In our modern rush to embrace the so-called "scientific" approach to raising children by quacks like Dr. Benjamin Spock, I believe we have overlooked the greatest model parent known to man. I speak, of course, of the Lord God. This post seeks to mine His word for as many gems as can be found in hope that we might be guided through the mine-field that parenting seems to be these days. Do chicken McNuggets make our kids fat? Does childhood videogaming produce violent adults? Who the hell knows. But one thing's for sure - give those little bastards an inch, and they'll take a mile.
Our Heavenly "Father" crushes many of the myths that get shoe-horned into our brains by liberal hack journalists like those down the street at Parenting magazine.
Let's take, for example, the myth of allowing your children to grow up to be whatever makes them "happy", to let them explore their "potential" and identify their "aptitudes" so that we maximize their "confidence" and bolster their "self-esteem". The Bible barely gets underway before the Big Man calls bullshit on this idea. In Genesis 4, mankind's first juvenile delinquent, Cain, decides to become a "tiller of the ground", in other words, a radical vegetarian, whereas his wiser brother Abel is a tender of tasty sheep. So when Cain brings his offering of fruits and vegetables to the Heavenly Father, does He put the offering on display like some ugly, pre-K stick-man drawing on the Refrigerator? Of course not. For *this* child, he "had not respect".
How about circumcising your newborn? "Science" is now trying to tell us how our long-revered customs of genital mutilation are not only "unnecessary", but science fanboys are even trying to say it is *wrong*! God makes no bones about this one in Gen 17:14. Any boy whose flesh of the foreskin has not been circumcised "that soul shall be cut off by his people".
Bad language? Gen 20:9 pulls no punches. "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." My young son called me 'dick-i-lous' the other day. He'd better hope I never figure out what that means.
Now let us not forget that hard-headed teenager who blows off Dad's sage advice and repeatedly breaks into the liquor cabinet. Woe be that poor bastard for he shall be dressed down in front of the city elders (this day and age, I'm guessing that means the homeowner or condo association) who "shall stone him with stones, that he die". [Gen 21:21] This is not only good parenting, but also very good economic advice if Dad's liquor consumption is already soaking up just a little too much of the family budget.
And finally, there are the little children. Gotta love the little children. Unless they make fun of your bald head, that is, like they did to Elisha on his way up from thence unto Bethel. Those foul-mouthed little sons-o-bitches you curse in the name of the LORD and send she-bears to rip them to shreds! [2 Kings 2:24]
So what's the bottom line here? There's a LOT more of this stuff in the Good Book and surely we don't want to eat into our time organizing prayer-chains on Facebook by actually reading all of it, so is there some rule-of-thumb into which all of this can be boiled down? I think so. Borrowing from the idea of "what would Jesus do", I think it's quite clear how God intends for us to govern our children through their formative years - they do as Father says, or he takes the little mothers out. All-in-all, I'd say that's the kind of good advice you won't find in any glossy magazine.
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