Ways parents unknowingly push their kids away from God
Here are four ways that we might
unknowingly push our children away from God
Duplicity
There may be no greater way that
parents push children away from God than by professing Christ but not living it.
I am reminded of a time when a child was told to answer the phone and tell the
person that mom was not there. What does this tell the child? It seems to give
them permission to lie, and children learn early on that lying is okay in some
circumstances. When parents behave one way at church and then live totally
different lives at home children can see through that hypocrisy or duplicity a
mile away. Thus drives them away from “religion but also away from God.
Pushing them towards God
It’s ironic that when we push our
children toward God and into a relationship with Him, we can push them away
from Him. Jesus never forced Himself on anyone but only said. “Follow Me” (Matthew
16:24), not “You had better follow Me”. When parents are trying to put pressure
on their children to be saved, they might cause a false conversion by their
caving into their pressure just so the parents will get off their backs, or
they might say they are saved just to please their parents, but parents make a
poor imitation of the Holy Spirit and can do more harm than good when they try
to force their children into being saved. Let the Spirit of God convict them of
their sins. It’s not a parents’ job to save them but only to point them to
Christ.
The Hand off
When parents abdicate or give up
their role as their children’s primary spiritual teacher and hand off all that
responsibility to a Sunday School teacher or a youth leader, they are giving up
the greatest influence their children will ever have, which is his or her
parents. What happens is that the Sunday School teacher’s or youth leader’s opinions
are held in greater esteem that the parents’ opinions in spiritual or Biblical
matters.
Unfair Comparison
When parents try to compare their
own child with other children, the child might feel inadequate in the eyes of
his parents. If parents say, “Look how good Jacob is at church, and see how
well he behaves,” then they are sending their child the message that he is to
be more like Jacob and not more like God. Also, when he sees the parents brag
on another child and not him, then he will feel like a failure, which might
even make them give up on trying since “when they measure themselves by one
another and compare themselves with one another, they are
without understanding” (2Cor. 10:12)
A great way to help children stay
in faith or come to Christ and be saved is to remind them of the great things
God has done in the past so they can trust God with their future. The Old
Testament command for parents remains the same today, as parents and grandparents
are told “You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are
sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie
down and when you rise. You shall write then on the doorpost of your house and
on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied
in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the
heaven are above the earth” (Deut. 11:19-21)
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