If you were in need of a job, would you apply for this one?

Job Description:
Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an, often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities! Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

Responsibilities:
The rest of your life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers. Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects. Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next. Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices. Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product. Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

Possibility For Advancement & Promotion:
None. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you.

Previous Experience:
None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

Wages and Compensation:
Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent. When you die, you give them whatever is left. The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

Benefits:
While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right.[1]

If you haven't figured it out yet, the position described is that of parent - or, as the official job description puts it: "Mom, Mommy, Mama, Ma, Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop."

We laugh at this description because it accurately reflects the truth that parenting is hard work. But it also holds promise of great reward. Though the risk is great and the cost is high, parenting holds the potential to transform our lives. More importantly, it offers an unparalleled opportunity to uniquely influence another person(s). Through parental love (storge), we are given the opportunity to reflect God's love.

The parents' love is one of the most God-like things in creation. Together with God the parents have brought this little one into being. And like God's, their love is totally gratuitous. The little one has done absolutely nothing to merit it. It is such a beautiful thing, this wholly gratuitous love.[2]

Parental love (storge) is a unique love, different from philia (friendship love) and eros (romantic love). As such, it possesses unique dimensions.

Not Directly Chosen, but Welcomed

We are born into a family. Unlike friendship love (philia) and romantic love (eros), we have absolutely no choice in the matter.  

We do choose to have children and become parents. However, even in this situation, our choice is limited. Dan Allender describes this peculiar situation:

The process of parenting continues to be the most haunting and holy experience of my life. It is unique in its expected foreignness. In contrast, my marriage is an up-and-down roller coaster of sorrow and joy, mostly deep joy; but it is a relationship I already knew something about before I entered it...

On the other hand, I did not choose my children. Instead I chose to become a father. With each of my three children, I had no choice as to their gender, eye color, intelligence, aptitudes, health, or disposition toward life. They came fully formed and uniquely stamped.[3]

Each child is a "familiar stranger." They are like us, but also unlike us. And they are more than simply a combination of their mother and father. This "strangeness" increases over time as children grow up (teenagers, anyone?), calling for a unique expression of parental love (storge). Storge love constantly changes over time to accommodate a child's progressive growth and maturity. Clearly, parental love is a demanding love - constantly shifting, growing, changing.

No one really knows what they are getting into when they consider parenting. It is impossible to adequately prepare for it. Our choices are too limited. The best we can do is boldly welcome the unpredictable. Wendy Wright expresses the radical nature of this welcome:

The entry of new life does not call for a polite if celebrative ritual and then a return to business as usual. Nor does it mean that you just schedule this person into your established routine like an appointment or meeting. ... To welcome a child is to accept responsibility for another person twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for a good many years. Ultimately, it is to welcome the unfolding mystery of an entire lifetime's joys and pains as your own. To welcome a child is to give priority to the unpredictability of another life, to tend it in sickness, no matter what you had otherwise planned, to allow your plans and dreams to be altered, even set aside, because of another's need. To welcome a child is to learn to think and speak in response to a different and constantly changing worldview, to be outside of your own frame of reference. ... To welcome a child is to recognize the surprising expansiveness of your own capacity to love and to confront the shattering truth of your own violence and self-centeredness.[4]

If anyone knew the "whole truth" about parenting, then no one would ever decide to have a child. For this reason, Bill Cosby writes, "Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit."

Stewardship, Not Possession

I have three children. God has entrusted me and my wife with three precious people. My children are very special to me. But the truth is that they are no more important than any other children. What makes them special and important to me is that they have been entrusted to me. They are mine!

But they are not mine as a possession; instead, they are a stewardship with which I've been entrusted. They are a gift of God entrusted to me for a time. Ultimately, like all things, they are God's and not mine.

Since they are not my possession, but a stewardship entrusted to me by God, the divine call in my life is to faithfully steward God's gift. My children do not exist primarily for my own personal fulfillment. Instead, I exist in order to be faithful to my God-given stewardship. This changes the way I view my children. It calls me to remain faithful to my charge, even when there is little personal fulfillment involved. Anthony Robinson offers helpful words in this regard:

Religious congregations and faith communities need to tell parents that while personal fulfillment or happiness may and probably will be part of parenthood, neither one is the point. Neither personal fulfillment nor my happiness are sufficient goals for parenting, or for life. Parents are called to be faithful--to themselves, to their children, and to the God who is the source of all life. If personal fulfillment is the only standard or the primary one by which we judge ourselves, it is too tempting to bail out, surrender, or give up. Our relationship with our children has more to do with fidelity than fulfillment, more with fulfilling a trust than with success.[5]

No technique, formula, or principle - not even the best and most insightful ones - guarantees success. A "good-enough"[6] parent may do everything possible, and the end result may still be heartbreak and disappointment.[7] That's why our view of success must not arise from a sense of personal fulfillment, but from a sense of faithfully stewarding the gift we have been given. We may be faithful stewards - successful stewards - and still end up with wayward children.

Discipline and Instruction, Not Authoritarian

The most unique dimension of family love (storge) is the call to discipline and instruction. This is not a prominent dimension in friendship love (philia) or romantic love (eros), but it holds a central place in the raising of children. For this reason, we must view ourselves as parents first - parents who have a call to discipline and instruct our children - and then, over time, expand our expression of love to include friendship. In other words, we are parents first and friends second. To confuse this order is to relinquish our unique role in protecting and preparing our children to be godly, responsible, loving adults.

