When I Was a Child

Christian parents desire their children’s salvation – more than their own. We pray for them, teach and discipline them, and love them. For the years they live with us, they are in many ways our life. What a blessing that our Savior turns the hearts of fathers toward their children, and by his grace the hearts of children toward their fathers (Mal.4:6)! He alone can do this – not principles and programs or podcasts.

                Depending upon personality, constitutional tendencies toward particular sins, and personal struggles, in our zeal for their spiritual health we can suffocate their young souls. Perhaps we fear our children will struggle in the same areas we do – we hope not, but we suspect. If they are quiet, do not share much, or find a little too much joy for our comfort in friends, sports, or movies, we suspect this is hiding some serious spiritual deficiency.

                It likely is. Do we not have them? And more to my point, remember: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child” (1 Cor. 13:11). To expect our children to be other than children – or teens – or young adults – is to place upon them expectations that they cannot meet and burdens the Lord has not yet strengthened them to carry. It also harms their normal developmental rhythms – trial and error, the Lord’s still, small voice, his working in them to fulfill his covenant promises in his time, instruction in righteousness, sowing and reaping.

                I suspect that high energy Christian teaching has encouraged parents to hope that their child will be the next Samuel, Joseph, or Daniel – or should be. Or that she will have the teenage piety of Mary, the mother of our Lord – this is not typical. Youthful, spiritual exceptionalism is not the norm. It cannot be, it violates God’s providential processes for covenant and conversion (faith and repentance). False expectations sow the seeds of discouragement in our children: that they do not measure up, are failures, and have disappointed us for being children and needing to grow.

                It is not only, I fear, the Big Eva mentality that ruins children by its non-confrontational, emotion-affirming, “gentle” discipleship approaches – but also the Reformed mentality that alienates children from the Lord, at least for a time, makes them insecure, and teaches them that they must reach a certain level of understanding and piety by age 6, 13, or 16. If Big Eva turns children into marshmallows, Reformed intensity can turn them into frustrated granite.

                Back to Scripture – we do not need labels or therapy. What does the Bible say? “When I was child” – remember what you were like; what you were thinking when your parents were speaking to you; how you first responded to serious discipleship; how you struggled to pay attention and were easily distracted by things that interested you; how you needed understanding, patience, and persistent, tenacious love and discipline. Remember and allow “when I was a child” to direct your parenting expectations. This does not mean settling for immaturity but responding wisely and humbly to your particular children. Immaturity is to be expected – when I was a child. Children come in all shapes and sizes, with a wide spectrum of mental and emotional makeups. They need to be taught, loved, encouraged, and corrected – just like you and me.

                “I thought like a child, reasoned like a child.” Not all childish thinking is sinful. Did David laugh? Certainly. Were there jokes around the campfire? Did he and his brothers enjoy sports and recreation? Did bodily functions sometimes amuse them? It is likely. There is no issue here unless as adults they want to remain children, never learn good manners and modesty, and expect that life should be constant fun and jokes. This is what parenting is for – to expect the childish, while modeling the mature, making it attractive – not with guilt manipulation, demeaning, making our children feel bad because they are, well, children.

                But “When I became a man,” or a woman, “I put away childish things.” There is a normal pattern of physical and spiritual growth in our children when the soil is good by God’s grace, the water of the word and prayer is falling, the dead spots are pruned by loving discipline. As they begin putting away childish things, they will want to follow Christ. This is the reason we must make far more than we do when a child of the covenant wishes come to the Lord’s Supper. There should be a party celebrating God’s grace when a child professes faith in Christ and wants to take up his cross. It is special to begin putting on the love of Christ and desire to walk in his fellowship. It is an amazing, immediate work of his grace to take up the vows of discipleship for oneself.

                Let us encourage becoming a man or woman, not by ignoring the blessings and challenges of childhood or mistreating our children because they are children. Trust God’s working in them “to will and to do his good pleasure.” He revealed the way he works to Abraham. “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him” (Gen. 18:19).

                God saved Abraham dramatically, almost instantaneously out of idolatry, and appeared to him in an Old Testament Damascus Road encounter. This is not the way he worked in Isaac. Abraham had to patiently instruct his son, command him in the ways of God. The Lord used Abraham’s faith and obedience to the word – not Abraham’s angst, manipulations, or harsh control measures – to fulfill his promise to Abraham. He used his word, patiently instructed, faithfully modeled, to win Isaac’s heart – until Isaac saw Christ crucified on Moriah’s summit, and became a believing man….