully study how God as heavenly Father relates to us as earthly children, we should find some very clear principles for parent-child relationships.

   For example, in God's dealings with man there is a clear distinction between punishment, as a means of administering retribution for misdeeds, and discipline, which is designed to promote the growth of the disciplined one. God never punishes his own children. All his righteous demands were met by Christ's atoning death on the cross. Once we accept Christ as personal Savior, we receive no more punishment. Instead, we are disciplined, chastened, or corrected. This is a crucial distinction and is often overlooked. Discipline is not a means of justice. Justice has already been satisfied. Discipline is God's way of maturing his children. It is instruction or training designed to correct misbehavior and develop the disciplined one. It doesn't involve justice, punishment, or getting even.

   Based on this theological distinction between God's discipline

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and his punishment, I would suggest that the Christian parent should never punish his or her child. We should discipline, but we should never punish. The chart below summarizes some of the major distinctions.⁵ I believe understanding these differences is as important for the effective training of children as it is for our own walk with the heavenly Father.

   Due to the complexity of the task, a useful theology of parent-child relations must be biblically comprehensive. It must include attention to biblical anthropology, for example, since the way we view man influences our entire approach to discipline and child training. If children are basically good, a permissive or democratic approach to childrearing may be justified. If, on the other hand, we view man as basically evil, we will not find these approaches consistent with our theology of man. And if we accept a third alternative (the one I believe is biblical) that man is best viewed as created in the image of God and subsequently fallen, we will have a different view than if we emphasize either man's "goodness" or "badness" at the expense of a biblically balanced perspective.

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   This third view of man leads to a view of childrearing that errs neither on the side of permissiveness (since it recognizes man's sinful nature) nor on the side of authoritarianism (since it recognizes that all children, in spite of their sinfulness, still bear the stamp and the image of the Creator). In place of the extremes of permissiveness and authoritarianism we can develop the biblical model that children are people of worth and value but that they also need lovingly exercised authority to counter their sinful bent and see them through the growing years of childhood.

   A theology of childrearing must also give attention to theology proper, the nature and attributes of God. Only as we fully grasp the implications of God's character for our own lives can we attempt to model his character in our relations with our children.

   Theologians speak, for example, of God's immutability. He never changes. Parents, of course, must change — hopefully for the better — but what a challenge to consistent parenting a recognition of God's immutability can be! One reason we can feel secure in God's love is that he is consistent — he never changes. Similarly a study of God's holiness, righteousness, love, mercy, grace and truth should make us think twice about our reactions to our children. What does it mean to act in truth toward our children? Do we, in our relationships with them, communicate truth and grace? Or do we communicate subtle forms of dishonesty and an unforgiving spirit?

   Ecclesiology is also fertile ground for the aspiring parent. Since a major mission of the church is the edification and maturation of its members (Eph. 4:1-13), the principles of growth, relationships, and change that are laid out for the church in Scripture can certainly give us insights into the process of growth that our children must pass through. And what about soteriology? What effect does the fact that our children have undergone a salvation experience have on our view of them and on our discipline?

   I personally believe that nearly every branch of theology holds important teaching for effective parenting. I would suggest that until we have studied many of these teachings we should not claim to have a truly biblical view of childrearing. We may be on the right track, and we may have a great deal of biblical truth,

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but we will not have gone as far as we can in applying the riches of God's Word to the needs of contemporary parents.

   A second need for an effective ministry to parents is trained church leaders who understand basic principles of discipline and childrearing, who are sensitive to the feelings and needs of both parents and children, and who are qualified to conduct training sessions for parents. I realize this is easier said than done, but I believe it is vitally important. We need men and women within our churches who have had sufficient life experience to be sensitive to the feelings of parents and their children and who are also sufficiently schooled in the biblical view of parenting that they are not driven from pillar to post by their own subjective reasoning or that of persons confronting them with problems. These people must have the maturity to hold out high goals without placing themselves "above" other learners. They must also be able to encourage honest and open sharing rather than creating a critical environment that reinforces feelings of guilt and failure.

   Needless to say, I do not see today's seminary curriculum training this sort of Christian leader. Most divinity students do not have as much as one course on the Christian family, let alone an entire course on parent-child relationships. While I am not suggesting that every minister should be competent to lead a seminar on Christian parenting, somebody has to do it, and these people will need training.

