If you are a parent or you work with children, please go to my friend Kerry Clark’s blog and read this post.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Okay, so we had a birthday party for Amelia yesterday. A baker’s dozen small children littered our house, literally spilling out onto the front lawn, hopped up on sugar and adrenaline.

There’s this thing that goes on among the parents these days — this one-upsmanship that no one likes to speak of. The most recent birthday party our kids went to featured a young(ish) woman dressed up like a princess who painted faces and performed magic tricks. There was a moon bounce and a pony ride and lots of other carnival-type attractions.

We are not in a position to offer such things.

So, we decided we’d go old school with the birthday festivities. You know — pin the tail on the donkey, musical chairs, that kind of stuff. Except we hadn’t reckoned on something: kids don’t play those games anymore. When we tried explaining the rules to musical chairs we realized that none of the children present had the foggiest idea what in the world we were trying to get them to do. At first, I thought it was because they were too young. Maybe this would be their first exposure to a wonderful game everyone learns to play at some point in time during their childhood.

But as we progressed the awful truth began to dawn: they not only had never played this game before; they’d never played any game like it. You know — where someone wins and someone loses. The concept of losing was completely lost on them. Worse, they all began to cry immediately upon being labeled “out”.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of zero-sum games where, in order for one person to win everyone else has to lose. But still…musical chairs? I quick survey of the adults present revealed that no one had, in fact, witnessed such a contest in any of their children’s classrooms. They simply don’t play games that deal with winning and losing anymore. Everyone’s a winner. Everyone gets a trophy.

The children were baffled at this mysterious thing that was happening to them. “I was walking around and around. Then the music stopped, and I looked around for a place to sit. But someone had taken one of the chairs away. I have no place to sit. Everyone else, but not me. Does this mean I get a prize?”

No, Olivia, it means you lose.

As the crowd of chair sitters grew smaller and smaller, the number of criers grew larger and louder, commiserating with one another at the sheer injustice of it all. “Can you imagine it? A game where only one person gets the prize?! This is terrible! I’m going to be in therapy for years!”

In talking with the other parents present, I asked if any of them remembered playing musical chairs when they were children. Everyone said yes. And did they remember the sting of being called “out”? Of course. Did they weep inconsolably over it? No.

Well…do you think maybe the children are missing a vital life lesson here?

Rant over.

God’s agenda for us is that we become more and more godly — not merely more and more biblical. The latter is merely functional as a means to the former, and if we ever find ourselves becoming more biblical but less godly, we can be assured that something has gone terribly wrong!

Furthermore, God’s goal goes far beyond morality. It is possible to be a very moral person and still remain far from God. The Pharisees are solid examples of people who fit both categories; they were very moral and very biblical. But they were so far from God that they couldn’t recognize him when he showed up in person and stood right in front of them!

So, if godliness is the aim for our lives, how do we know we’re hitting the mark in becoming the kind of parents God would have us be? Well, when you start parenting your children the way God has parented you — then you know you’re on the right track. And when your goal for your kids lines up with God’s goal for them, again, you’re headed in the right direction.

But most parents I talk to are more concerned with trying to get their children to sit still at the dinner table, to sleep through the night, to use their manners and stop hitting their siblings. In other words, parents tend to be more concerned with externals than internals, and end up calling behavior modification techniques good parenting.

One of the problems with such a focus on the externals (and there are many) is that you can end up raising kids who suffer from Eddie Haskell syndrome. You know the type of kid I’m talking about, right? You went to high school with someone who was always polite, always well-behaved…until all the adults left the room. Then he was the definition of troublemaker.

Jesus met up with people like this during his life on earth. He said that their outsides looked great, but their insides were rotten. They were like a tomb that had been painted white. It looked so nice and clean, but the contents stunk like you wouldn’t believe!

It wasn’t a new problem for Jesus, though. The prophet Isaiah, back in the Old Testament, had mentioned how the people looked so great as they practiced their religious rituals. But God could see what was really going on inside, and he knew how far they were from him in their hearts and minds.

Jesus’ solution to the problem was interesting. He acknowledged that behavior was important, but he said it wasn’t as important as character.

