10 Character
Principle: Not all of the wrong your children do is a direct rebellion to authority; much of the wrong is the result of a lack of character.
Let me play out a scene for you. It’s Tuesday late afternoon at the Smiths’. They live in an open floor plan house, where the kitchen, living room, and family room all meld into one another. Mom is in the kitchen, and she is in full-blown, nervous, and frenetic mode because in an hour or so a family of six is going to arrive for dinner and she is not remotely near being ready. In the family room, in full sight of Mom, are her three children, ages 7, 9, and 11, and they are playing Wii bowling together. Now, think with me carefully as I ask the following question: What is wrong with this scene?
I would imagine many of you would answer, “Nothing! If I’m working as fast and hard as I can to get something done and my children are quietly playing together, Jesus has surely visited my house!” But at closer examination, what is being revealed in this moment in the lives of these children is a very important lack of character. Each of these children is old enough to understand that their mom is up against it. Each of them has become accustomed to sensing her emotions. Each of them is able to understand that she needs help. And each of them is in possession of skills to help her, and in helping her, lift some of the pressure that she is feeling. But not one of them offers help, because they don’t actually care. They don’t care that she is nervous and discouraged. They don’t care that she is hurt that they don’t offer to help. They don’t care that she may be embarrassed in front of her friends. They don’t care.
You wouldn’t want such a person as your friend. You wouldn’t want such an uncaring person as your spouse. You wouldn’t want such an unfeeling person as your neighbor or your boss. What God is graciously revealing in the hearts of these children is not okay in them, and it should not be okay to us. What is being revealed is the source of much of the hurt, heartache, dysfunction, and conflict in the human community. So, it’s not enough to target the direct disobedience of your children; as a parent you must also have an eye toward their character.
You see, in the situation that I have described, the children have not rebelled against a rule. They have not disobeyed their mom’s command. They have not refused to do what they are told. But what they are doing is wrong in the eyes of God, and it should be seen as wrong by us as well. The problem with these children is not that they have conspired together to rebel against their mother. Their problem is that they lack character and because they do, they haven’t done what is right, good, loving, and kind. You will miss God-given opportunity after God-given opportunity if you do not understand that not every wrong thing your child does is a direct rebellion to authority. Much of the wrong they do is the result of a lack of character.
It’s not enough to just emphasize the beauty of submission to authority. You must also emphasize the need for character development. In both of these you’re helping your children to recognize and understand the damage that sin does to their hearts and to ours as well. Now, you don’t march into the family room, stand in front of the flat-screen, and start yelling at your children: “How dare you watch me be so upset and not offer to help me after all the things I’ve done for you! I want you to unplug the game machine and hand it to me. Take a good look at it because you’ll never see it again! Children that are as cold and unfeeling as you don’t deserve a game machine! Now, get your rear ends into the kitchen as fast as you can and do what I tell you to do or, well, you don’t want to know what will happen!” What I’m saying is this: if you deal with a lack of character with a lack of character, you will not accomplish what God has given you to accomplish in the hearts of your children.
Proper handling of these kinds of situations always begins not with a lecture, but with confession. Before you talk to your children, you and I need to talk to ourselves and to our Lord. We need to confess that it’s not just our children who lack character; we do as well. That’s why we are tempted to get angry when God is calling us to give grace. That’s why we’re tempted to beat our children with words when we are called to bless them with wisdom. That’s why we are tempted to motivate our children with guilt, rather than igniting in them the courage of the gospel. That’s why we take personally what really isn’t personal at all and make it all about us. That’s why there are moments when we are walking down the hallway toward one of our children’s rooms and we’re actually angry because one of our children has the audacity at that moment to need parenting!
Much of our struggle as parents is rooted in the fact that God is still working, with the zeal of transforming grace, to mold new character into our hearts. Without that grace we would be left to the coldness of our hearts and the dysfunction it would create in every dimension of our lives. When you confess that when it comes to character struggles, you are more like your children than unlike them, then you deal with situations when character problems are revealed with patience, kindness, and grace. This confession frees you to see these moments not as anger-producing irritants, but as what they are: moments of grace. God has set every element of these situations up to reveal the hearts of your children to you. He has manufactured this moment to remind you again that the heart of your child is not operating the way that he intended. And he has done this because he loves your child and he wants you to be an instrument of insight, confession, and change in your child’s heart.
