While we would imagine that most parents do not want their children to simply adopt the parents\u2019 point of view on everything\u2014and particularly their point of view on something as important as God\u2014the challenge becomes one of providing the child with a free mental space within which to come to their own conclusions while at the same time offering firm and sure guidance, which every child deserves.<\/p>\n
Children don\u2019t want parents who are wishy-washy\u2014and they don\u2019t deserve them. They want and deserve more.<\/p>\n
If a child is afraid of the policeman on the corner, do we tell her: \u201cOh, sweetheart, the policeman is our friend. <\/i>There\u2019s no need to be afraid of him. He\u2019s here to protect<\/i> us and to help <\/i>us.\u201d<\/p>\n
OR\u2026do we tell her: \u201cOh, sweetheart, I think<\/i> the policeman is our friend. I hope<\/i> there\u2019s no need to be afraid of him. I wish that<\/i> he were here to protect us and to help us. Let\u2019s keep our fingers crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n
If your son is afraid to go into his room at night because he imagines there\u2019s a monster under the bed, do you say, \u201cSon, there\u2019s nothing to be afraid of. Come on, I\u2019ll go in there with you and show you.\u201d<\/p>\n
OR\u2026do you say, \u201cWell, son, I sure hope there\u2019s nothing to be afraid of. Come on, I\u2019ll go in with you and I\u2019m going to wish with all my might that I\u2019m right about this. But let\u2019s keep the door open in case we have to get out of there in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course you offer the former, not the latter. You know that what your child looks to you for is certainty<\/i>.<\/p>\n
In all matters.<\/p>\n
So the challenge becomes one of how to help your children feel certain about things, without robbing them of the opportunity (and the skill) of becoming <\/i>certain themselves through the reaching of their own conclusions.<\/p>\n
This is not an easy thing to do, and it can require us to sometimes walk a very thin line.<\/p>\n
Self-discovery is the pathway to certainty<\/b><\/p>\n
In nearly every situation in our children\u2019s lives it seems to me we do our best job of parenting when we help them find things out for themselves.<\/p>\n
Yet how can children find out for themselves about something as hypothetical (and that sometimes seems<\/i> even to us <\/i>to be hypothetical) as God?<\/p>\n
And the problem here is that many other people talk about God in very definitive<\/i> terms<\/i>. So what your child is hearing on the playground, or in the home of friends, can sound very<\/i> certain. Then, when your child comes to you for clarity, what do you say? That you don\u2019t know? That you can\u2019t be sure? That you have your own ideas, but it\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess? That we should all keep our fingers crossed?<\/p>\n
Suppose your child comes to you and says he is afraid of God. Do you say, \u201cOh, sweetheart, God is our friend. <\/i>There\u2019s no need to be afraid of God. God\u2019s here to protect<\/i> us and to help <\/i>us.\u201d<\/p>\n
OR\u2026do you say: \u201cWell, son, I think<\/i> God is our friend. I don\u2019t believe <\/i>there\u2019s a reason to be afraid of God. My own thought is that God is here to protect us. I hope <\/i>there\u2019s no reason to be afraid of him. Let\u2019s hope I\u2019m right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say that your daughter has heard at her friend\u2019s house that God punishes us if we don\u2019t do what He wants us to do. She\u2019s heard that if we are not careful we could wind up going to \u201chell.\u201d Now what do you say? \u201cSweetheart, that\u2019s not true.\u201d OR\u2026\u201cI certainly hope that\u2019s not true. Let\u2019s cross our fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes\u2026these questions about how to proceed are not small questions. And we will begin to explore them as we continue with this series of articles in our next post. I hope you’ll join us for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While we would imagine that most parents do not want their children to simply adopt the parents\u2019 point of view on everything\u2014and particularly their point of view on something as important as God\u2014the challenge becomes one of providing the child with a free mental space within which to come to their own conclusions while at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interpreting-conversations-with-god"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5499,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497\/revisions\/5499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}