And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said, “My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline, and don’t give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.” [Hebrews 12:5 (NLT)]
We’ve heard of helicopter parents—those over-involved and over-protective parents who hover over their children, taking responsibility for their experiences and protecting them from failure. With the college admission scandal in the news, we now see helicopter parents on steroids. Called lawnmower, snowplow, or bulldozer parents, they don’t just hover over their youngsters. Not wanting to see their children struggle, they mow down challenges, plow through hurdles, and demolish any obstacles facing them.
Those parents are now reaping what they’ve sown. Having spent 18 years clearing the road for their children, they’ve failed to prepare them for the bumps in the road of adulthood! Instead of sitting in the backseat of their adult children’s lives, they remain in the driver’s seat. The New York Times and Morning Consult (a technology/media company) recently conducted a poll of a nationally representative group of parents of adult children (aged 18 to 28). It found that 76% of the parents remind their children of deadlines they need to meet, 74% make their appointments for everything from haircuts to doctors, 15% call or text them to make sure they don’t over-sleep, 11% will call their child’s employer if there is an issue at work, and 8% had contacted a teacher on behalf of their child! These aren’t first-graders needing guidance; they’re adults who should be able to accomplish these simple tasks on their own! 12% of those same parents even give their adult children more than $500 a month for rent or expenses. I have a neighbor who pays his grown son’s credit card bill. That might be understandable if he were a struggling student but this young man, out of law school for two years, is gainfully employed and totally debt-free! Apparently, with all that education, he hasn’t yet figured out how to budget! I know of another woman whose son had difficulty adjusting to dormitory life and waking up for class. Rather than letting him learn how to acclimate to new circumstances and reap the consequences of missing class, she moved to his college town so he could live with her and commute to class (after she’d awakened and fed him). Perhaps a better name for parents like these would be “concierge.” They provide the wake-up calls, get the reservations, arrange the transportation, solve the problems, make the phone calls, and figure out the logistics of their children’s lives.
All parents want their children to succeed but, when they repeatedly eliminate every obstacle and challenge, they’ve left their children unequipped for the challenges of adulthood. The prodigal would never have returned home if he’d had a concierge parent! Mom and Dad would have paid his bills, smoothed out any legal difficulties, provided groceries during the famine, and told the farmer their son was too good to slop pigs! Not having to experience the consequences of his profligate lifestyle, the son would never have seen the error of his ways.
When we read the exodus story, it becomes clear that our heavenly Father is no concierge parent. The God who parted the Red Sea certainly could have destroyed the Philistines with a snap of His fingers and taken his people on the direct route to the Promised Land. Instead, He took them the long way around and a three week journey took two years while He prepared the Israelites for the challenges of Canaan. Then, when they rebelled, rather than coddle and coax them, God let them suffer the consequences. For the next thirty-eight years, they learned the painful lesson of missed opportunities.
Believing in on-the-job training, God allows us to experience failure and frustration, not because He wants us to be failures but because He wants us to learn how to solve problems, make decisions, resolve differences, assess risks, and turn to Him. Like any parent, God wants us to be successful but He also wants us to understand the weight of our decisions and learn both humility and the importance of surrendering to his will. As Adam and Eve learned when leaving Eden, free will is not a gift to be taken lightly and there are consequences to our choices. Wanting us to grow in wisdom, discernment and strength, God lets us make mistakes, face opposition, lose battles, and experience His discipline. If He protected us from challenges, set-backs and trials, we’d think we were the ones responsible for our success. It is in our pain, disappointment, loss, and failure that we truly see how much we need Him.
When we come to Jesus, we come as baby Christians. While He lovingly accepts our imperfect immature selves, He doesn’t want us to stay that way! Let us thank God for the numerous opportunities (many of which we didn’t enjoy) that He’s given us to mature in our faith and grow more like Christ.
He [Herod] put on his royal robes, sat on his throne, and made a speech to them. At its conclusion the people gave him a great ovation, shouting, “It is the voice of a god and not of a man!” Instantly, an angel of the Lord struck Herod with a sickness so that he was filled with maggots and died—because he accepted the people’s worship instead of giving the glory to God. [Acts 12:21b-23 (TLB)]
Sometimes, we Christians use religious jargon or “Christianese” when speaking. In fact, we might “testify” or “witness” instead of talk about our faith and “fellowship” instead of meet with friends! If, while speaking with non-believers, we use words we (and our fellow church-goers) can barely define we may as well be speaking a foreign language. Tossing about words like propitiation, sanctification, justification, glorification, conviction and reconciliation show that we can talk the talk, but what does it mean to anyone else? Let’s remember that Christianity isn’t a secret society like a lodge, college fraternity or sorority. There’s neither a secret handshake nor a password required for admittance.
Yesterday, I wrote about Cyrus Teed, the Koreshan Unity, their strange theology, and Cellular Cosmogony: the belief that the earth is a hollow shell and the entire universe exists inside that shell. Whether he was a charlatan or insane fanatic, Cyrus Teed claimed to be immortal. When he died in 1908, his followers kept his body in a bathtub for five days and waited for his resurrection. Rather than rising, Teed began to stink and authorities forced his corpse to be buried. Nevertheless, many of his followers faithfully waited another thirteen years for his return.
Paul’s letter to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus is a lesson in the subtle art of persuasion. It’s said that we catch more flies with honey than vinegar and Paul illustrates that beautifully. A lot was on the line for the runaway slave Onesimus—if Paul didn’t convince Philemon to forgive him, the man could have been killed or sold to work in the lead mines. And, if Paul’s letter offended Philemon, the new church at Colossae could have suffered. As short as his letter is, I imagine Paul prayed and labored over it a long time.
The day’s gospel was from Mark 10 and, as the sermon began, the pastor shared having spent three hours earlier that week in a tiresome meeting on evangelism. The speakers had been lauded for the high number of “first public professions of faith” in their parishes. As the meeting went on, the pastor furtively checked his phone to see if memory had served him right. Indeed, his church far exceeded the numbers of the keynote speakers. Part of him (the bad part), like James and John, wanted to boast and be honored but the other part reminded him that ministry is about people and not numbers. He ate a little humble pie and said nothing. As often happens in long meetings, his mind wandered and he thought back to an encounter some twenty-eight years ago when he first came to the parish.
Devotions of the Heart 