When you begin to think this way, rather than being mad that you have to deal with this stuff all the time, you will be blown away at the magnitude and zeal of God’s grace. How could it be that God could love your children this much? How could it be that he could care so much about what is in their individual hearts? How could it be that he would exercise his sovereign power in such a specific way as to make sure that the lack of character in the hearts of your kids would be exposed in such clear ways? But he does care and he does rule situations in our families, not so that they would be comfortable, but so that they would be something better, something restorative. Because God is a God of incalculable grace and boundless love, we will have character opportunities with our children. God will give them to us again and again. The question is, Will we recognize them and deal with them with patient wisdom and restorative grace?
A Stunning Connection
The Bible makes a connection to the source of character issues that makes these issues profoundly more important to the task of parenting than you would otherwise think they are. Character problems are more than relational hassles or situational irritants. They are more than what causes horizontal disharmony in our lives. There is something deeply moral and theological about these problems, and only a person who takes the Bible seriously would ever come to understand this. Why do all of our children (and us too) tend to be impatient, unkind, demanding, and complaining? Why do they tend to fight with each other, say things that are unkind, and lack in functional love? Why do they want to be first in line, be the center of attention, and find it easier to be served rather than serve? Why do they tend to look for ways to avoid work, shift the blame, and think that they know more than they actually know? Why do they tend to argue for argument’s sake, be more competitive than is necessary, and think they’re the one always getting the short end of the stick? Why do they not act lovingly toward people they say they love, why do they not like to share, and why do they tend to excuse rather than confess? Why?
If you do not understand the source of character issues, it’s hard to handle those issues in a way that leads to recognition, confession, and change. This is where the connection that Scripture makes is as practical as it is brilliant. When I came to understand this connection, it fundamentally altered forever the way I looked at my children (and myself) and the way that I dealt with their character problems.
I want to examine Romans 1 with you because this is where this stunning character connection is made for us. The verses below break into God’s discussion of what sin does to the function of every heart of every person who was ever born. That means it describes to you the hearts of your children.
. . . because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. . . .
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Rom. 1:25, 28–32)
I don’t know if you caught it as you read the passage above, but the Bible connects character issues to the most significant of all human functions—worship. What this passage is telling you as a parent is that the heart of your child always lives under the rule of someone or something. And what rules the heart of your child will shape and determine how he deals with the situations and relationships of everyday life. This passage also alerts you to the fact that this means that there is a daily war that is being fought on the turf of the hearts of your children. It’s a war for control. Will the heart of your child be controlled by love for the Creator (worship) or by craving something in the creation (idolatry)? Further, it lets you know that it’s only when your heart is ruled by the Creator that you will respond as he has designed you to respond to the circumstances and people in your life. Think of how this helps us understand, untangle, and intervene in situations like what I described to you in the beginning of this chapter.
So we’ll start with this question: On the Tuesday in our story, what’s ruling the hearts of those children? The answer is easy: pleasure. Is pleasure an evil thing? No, it’s not. God placed us in a pleasurable world and created us with an ability to enjoy its pleasures, but pleasure must not rule your heart. If the desire for pleasure controls your heart, you will not respond appropriately to the situations and people in your life. So because these children were getting what they wanted, they didn’t care about what their mother was going through. If pleasure controls your heart, you won’t love and serve the people in your life as God has called you to.
It’s not wrong to want a little control over your life, but if the heart of your child is ruled by control, he will fight your authority every time. It’s not wrong for your child to want to be right, but if a desire to be right rules his heart, he will be endlessly argumentative. It’s not wrong for your daughter to want to be accepted, but if human acceptance rules her heart, she will be tempted to do things she shouldn’t do to get it. It’s not wrong for your son to enjoy material possessions, but if the desire for things rules his heart, he will be constantly dissatisfied and demanding. It’s not wrong for your children to want a little independence, but if independence rules their hearts, they will fight you every time you try to exercise a bit of parental control over them. The character issues in the lives of your children exist not just because they want bad things, but because they become enslaved to good things. You see, a desire for even a good thing really does become a bad thing when it becomes a ruling thing.
The biblical connection of character issues to worship is incredibly helpful as you think about how to understand and respond to those issues in the lives of your kids. And you have to understand your parental job description in these moments. Your children don’t understand the connection that the Bible makes between character and worship. If you would go into the family room and ask, “Why didn’t you offer to help Mommy? You could see she needed help,” your children wouldn’t answer, “Because there’s idolatry in our hearts. Rather than our hearts being ruled by God, they were ruled by pleasure, so we didn’t really care about what you were going through. Come on, Mom, you know that misplaced worship always leads to character deficiency.” Your children will never say that because they don’t understand why they do the things they do. Parents, that’s your job. It’s your God-given job to unfold deep mysteries of the universe to your children. To make connections for them that are not only insight-giving, but life-transforming as well. They need you to do more than announce failure, instill guilt, attach a consequence, and walk away. If you can’t have a conversation that makes these important heart/worship connections, schedule it later. But capture these opportunities. These moments are moments of grace. God is revealing to you what your children don’t see and don’t understand so you can show it to them so that the Spirit of God can work concern, conviction, and confession into their hearts.
