How to Exasperate Your Children
The Irish Calvinist shares some great thoughts on how to exasperate your children:
Yesterday I preached on Colossians 3 and the way in which the new ‘house-table’ is to reflect the new humanity. In the midst of the study I was deeply effected by the danger of exasperating children to the point that they loose heart, as verse 21 says.
By way of application I came up with a list of 12 surefire ways to exasperate your children:
- Be a hypocrite
- Be a bully to them
- Be harsh to them
- Be Emotionally Distant from them
- Show Favoritism to Other Kids
- Have Unrealistic Standards
- Be Mr Question your kid’s salvation guy
- Be Mr Assure your kid’s salvation guy
- Don’t discipline them
- Discipline them without biblical instruction
- Don’t teach them the Bible
- Don’t connect discipline to the gospel
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:24 am
Internet Monk wrote a great essay years ago on seven ways Christian parents can royally screw up their kids. This is a bit more succinct than that was. 7 and 8, for a kid, can effectively be the same thing. If you question whether or not they are saved it expresses doubt about them and God at the same time, just as if you assure them of their salvation they can wonder why you have this knowledge and they don’t or vice versa. The mode of assurance or doubt becomes the parent rather than Christ, or at least that’s my guess based on my own history of these two avenues.