Jesus was less concerned with behavior than he was with what was going on inside a person. Jesus seemed to believe that people do what they do because they believe and feel certain things. So, he knew better than to focus all of his energies on behavior modification techniques that produce short-term results and “false-positives”. He went to the root of the problem, looking beyond mere externals in an attempt to fix what was going on internally. He didn’t just want his followers to do certain things; he wanted them to become certain kinds of people for whom the right things were done naturally.

So, if we were to allow Jesus to set the agenda for our parenting, we may need to take some of the emphasis off our child’s behavior and put more emphasis on character development.

What might that look like? And why do you think more parents don’t parent from the inside-out?

I grew up in a religious environment that stressed the importance of the Bible. Our church was keenly interested in finding a biblical reason for why we did particular things in particular ways. We wanted to be a biblical church with biblical leaders holding biblical beliefs and doing biblical things.

This is not necessarily bad, but it’s not necessarily good, either. It’s not bad; it’s just insufficient.

Being biblical should never be the goal for an individual Christian or a church. Being biblical is only useful as a means to a greater end, and that greater end is godliness.

For example, a person may “go into all the world” in an attempt to “make disciples” (a very biblical thing to do), but if, as you are going, you are a jerk…well…you may be doing a biblical thing in an ungodly way. Being biblical people is of no use to us if it actually keeps us from becoming godly. And it often does just that when we think we’ve arrived by simply doing what the Bible says.

And here’s why I bring this up now — in the context of a series on parenting: There are a lot of biblical parents in churches. There is a lot of material out there designed to help you become more biblical in your parenting. Books and tapes and seminars abound where parents are given a lot of different Bible verses to apply in their homes.

But what is often missing is the idea that parents are supposed to be godly — not just biblical. And if a biblical parent stops short of becoming godly, a lot of bad things can happen. Bible verses can be used to reinforce an authoritarian battle of wills with our children. Without taking on the mind-set, attitude and thoughtfulness of Jesus (aka “The mind of Christ”) good Bible verses become a justification for taking a power-based approach to parenting — an approach that dishonors God and fails to produce the long-term results we hope for.

In a biblical but ungodly model, “good” children are obedient — never mind that it’s usually passive obedience or merely external compliance. This shortsighted definition of success makes parents feel good, but the long-term consequences are disastrous. This kind of parenting often produces frightened, legalistic children rather than free and secure adults. As those children grow older, the tend to become less and less like Jesus and more and more like the judgmental religious folks for whom he reserved his harshest criticism.

So, the question good parents must ask themselves (and they must ask it often) moves from “Are we biblical parents?” to “Are we godly parents? Are we parenting our children the way God parents us? Would God ever ‘bow up’ on us and remind us that he could kill us and make another one that looks just like us? Would God ever yell at us for spilling milk at the dinner table? Would God call us names or threaten us?”

What are some of the differences you can think of between biblical parenting and godly parenting?

Jesus never had kids, so we don’t typically think about him when we think about how God wants us to parent our children.

Then again, Jesus never ran a business or pastored a church, but we think about him in that context all the time. But that’s another story….

For today, imagine Jesus wrote a book about parenting. What do you think he would say? How would what he says about parenting differ from most of what we hear on the subject?

A little over a year ago I wrote the following post. Given what we’ve been talking about here lately, and the topic of my sermon this Sunday, I thought it might be appropriate to restate what I feel so passionately about.

**********

I believe (and there’s some research out there to back this up) that every parent knows that when it comes to shaping the morals, values and ethics of our kids, it should be the parents driving that bus. I also believe that most parents feel overwhelmed and undermined as to how to go about doing it. In the absence of a plan, they most often turn to the only experts they know and trust: the church.

Most of the people who read this blog will attend church somewhere this weekend. You are thoughtful Christian people for the most part; many of you are thoughtful Christian parents. You take your kids to church, to a youth group or to Sunday School, and you expect them to learn something there that will help shape their faith and character.

That’s fine insofar as it goes. But I want you to hear this: the church can’t raise your kids.

It’s not supposed to, and it has done a terribly ineffective job when it has tried.

I love the fact that churches are getting more and more intentional about providing good, quality programming for children. It ought to be innovative and inspiring. It ought to rival the best Disney and Nickelodeon and PBS have to offer in terms marrying creativity and educational content. Churches ought to increase the percentage of their budget that goes to children’s programming, even if it means cutting some long-standing programs that benefit adults.