   Can our seminaries be expected to assume this responsibility? Frankly, I am not sure. I am afraid too much seminary education is divorced from real life issues. Hebrew, Greek, theology, church history, homiletics, and English Bible are obviously important to the training of a minister, but Jesus was "touched with the feelings of our infirmities." What in our seminary curriculum helps prospective pastors become sensitive to the feelings of a rebellious adolescent, a fearful eight-year-old, a stubborn two-year-old, an anxious mother, or a disinterested father? Very little, I suspect. And perhaps this shouldn't be the seminaries' role, but if the seminary doesn't do it, who will? I believe we should set up institutes for training pastors and other leaders for parent ministries. Either within the seminary or in some other setting we need

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thorough training experiences that ground people in the biblical view of parenting plus help them become sensitive to the feelings and infirmities of parent and child alike. This, of course, presupposes the personnel to train future leaders.⁶

   A third need is new material for Christian parents. Although much of value has been produced in recent years, I think that we still do not have any clearly definitive works that lay out a complete biblical foundation for parenting and then practically apply that foundation to the myriad of problems faced by the average parent.

   We need action-centered material. We need programs, workbooks, and planned activities that will help parents apply basic biblical and psychological insights to daily family problems. It is not enough to simply state the principles. The life-long habit patterns of most parents rarely change with a few intellectual insights or prophetic exhortation. Instead, they change only when we have consistent support and guidance from other people.

   For example, I find it quite easy to go into a church or large group meeting and speak for an hour or two on parent-child relationships. I can entertain the audience. I can give new biblical and psychological insights. And I think people generally go away feeling they have received their money's worth! But I sometimes walk away with a certain empty feeling. I realize that when the sun comes up the next morning most people who heard my lecture won't really be so very different in relating to their children. Oh, they may have some new insights, and they may try a couple of new "techniques," but few really deep, basic changes will have taken place. It is one thing, for example, to tell a parent he or she should not correct children in anger or attack their self-esteem. It is quite another for that parent to gain sufficient insight into his or her own hostilities to avoid punishing instead of disciplining or to avoid demeaning a child's sense of self-esteem. This is certainly true in my experience with my own children.

   The Scriptures make it clear that growth is a process and that we need other people to provoke it (Ephesians 4:14-16). Most of us can change if we have someone who can stick with us over a period of time to allow us to express our feelings and frustrations,

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to help us gain a greater measure of objectivity, and gradually to improve our parenting behavior, but most parents don't have this opportunity. They attend a lecture or read a book, and then they are on their own. This should not be.

   I am often asked to recommend books and materials that will be of help to parents. Frankly, I hesitate to recommend any specific material because I have yet to find anything I agree with completely! I have also been unable to read all of the materials that are available. Given these limitations, I think what might be most helpful is a set of guidelines to evaluate both the accuracy and the practicality of the many available materials.

   First, the material should clearly reflect the viewpoint that the Bible is our ultimate authority. By this I do not mean that the material has to have hundreds of biblical references. The number of biblical references is not nearly as important as the basic tone of the material. Satan can quote Scripture! Does the author communicate a deep commitment to the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures? And do his writings appear to flow from this commitment and from a desire to communicate God's truth about the family? Or does he engage more in an occasional prooftexting of essentially secular theories?

   Second, what is the author's view of family government? Is it permissive? Is it authoritarian? Or is it biblical? As I understand the Bible, it lays out a family structure based upon mutual sensitivity and sharing within the framework of the loving authority of the parents. Specifically, I do not see the Bible supporting either the "because I said so" approach of authoritarianism or the "if it feels good do it" approach of permissiveness. As the model parent, God does not force us to do a lot of things we do not want. He is amazingly patient and understanding of our feelings. At the same time he does not leave us to our own desires and devices with no firm guidance or direction. Materials that lean to either of these extremes should be considered suspect.

   Third, the author's view of motivation should be biblical. By that I mean that the major means of parental motivation should be love and an understanding of the consequences of negative behaviors. Writings that promote the use of parental power to instill

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fear in a child are not acceptable. Consider this quotation as an example:

If I were to ask, "Which emotion should fathers and mothers use to counter Satan's appeals?" You'd come back with the sweet reply — "LOVE." That sounds very nice and proper, doesn't it? Well, I'm sorry — that's NOT the emotion. We need something more powerful than parental love. There's only one emotion that is greater — FEAR. I know that startles you. But mama-love and papa-love do not have the same effect on them it used to.

