Like many Christian parents, Wai Jia and I want our children to know Jesus and be on fire for Him. Jesus changed our lives, and He is worthy of us to follow. What else do we want our children to know other than Jesus, who holds the universe together (Col. 1:17)? We had many late-night conversations on how we should show our kids Jesus. I have two girls. At that time, one was a toddler, and the other was an infant. We asked our friends, who love Jesus and are parents, for advice. We also read many books. However, as a father, one of the most influential experiences was God placing circumstances in my life that shaped me to be a more hands-on parent.
As I mentioned before, I was never good with children. I’d never thought through what it meant to be a parent, let alone to disciple them. I assumed my children would know Jesus at Sunday school. But God opened my mind to see that I am primarily responsible for their spiritual growth. My firstborn was born in Canada. Three months later, we moved to Baltimore, USA, where Wai Jia started her studies for a Master of Public Health at John Hopkins University. At the same time, I was studying for the Master of Divinity degree online. Since we were both studying, we thought sending my firstborn to daycare was the best solution. This was what other people were telling us. Wai Jia would go to school during the day, and I studied at a coffee shop. Then I’d pick up my girl in the afternoon.
However, God led us in a different direction. Before Wai Jia started her program, we decided to help my firstborn transit to daycare by putting her in daycare for two hours. My daughter had a terrible experience at daycare. She refused to take a nap and cried the whole time. When we picked her up, her eyes were puffy from crying. Desperate and unsure of what to do, we prayed and asked God for help. We also emailed our Zion Bible School teachers for advice. That night, I dreamt of putting my girl to sleep by pulling down the blinds. The next day, the teachers replied. I thought they would tell me to focus on my studies and let Sarah-Faith go to daycare. After all, I was preparing to do God’s work through my study. Instead, they told me to put my studies on hold and prioritize my daughter’s well-being.
Between my dream and my teachers’ reply, it was clear that God wanted me to look after my firstborn. It was an expensive decision as we had already paid for a month’s worth of daycare, which was $1,300 US dollars. My daughter stayed at daycare for two days before we moved to plan B. Our plan B was for me to look after her during the day while Wai Jia went to school. Almost instantly, I had to adjust to looking after my daughter. This was the beginning of many encounters where God changed my circumstances and revealed that I needed to be a more hands-on father. Through these circumstances, I learned about parenting and what it means to disciple my children. In this season of fatherhood, I realized God had a plan for parents to raise their children in ways that honour Him and show them who God is.
For this thesis, I define biblical parenthood as a parenting methodology rooted in the Bible, where Jesus Christ is the centre. Though the Bible is not a manual for parenting, it contains wisdom for guiding our children to know Jesus. The Christian community tends to assume that because we label certain teaching as Christian or biblical, it focuses on Jesus. Unfortunately, it is not. When we started homeschooling, we met a lot of homeschooling parents who were also Christians. Many recommended the Charlotte Mason method because, they said, it is biblically based. However, when I read about this method, I realized there is nothing biblical.
The Charlotte Mason method (“Homeschooling”) encourages the child to read, behave well, and discover the outdoors. These activities alone are not bad. The problem is you can do all these activities without Christ. So even though many Christian parents advocate this method, I decided not to apply this method to homeschool our children.
While many parenting styles and methods are available, how our parents raised us will be the most influential factor in how we parent our children. If our parents are not believers, our parenting methods will not be biblically based because they won’t center on Jesus. Many parenting methods focus on changing behaviour. Changing behaviour, even if successful, will never address the spiritual level that only Christ, through the Holy Spirit, can address. Nothing has the power to change someone’s heart except the Holy Spirit.
In Shepherding a Child’s Heart, Dr. Tedd Tripp listed some of the popular non-biblical methods that Christian parents adhere to. They are not biblical because they do not point the child to God and her need for a Savior. For example, many parents will base their parenting styles on their parents because they turned out okay (Tripp 79). But we may inherit sinful behaviour patterns from our parents by copying their parenting style.
Other popular methods include bribing or setting a contract with children so that when they behave correctly, they get a reward. Whatever you want them to do, reward them, like money, for doing it. The opposite approach is punishing the child by frightening him so that he won’t do it again. Tripp explains these methods are superficial because they don’t address the heart issue (80). Tripp not only frowns upon parenting styles that modify behaviour but also believes addressing behaviour without dealing with the heart issue is condemnable. It can breed self-righteous attitudes like the Pharisees (Tripp 21). With the Charlotte Mason method, I have no problem with my children having good manners and loving to read. I want my children to exhibit these qualities. The problem is that they can do so without knowing Christ.
In December 2011, Amy Chua published a highly sensationalized book titled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Chua compares Western parenting with the Chinese parenting style, emphasizing “…arming children with skills, strong work habits and inner confidence” (Chua 63). She explains that the Western parenting style focuses on developing a child’s individuality and allowing the child to explore by playing.
