Chapter 1: Begins with a great visual of the challenge of parenthood. (This is so jam packed with information I am summarizing it in 2 separate sessions.
Picture a table: With a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle on it, with a huge variety of shapes and colours and patterns. He adds: The boarder pieces are missing and there are a couple of handfuls of pieces from another puzzle thrown in. Finally the lid of the box that you were hoping to use to get somewhere on this puzzle is lost.
This, he depicts, is the challenge of parenting in 21st Century North American culture.
The First key is to overcoming this challenge is to have a plan. We plan for everything these days but often we try and parent out of good intentions and will power. We need to admit we need a bigger picture plan.
The second key is realizing why there is no borders, how the extra pieces got in there and where the lid went.
The borders relate to the larger culture that has become increasingly individualistic and large scale morals and values seem to have lost its place in the fabric of our greater culture.
We react in several ways by being extreme parents to either one end of the pendulum or the other. There are those who clean out all clear moral boundaries. Letting life take its course with family both with spouse and children.
What turns out is parents who are ” guilty by either commission or omission of failing to lead their kids properly through childhood”
The there are those who close the fence in tightly around their children and keep them from harm. They restrict most outlets: media, friends, education, etc.
What turns out here is parents who are preventing Children from relying on God in rough times and preventing the “Holy Spirit from building up a true sense of moral resolve in their hearts. “
Both side well meaning, but both damaging to the Child. One to free the other to controlled. We all fall into this pendulum in our parenting.
Looking to the extra pieces of the puzzle he exposes the falsity in anyone who says that in order to be a good parent you must: Feed, Discipline or Educate your children in a certain way. He says, “Children are free agants and capable of resisting even the most effective parenting plans available.” Dr. Kimmel then moves towards what should we be planning, thinking and doing as parents.
He offers this foundational thought. “With all of the help that we have been given, especially as Christians, are we effective at producing the kinds of kids who are anxious to be used of God to reform the world around them?”
There is a growing divide between Christians and culture and even in the individual between Christ and culture. We rarely let the two meet and are uncomfortable when they do. Dr. Kimmel nails it on the head in the above quote.
We have as much work to do personally as we do parentally and our Christian Boxes are not helping us.
Kimmel writes: “It isn’t supposed to be this way. God left our families in communities to serve as porch lights, if you will, for the lost people around us. We are to be a steady glow that helps them find their way out of the darkness. when families are committed to being this, light, they are inclined to live more intimately with Christ. They pray more, study there bibles more, they care for one another, they reach out to their neighbours more. Somewhere in all the talk about raising kids, we moved away from this as a priority in our parenting.”
I think so far this chapter, if I boiled it down, it would say that having a vision for parenting that lines up to scripture and is real (not gimmicky), mindful (present to your children’s needs) and faithful (Leading your children to live in a difficult world and by the strength of a God that is real and loves them.)
Thoughts, questions, comments let me know
Grace and Peace
Adam
Let me add on: We need to see ourselves as a family and in that family is the “most effect and efficient vehicle to produce the kind of people who can move confidently into the adult world and have a redemptive impact on their culture- that is what we are supposed to be doing.”
It was the last stronghold that Satan could not penetrate: “a good solid family. Parents armed with little more than a vibrant relationship with God”
What happened? “We got scared and now fear not faith is what motivates so much of the Christian parenting advice we get.”
I have to think at this point what do we do, this is heavy. We need to step back and stop striving so much, demand from our culture more time with God and our families. To go back and replace some of the fabric so that, gotta run turns into, how are you doing son? We need to rest and know each other… and know God