The Perfect Father

Several months ago, one of my pastors, Nick Wagenmaker, shared a teaching on good parenting. He made the point that the best parent is not the one who tells his children what to do and then makes them do it. Rather, the best parent lays out principles of behavior and lets his children apply those principles within the scope of their free will. In other words, a good parent helps his children learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Obviously, there are limits to the freedom a good parent allows. One wouldn’t allow his children to drink poison or run into the path of an oncoming truck. Locking up dangerous substances and monitoring activities near the road are examples of logical limits a parent must apply. On the other hand, if a child wants to exercise his freedom to do something that might cause minor discomfort or loss, the best parent allows the child to suffer in order to learn.

We have all seen the so-called helicopter parents hovering over every aspect of their children’s lives. As a coach, I was painfully aware of how desperately some parents wanted their kids to star on the field. Recently I came across the term “bulldozer parents” to describe the overwhelming pressure some parents place on their children, shoving them into situations the children either don’t want or cannot handle. I have also witnessed the disaster these parents have sometimes created when their children rebel as they get older.

It goes without saying that too little supervision also has a negative consequence. I think of the history of Eli’s sons recorded in 1Samuel 2. Eli was not only too loose with his supervision, he apparently failed to provide his sons with the proper grounding in righteous behavior. Giving children some latitude to experiment is fine as long as there are boundary principles within which they operate. When children are raised without such boundaries, we see results such as school shootings, teen pregnancies and all manner of social disorder.

As with human parents, so it is with our Heavenly Father. Most believers realize that having free will is an integral part of bearing the image of God. Absent freedom to choose, the requirement to love and honor God would be meaningless. Robots can obey commands, but they cannot return love to their creators. The freedom not to obey, not to love is essential to the status of God’s image bearers. God had to give Adam the choice whether to eat the forbidden fruit or not to eat it.

Here we come to the point of this lesson on parenting: God, the best parent ever, allows us the freedom to behave any way we choose. Before joining His family by uniting with Christ, we were more likely to do wrong than right. After being adopted into God’s family, our revived spirits get help from His Holy Spirit to overcome the drag the world places on our souls. The pull of the flesh, the world and the devil is still there; the difference is whereas we had little power to resist before, we now have the power of Almighty God to steer us correctly.

I purposely chose the word “steer.” As the perfect parent, God does not force us into righteous behavior; He guides us through His Word, our renewed conscience and the community of fellow believers. When Paul tells us it was, “For freedom that Christ has set us free,” he adds the reminder that prior to our life in Christ, we were bound as slaves to sin. We now have the “freedom” NOT to sin which was not possible before. Sadly, we often still choose to sin anyway, breaking our commitment to the One who bought our freedom.

The writer of Hebrews points out that, like an earthly father, our Heavenly Father disciplines us when we make those wrong choices. While the discipline is not pleasant, it is proof that we are legitimately children of God according to the Hebrews’ author. If God didn’t care about us, He wouldn’t bother to help us stay on the right track. He wants us to obey Him out of love, but He will use discipline to convince us to obey when love fails to do so.

My children are all grown now. I don’t have the same control over them I once imagined I had. I am happy to say that they are each living lives that, in large part, honor the God they chose to serve while still under my roof. Each of my adult children has made choices at one time that I would have wished to countermand, but I have no power to discipline them anymore. But I am not without the power to affect their lives. I pray daily that God will draw them close and take whatever means necessary to keep them safe and sound – sound meaning grounded in His love. After all, He is the perfect Father.