The Bible says that even if we have all the eloquence of mankind, but do not have love, we will only be a loud gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Recently I was changing my 3 month old’s diaper with two wild and crazy boys running circles around me, and God spoke to my heart.
We had just finished a wonderful and impactful homeschool lesson about racism in America, and how the sin of mankind turned the beautiful skin colors God made into something that exposed the ugliness of our hearts. The lesson long gone, and the mess of construction paper used to make a chain showing the brotherhood of all mankind cleaned up, but my heart was still ruminating on the precious discussion we had about this very gut wrenching topic. I was thinking to myself that all I wish is for my children to grow up and be kind humans. Ones that love others.
My heart aches to raise kind humans. If you’re reading this, I have a hunch that this is also your heart’s cry. In the quiet place of my own heart (albeit surrounded by much early childhood chaos) I felt God showing me the difference between “making” children into who we want them to be, and “raising” them into who God has willed them to become. I believe there is a stark difference in the two; a difference important enough that if we get it right, we will release children into the world that help usher in the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in Heaven. And if we don’t get this difference right, our children will become another loud noise that turns people away from the God who made them.
I think sometimes parents get the word “make” confused with “teach”. We think we are teaching them as we ought, but really we are making them into something God may not intend. As long as I have made my child into the world’s picture of success I have taught them well, right? I disagree. Many kids can be taught a lot of respectable things, but still not be raised into the kind of loving people the Bible talks about. I believe we teach as parents in order to “raise”, not make. We should teach in order to raise them “up in the Lord”, not make them into what we want, or what we think they want. So it begs the question, what are we teaching our kids? And in turn, is that teaching helping to raise them as we’ve been called to do, or is it only succeeding in making them into clanging cymbals?
If we as parents spend our days teaching our kids how to throw a baseball, say their ABC’s, learn quantum physics, balance a checkbook (does this show my age?), correctly search the Internet, safely be at home alone, load the dishwasher, make their beds, clean up after themselves, drive...the list can go on and on with things that we can teach our children. But if we do not teach them how to love others will it all have been worth it? If our children know all of these things, if they grow up to become CEOs and world leaders with all the eloquence of mankind, but we have not raised them to love, then we have only succeeded in creating a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. All that knowledge and skill that we’ve spent so much time imparting is just noise if our kids don’t know how to love others well.
This important character development has its roots in our opinion on the subtle difference between parenting with the goal to “make” and with the goal to “raise”. I believe the only perspective that creates loving kids is to look at it as a partnership with God in raising this child He gave you.
Notice I didn’t say “this child you made”. The truth is, God made our children. You might be reading this and saying “Nicole, I specifically remember being pregnant (or having a wife that was pregnant) and carrying that child around, feeling it get bigger in my womb, how could I not have made this child!?” Well, you did partner with God in creating this child, but only as giving it a space to be knit together by the Creator God. Let me ask you some questions that make this truth obvious. Do you know how to make a human nose? Do you know how to intricately fold the brain so that it fits within the space of the skull that God made for it? Do you know how to perfectly set the bones in the ear in the correct way so that it can hear? Were you ever driving down the road while pregnant and had to pull over to the side of the road to concentrate on making your baby’s fingers? No you did not make those things. God did.
God has already made your children, so your job as a parent isn’t to make them into something. Your job isn’t to make them into the next president, or make them into a professional athlete, although many a parent has strived and spent many dollars trying to make their kids into things. This completely misses the heart of what we are supposed to be doing as parents. God has already made our children, it is our job to raise them. If our children are noisy in all the wrong ways, perhaps it is because we have been trying to make them.
The truth is, God has already planned and determined what your child was made for (Jeremiah 29:11). We don’t get to decide what our kids become. God has already made them for a reason. Our job is to help our children discover the unique reason God gave them His very breath. And that reason will be different for each child. This means we get to come alongside them as a safe place to fall as they are growing and learning, much like a scaffolding holds up a building under construction. The scaffolding doesn’t make the building- it supports it as it grows. We don’t make our children, we support them as they grow.
This truth that we don’t make our children into anything can rub the wrong way with many parents. Because we love them and want the best for them, (and if we’re honest because we struggle with control), it is very easy to strive to make our kids into what we deem as the right kind of success. Won’t we ruin our kids if we don’t make sure they “make something of themselves?” I would argue that the only way we have a chance of damaging our kids and creating baggage they will carry for many years, is to determine yourself what they should be. And this doesn’t look obvious like forcing them to choose a certain career (although that can and certainly does happen). It mostly looks subtle, like the beliefs you hold about what pursuits are worthy. Your kids will pick up on what you deem to be the right way to live. And because most kids want to please their parents, and for awhile think that whatever their parents think is the right way, they will want to do what they think you want. Once this happens, you begin to miss valuable time helping them discover why God created them, specifically, to live on this earth at this time in history. Missing this time is scarier to me than trying to force them into a certain life from being scared they won’t become something.
It helps to ask what is the end goal to raising our kids? If we believe the Bible to be true, it is to love God and love others. As your kids are growing, they will naturally be egocentric- which means they believe they are the center of their own universe. This natural tendency to look out for themselves, combined with the “make” perspective of parenting, creates noisy kids who are only clanging cymbals. We need to raise kids to look outward from themselves. To love others. This is how they do not become a loud gong in the cacophony of worldly noise that holds no eternal weight.
So what does love look like? How do you know if your kids really love others? It looks like your child befriending the kid who is all alone at the park. It looks like them helping to pick up books and papers that have fallen out of someone’s hands. It looks like them being saddened when somebody else is hurting. It looks like them cheering and clapping their hands with all their might when someone else succeeds. If a child grows to be a loud gong or a clanging cymbal, then perhaps they were neglected the noblest of education: how to love others.
A child who is raised to care about the world’s injustices is a child who was raised to run after the heart of God. Let’s raise our kids to know the Lord and what He desires, not make another trophy for the world to gawk at.
This shift in perspective can be challenging, but it is also freeing. We don’t have to worry about making our children like we would make a piece of pottery- worrying that the wrong handling of it will shatter the pot into a million pieces, never to be properly repaired. Remember who the potter is, and it’s not us.
