Raising Your Children

Selected Scriptures

     We've just completed a marvelous study of the family and marriage as indicated to us in Ephesians chapters 5 and 6. And we thought it might be special in the days that we have filling out our schedule to spend some time discussing a little further aspects of wisdom in raising a child.  And we really want to look at the Old Testament.  One of the great features of the Old Testament is the whole process of rearing children, the emphasis on the principles of wisdom that were used there.  And some of the scholars of Old Testament times have given to us insight into the principles that were used in raising their children in the Old Testament.

     Fred Barshaw is with us today and we're going to discuss some of these principles and see how they apply to our lives today.  Fred, it's good to have you with us.

FRED:  Thanks, John, it's good to be here again.

JOHN:  Fred, let me just begin by saying I have a list and you have a list of these principles and maybe we could just start at the beginning and talk about the principles that we found in the Old Testament that were used by the Jewish people to rear their children.  Just a note before we do that, they were committed to building a righteous generation, to raising up a godly seed.  And this as a goal demanded these kind of principles.  And so, let's begin at the beginning.  What was the first one that you have on the list?

FRED:  Well I think in light of Proverbs 20:22 where it says, "Do not say I will repay you evil but wait for the Lord," the Jews had a rule of conduct in raising their children which was basically this, to eliminate all thoughts and behaviors which speak of viciousness or vengeance because it was out of harmony with what God's will was for them.

JOHN:  In other words, no spirit of retaliation.

FRED:  Right, teaching your children to accept what happens without becoming embittered, vengeful, seeking to injure the person who did something to you.  I think it even goes beyond that.  You know, when Christ was speaking on turning the other cheek and going the second mile, the idea was not purely vengeance but it was to not let the situation control you but that you control the situation. And vengeance has a way of taking over and allowing the environment or the other person to control your emotions and your attitudes and your behavior rather than you controlling it the way God would have you to be in control.

JOHN: In a sense, I guess, part of that, and we'll probably get in to that later, would be sort of a lesson in humility because it is usually pride that seeks vengeance or viciousness.

FRED:  Absolutely.  In fact, I think it falls in direct line with much of the teaching that you've been giving to us here at Grace, John, in that humility is really the avenue for almost all Christian behavior and godliness. 

JOHN: So to begin with then in raising our children we want to eliminate all thoughts and behaviors which could be vicious or vengeful.

FRED:  Right.

JOHN:  What about a second principle?

FRED:  Well a second one and it sort of goes along with this and simply extends the first one, to reject feelings of anger and bitterness, not only toward wrong done to oneself but wrong done to one's parents or family.  You know, it's sometimes easy to handle the wrong that's done to us but then when it sort of slops over on to our family, then we can get very angry and vicious over those things.  And the Jewish perspective was if you're going to go part way you need to go all the way on handling this vengeance aspect.

JOHN:  Yeah, it's kind of like...it's kind of like the Little- League father who has a fight with the coach because he doesn't let his son play.

FRED:  Right.

JOHN:  In other words, he gets angry and bitter in defending another member of his family.

FRED:  That's right.

JOHN:  All of us, I think, are prone to anger and anger when it is extended becomes bitterness and bitterness just literally can destroy a person.

FRED:  Well it's like a toxin or a poison in his system.  It not only confines itself to the object of the anger or bitterness but it seems to spread and control all our attitudes and behaviors in regard to other aspects of our lives.

JOHN:  You know, in these first two principles about vengeance and anger and bitterness, again we come back to the fact that the reason people feel this way is because they feel their rights have been abused, or somebody has taken away something that they deserve, or their worth has been tread upon.  And that all stems from a wrong attitude, a basic attitude that says "I have rights and I deserve this and you can't do that to me," sort of thing which is really pride.  And we're right back to that concept of humility.  As we learn to be humble and as we learn the spirit of meekness that our Lord talked about, we realize that we deserve nothing anyway.  In fact, if we got what we deserved we would get condemnation from God.

