I really worry a lot about being a good parent. I worry about being both too strict and too lenient; about looking like the bad guy in front of friends and strangers; I worry that I will royally mess my kid up. I hope (and pray) that I can be consistent while also knowing that there is no such thing as perfection (on my part or of that of the child).
This article by John Piper is good encouragement to persevere in requiring obedience:
I am writing this to plead with Christian parents to require obedience of their children. I am moved to write this by watching young children pay no attention to their parents’ requests, with no consequences. Parents tell a child two or three times to sit or stop and come or go, and after the third disobedience, they laughingly bribe the child. This may or may not get the behavior desired.
Last week, I saw two things that prompted this article. One was the killing of 13-year-old Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa, California, by police who thought he was about to shoot them with an assault rifle. It was a toy gun. What made this relevant was that the police said they told the boy two times to drop the gun. Instead he turned it on them. They fired
I do not know the details of that situation or if Andy even heard the commands. So I can’t say for sure he was insubordinate. So my point here is not about young Lopez himself. It’s about a “what if.” What if he heard the police, and simply defied what they said? If that is true, it cost him his life. Such would be the price of disobeying proper authority.
You can read the whole article
here; it has some really good reminders.
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