June 10, 2008: As For Me And My House

Do parents matter?

Seriously. I'm asking this for real.

I found out the other day that a devout Christian friend of mine never knew his father, because the man abandoned his family when my friend was young. A pastor friend of mine, an example to me of holy good cheer, had a father who was angry and bitter. My father's father was a nasty unpleasant grouch - but somehow my dad wound up with a personality as warm as the sun.

Leon Powe of the Celtics grew up fatherless, and his mother, who had trouble with the law, died when he was a junior in high school. But Powe turned into a saint. Jim Daly, current president of Focus On The Family, was raised in foster homes - some of them really bad – after his parents divorced and his mother died and his stepfather abandoned him. But Daly turned out good.

Jerry Falwell's father tried to make him an atheist, and Madeleine Murray O'Hare tried to do the same with her son William. They failed, and their sons became outspoken evangelists of the gospel their parents hated.

And then there are all those good, godly parents whose children are evil. A missionary couple I know had a daughter who tried to poison them. That is extreme, of course, but I know plenty of cases not too far removed from that. Ever since God created Adam good people have begotten villains.

I find especially instructive those cases of close-in-age siblings, raised in the same home under the same conditions by the same parents, where one sibling is good and the other bad. A friend of mine (a good man) has told me that if his brother ever shows up on his doorstep, he will call the police (and I'm sorry to say he would be right to do so). Another friend who leads a moral life agonizes over a brother who has turned into a criminal bum. This friend happened to mention to me that his parents went out of their way to raise him and his brother just the same.

So, seriously: do parents matter?

After observing life and families and studying the Bible a lot, my answer has become, "Not nearly as much as we think." In the last few decades, parenting and family matters have become an obsession of the evangelical Christian subculture. The topic dominates Christian radio, is featured in a thousand sermon series, has launched millions of books and dozens of institutions. This fosters the illusion that we can control much of the way our kids turn out. The question I have been wanting to ask for a while is, "Why do we say so much about parenting when the Bible says so little?" Read through the whole Bible yourself and you will see what I mean. It is not that the Bible says nothing about parenting, but relative to other topics it is actually pretty low on the priority scale. Consider this: can you name even one child of a disciple of Christ? Can you name any of their wives? The apostles managed to write a whole New Testament and never mention their family members once!

I believe the apostles knew in their bones something we are in danger of losing: every one makes his or her own decision for Christ. Good parenting does not sanctify, and bad parenting does not doom. Do not take credit for your little saints, and do not beat yourself up over your little demons. Do your best as a parent, and remember always that your children will have to answer to God for themselves just as you will.