Some children are able to understand right and wrong at an earlier age, and some at a later age. At a younger age, your discipline will naturally be much less severe than at an older age. When I mentioned the severity of the discipline I carried out on my daughter, I was referring to an age when she was already a teenager. But you can and should start discipline much earlier. As a parent you are probably in the best position to determine at what age your child can choose right and wrong. I cannot give an exact age because it varies according to the nature of the offence, the intelligence of the child, and the maturity of the individual child. But the sooner you start, the better — because it will make it unnecessary later on to be excessively severe. If your child can already discern right and wrong at two or three years old, that is the time to exercise discipline at a mild level appropriate to their age.
We are concerned about this question also because some people come to our churches and find that the children are so badly behaved that it actually disgraces the whole church — and worse, it disgraces the Lord. It says to visitors: what kind of church is this, where the children are rude and cannot conduct themselves properly? It is a dishonour to the name of the Lord. Parents have a responsibility to the glory of the Lord to carry out proper principles of parenting.
Now to a very important question: when children grow up in a church environment — taught in Sunday school, brought up hearing the Bible — and yet many of them grow to adulthood without committing themselves to the Lord, how do we deal with this?
First, it is very important that you do not put pressure on your children to become Christians. If your life cannot attract your child to the Lord, you do not have the right to demand a decision from them. Many parents are only good at preaching to their children — you should do this, as a Christian you must not do that — and the children become so sick and tired of it that you can actually drive them right out of the church. This is true in physical parenting and equally true in spiritual parenting: you cannot win people to the Lord as true disciples unless there is a quality about your life that draws them to him. Your child must be able to see the glory of the Lord in your life and say, "I would like to be like my mother, like my father — I would like their Lord to be my Lord also." If your Christian life is very poor, please do not force your children to become Christians, because they will only become nominal Christians not worth having in the church, and you will damage their lives.
Another question came about alternative forms of discipline besides the cane. Yes, certainly there are other ways. Provided that you keep in mind that no matter how it hurts, there are times when you cannot avoid physical discipline. But I have also often given another choice. For example: "Would you prefer to take physical discipline, or would you choose another option?" And one option I have often given is to give up pocket money — not one week's, but all of the accumulated money, which could amount to a hundred Canadian dollars or more — and give it anonymously to some needy person. More than once my daughter chose this. We would discuss how much is appropriate to the seriousness of the offence, and who the needy person might be, and the money was given anonymously so that no self-righteousness could build up from it. This approach works with older children; with younger ones you may need to think of other ways that still impress the same lesson without physical punishment while still producing something constructive.
On the question of the child's salvation — to what extent is the parent responsible if a child does not become a Christian? What about free choice?
This is a question I used to ask myself endlessly, and with all honesty I can tell you what was in my mind: I was sincerely, earnestly, wholeheartedly hoping it would not be my fault. If I were to think it was mostly my fault, oh, I did not want to live another day. So I struggled with trying to apportion percentages. And then when I honestly faced the question — how much of it was Eli's fault when his sons committed adultery in the tabernacle? — I had to stop hiding. The answer is: to a great, great extent, the parent is responsible. May the Lord show you how great that extent is.
The story of Eli is instructive. When his sons were committing gross sins, what did Eli say to them? "Why do you do such things? It is no good report that I hear." That is all. He just wanted to understand why. He said to them mildly, "My sons, it is not good." And God's verdict in 1 Samuel 2:29 is this: "You honour your sons above me." That is what God saw in Eli's heart — not the mildness of his words, but the reality that he valued his sons' comfort above God's honour. He did not restrain them. It is not my interpretation; it is what God says.
The problem is that many of us cannot tell the seriousness of the sin committed by our own child. The same sin committed by another child we would judge readily as serious. But when it comes to my own child, I say: she is forgetful, or tired, or under stress. We make endless excuses. And if we allow this to continue, we grow either too soft — allowing sin to persist — or too impatient, so that our frustration explodes in anger. Either case, we are not training our child in the way of the Lord.
So what shall we do, having already sown so much in the past? Training is not an event; it takes time and years and must begin somewhere, in the right direction. Unless here and now the way you look at yourself, the way you look at your child, and the way you relate to your child begins to change toward God's way, you will continue to reap what you have sown. We are extremely good at teaching with our words — "I told you, I told you, I told you" — but training according to Scripture is by example. Unless your life and mine is a consistent one, the child cannot be trained properly. He learns by what he sees, not by what he hears. Come before the Lord with a simple heart and say: Lord, whatever part is my responsibility, I hold myself fully accountable to you for it. Let us take courage that God is able to deal with us at the fundamentals.
