As parents it is our natural disposition to protect our children. Obviously, this is not a bad thing. We can all recall instances, whether as a parent or a child, where we have experienced first hand this parental instinct.
However, because we are all sinners by nature, this good and beneficial instinct, like the rest of creation, has not been left untouched by the poisoning effects of sin and death. In a moralistic home, we can see this corruption of parental protection at it’s absolute worst. Moralism is cleaning the outside of the cup while disregarding the filthy inside. Moralism is making sure the behavior is up to snuff while essentially ignoring the heart condition responsible for the rotten fruit.
This is when our parental instinct to protect our children, when not submitted to Christ and prescribed by His powerful gospel, becomes extremely dangerous for our children.
The picture I want to paint is one of an infant in a crib. A sweet little newborn safe and secure, unable to roll onto the floor. Unable to get their hands on potentially dangerous things that will go directly into their mouths. Restrained from crawling to the stairs and tumbling down. Parents can sleep easy when their babies are in their cribs.
Cribs are good for what they are good for. What I mean to say is if you are trying to use a crib to keep your toddler in bed, then cribs are not so good. In fact, at that point, a crib goes from keeping your child safe to becoming dangerous. What was supposed to keep your baby safe has now become the danger. To continue to use a crib in the same way you did when your toddler was an infant is more like putting them into a trap rather than a safe place.
If we are using rules and laws to train our children to behave like good little boys and girls, the danger is that they will do just that. The danger in that is that we will succeed.
Children are smart. If you are a moralistic parent, over time they will figure out that you are happy so long as you see them in the box, see them obeying the rules. So they just jump back in the crib every time you peek inside. They are free to be and do whatever they desire so long as they pay their dues and keep up the facade as long as they are living under your roof. Unfortunately, this has not only been the implied reality, but the explicitly communicated reality. “Once you’re 18 and out of this house, you can do whatever you want.” But as parents who love our children, do we really mean that? Can they really do whatever they want?
I’m not talking about physical ability of course. We cannot force grown children to do whatever we may like, but are we teaching our children that they, like us, are going to have to give account to someone one day? We are all ultimately held to the same righteous standard, regardless. And not simply for what we do, but for who we are. What we feel and think and believe and therefore, obviously the things we do are all held up to a very high standard that altogether transcends you and me and everyone else.
One damning effect of moralism is that it lulls us into a sense of safety and security because all we are focusing on is the outside. This in turn deceives us into eventually believing that we are our own standard—our own god, and before long, we start to believe that we are everyone else’s standard as well and therefore everyone else’s object of worship, including our children’s. It is this abhorrent mindset that makes us fuss when the world doesn’t revolve around us. So then, when our children misbehave, when sinful hearts rear their ugly heads in a selfish tantrum or a knock-down-drag-out with the little brother, we focus our “wrath” on the inconvenient behavior rather than on their dirty little hearts.
We are bent to so focus on the crib, that we become oblivious to our toddlers desire and ability to climb out. We grow consumed by good, clever rules and laws that we tend to ignore the forgetful heart that is prone to wander. Focus on the mechanism and you lose sight of the person.
We fool ourselves into believing that if we can just pick off that bad fruit as soon as we see it begin to grow (in ourselves or our children), we will be ok. But we never get to the root of the problem—the root.
In a moralistic home, when your child flips out of the crib and lands on their face, you run over and scoop up your bruised and bloody baby, clean them up and then go look for the default in the crib. “What’s wrong with this thing? This is supposed to keep my sweet baby safe!” You fiddle around with it a bit and put them back to bed assuring yourself that the extra screw, or board or zip-tie fixed the problem for good. Only, the crib isn’t the problem, the problem is that your toddler has outgrown their baby bed.
The crib works great for what it was intended to do—keep your infant securely in bed. In the same way, the law works perfectly for what it is intended to do—revealing our weakness.
The law isn’t weak, our flesh is weak. The law isn’t sinful, our hearts are sinful. The law isn’t imperfect, we are.
Grace, unlike the law, compensates for us. Grace is poison that takes care of that bad fruit tree once and for all time. Grace is the “miracle grow” that magically makes that good seed grow and bear much fruit.
Our children outgrow their cribs and we graduate them to big boy beds. We compensate for our child. When we do this, it isn’t because we don’t care about our child’s safety. Quite the contrary. In the same way, Grace doesn’t nullify the intent of the law (our wellbeing) it simply provides a way to achieve the goal.
It isn’t enough to make sure our children behave properly. We must gracefully pursue their hearts just like our Father pursues our hearts. We must hone in on making sure they believe properly rather than behave properly. The beauty in this is that when we stop focusing on behavior and start paying attention to the heart—to belief, the behavior is sure to follow.
God sent Jesus because He wasn’t content to just put His children in a crib and peek in on us every now and again. He has not helplessly intended for our safety, He has effectually purchased it. He has shown grace and we would do well to go and do likewise.