Every exposure of the heart is a grace. Every conversation is a blessing. How amazing is God’s love that he would ever care about one moment in one family in one house somewhere on earth, and he would work so that hearts would be exposed, truth spoken, and rescue provided. If he did that only once, it would be an incredible miracle of grace, but he does it again and again in millions of homes every day. That he cares for us and our children is too magnificent for our little human brains to fully grasp. When you have to deal with a situation that has been made difficult because your child lacks character, you are not being cursed, you’re being graced. God turns these moments of failure into moments of redemption and asks you to participate in his gracious rescue agenda.
When your teenage daughter, Sally, comes home at the end of her school day and says, “Everybody in my class is going up to that old abandoned camp for the weekend to hang out and have a sleepover,” you say, “Do they have permission to be there?” She says a bit impatiently, “Mom, it’s an abandoned camp; there’s no one to give permission.” You then say, “Will there be adult supervision?” Sally says, “Come on, Mom, we’re a bunch of young adults. We’re capable of an overnight at an old camp. What do you think is going to happen?” So you respond as calmly as you can, “Sally, I’m not comfortable with you going somewhere for the weekend without permission to be there and without adult supervision.” Sally says, “But, Mom, everyone is going. I will be the only one that can’t. How embarrassing is that? I wish you weren’t so hung up. I wish you would trust me for once. I can’t believe I have to go to school tomorrow and tell my friends that my mom won’t let me go!” You say, “Sally, I wish I could say yes, but I just don’t think it’s a good plan.” Sally walks away while saying, “I knew you’d say no; you always say no.”
The problem with Sally in this situation is not that she has broken a rule. You had never given her the “no weekends at abandoned camps” rule. The problem with Sally is that she lacks character and that lack of character has put her at odds with you. Now, think back on the connection that has been the focus of this chapter. What’s ruling Sally’s heart right now? Sally doesn’t understand it, but the big motivating factor in her heart is what the Bible calls “fear of man.” Sally craves being in the “in crowd.” She craves being accepted by her peers. She fears being rejected. All of this is understandable and normal, but dangerous as well. The Bible says that fear of man is a snare (Prov. 29:25). You see, it is natural to want to be accepted because God has designed us to be social beings, but if human acceptance is where Sally looks to get her identity and inner sense of well-being, then she will be tempted to do and say things that she should not in order to get it.
Because fear of man rules Sally’s heart, she is angry that her mom is concerned, rather than being thankful for her love. But Sally doesn’t understand why she’s feeling what she’s feeling and doing what she’s doing because she doesn’t understand the connection between character and worship. Sally needs something more than a parent who will say a firm no; Sally needs a parent who will help Sally understand what’s in her heart and how it shapes the way she responds to her mom. These are not the hard moments of parenting; these are wonderful moments where eye-opening and heart-changing conversations are given an opportunity to happen.
A Descriptive List
Go back and look at Romans 1:28–32 again. Notice the connection between worship (“since they did not see fit to acknowledge God”) and character (the poor character list that follows). If you examine this list, it describes quite clearly the things we deal with with our children every day.
Envy. How often do you have to deal with the conflict that results because one sibling is jealous of another?
Strife. Is there ever a day when you don’t have to deal with some kind of problem between your children?
Deceit. How often are our children less-than-honest about what they have said or done?
Gossip. Do you not find your children being regularly seduced by the temptation to talk negatively about someone to someone else?
Insolent. To be insolent is to be rude and unmannerly. What parent doesn’t have to deal with this on a regular basis?
Haughty. It’s the pride in the hearts of our children that again and again makes parenting them difficult.
Boastful. Boastfulness is pride with an open mouth. Our children are way too comfortable with announcing that they are better, smarter, prettier, faster, stronger, more likeable, etc.
Foolish. There is never a day when somehow, someway you are not confronted with the foolishness of one of your children.
Heartless. It is sad to see how heartless our children can be in their responses to one another.