These parenting methods offer parents what they want to hear— a guaranteed method to make their child successful. Just follow a plan, and you will produce the child you want. Unfortunately, they will not point children to Christ because they are not biblically based. They will never explain that the child is a sinner and that without Christ, her eternity is damnation. All these parenting methods have one thing in common: you can do it with your own strength. Biblical parenting is the opposite. All of us have fallen short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23). Only when we humble ourselves and come before the cross and recognize Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then by His strength, can we flourish and grow and enable our children to do the same.
Where does the Bible speak about parenting? Most of us will remember Deuteronomy 6:4-9 or Ephesians 6:1-4. These are important passages I will explore later. However, Bettis points to a different passage for parenting guidance. For Bettis, “[t]he foundational parenting text is not Ephesians 6:1-4 or Deuteronomy 6:4-9, as important as they are, rather it is Matthew 28:18-20” (5). He compared the Great Commission to the North Star. Just as the North Star is a reference point for sailors, the Great Commission is the reference point for parents to disciple and parent their children.
If the Great Commission is the key verse in parenting, then parenting is under the umbrella of discipleship. When I realized my parenting duties were not just to take care of my children but to disciple them, I felt the great responsibility on my shoulders as a father. The mundane tasks I do as a stay-at-home father, whether changing nappies or putting my children to sleep, are opportunities for discipleship. All of a sudden, these mundane tasks carry incredible weight. In other words, every moment I spend with my children is an opportunity to share and show my children who Jesus is. Before I understood parenting as following the Great Commission, I never considered caring for my children as kingdom work. However, Jesus showed us that even the most mundane task could be considered ministry.
The night before the crucifixion, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God” (John 13:3), Jesus performed the most humbling and mundane act—washing the feet of His disciples (John 13:5). Jesus expected us to wash each other’s feet in everyday living (Bailey, The Gospel of John, 250). We often use foot washing as a ritual between leaders and church members to demonstrate humility. However, I believe Jesus’s desire is not to wash other Christian’s feet as a ritual. He did it to teach them what it means to love one another (John 13:14-15). I will expand on parenting as discipleship under Parenting Like How Jesus Makes Disciples.
Bettis reminds us that the role of parents is not to help the child succeed in life but to help them prepare for judgment day (6). This is equivalent to Dr. Brian Bailey’s teaching on one-hundred-fold Christians. Some parents think if their children are saved by reciting the sinner’s prayer or getting baptized, they have done their duty as parents. They are wrong. The goal for discipleship is to become a hundred-fold Christian, which is the same success criteria I mentioned earlier in the goal for Sunday school and parenting.
Thompson views the role of the parent is to help the children “…to delight in the grace of God and desire to love and obey Him” (60). He concluded that the consumerism of sugar-coated Christianity in the ‘80s and the ’90s are not working since young adults, who used to go to church as children, are leaving the church in mass. We should not be surprised that sugar-coated Christianity doesn’t work. Just as the seed that fell in rocky places failed to grow because it didn’t develop deep roots (Matt. 13:21), we need to ensure our children’s faith is deep and strong such that they can withstand the temptations and the persecution of this world. One way to do so is for parents to disciple their children seriously.
The key for the next generation is to return the responsibility for discipling our children back to the parents. The church’s role then becomes a supplement or support to helping parents in discipling their children. Each family is a microcosm of the larger church family. The parents, specifically the fathers, need to take on the role of the spiritual leader and be responsible for discipling their children. I single out the fathers because they are the head of the household and the family’s spiritual leader.
Tripp said the objective of parenting is to answer the first question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: What is the chief end of man? The answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever” (64). Tripp’s focus is the heart of a child since the heart is the wellspring of life (Prov. 4:23). The parent’s role is to help a child address heart issues and to show the child that what he ultimately needs is a Savior. Anything that points a child to something or someone other than Jesus, including success and even good behaviours, is idolatry.
Frisk emphasizes parenting as the way to disciple the next generation. She notes that discipleship, like parenting, is a way of living, not just a course or program (17). The emphasis lies in that parenting is an important part of discipleship. Jesus-centred parenting helps parents look to Jesus in parental decisions.
Both Tripp and Bettis emphasize that our children are image-bearers of God. Bettis refers to God’s command in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply (4). The command is to fill the world with Godly-offspring and image-bearers. As image-bearers of God, our children are made to worship God. If they do not worship God, they will worship idols. The parent’s job is to guide their children to worship God (Tripp 36-37). The parent’s job is to guide, teach, instruct, and warn their children about the eternal consequences based on their decision to follow Jesus. As image-bearers of God, Tripp maintains that our children must mature to the point that “[t]hey must learn that they will only ‘find themselves’ as they find him” (65). This comes from Psalm 73:25, “[w]hom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You.”
Bettis references Malachi 2:15 that God seeks godly offspring to explain why God gave humans the ability to multiply (4). Since all of us, including our children, are image-bearers of God, God desires that we worship Him and Him alone. In short, as Christians, we are to fill the earth with glory-bearers, starting with our children. This is consistent with the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, including our household.