Tracy R Pace

Some years ago, there was what I'll call a "Parenting Prosperity Gospel." That's a bold term, but I'll use it. Buckle up for a lengthy post on this persistent problem and its devastating effects on the church. In simplified form, the Parenting Prosperity Gospel (PPG) taught a generation or two of Christian parents this: if you teach your kids to obey, if you set up a system in the home of authority and obedience, your kids will almost certainly become a believer. This thinking was based largely in Proverbs 22:6, which reads "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Many parents who were taught this approach (notably by Bill Gothard and other legalists) had zero experience with Christian parenting. They got saved in adulthood and had no idea what they were getting into. Major Baptist and evangelical leaders recommended this vision of parenting, and platformed Gothard (and other legalists) to the skies. It is absolutely right to train children to obey rightful authority. Children need discipline, structure, order, moral training, and boundaries. (Be careful about systems like "Gentle Parenting" that soften these things in some ways.) In Ephesians 6:1, for example, Paul says this: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." This is non-negotiable. But the generation raised on formulaic parenting, in which everything tends to boil down to obedience, sometimes found as their kids grew up that the system didn't work. That is, it didn't produce kids who professed faith as they aged. In many cases, there was an early profession (maybe aged 5-8), but as the child grew older, they didn't stick by it. In some cases, they rebelled, lost their way, or rejected the faith openly. Sometimes this prompted a blow-out fight in the family, with the child tragically going full prodigal on their parents. No father or mother can save their kids. This only God can do. However, we cannot miss that there is a generation or two of Christian parents and their kids who are very much recovering from the Parenting Prosperity Gospel. The parents thought if they did all the right things, then they would get the right result. That's what the mega-famous Christian expert told them. But they didn't get the right result. Their kids are distant from them or perhaps even openly estranged from them. The church needs to do a good bit of thinking and healing in this area. Parenting is an ordered art, not a reductionistic science. You do not take the variable of children, plug them into the parenting equation, and automatically get redeemed kids at the end. Nor does everything in parenting boil down to obedience. This is especially true with formulaic parenting, where it gets all too easy for rules to dominate the home, such that the rules system (with a good number of arbitrary rules) comes to be even bigger than God's grace, mercy, and forgiving love. The way forward here is not to abandon all rules. We have to have some! But we need to make sure, in our fatherhood and motherhood, that rules are not the focus of the home. The heart of our child is; loving our child is; living out the gospel is, by which I mean creating a home culture where there's moral order, but also a whole lot of kindness, joy, forgiveness, and grace; above all, the glory of God is our consuming passion. We also need to ramp up counseling and shepherding for those ravaged (and I use that word advisedly) by the Parenting Prosperity Gospel. In conservative evangelical circles, in some cases it has left us with a generation of grieving parents on the one hand (many of whom suffer in silence, endlessly adjudicating what they did and why the formula failed) and aggrieved children on the other hand (sorting out legalism, a difficult home background, and their own sin). Both sides need help--a whole lot of gospel help. Let's pray for better days ahead. Let's pray for us all to learn many lessions from the era of Gothardian influence. It's not that there was nothing true in that movement; no doubt some true things were taught. But overall, that system amounted to a Parenting Prosperity Gospel, and it wrought a lot of pain in the church. In some cases (not all), it made men iron and unbending and unloving, it left women confused and unstable and disconnected from their kids, and it left kids burned and angry. We are all thoroughly imperfect fathers and mothers. We all need the gospel every day we live. Even our best efforts will fail. For these reasons, let's parent in a ton of prayer, dependence on God, and trust that he will do all things well. Let's not set ourselves up as Olympian Kings and Queens who never falter or need to repent. Let's not only preach repentance to our kids, let's demonstrate it so they see it as normal, healthy, and good. Sin isn't something only that Really Bad People do; sin is our collective foe. We all struggle with it, but praise God, Jesus is way, way, way stronger than it. In all this, let's bring moral order to our homes, but let's set the center of the home culture to love: gracious, forgiving, self-sacrificing, joy-producing love. All this, by the way, starts with a man--a husband and father--who models his own fatherhood after the warm and incredibly gracious Fatherhood of God, the one who is "slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love" (Exodus 34:6-7; Luke 15:11-32; Hebrews 12:3-11).

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