But I’ll say it again: the church can’t raise your kids.

I repeat myself because something really tragic has happened over the course of the last several decades. While we were busy developing innovative programming for children, we somehow convinced parents that it would probably be in their best interests to leave the faith development of their kids to experts like us.

Somehow, though I don’t think we did this intentionally, the faith development of children has largely become church-centered and home-supported.

Church is where kids go to learn about God and faith and morals and all that stuff. Families support those churches financially and by making sure the kids are there as often as possible. As long as parents have their children at church frequently enough, they feel like they’re doing their part to shape the faith and character of those children.

There are lots of reasons why this has happened; none of them are good enough. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. It can’t work.

God has not set it up to work. God established the family to be the primary unit of faith development. Families may come together to form a church, and that church can support what’s going on in those families. But the faith development of kids is supposed to be home-based and church-supported.

I have looked all through the Bible and have not found one verse that tells churches how to raise kids. God put those kids into a family — under your leadership — and he calls you to do the heavy lifting. Raise your own kids. Stop relying so much on the church to do something God hasn’t called or equipped it to do.

Now, in order to be the parent, you’re going to need a plan. I’m not going to give you a plan. I’ll give you suggestions, but this is something I would never presume to tell you how to do. You know your kids. Anyone who ever tells you that all children should be treated the same way is wrong. Anyone who offers you the false hope of “one-size-fits-all” parenting should be dismissed. Kids aren’t animals, and kids aren’t computers. They have minds of their own and the ability to make their own decisions and choices. You must tailor your parenting to suit the personalities of both you and your child. Failure to do this is failure to honor your child and failure to honor the God who creates us uniquely.

For now, here’s the thing I want you to remember: the church can’t raise your kids.

A number of you wrote in to say that you think parenting is probably harder now than it ever has been before. There are plenty of reasons why someone might say this.

There are certainly fewer “cultural allies”, as one social critic words it. There was a time when just about everyone in your neighborhood (if you lived in a neighborhood) shared the same values and morals. Even when you might have disagreed about certain beliefs (say, the neighbors were Jewish or something) there was still a general sense of morality in your community. Parents could even trust the local radio and television stations to run generally wholesome programming during prime-time hours. You sent kids to school, and teachers would back parents up, teaching kids the same set of principles taught at home.

Now, this was obviously a double-edged sword. Prejudices were passed on and backed up, too. Ignorance was often confirmed in these kinds of situations. But — on the whole — parents could count on many of the other leaders in a child’s world to be family-friendly. That’s not always the case anymore.

And there are more opportunities for “other voices” to begin speaking into your child’s life at an earlier age than ever before. More of us put our kids in daycare programs or plop them down in front of a video or the Disney Channel or on the Internet. There are a lot of different voices out there vying for your child’s attention, and with more and more families relying on two incomes, it’s easy to see how hard it can be to maintain your place as the primary shaper of your child’s values and morals and beliefs.

There’s also a sense in which parents’ already shaky confidence is constantly being undermined by the vast number of parenting “experts” on the scene. Every newspaper or television show, school or church seems to have someone who majored in Early Childhood Development or Child Psychology or Family Therapy. These people often give off the impression that they know your child better than you do. After all, can you understand your teenager daughter’s internalized angst-driven desire to seek homeostasis within your family system? I didn’t think so. That’s why you need an expert to tell you how it’s done.

Just go to a bookstore and peruse the magazine rack. Look at how many headlines scream out to you: YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, AND YOU MIGHT BE DOING IRREPARABLE DAMAGE TO YOUR CHILD!!!

We spend less time with our children and, as a result, lose confidence in our ability to parent. Parents today feel guilty, worried and indecisive. We secretly think we’re not very good at parenting, and the experts probably do know our kids better than we do.

So, in one sense, parenting is much harder than it used to be.

And yet….

Last year for Christmas I bought my kids the first season of the television show Little House on the Prairie. My girls just love this show, and it’s provided a lot of “teachable moments” for us. One thing that continually amazes me, though, it just how difficult life was for those people. Your child might die from a common cold. They barely had antibiotics. You had to be careful about the water you drank. They lived on the verge of starvation. They didn’t have immunization against polio or chickenpox or the measles. Heck, your kid could wander off and get eaten by a bear.

