Heart of the Matter: Raising Children in the Age of Fulfillment

Live from the Mecca of Mormonism – Salt Lake City, Utah, this is HEART OF THE MATTER. We are looking at all sorts of things relative to living in the age of fulfillment.

And I’m your host Shawn McCraney. Show 15A: Problem Child?

Taped Tuesday, March 24th, 2020. Aired Monday, March 30th, 2020. So, we have all the theories in place, don’t we? Christian schools this, family administration that. This is how to live, right?

So how are Christian parents in the age of fulfillment supposed to respond to children who have issues, problems, who get into trouble or are flat out rebellious? I say in the age of fulfillment because if this was not the age of fulfillment, then managing troubled and rebellious children would take on a different approach.

New Testament Guidance

See, in the New Testament era, Jesus was coming back to save His bride from the prophesied and eminent destruction that was headed their way. So, in that day, Paul says that the Bride was to be spotless and without blame, and he wrote in both Ephesians 6:1 and Colossians 3:20:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.”

This was good advice to children then and it remains great advice today. Why? Who loves their children more than their parents, right? So for children to obey their parents is something children need to understand as beneficial to their well-being, and not detrimental.

This is a great source of reasoning to use with children when they balk at your administration and ways: to lovingly explain to them that there is nobody on earth who loves them more, cares more about their health and safety and well-being, and will advise them better on how to make choices than their parents. (Of course, there are always exceptions to this).

But with life comes problems, and with children come growing pains.

Agape Love in Action

This is going to be a very short show because the answer to a child having trouble in school with assignments, the answer to a child getting into a fight, doing something mean to others, refusing to follow the house rules, or worse yet, dabbling with drugs and alcohol, being promiscuous, or coming out as a homosexual, is love—agape love, which is defined by scripture as being:

Joy
Peace
Longsuffering
Gentleness
Goodness
Faith
Meek
Self-controlled

For tonight’s discussion, I am going to flip these attributes of Agape Love around and use them situationally. So the characteristics of agape love in reverse order of Paul’s list are:

Self-controlled
Meek
Faith
Good
Gentle
Longsuffering
Peaceful
Joyful
Loving

So, the principal calls and says that our son was rude to the teacher. As a Christian parent that loves as Jesus loves, when he comes home from school will we react eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth and be rude to him? No, we would be:

Self-controlled
Meek
Faith
Good
Gentle
Longsuffering
Peaceful
Joyful
Loving

That’s on the small stuff, but what about the bigger stuff? Johnny gets arrested. Jane is sleeping around.

Love. Love. Love.

Andy is a homosexual. William molests a kid next door. Your own child is molested.

Love. Love. Love.

Love does not mean we are not direct with our children or with those who hurt us or our family. Love does not mean that we condone certain practices. Agape love simply structures our motivations and reactions toward situations and people.

Implementing Agape Love

We can express our disappointment, our expectations, our concerns for a child's behaviors, and even administer discipline, but it must be framed in:

Self-control
Meekness
Faithfulness
Goodness
Gentleness
Longsuffering
Peacefulness
Joyfulness
And love.

Love wins. Love works. Love builds. Love heals. It is remembered. It sinks into the hearts of children when bestowed upon them. It tells them, like God tells us, that no matter what someone does, no matter who they turn out to be, no matter what course or decisions they make with their lives, we love them as God loves us.

Even tough love MUST be administered with self-control, meekness, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness, longsuffering, peace, and joy.

There’s nothing magic in tonight’s program. Parents cannot—cannot go wrong with love running their show when it comes to every circumstance a child faces.

Finally, when it comes to the most recalcitrant children, the most rebellious, the most addicted, abusive, and criminal, nothing I’ve said should be forgotten, as those characteristics are the framework of all a parent does, but in those cases, it IS the most loving thing to let the child experience pain.

To suffer jail time, withdrawals, financial ruin, or other natural outcomes from aberrant behaviors. We know this is a form of love as God Himself, who is love…

The Balance of Love and Consequences

And so with longsuffering and meekness and gentleness, we take our children in our arms, and we reaffirm to them that we are there for them when they suffer – to pray for them, be present for them, to talk to them and rally behind them, but to allow them to suffer the consequences of their actions once our instructions have been ignored.

Wrapping this up is what I am saying is it is NOT loving to support bad behavior. It is the opposite of love. But it is similarly not loving to withdrawal our unconditional love from our offending children during their worst times – this is when they need us, those who love them most, most.

Loving Support Without Enabling

Do hold your drug addicted children in your arms, but never feed their habit in anyway. Visit them in jail, but don’t bail them out. Let these types – and many of us have them – experience the fallout from their ways, because in some children, it is the most loving thing we can do.

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