FRED:  That's right.

JOHN:  And so, when you get very defensive and self-justifying and angry and vengeful, you're simply betraying the fact that you have an over-estimation of yourself.

FRED:  Yeah, there's a real good court sort of metaphorical picture of this.  I might start off the metaphorical picture with saying that God expects us to be thermostats and not thermometers.  And what we mean by that is just comparing the two, the thermometer is totally under the control of its outside environment.  It simply reacts.  It's a reacting instrument to whatever it is outside.  If it's hot, then it reacts in a hot way.  If it's cold, it reacts in a cold way.  Whereas a thermostat is not a reactor, it controls, it's an actor.  If it gets too warm, it cuts in with the cool air.  If it gets too cold, it cuts in with the warm air.  So it controls its environment. And I think what God desires of every Christian, and, of course, the faithful Old Testament Jew also, was that instead of being a thermometer in their life they were to be thermostats.  They were to control life and all around them. And to become angry or vengeful is simply to give the control of your life over to the situation or the people around you rather than you being in control.

JOHN:  You know, that is a great thought in view of the father's role in the family.  The father should be the thermostat.  He should control that.  You know, you can think of the illustration of a kid who comes home from school and the teacher has irritated him or done something, maybe he felt he was graded unfairly or he was reprimanded unfairly and so he's...the kid is angry.  At that point the father, if he is a thermometer by what you're saying, is going to get angry too.  I mean, his temperature is going to go right up to the environment that his son is creating but if he's a thermostat, then he's going to apply to that situation the wisdom that's going to cool it down. That's a tremendous concept in relationship to the role of a father who really is to be a thermostat in the family.  Whatever it is that seems to be getting too hot or too cold, he has to bring into perfect balance.

FRED:  Absolutely, he has to be the model for being a thermostat in life.  You know, Proverbs 15:1, of course, is a prime example of being a thermostat, "A gentle or soft answer turneth away wrath."  Whereas the harsh word is simply allowing the situation to control you rather than you controlling the situation.  The understanding is that vengeance also always carries with it a built-in destruction factor.  It's going to destroy your character to one degree or another.  So whoever seeks to carry out vengeance is going to allow a part of his own character and personality be gnawed away and destroyed in that facet of his reacting. 

JOHN:  And I think too that doctors have even shown that a person who carries around vengeance and bitterness and anger has a sort of a constant self-destruct mode because physically it reacts against the normal flow of life in the body.  You know, there are all of those factors of blood flow and saliva and the nervous system and all of that is restricted and constricted by anger which tenses up and causes physical and medical problems as well.

     Well, we better go on to a third principle and I notice it here.  The third one is that the Jewish people in wisely raising their children were consistent in punishing all real intentional wrong doing.  What do you really see in that?

FRED:  Well, when we talk about real intentional wrong doing we're talking about in the child's mind he's determined to rebel against the standards that have been established, the boundaries of acceptable behavior.  He's willing to trespass those boundaries which are established by the parents.  And Scripture indicates that the parent is obliged to punish all rebellious, all intentional wrong doing on the part of the child.  Of course, the child who errs out of ignorance or immaturity needs to be dealt with accordingly.  In other words, with understanding and understanding that he didn't understand where he was supposed to go and how he was to react and therefore it must be a gentle teaching kind of situation.  But the youngster who disobeys just out of pure rebellion needs to be disciplined.  And much of Proverbs is addressed to that.  You know, you have Proverbs 19:18, "Discipline your son while there is still hope," that is that's he's young enough.  It says, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, the rod of discipline will remove it far from him."  "He who spares the rod hates his son."

JOHN:  Yeah.

FRED:  And you need to in light of this particular principle to always discipline for the youngster who steps over the boundary intentionally.

JOHN:  Fred, let me ask this question, too.  Why is a child so determined to rebel?

