Rachel Cobb: Missional Parents

There are passages in the Bible that are so convicting, counter intuitive, or downright distasteful that I would just as soon skip over them til God can make me understand.  Some have grown to hit me that way only since I became a mother.  For example, Mickey preached on Abraham’s call to sacrifice his son Isaac sometime when Lilly was a baby.  I looked at my lap through the whole sermon, hardly bearing to imagine what it would be like for God to make such a request of a parent.  I get it - it’s about obedience, and providence!  God provided a lamb for the sacrifice.  But Abraham walked with his son up that mountain with every intention to do what God said.  I’ve been a Christian all my life, but it’s still unbelievable that God could be that real, that saints follow Him that explicitly.  I’m not there. 

One story I’ve always loved is that of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1, but these days I find it gut wrenching.  Hannah is a young woman so desperate for a child that she prays fervently and without self-consciousness that God would grant her a baby.  She even goes so far as to vow that if God would give her a son, she would in turn give him back to the Lord, to serve in the Tabernacle alongside the priest.  God heard and He responded.  He made life out of emptiness, reversing her very human consequences in a miraculous way, and gave her Samuel.  Any of us who have pleaded to God for a child surely know what we would do next – protect him, dote on him, never let him out of our sight!  But not Hannah.  She honored her vow, and when Samuel was weaned she dedicated him to the Lord, praising God in doing so.  Again, I am not there.  Samuel grows up with the old priest Eli, whose parenting is in stark contrast from Hannah’s.  His sons are wicked and immoral, and though he chastises them, God tells Eli that he honors his sons above God (1 Samuel 2: 29).  Hannah demonstrates self-sacrifice while Eli demonstrates self-preservation.

If I’m being honest, I can’t stand to come close to holding my hands open to God like Abraham or Hannah, particularly when it comes to my child.  I don’t think I’m alone in that most of my thoughts, prayers, worries, wishes, and minutes of my day are devoted to my daughter!  This is forgivable and understandable and I think most of us can get pretty obsessive and possessive about our close family relationships.  However, as a culture it appears to me that one of the most commonly accepted idols, that we ourselves choose to place right on the throne of our lives, is our kids.  Obviously Lilly is adorable and blessed, and Ryan and I have the privilege of introducing her to what life is all about, in other words, Christ!  But how do we go about it?  I couldn’t possibly estimate the number of hours I have spent creating a wardrobe for a baby over the past two years.  If anyone could be worshipful in their devotion to smocked dresses and Gymboree sales, I guess it would be me.  Listen, I’m so sick that I’ve stewed over making sure she’s sporting a respectable brand of diapers!  Something tells me that God’s not in that. 

The problem is when parenting becomes less about that mission and more about us.  A lot of the money, time, and emotional expenditure we exhaust for our children is less about fulfilling our call as parents and more about filling our own emotional needs. We collect information about parenting.  We collect “stuff” for parenting and tips for discipline and form rigid positions on everything from spanking to homeschooling to breastfeeding.  We equip our kids to look and feel like all the others by purchasing for them the right toys, jeans, and phones.  We teach them to perform and achieve.  Often, our choices in gifts, activities, travel experiences, and schools for our kids say more about what we aspire to than about our call as godly parents.  We want the best for them, don’t we?  And we want them to be the best, because we want to be the best and have the best. 

Nothing is wrong with the joy that comes from kids’ activities or clothes or achievements.  Nothing is wrong with it until all those good things become god things, and we chase them and work for them and love them more than anything else, including God.  That is idolatry.  Tim Keller says it so powerfully in his book Counterfeit Gods, “Modern society…puts great pressure on individuals to prove their worth through personal achievement. It is not enough to be a good citizen or family member. You must win, be on top, to show you are the best…. From the earliest years, an alliance of parents and schools creates a pressure cooker of competition, designed to produce students who excel in everything…. The family is no longer what Christopher Lasch once called a ‘haven in a heartless world,’ a counterbalance to the dog-eat-dog areas of life. Instead, the family has become the nursery where the craving for success is first cultivated.”

  The bad news is we come by it honestly:  we are so marred by sin that not even our natural affection for our kids is untouched or unaffected.  The good news is that God really does love us and desires to reign in our hearts above all else, foremost because He is God and secondly because he loves us and knows a better “best” for His children than we could ever imagine for ours.  The Biblical model for a blessed life is submission, open hands, self-sacrifice, not-my-will-but-Yours-be-done.  EVEN when it comes to our kids.