As the Twig is bent, so Grows the TREE.
Many Christian parents think that if they exercise due diligence in exposing their children to the Christian faith, following Christ will automatically result. But the task of raising children and passing on the baton of faith isn’t automatic. It takes great wisdom and perhaps even more, grace.
Melanie was born and raised in a devout Christian home. Her parents were conscientious about Sunday school and church attendance. Concerned about the influence of the world, they even home-schooled Melanie. Shortly after high school graduation Melanie started hanging out with Dan, who didn’t attend church. It wasn’t long before they started running with a rough crowd and using drugs. Besides a few brushes with the law they lived a Bohemian lifestyle and moved in together … until Melanie became pregnant. Then Dan left and Melanie went home.
We are all too familiar with stories like Melanie’s. Stories of young adults who decide to kick over the traces of their Christian upbringing to embrace the world. What do we as parents and fellow-believers do when our kids or our friend’s kids depart from the path, behaving in ways we don’t approve of and announcing they don’t believe things we raised them to believe?
I cannot offer a sure-fire fix for keeping kids on the straight and narrow. There simply isn’t one. But I can offer two insights that may help us as parents and friends to exercise wisdom and show grace.
The first insight is about human development. When kids are younger they typically follow along with their parents’ values and beliefs. But as they mature they are exposed to values, beliefs, and behaviours that differ from those of their parents. They begin to question what they themselves will value, believe, and how they should behave in their own life. This is part of their natural development into adults.
Individuation, separating oneself in one’s identity from one’s parents, is essential to maturity. Parents often perceive this as rebellion, and in one sense it is. In many cases rebellion is nothing more than our kids trying to assert themselves as individuals, and not as clones of us, their parents.
Therefore they go through a time of trying things on for size as it were, almost asking themselves, “Is this me? How about if I do this? Does that fit?” I call it a reality-testing phase of trying to figure out their reality and answer for themselves, “Who am I in the world?”
Related to this is the fact that when our children are small, we exercise total authority over them. We tell them what to do and when to do it. But wise parents will recognize that there comes a point in their child’s development, usually during the teen years, where their role switches from being the authority to being an influencer.
When they are going through the reality-testing phase, that is the time we want to come alongside, not as authorities with rigid rules, but influencers seeking to guide. When it comes to the clash of values, battles must be chosen carefully. Ask yourself: how much will this issue matter five or 10 years down the road? Is it worth it to succeed in making them conform only to lose the influence you will want to have later?
As they wrestle with different viewpoints we need to come alongside as allies and brothers and sisters in the faith to facilitate the process, not authorities to clamp down on them and anything that smacks of being unchristian. We’ll see in the process of wrestling, not unlike the butterfly seeking to emerge from its cocoon, new faith muscles grow. Faith becomes strong and authentic.
Here is the second insight. As a younger generation believes in and follows Christ, they must interpret Scripture and apply it for themselves in the context of their culture. Since the world is different than it was 25 years ago, how faith is lived out will also look different. We need the wisdom to recognize this and the grace to not react when it doesn’t look and sound like the way we express our faith. We baby boomers certainly gave ourselves permission to exercise our faith in a different way than our parents when we altered many things about how church is done and how faith is lived out.
Remember, we are bending twigs, not breaking them.