FRED:  Well, I think, the Christian answer, of course, is that it's a built-in part of his being.  We are born with the desire to rebel, the seed of rebellion.

JOHN:  Yeah, and I think that's so important.  Modern psychology does not recognize that and that's why they don't talk at all about discipline or corporal punishment or anything like that because the wrong assumption is that this child is a free human being who can choose right and wrong and you've got to give him his head and let him develop the way he wants to go.  But the real issue biblically is that you have to break the back of his sinfulness, in a sense, and if you don't correct him he will be literally be out of sync with God's plan for a joyous life as long as he lives. And in the midst of his freedom there will be absolute misery because he's never learned how to control his sinful impulses and therefore to please God and to know the joy that God can give.

FRED:  That's right.  You know, I know this will take a little time but I just want to recite an incident when I was a school principal that illustrates this principle so well.  I remember I had a teacher in the third grade who had received a youngster that I knew was eventually going to give her a lot of problems.  And sure enough, after the second week of school he appeared in my office, her with her hand upon him saying, "He was a total disruptive element in her classroom."  And I turned to the youngster and I said, "Archie, is this true?  Are you disrupting the classroom?"  And he says, "Yeah, but you won't do anything about it."  And I said, "Well gee, that's interesting, Archie, what do you mean I won't do anything about it."  He says, "Well you can't touch me."  He says, "Nobody touches me, my mother and my father have never touched me and no one else is going to touch me either and that includes you." 

     And I said, "Well gee, that's an interesting statement, Archie.  Why don't you come on in to my office and sit down."  So he came in and sat down and I said, "I want to call your mother and just ask her about this, Archie." 

     And so, I called the mother and I said, "Mrs. So-and-so," I said, "Archie has been doing this and this and this and I want to give you a choice."  I said, "I'm either going to send him home for two weeks or I'm going to spank him, which would you prefer?"  And she said, "No one has ever touched our child," and she says, "You aren't going to touch him either."  I said, "Fine, would you come down and pick him up?  You can keep him home for two weeks."  And she says, "Well, can't we talk about this a little bit?"  Obviously she didn't want Archie at home either.  And I said, "Sure, let's talk about it."  But I said, "Those are the only two options you have."  And then she said, "Well, when you spank a child how do you do it?"  And I said, "Well, he just bends over after he understands what the offense is and I give him a couple of swats with a paddle."  And she said, "Well, do you hit him hard?"  And I said, "Oh yeah, it's no good unless I hit him hard." And she says, "But we've never touched him."  And I said, "Well, you have the other choice, you can come and get him for two weeks."

     So by then she was crying and she said, "Well, can I call his father?"  And I said sure.  Well, meanwhile poor ole Archie is sitting there and his eyes are getting larger and larger cause he knows things aren't going exactly as he had thought they would.  So in any case, she called me back in about five minutes and she said, "We've decided that you should spank Archie."  And I said, "Good, I'll had the phone to Archie, will you tell him that?"  And so I handed the phone to Archie and, boy, of course, at this point he just turned completely white, you know, he thought this was terrible.

     So anyhow, I have to say this, within Archie, within that rebellious child was also a good kid.  And he took those swats and I really hit him hard, he hopped all over that office cause it really crackled.  But he took all three of them.  And I said, "Now, Archie, you understand why we did this."  "Oh yes, sir."  And all of a sudden he became a model youngster and I sent him back to the classroom. And I said, "Now, Archie, if the teacher sends you back, what's going to happen?"  "Well, you're going to spank me."  I said, "Yeah, that's right, Archie."  And we shook hands and he understood.  And I sort of did a little thing with the kids that sort of helped, I'd write the thing on a chalk board sometimes and then after they got their swats I'd erase it.  And I'd say, "Now, as far as I'm concerned it's all over, Archie."