# Workshop on Parenting (2) — Part B: Parental Responsibility, Training Up a Child, and the Authority of Credible Love
I would like to supplement Helen's sharing with one verse, because I neglected it and it is very important. It is not my interpretation of Eli's response — it is what God knows and sees in Eli's heart. In 1 Samuel 2:29, the Lord says to Eli: "Wherefore do you honour your sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the choicest of all the offerings of Israel my people?" That is God's own assessment. And in 1 Samuel 3:13 we read: "I am about to judge his house forever, because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them." God is holding Eli accountable even for the offences of his adult sons, because Eli failed to warn them. As the Bible says elsewhere, if God wants us to warn someone and we fail to do so, we will be responsible for their spiritual condition. The parent retains a moral duty to warn, even after the child is grown.
I also want to supplement Proverbs 22:6, which many of you cling to in hope: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." That is a genuine promise of God, and you are right to take comfort in it. But the crucial question is: are you truly training your child in the way the Lord intends, or in the way of the world, the way of your past habits, the way that sounds right to you but may not be the Lord's way? The training must be real training — training by example, training that costs something — not simply bringing the child to Sunday school while your own life does not match your words.
Helen, my wife, has shared very honestly about her own long spiritual struggle. She grew up in a traditional Christian church background but was never taught how to live victoriously in the Christian life, and she lived in a constant state of spiritual defeat for years. This affected our daughter Grace deeply. Grace felt that her mother did not live like a Christian, did not behave like a Christian, and that became a stumbling block to her. Grace said to her mother: "You are good at talking, but I don't see anything in your life that matches your words." That is why, even though Grace did love the Lord in her own way from a young age, I did not wish her to make a formal commitment until the situation could be overcome in her heart. She was not baptized until her teens, and only after Helen had won the spiritual victory and been re-baptized herself — and very soon after, Grace also requested baptism and was found genuinely ready.
My principle from the very beginning, in spite of the difficult situation at home, was to require of Grace absolute obedience to me, without question. Now, I know that sounds like a dictator. But let me tell you something. I have watched some of you parents, and I have seen your child say no to you — and the parent made no response. I am absolutely amazed. Grace would never have dreamed of saying no to me in her life. And the reason she obeyed me was not that she was afraid I would beat her — I have never slapped her or physically beaten her except for the one occasion with the cane when she was a teenager. The reason she obeyed is the only real reason: by the grace of God, she saw that my life matched my words, that I was true to what I said, and that I lived in a way that glorified God in the home.
As a parent, you must above all things live the Christian life in your home in such a way that your child respects you as someone who truly lives it. They obey not because they are afraid, but because they respect you as a genuine person who deserves to be obeyed. That is how you can train a child — not by being a dictator, but by winning your child's respect through the quality of your life, so that whatever you ask, the child will do it willingly.
Now regarding age: in the Bible, a child — male or female — is regarded as a responsible person before the law at the age of thirteen. That is why I would not permit Grace to be baptized until that age even though she came to love the Lord. And once she reached thirteen, I sat her down and said: "From this day forward I am going to treat you as a grown-up. I am going to hold you responsible for your actions. I will not give you direct commands anymore — only advice. You are now responsible." She said she was scared. Good. Being treated as a grown-up is a serious thing. And from that day I said please when asking her anything, because I also wanted her to know that I respected her. Do not ask me from what age a child is responsible — you are responsible. You see to it that your life is of such quality that your child will joyfully obey. That is the beginning of all proper parenting.
One last question about how much to pressure a child to attend church. I do not believe we can ever force anyone to attend church, and especially not if doing so will work against their salvation. If your child is older, he or she can observe and understand a great deal. Your life is more important than any compulsion. Have an open talk with them — explain why you attend church, what you have experienced from God, help them see the reality of sin and of God's grace, and let the joy you exhibit before them speak louder than any demand. Invite rather than force. As the Bible says, be as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove. Wisdom has to be exercised in each family situation.
May the Lord be gracious to you. Our time is gone, and we must close. Please speak to your leaders afterward if you have further questions. Thank you for coming, and may God give us the wisdom to fulfil the most important task in this world — the formation of a human character into the image of God.