Parents, seeking to compete with Satan, must answer with the countering emotion of fear. Fear is the one great emotion to which everyone responds. Fear alone can check the awesome forces unleashed in teens.⁷

   Biblical discipline is based on the loving response of an understanding parent, not the angry one of a frustrated adult. As John put it, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love" (1 John 4:18, RSV). Our appeals to changed behavior should be based on love and an understanding of the harmful consequences that misbehavior causes rather than on fear. A.H. Strong includes an excellent discussion of the theological distinctions between discipline and punishment in his Systematic Theology.⁸

   Fourth, helpful writings on parent-child relationships should reflect the author's understanding of the child's inner world. To borrow a term from secular psychology, they should reflect the author's ability to assume the child's "internal frame of reference." Does the author understand what it must be like to be a hungry infant lying in a crib? Does he understand what it must be like to be a fearful two-year-old in a world of seeming giants? Or, does the author see things only from adult perspectives? For example, it is so easy to see the two-year-old simply as a "stubborn, rebellious child." It is much more difficult to understand why he is so stubborn — two years ago he didn't even exist; one year ago he was just beginning to walk and talk; now he feels hopelessly small and inadequate and his stubbornness reflects, not only his rebellious nature, but also a wholesome desire to become

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a person in his own right. Similarly, does the author know teenagers are supposed to be "moody" and to bounce from one attitude or activity to another?

   Fifth, the author of good material for parents should show a mature sensitivity to his or her own attitudes and feelings. If someone is really an expert, he or she won't claim to have all the answers and will not be rigid in attitudes and actions.

   Sixth, materials for parents should be immensely practical. While homiletical excellence may be fine for the pulpit, eloquent persuasion does little to change the life-style of the twentieth-century parent. We need materials that tell us how to handle temper tantrums, sibling fights, the finicky eater, the rebellious adolescent, and the spiritual dropout. Materials that fail to touch such practical issues as these are best left on the shelves.

   I am sure I could go on and list several other guidelines, and frankly, I could probably rule out all material, including my own! This is not what I intend. Instead, I am suggesting that we try to select the best possible material, but we should be prepared to evaluate it critically and not hesitate to correct its inadequacies through additional reading, exercises, or lecture input.

   For example, I frequently refer parents to Rudolf Dreikurs's Logical Consequences: A New Approach to Discipline⁹ and Haim Ginott's Between Parent and Child.¹⁰ These secular books both have a very inadequate view of the nature of man and of the biblical pattern for family government, but Ginott's is the best book I know on communication with children, and Dreikurs's presentation of natural and logical consequences is superb. I tell parents, "Ginott is beautiful on communication but wretched on discipline, and Dreikurs is great on natural and logical consequences, but his concepts of democracy and of the nature of man are grossly unbiblical!" If we are willing to be creative and critical, we can all find material to adapt to our particular needs and purposes.

   A fourth primary need for changing the quality of living in the Christian home has to do with the program of the local church. We need to structure classes and seminars into the ongoing

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educational outreach of our churches. I personally believe that every church should have at least one full quarter class for parents each year. This could be during the Sunday school hour, on Sunday evening, or during the week, but it should be a vital part of the church's Christian education program. Ideally, it should not be an elective that is offered after church members have taken other basic courses. It should be at the very heart and core of our entire Christian education program. What an opportunity to make our theology relevant! What better way to learn something of the character of God than to study the implications of God's dealings with us as his children for our dealing with our own children? What greater opportunity to understand and appropriate God's forgiveness than to think of forgiving our own children? And what better way to see God's loving hand of discipline than to begin to see the difference between the times we lovingly correct our children for their good and the times we punish them out of our own frustrations?

   These classes or seminars need to be structured to maximize participation. It is not enough to hear the principles. We need individual or small-group attention and support to apply the principles to our children in our situation. Small study groups serve as ideal vehicles for taking a theology of childrearing, communicating it through a trained leader and appropriate materials and weaving it into the fabric of daily living. These groups take important principles from the realm of the abstract and put them into practice.

   As a psychologist I see one other basic need. This is for a series of comprehensive research studies into the workings of the Christian home. By singling out certain obviously effective Christian parents and studying their relations with their children, perhaps we could gain insight into some essential ingredients of effective parenting. Do emotionally mature and spiritually committed children come from homes where the father spends a great deal of time with the children? Do they come from homes that have daily family devotions? Do they come from families that rely heavily on physical spanking? Do they come from families

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with good husband-wife communication? Or is the overall emotional tone of the family the most important factor?

   And what is going on in the many apparently "fine Christian homes" that have produced rebellious, spiritually disinterested children? Was an unseen authoritarianism at work? Were the parents so busy in church activities the children felt neglected? Or did the children feel an excessive need to "be good" because they were held out as an exemplary Christian family? Answers to these and similar questions could be very helpful in shedding new light on effective parenting.