You want to talk about parenting being hard? We don’t have to worry about half of the things they had.

And I’m not just talking about life as it was 150 years ago. If you want to talk about having it rough as a parent, talk to an African-American family who raised kids in the 40s and 50s. Imagine raising a child who didn’t have a guaranteed quality education or equal access to good jobs. That’s still a reality in some parts of of America, but a lot has changed in the past 50 years. The Ozzie and Harriet Show wasn’t a reality for much of our nation.

So, if we can agree that there are ways in which parentings is more difficult now than it used to be, what are some other ways in which parenting has become easier in recent years?

I’m starting a three-week sermon series this Sunday at The Bridge based on the material in my book Hearts and Minds: Raising Your Child with a Christian View of the World.

This week I’m going to try and answer a simple question, and I’d like your thoughts.

Is parenting today easier or more difficult than it was in previous generations?

Please explain your answer.

Thanks for all your advice on yesterday’s post. Amelia’s our third, so we’ve been through this whole thing before. We’ve even developed a strategy.

Amelia should know that her feelings are important, but she also needs to know that her feelings don’t get to make decisions for the whole family. She also should know that just because she wants to do something, that doesn’t mean she has to do it. On the flip side of that coin, just because she doesn’t want to do something, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to do it.

Also, our response is often determined by how she says, “I don’t want to.” Whining might get one response. An honest plea gets a different response. A defiant tantrum gets still another response.

Finally, there are things she simply must do. She must take her medicine when she’s sick. She must buckle up in her carseat before we leave. Things like that. In a situation where it’s something she just has to do but doesn’t want to, I sometimes resort to this method: “Amelia, you can either do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is daddy pours your medicine in this cup, and you drink it by yourself. If you do it with your good attitude, daddy might even give you a cookie after you’re done. The hard way is daddy pours your medicine in this cup, holds you down, forces your mouth open, pours the medicine down your throat, holds your nose until you swallow it, and you have to stay in your room for 30 minutes. If you do all that with your terrible attitude, daddy might even spank your bottom. Now, which do you choose?”

She rarely ever chooses the hard way.

Now, here’s something for us to consider: She’s three. You expect times like this from a three-year-old. But the reason we discipline her now is because we don’t want her pulling this kind of thing when she’s 15 or 23. We want her to understand that part of being a grown up is doing things we don’t want to do because the consequence of not doing them is even worse (and the benefit of doing them makes our lives better).

There’s going to come a time when we won’t be able to force her into the van and buckle her in her carseat anymore. We won’t be able to hold her down and force medicine down her throath. If she doesn’t want to take her medicine, it’s going to be her choice. If she won’t get in the van, we’ll have to choose between leaving her behind or allowing her to ruin things for the rest of the family.

Of course we’ll continue loving our child, but we will not allow her to hijack the rest of our family and sacrifice our goals and values and plans for the sake of her selfish agenda. If she refuses to participate in the life of this family, if she ever gets abusive or destructive, we may even ask her to leave. I’ve known parents who did just that, and it’s got to be among the most heartbreaking choices a parent ever has to make.

You never stop loving your child, and you always hold the door open for reconciliation. But boundaries are healthy, and healthy isn’t always pain-free.

Now, some of you may have figured out where I’m going with this.

How is this any different from dealing with people in church who simply do not want to change with the rest of us? They don’t want to pursue the same goals or values or plans as the rest of us. They don’t want to cancel Sunday night services. They don’t want to stop adult Bible classes. They don’t want to have all these strange, new people in their church. They don’t want to give up their seat for someone else. They don’t want to reach out. They don’t want to give more. They don’t want to volunteer. They don’t want to serve. They don’t really want to grow.

How should church leadership deal with those people?

This is Amelia, my three-year-old daughter. She’s the cutest and funniest three-year-old I know. But she doesn’t always look like this.

Sometimes she looks like this:

If you’ve ever known a three-year-old, you know it’s not always fun.

Sometimes we’ll ask Amelia to do something, and her new response is, “I don’t want to.”

Sometimes it’s said in a whiny voice. Sometimes it’s said earnestly. Sometimes it’s shouted and followed by the stomping of feet or just sitting in the middle of the floor. Sometimes there’s a full-on throw-down tantrum.

So…parenting experts…what should I do?