Not only does this list capture the things that you are required to grapple with daily as you parent your children, it also tells you why you have to deal with them. Your children don’t so much need character management as they need worship realignment. They don’t first have a character problem; they have a worship problem that produces a character problem. Because of this they need more than character critique; they need to be given insight into the worship function of their hearts and how it shapes the way they react in the relationships and situations of their daily lives. They really do need truth that has the power to set them free.
Yes, it is true that our children are slaves to what they don’t see, and because they are, they respond in ways that they don’t understand. They need the grace of insight, the grace of wisdom, the grace of patient instruction, and the grace of daily forgiveness. And our ability to give this grace to our children starts by acknowledging that the list we have considered not only describes them but us as well. The worship of our hearts gets kidnapped, too, by something in the creation, and when it does, we don’t respond as we should to the people and situations in our lives. Like our children, we need a patient Father who will help us to see our hearts so we can confess what is there and reach out for the change that only he can empower. Parents who are humbly willing to confess their need of parenting care don’t resent those moments when they are called by their Father to give the same care to their children.
Think of how God works in your life. He is not content with just forgiving you for your sin; having forgiven you, he is zealously committed to transforming you. He doesn’t just target those intentionally rebellious moments. He works on the character of your heart as well, so that you progressively become what he designed you to be. Because he is committed to character change, your Lord goes after the idols of your heart and he will not rest until every thought, desire, choice, word, and action is fully rooted in the worship of him. You and I are still blessed every day with his fatherly care because the war of worship still rages in our hearts.
Now God calls you to do with your children what he graciously does with you every day. Help your children understand and own what rules their hearts. Help them see how what controls their hearts shapes how they respond to people and situations. Make the character/worship connection again and again and again for them. And as you do, remember that you are functioning as a tool in the hands of One who has the willingness and power to free the hearts of your children from what has captured them, and in freeing them, implant new character in their hearts.
Bobby’s Story
Bobby was a bit of a geek. He had a bulbous body, was not very coordinated, and was a bit socially awkward. Because of this Bobby hated school. There wasn’t a day when Bobby wasn’t made fun of. Bobby would beg his mom to stay home, and he would cry as he told her at the end of the day about how he was treated. But when Bobby was around ten or eleven years old, he discovered that he had a good sense of humor, and when he made jokes, people liked him. So the classroom became a place for Bobby to perform for acceptance. Bobby was good at it. Sometimes Bobby said something so hysterical that the teacher would have to turn her back to the class because she was laughing too. Bobby had become the typical disruptive class clown.
Then the notes started coming home about the distraction that Bobby created in his class, and Mom would talk to Bobby. Bobby would promise his mom that he would do better, but he didn’t do better. Before long the administration of the school threatened Bobby with expulsion, and his dad lectured Bobby about what life would be like if he had no education, but nothing changed.
I met Bobby when he was thirty-five. He had asked to talk with me. The first time we met, I asked Bobby why he was there, and I’ll never forget what he said: “I’m just so tired of playing the buffoon.” Bobby had never finished his schooling; he had a string of short-term jobs and a series of broken relationships. He was a lonely, broken man. So I began to talk to Bobby about his heart. It’s not wrong for Bobby to have wanted to be accepted. It’s not wrong that Bobby hated the rejection that he faced every day. But if these things rule your heart, they will do damage to your life—and that is exactly what happened to Bobby.
I remember Bobby saying to me, “Paul, I’m thirty-five years old, and you’re the first person who has ever talked to me about what rules my heart.” Bobby wasn’t saying this in a self-excusing way; he was just wondering aloud. Bobby was raised in a Christian home. He went to a pretty good church and attended a Christian school, but no one had ever talked to him about what we have considered in this chapter. No one had explained these liberating mysteries that the Bible reveals for us. No one had told him that no human being could ever give him the identity and rest of heart that he was looking for. No one helped him to understand that the failure in his life was rooted in hooking his heart to something that would never deliver.
Bobby is now an owner of his own business. He’s married and a father. Bobby is an elder in his church. I wrote this chapter because I am concerned about what will happen to the Bobbys that are being raised by Christian parents about the world. Will our Bobbys learn early what controls their hearts and how what controls their hearts shapes the character of their lives? Or will our Bobbys continue to respond to people and situations in ways they don’t understand out of hearts that are progressively captured by what can never deliver what they seek? Will their parents fail to see moments of character deficiency as moments of grace? Will their parents fail to make connections that have the power to change their hearts? Will we bring the gospel of liberating, transforming grace to our Bobbys in little moments of everyday life? What will happen to our Bobbys?