Is It All Just A Crap Shoot?
I attended a lovely wedding over the past weekend. The bride was the daughter of some good friends -- some of the most outstanding people I know who raised two amazing daughters. These women are not outstanding just because they are very successful professionally, they are outstanding because they are fine people -- compassionate, caring, thoughtful and faithful. Over the years I've looked at this family as a model for what the "christian" family should look like. This is a family where values were lived not just talked about, a family where the parents were definitely in charge but the girls were given freedom to become themselves. Yet, it has not been a family without heartbreak, either. So you can see why I often point to them as a model for spiritually nurturing families. But whenever I do that I always have this nagging sense in the back of my mind that there are probably other families out there who parented in much the same way my friends did whose children didn't turn out to be as spiritually and emotionally healthy as my friends' daughters. And we all know families where the parenting has not been the best it could be and the kids still turn out to be fine human beings. So what was the difference? Is it just that parents do the very best they can and hope for the best? And where does God and the Holy Spirit figure into all of this? Does parenting really matter? (I think it does - but it is an intriguing question when one looks at the anedotal evidence). Often we look at the dysfunctional to see what functional really is. Perhaps it's time to look at functional families to find out significant correlations to spiritual and emotional maturity.
4 Comments:
Bingo, IVY! I completely agree. So many times in models of education and childrearing it is a "Let's look at what people are doing wrong and fix it model." But you are coming from a "What are people doing right and encourage it model." I think that this is exactly what parents and educators need to do.
Concentrating on how to fix the bad usually doesn't work all that well. I am glad to see that you are encouraging your readers (and I hope you have more of them) to look to the good and embrace and encourage those elements.
In light of all those true observations that make us wonder if it's "all just a crap shoot" (I'm a parent with 5 kids 16-24), believing that the best parenting in the world will never fill the God-shaped space in kids that God has saved for Himself, believing that even in the midst of horrible parenting or faced with children making "bad" choices God can intervene... I wonder if even considering that there's a model for right and wrong may have it's root in a didactic model.
As a mom I thought about Cain and Abels' mom and Samson's mom and David's mom...had they grown up in evangelical churches they would have been ostracized big time... yes? And David was a man after God's heart...
We may just have to prayerfully go back to scripture and radically change our thinking...There are so many interrelated elements involved on one hand... and on the other there's probably something profoundly simple about it all ...
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