     So anyhow, he went back, I didn't hear from him the rest of the day.  But at three o'clock at dismissal time I saw this big Cadillac come streaking up to the curb and screech to a stop and out came his mother.  I recognized her and I saw her race past the office and pretty soon she came back again, I guess she was going to see if Archie was still alive, you know.  So in any case she came back by the office and as they passed by, I was standing out in the front office and Archie stopped and he said, "Hi, Dr. Barshaw, how you doing?"  I said, "Great, Archie, how you doing?"  And he says, "Fine, I had a great afternoon," you know.  And this mother had this tremendously puzzled look on her face and so she sent Archie on out to the car and she came in and she said, "Well did you spank him?"  And I said, "Well certainly I spanked him, I told you I was going to spank him."  "But he doesn't hate you."  I said, "Well why should he hate me?  He has now received recompense for what he knew was wrong and he feels satisfied," and I explained about the erasing the little chalk board.  And as far as he's concerned it's clean.

     You know, it reminds me of Proverbs 29:15 and 17, it says, "The rod of reproof give wisdom."  And, you know, the rest of his time there from third grade through sixth, I never remember Archie stepping out of line, he became a model student, one of our top students.  And it...

JOHN:  Hmm...well...go ahead...

FRED:  Kids need to know what the limits are and then they need to know where the approval is going to come from.

JOHN:  Absolutely...

FRED:  That's their security.

JOHN:  Sure.

FRED:  The boundaries of acceptable behavior are their security.

JOHN:  Fred, a fourth principle is to never prefer one child over another.  And I think the Hebrews knew this. There was an equality and I think partly because they understood that to be the nature of God, that God was no respecter of persons.  And in their being made in the image of God and wanting to truly manifest God, they wanted to be careful about not preferring one child over another, but that is a problem very often in families.  Maybe you could talk to that issue for a moment.

FRED:  Oh, it really is a problem and I think it can be both conscious and unconscious as far as a parent is concerned.  No parent wants to prefer one over the other but there are just certain personality affinities and things that occur between the various children of a family and a certain parent that makes one a favorite.  You know, you always hear the story, "Well mother always liked you best," you know, "you were her favorite."  But there's a number of damaging things and there's a number of wrong things about preferring one child over the other and you've already mentioned one.  Because in doing that you reflect a poor image of what God is really like.  And, of course, the second aspect, it's in direct violation of Scripture which tells us that.  And a third thing, it imposes a poor self-image on the child. I think this is one of the ways to exasperate a child that we talked about before.  And it's just wrong in all those aspects.

JOHN:  A child has to sense love and love basically involves value.  In other words, love says you're worth something.  Love says I value you.  And if it is apparent to the child that you value that child less than you value another child, he can't accept that, or she cannot accept that.  That's a statement about their worth, that they really don't appreciate.  They cannot live comfortably in a situation where they're worth less to you than other children are. 

FRED:  That's right.  You know, I think what every parent really needs to really recognize is that every child is gifted. And instead of looking for the negatives in a child, which most parents tend to concentrate on even though they don't like to, those are the things that seem to shout at us, we need to think on the positive, we need to look for the giftedness in our children.  Now giftedness always isn't relegated to the academic giftedness.  There is giftedness in people relationships.

JOHN: Sure.

FRED:  I had a boy down in a black school that had no home.  He had gone from foster home to foster home, he couldn't read, he couldn't write.  And Robert was an angry child.  He had been totally disliked by everyone that had been around him and, of course, he deserved a large part of it.  And I said, "Is there anyone that loves you, Robert?"  "No, and I don't love anyone."  You know, and I said...and then he backed up and he said, "No, somebody loves me." And I says, "Who is that?"  He says, "Well there's a dog on the way home that I pet and he growls and barks and bites at everyone but me, but me and that dog, we get along great."  He says, "I love that dog but he's not my dog," he said.  But in any case, I thought, "Gee, there must be something in Robert that's gifted and I need to look for that good thing in him." And so we began to talk a little bit and he told me that he liked to put bicycles together, different size spokes and he could make them go different speeds and so on.  I thought, "Gee, this is amazing for an eleven-year-old boy."  I said, "Where do you get your bicycles?"  He says, "Well I steal them."  You know, I thought, well I better bypass that because this is the environment he came out of.