Parents are responsible to discipline and instruct their children: "Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray" (Proverbs 22:6). The Message paraphrases this as, "Point your kids in the right direction--when they're old, they won't be lost." Christian parents have a responsibility to instruct their children in the way of God. Family is a place of spiritual formation. It may sound liberal and tolerant to say, "I'll let my child believe whatever she wants. She can choose on her own," but this betrays our responsibility to "point our kids in the right direction." If we cherish the faith, why wouldn't we want to pass it on? Are we going to give our children the option to decide if they want to play in the middle of the street or not? In my opinion, some parents neglect their responsibility to discipline and instruct their children because they want to be their children's friend at the expense of being their children's parent. They reverse the order of love and neglect the most unique expression of family love, that of training children in the ways of God.

How do we train our children in the home? Our goal should not be to replicate Sunday School in our house. Instead, as we go about our daily lives, we include a sense of God in all we do. We can follow the wisdom of Israel's shema - the daily prayer of God's people:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Thomas Long assures us that we don't have to be "religious experts" in order to create the kind of environment that promotes spiritual formation:

Here again we see that the key is not knowing just what to say or possessing all knowledge about the Christian faith. The key is to provide the kind of environment in the home where talking about God can take place. If talking about God is as expected and as natural as talking about playmates or television programs, children will learn to ask questions about God, speak their thoughts about God, and come to trust this God, whose presence is woven into the fabric of the everyday.[8]

As we live out our faith, our beliefs and practices will provoke our children's natural curiosity, and they will inquire about our faith (see Deuteronomy 6:20). This provides us with a perfect opportunity to share our beliefs with our children. "Teachable moments" naturally arise out of our shared life together. By taking advantage of teachable moments in the school of life we become a model of the faith - and this is the most effective teaching tool.

This is how Jesus disciplined and instructed his family of faith - the disciples. By sharing life together, Jesus modeled the godly life and taught his disciples in the context of a loving relationship. In contrast to the popular pedagogical model of his day, Jesus was not authoritarian, harsh, critical, or demanding, and yet his followers - his disciples - loved, trusted, and learned from him.

The word discipline itself is integrally connected to Jesus' relationship with his disciples. The disciples follow him and open themselves to radical change because mutual love, trust, belief, and admiration draw them. Jesus' authority rests upon aligning himself with his disciples and not standing over them as commander-in-chief.

Discipline, then, has greater biblical affinity with teaching, guided by love and admiration, than with mastery, force, and chastisement driven by fear.[9]

Jesus gently and patiently taught his disciples - through word and example in the context of a loving, mutual relationship - to be and do their best, for the right reasons, and for the common good.

Jesus struck the perfect balance of accepting love and transforming love. According to Anthony Robinson, a parent's great challenge is to "chart a course that includes and moves between two kinds of love: accepting love and transforming love. The one affirms the being of a child and lets them be, while the other seeks their well-being and prods their growth."[10] Dan Allender concurs: "Children need to experience the strength of enforced boundaries and appropriate discipline as well as the mercy of being loved completely."[11] This balance is hard to maintain, but necessary to healthy growth and maturity.

The goal of parental discipline and instruction is godly wisdom, personal self-discipline, and growing mastery of a child's unique skills for the common good. One great resource for training in these areas is the ancient book of Proverbs. Its opening verses reveal that this sacred book is meant for the instruction and training of children (Proverbs 1:1-6). The existence of this book in the sacred canon reveals the love Hebrew parents had for their children. Religious leaders had some influence, but the greatest responsibility and influence fell upon parents. Proverbs brings out the urgency of parental love: "Hear, my child, your father's instruction, and do not reject your mother's teaching" (Proverbs 1:8).

One additional resource I have found particularly helpful, especially in regard to helping each child fulfill his or her maximum potential, is The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness by Edward Hallowell. Click here for my summary.

Responsibility Without Possessiveness

Parents have a special and unique role to play in the lives of their children. This role changes over time. This is best reflected in a parent's changing expressions of protection and preparation over the course of a child's life.

When children are very young, parents must protect more and prepare less. Great care must be expended in protecting babies, toddlers, and small children from the harsh realities of the world. At this young age, minimal preparation is offered in regard to teaching children how to engage with the world at large.

Over time, however, a child's horizon expands from home to the world. The home, which was once their universe, becomes smaller, and the world beckons them on. As they grow and mature, parents have less opportunity to protect their child (they can't be with them all the time) and must expend more energy preparing their child to engage with the wider world.

The amount of effort parents put into protection and preparation must change over time in inverse proportions. Early on, protection is great and preparation small. As children grow and mature, parents protect less, and preparation increases. We must remember that we are equipping children to live their own life - training them to leave the security of home, prepared for what the world may bring them and no longer in need of us to protect them.

Kahlil Gibran offers a beautiful poem on this:

You children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself
They come through you, not from you.
And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but strive not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and he bends you with his might that the arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so he loves the bow that is stable.[12]

Our children never stop being our children. A parent is always a parent, even when children have grown up and moved away. Though children may leave our hearth, they never leave our heart. Wendy Wright communicates this tension well in regard to her son: 

Before he was born, I did not know how I could ever let him in. Now that I have, I don't know how I will ever let him go. ...

The great and twin disciplines of the spiritual art of being family are, I think, the disciplines of welcoming and of letting go.[13]

We parents should not fear that if we are no longer needed, we are no longer loved. Family love (storge) must change and develop over time in order to faithfully steward the gift of children from infant to adult.

Ideally, family love (storge) provides the much needed roots for healthy human development. This "rootedness" remains with us our entire lives. Simone Weil writes, "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul." "That's what families provide for us... They give us roots for our soul. If we're lucky, they give us wings for our spirits as well."[14]

© Richard J. Vincent, 2008