L I F E A N D P A R E N T I N G A D V I C E
What is your real focus?
As nice Christians, we wonder sometimes why we don’t have much power, purpose, and joy. Well, too many well-meaning people – like you and me – are accidentally (but oh-so-easily) turning our focus from God to false idols and false priorities.
Whether you have kids or not, let parenting expert, pediatrician Meg Meeker, give you an example of how. (We continue with a piece of her recent observations on Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson, she says …)
Good, solid, loving Christian parents [are honoring and prioritizing] their children more than they [honor and prioritize] the Lord. … How did this happen?
Well … very insidiously and slowly over the past 30 years Satan has come in and used the nicest of our friends to just sort of make a few little changes in their parenting under the guise of being wonderful parents to focus more and more and more away from God and onto our children. …
Moms and dads are orbiting around our kids and God is orbiting around all of us in our family.
It sounds good – “focus on your kids.” And in truth, our world would be a lot better off if more Americans added a little focus to their child-rearing habits. But here’s the problem: we’re totally misunderstanding what “focus” really means.
The human soul is selfish and self-centered. “Focusing” on a child – and prioritizing their desires -- exalts the absolute wrong part of a child’s character.
But as parents in America, this is how we’ve been trained to do our job effectively. High schools, then colleges, and now even some first-time employers are calling parents “helicopter parents.” They hover around their children. They … orbit … around their children.
No! That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We as individuals families are called to orbit around God. He is the center … of everything. We are called to focus – unwaveringly – on him.
When we put our kids – or anything else in life (money, job, hobbies, our parents, our spouse) – at the center of our universe, we’re pagans. We’re worshipping the created rather than the creator.
And kids see this. We say we love God, but in the name of being good parents, we focus on everything else. And then they see us a hypocrites when we call them to follow something we aren’t following ourselves.
This subtle shift is destroying the church … and destroying our children.
If you want to focus on your kids, focus on God. Train their attention away from their self and their desires and their abilities and what makes them “happy” (in the short-run), and turn them toward the only thing that will bring them power, peace, purpose, and joy in the long-run.
God is our center.
Indeed, he’s the reason we can spell joy.
It’s J-Jesus, first (He must be the center of our orbit).
O-Other’s second (and the good news is that kids actually desire deeply to serve, they want to make a difference, and yet we as parents keep focusing on them and confusing their heart), and …
Y-You last. (Let’s resolve to not confuse them with the wrong focus.)
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who’s tired
of living in a YOJ world
No comments:
Post a Comment