How to develop resilience in our kids? We want them to possess grit, courage, thick skin, the habit of getting up after falling. Well, the most important factor we’ve saved for last: Parents who worship and trust in a big God are best equipped to rear resilient children.
Tonia and I occasionally remark on how anxious kids are today. But our perspective isn’t unique. Sociologists are noticing the same thing…an anxious generation. Some have even pinned it to a year – 2010 – around the time smartphones became ubiquitous. (Parents, delay giving smart phones to your kids for as long as possible. Practice in front of the mirror your drowsy and vague ‘perhaps next year sweetie…’)
But I’ll posit another, non technological factor behind kids’ rising anxiety: fearful parents. In many cases our kids are picking up on our fearfulness and taking it upon themselves. Again, mine isn’t a novel position. The smart people have even coined a term, safetyism, to capture this obsession to be or feel comfortable and secure… at the cost of everything else. Including progress. Maturity. Fun. OBEDIENCE.
In many cases our kids are picking up on our fearfulness and taking it upon themselves.
We could guess at reasons for parents’ fearfulness:
- Very online parents are regularly exposed to tragedies all over the nation, even the world. An overload of web browsing makes it easy to start assuming that the worst is always just around the corner.
- On the other hand, thanks to good and bad developments, no generation before ours has been as buffered from in-the-flesh calamity and death. Ironically, this kind of sheltering has made us skittish.
- We’re indoors a lot, and sedentary, and for some reason a lot of being indoors and sitting around makes us fretful.
That list is just getting started. But for my money, the root problem of fearful parents is theological. A book was written in the 50s that several times I’ve heard is only mediocre, but, dang, does it have a good title: Your God is Too Small. Exactly! We are fearful because our God is small. Our kids are growing up in families with a small God…but also with an ever-growing realization they’re entering a big world. So they feel ill equipped = SCARY!
What are indicators that your God is small?
- He’s a therapeutic God that gives advice, not a Lord that issues commands. Obeying and aligning your life to his Word is merely one consideration among many.
- He’s a little God who wants just a little something from you. Not the consuming fire (Hebrews 12). Not the Christ who says to the dutiful son: Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their dead. The small God makes no claims on things/people you value. He’ll leave you alone on the easy and broad way.
- He’s a God whom you are controlling by your feelings, your desires. If you feel positive, then he’s obviously good. You can trade with him: give my daughter a better marriage and I’ll go to church 75% of the time.
- He’s a God that likes to coddle and cuddle. Certainly not the mean God of the Old Testament! Then again, we’re perplexed when Jesus reprimands the disciples after they frantically awaken him in the middle of a deadly storm: Why are you afraid, of you of little faith? So, even the New Testament God is a little brusque then!? Well…how dare he be so dismissive of my authentic feelings!
- He’s easy to relegate to something less than the Most High, the One who sits enthroned over the flood (Psalm 29:10). When the good people are winning, when peace prevails…that’s God! Otherwise…where’s God?
- He’s a God of the past. In the early months of the 1960s things got too wicked, too complex, too advanced for him to make much of a difference. We’d love to get back to the good ol’ days when he still had things in hand!
Well, we could keep going with that list too, of small-god-ism. But here’s the point put positively: Fear the God who is there, and the world grows far less scary. Humble yourself before God, and you’ll stride through the world.
Fear the God who is there, and the world grows far less scary. Humble yourself before God, and you’ll stride through the world.
I like this little anecdote from Benjamin Warfield that highlights the practical outcomes of theology:
We have the following bit of personal experience from a general officer of the United States Army. He was in a great western city at a time of intense excitement and violent rioting. The streets were over-run daily by a dangerous crowd. One day he observed approaching him a man of singularly combined calmness and firmness of mien, whose very demeanor inspired confidence. So impressed was he with his bearing amid the surrounding uproar that when he had passed he turned to look at him, only to find that the stranger had done the same. On observing his turning the stranger at once came back to him, and touching his chest with his forefinger, demanded without preface: ‘What is the chief end of man?’ On receiving the countersign, ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever’ – ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks!’ ‘Why, that was just what I was thinking about you,’ was the rejoinder.’
Theology makes a difference! Parents, are you sure that the Father of Jesus Christ is God? Well, then act like that’s the case: The righteous who walks in his integrity— blessed are his children after him! (Proverbs 20:7)
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