     But, you know, I had a high-school mechanical aptitude test sitting behind me and I gave it to him.  And I said, "You know, Robert, since you're interested in mechanics, I'd like to find out how good you are."  And I handed him the test which was mostly pictures showing different gear ratios and if this gear went this way, way down the line which direction would this gear go and which one would have the most mechanical advantage and so on.  And he looked at it, "But, Dr. Barshaw, I can't read.  I don't know what this says."  And I said, "Well you look at the picture and figure out if you can find out what it's really saying and there's a multiple choice answer there.  If you can't understand it, ask me and I'll tell you what it is, okay?" 

     Well he went through that thing and he only asked me on about three of them. In a very short time he took that whole high school mechanical aptitude test and when I graded it he came out in the 95 percentile, an eleven-year-old boy on mechanical aptitude test.

JOHN:  Even though he couldn't read.

FRED:  Even though he couldn't read, showing the boy was an absolute mechanical genius that no one had bothered to take advantage of.  Wasted resources even within our own children are one of the primary problems in the world today...wasted resources.

JOHN:  Now this whole area of preference can so easily become a problem because my aptitudes and my skills may not be what my child's are and if he doesn't match my expectation, then I tend to look down on him.  Now in my case, I couldn't pass an elementary mechanical aptitude test and if I were in my particular skills forcing that on one of my children and making that expectation the only norm for acceptance, then I would do a terrible disservice to him.

FRED:  Absolutely.

JOHN:  So what you're saying is then to avoid preferring one another we have to love them as God loves all of us, we have to understand that it is right to love them all equally, and we have to be looking for those very special qualities in their life that make them stand out and stand apart from the other children.

FRED: Right, because God has placed with any...within any person a potential for dignity.  And dignity means being worthy of respect.  There is no person that doesn't have a potential for dignity.  And it's up to the parent to find that potential, identify it, and capitalize on it in that child's life.

JOHN:  Maybe just as we close our program today, Fred, we could mention the fifth in these principles.  Why don't you tell it what it is and then comment on it.

FRED:  Oh, this is such an important one and it applies to adults and children and it applies to every person really and especially believers.  It's to rather show sin...now I'm going to have to explain this after I'm through...to rather show sin and its essential repulsiveness than to threaten a child out of it by speaking of its consequences in this world or the world to come.  We can deal with our sin either vertically or horizontally.  Sin primarily has a vertical, initially a vertical offense to God.  We should always see sin as, first of all, offending God because that's what it does.  But most of us think of sin in terms of its horizontal implications, how it affected someone else.  And we need to teach our children to always think in terms of how their sin has offended God and not others.

JOHN:  Boy, that is such an essential principle...to teach young people that sin is an offense against God rather than that sin messes up things in the world. And that is...that is contrary to what's going on even in evangelical Christianity.  I was talking about this Sunday night in my message that we have been saying for a long time that sin is a problem because of what it does to us and what it does to our relationships and we've got to take care of that.  When in fact that is only a secondary factor.  And, my, what an important thing that the Hebrews grasped when they grasped the fact that you must teach your children that sin has consequences toward God.  That is really the heart of the matter.

     Well what have we said today?  We've said that there are aspects of wisdom in raising children that we find in the Old Testament.  First of all, the Hebrews knew that they had to eliminate all thoughts and behaviors which spoke of viciousness or vengeance.  They had to teach their children to reject feelings of anger and bitterness not only toward things done to themselves, but done to other members of the family. They had to be aware of the need to punish all real intentional wrong doing because there's a basic rebellious nature in the child.  And then to never prefer one child over another.  And then finally, to make sure that children understand that sin offends God first of all, and secondarily it complicates life severely and seriously.

