Parenting and our double standards

With the start of the school year, weekday computer game time for the kids has been shelved, thankfully with less-than-expected withdrawal symptoms, as they bid a regretful au revoir to the iPad, laptop, etc!  One of the things we tell our kids is that if they get addicted to computer games or Korean dramas and lose control, we will throw them away.  I bet you have probably said the same thing to your children!

Earlier this week, my wife very wisely pointed out to me the parenting double standards that are evident in this scenario.  It's often more straightforward to see our children's weaknesses.  For us as adults, we tend to be able to rationalise our weaknesses - spending excessive time on social media in the guise of keeping up with friends, buying branded goods by saying we have to present a certain image, or taking part in gossip in the name of "networking".

Matthew 5:30 says:
If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

So how is it that we can see that it makes sense for our children to throw away stuff that causes them to lose self-control, but we can't see the sense for ourselves?  Even more embarrassingly, how is it that even our children can learn to be obedient, and learn to see the sense of throwing away the bad stuff, but we can't?

God, help me always to be a child before You and obedient to You.  Reveal the condition of my heart, and the purity of my motives.  And help me to throw off the sin that entangles!

As I sit here and type this, it strikes me that there is something else that kids have that we don't - and that's the sense of wonder.  Over time, wonder is tempered into mundanity.

Look at the picture above.  You might look at that and think to yourself about the intelligent work that has gone into it - whoa, that is some great camera work, to capture the image on the screen, or even that your computer/phone screen resolution pretty awesome.  Kudos to the photographer, and the technology companies behind it.  But when we're actually there, looking at the very same high-definition image captured on simple water, instead of LCD, we think - that's natural.

Or clouds.  Do you know they're made of water in its liquid state, not gaseous?  Could you make water in its liquid state float without holding it aloft with your hand in a cup?  But we look at the clouds and think - that's natural.

A lot of us think - God, if you give me a clear sign, I'll believe and follow you.  But you know, signs aren't always as convincing as they should be.  Exodus 13:21-22 says:
By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day and night.

Now you might say - if God showed me a pillar of cloud and fire to follow, I would!  But you know what?  After the Israelites started following that pillar of cloud for a while, it started to look normal.  "Hey, it's that amazing pillar!" turned into "Oh... that old thing again."

Signs and wonders are great.  But the funny thing is, it's not their absence that keeps us away from trusting God.  It's that they happen so much that in the end, it takes the Holy Spirit to speak into our hearts, softening what has become calloused over the years, and dropping the scales from our eyes so we can see again with the wonder of a child.

So the next time we look at our kids and threaten to keep away their toys, it might be worth taking a clear-eyed look at our own toys too.  And the next time we see something we think is just "normal", think about how God is speaking patiently, lovingly, and supernaturally to us.  Let's turn to Him and say "Here I am.  Speak Lord, your servant is listening" (1 Samuel 3:10).

Have a supernaturally awesome weekend :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bullying? Stand up!

Image
When I was a kid, I remember being bullied a fair bit.  I was small for my age, bespectacled, shy.    The teachers didn't help by putting a target on my back by making me Vice Head Prefect.  I would get my stuff just taken away from me by bigger kids, dragged out into the field to be tickled until I collapsed (much less fun than it sounds), and pushed into the storm drains.  Not all the kids were full-blown bullies of course.  But I remember some of them standing by, and politely holding my spectacles (so they wouldn't be broken) while the bullies did their work on me. Most of this stopped when I got to secondary school, where a much larger proportion of my fellow students were now just as nerdy!  And of course I grew up too.  I don't really look back on those days with any kind of animosity, because I think it never occurred to me that it was unusual.  But I do think my experience made me a bit more sympathetic about people around me who are being bullied. When you
Read more

Life as a pie chart

Image
Someone told me recently about a "life exercise" in which one compiles all the stuff that makes up your life, and puts it in a pie chart.  So let's say for me, something like this. The idea is to visually demonstrate to myself that, in the event I lose one of these things, then I can see that, hey life is not so bad, that wasn't such a big deal.  Say for example, if I suffered a blown ACL, and couldn't run or play basketball any more, like this: At first blush - I'd say, hey, I still have my wife, children, parents, career, church life - so, chin up, things are not so bad.  Pretty good life visualisation tool to bring some optimism back into play! ... But what if, a month later, something happens at work, and boom, career gets sidetracked, I lose my job, or get put in cold storage somewhere, like this: Oops, now only half my life is left!  With only half of life's meaning left to me, what do I do? And what if something happens to
Read more

Family AND Team

Image
I heard an interesting viewpoint this weekend. A family is not inherently a team. Hmm.  Sometimes at work, often in church, and most of the time at home, you hear people say to each other that we are family. And often, we really are. We care for each other above and beyond transactional matters.  It matters to me when my colleagues and cell group members (and of course my actual family members) go through illnesses or family issues or work challenges. I root for their success at presentations and projects and relationships. I care about what they care about, even if it has little direct impact on my own life. In a way, a family is sort of an amalgam of people who support each other in pursuit of each member's personal goals. For example, as a father, I support my children in their academic, career and ministry goals. But where they go to school, the grades they get, and the careers and ministries they build - they're really their goals, not mine.  Ditto for my role as a church
Read more