   Some recently initiated research studies at the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology illustrate another type of research that can be helpful. Fleck and Day¹¹ studied the relationship between the perceptions a group of college students had of God and of their parents. They found that college students who were converted prior to ten years of age had very similar God and parent concepts while students converted at age seventeen or older showed much less similarity.

   In a related study Edwards¹² found a positive relationship between the image of God a group of college students had and the quality of their spiritual experience. Taken together these two studies demonstrate two important principles: (1) A person's image of God is apparently a function of the way he perceives his earthly parents, and (2) This image of God is related to the quality of the person's spiritual experience. The implications are wide-ranging. If a child has unforgiving parents, he is likely to see God as unforgiving. If he has perfectionistic parents, he will probably have difficulty believing God is ever pleased with his performance. And if he has a nagging parent, he will tend to view God as being constantly "on his back." I believe confusion of God and parent is one of the major causes of spiritual rebellion among adolescents. They blame God for their parents' failings, identify God with their parents, and rebel against both. This vicious cycle can be changed only as parents give children a healthier image of what God is like through their daily relations with their children.

   In another study, Foster and Edwards¹³ found that parents

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from Christian homes were a more important source of influence in the development of their children's self-esteem than non-Christian parents. Although children from Christian homes showed no higher levels of self-esteem than those from non-Christian homes, their parents did make a greater impact (for better or worse) on their children's self-esteem! This study also raises some important questions. Why, for example, didn't children from Christian homes evidence a higher level of self-esteem than those from non-Christian homes? And why is it that Christian parents apparently have a greater impact on their children's self-esteem than non-Christian parents? I won't venture any answers at this point but would like to suggest we need to find some answers.

   These studies only scratch the surface, but they indicate the type of information that is available. Many more practical problems can be researched. We could, for example, study the effects of the separation of missionary children from their parents. We could study the effects of parents' personality styles on the adjustment of children, and we could study the effect of church attendance and peer influence on Christian children.

   A final area of research could be the effectiveness of various training programs for parents. What lasting effects come, for example, from attendance at the many types of conferences and seminars now being offered? Do family conferences really change the family? And do seminars for parents really change the parents? An evaluation of several types of training programs could tell us what type of training really works. We may currently be wasting a lot of time in unproductive efforts. If so, we should eliminate them. On the other hand, if some programs are working, let's find out why and how and begin to utilize them even more productively.

   These are just a few areas that call for our attention. A topic as complex as Christian parenthood really deserves much lengthier study. I do believe, however, that if we develop a theology of childrearing, a group of trained leaders, practical new materials, structured classes and seminars, and a series of comprehensive research studies we will be well on our way to a vastly improved ministry to parents.

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Notes

1. Al and Pat Fabrijio, Children — Fun or Frenzy? (Palo Alto, Cal.: pamphlet, 1969), p. 10.

2. Howard G. Hendricks, Heaven Help the Home (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1974), p. 67.

3. C.S. Lovett, What's a Parent to Do? (New York: Personal Christianity, 1971), p. 61.

4. Hazen G. Werner, "Wise Parental Love," The Marriage Affair, ed. J. Allan Peterson (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1971), pp. 161-62.

5. This material is adapted from my book Help! I'm a Parent (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1972).

6. Other faculty members from the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology and I have developed an intensive one-week seminar to train pastors, educators, and other interested adults to conduct seminars and classes for parents. This seminar includes approximately 40 hours of instruction as well as collateral reading and curriculum materials that can be used either in the church or in parent study-groups. Information can be obtained by writing Parent Education Seminars, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Rosemead, Calif. 91770.

7. Lovett, What's a Parent to Do? p. 61.

8. A. H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1916), pp. 652-55.

9. Rudolf Dreikurs, Logical Consequences: A New Approach to Discipline (New York: Hawthorn 1968).

10. Haim Ginnott, Between Parent and Child (New York: Avon, 1965).

11. J.R. Fleck, L.G. Day, J.W. Reilly, "Concepts of God and Parents, and Perceived Parental Religious Orientation as a Function of Age of Christian Conversion Experience," 1974.

12. K.J. Edwards, "Sex-Role Stereotyping of Jesus: A Dimension of Identification and Its Relation to Subjective Religious Experience," 1975.

13. T. Foster and K.J. Edwards, "Parental Influences on Self-Esteem of Preadolescent Boys in Evangelical and Nonevangelical Families," 1975.

_________________

Dr. Bruce Narramore is academic dean of the Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology. He is the author of several books including, Help I'm a Parent, and An Ounce of Prevention.

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