     Tomorrow we're going to continue our discussion of the principles of wisdom in raising a child taken from the Old Testament.  And I might just add as a footnote as we prepare to say goodbye for today, that these are not our thoughts, these are not the thoughts of some psychiatrist or some psychologist or child behaviorist but these are God's thoughts.  These are the things that are revealed in the Old Testament most particularly, I think, in the book of Proverbs where the principles for raising a child were given.  And, in fact, given in the book of Proverbs we find a model for all of this because repeatedly it says my son, my son, my son, and then it will follow on by saying, "Learn the wisdom of your father and the instruction of your mother."  We believe that the book of Proverbs was taught to the children, particularly the young boys so that they would learn the principles that God wanted them to know in terms of growing to mature and godly manhood. And then, of course, disseminated to the ladies as well.

     I hope it's been helpful for you to be with us today and to learn a little bit more about how to raise your children, or for some of you maybe it's your grandchildren, or maybe for some of you how better to communicate these things to folks that need to know.  You know, some of you have children and you can make a direct application.  Some of you are Christians who perhaps can, as it says in Titus, teach the younger women to do this, or some of you men could teach the younger men to take their role and responsibility in rearing up a godly generation, a godly seed that will exalt the Lord Jesus Christ in our world.

     Well God bless you for sharing with us today and we hope this has been a very special time.

JOHN:  We have the privilege again today of sharing together with Dr. Fred Barshaw as a follow up to our series that we've recently completed on marriage and the family.  And we're having a special two-day discussion of aspects of wisdom in raising a child that are taught in the Old Testament.

     Now yesterday we started looking through our list of principles that are necessary in properly raising a child and we covered five of them.  First of all, to eliminate all thoughts and behaviors which speak of viciousness or vengeance.  Secondly, to reject feelings of anger and bitterness, not only toward wrong done to oneself but wrong done to one's parents or family.  Thirdly, to punish all real intentional wrong doing.  Fourthly, to never prefer one child over another.  And then finally, to show sin in its essential repulsiveness to God rather than its consequence in the world.  In other words, to deal with the vertical aspect of sin in teaching a child rather than just the horizontal.

     We want to go on today and see some of the other principles that are very essential in properly raising up a godly generation.  The sixth principle, Fred, is one that we've talked about in other discussions and it is to never discourage or exasperate a child.  Just as a review, what do we really mean by that?

FRED:  Well, I think, you expressed it in our last discussion very well, John, it's to push the child in a corner where he has no options.  He can't do anything about what you've commanded of him or demanded of him, therefore all he can do is feel frustration which is an anger, a mixture of those two things, I think the Germans call it anxed(?), it's that terrible feeling of running out of options, as you said.  There's nothing you can do about it.  And the Bible specifically forbids that.  Ephesians 6:4, "And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger."  Colossians 3:21, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children that they may not lose heart," and that's just simply a reflection of the Old Testament principle in the same regard.

JOHN:  You know, I had an illustration of this the other day.  Our children were sort of milling around and I was trying to study as I was preparing for Sunday.  And I said, "Now, kids, you need to be quiet so Dad can study."  "Okay, Dad," and, you know, nothing happened to make things quiet, it got worse.  And so I said, "Now, if you're not quiet I'm going to need to discipline you."  And they weren't quiet.  So I just stepped out the room and little Melinda was going down the hall and I said, "Come here, honey," and I just whacked her.  And I said, "Now you have to learn to obey."  And she looked at me with this blank look and she immediately went to her mother and she said, "Mother, I wasn't there, it wasn't me."  And she was totally frustrated because she had been disciplined for something that she didn't do and had absolutely no way to defend herself because I didn't ask for an explanation, I just acted.  But that would be maybe a less serious but if that happened very often, a prolonged problem in exasperating a child, and we do not want to break their spirit.

FRED:  Absolutely.

JOHN:  We don't want to push them into a corner where we lose a sense of justice and sensitivity.

FRED:  Yeah,