I’m back in Instructing a Child’s Heart now, chapter 7 (“Authority Is God’s Plan”). In this chapter we are reminded to teach our children to recognize and submit to our God-given authority as parents. I appreciated the very positive way in which the Tripps showed us how to teach that principle to our children.
First, they put the reality of our children’s need to submit in the broader context of God’s establishment of authority in all spheres of life. After describing various spheres and roles of responsibility God has established they say, “Instructing our children regarding the authority structures that God has created will form their thinking about the very concept of authority. This formative instruction is far more profound than merely training our children to obey. It gives them a model of how God has made things and how they are all supposed to function” (p. 83).
And then they make this excellent point about why setting the call to obey our authority in that larger context of all of life is so important: “When our children clearly understand that authority structures come from God, obedience to parents will not seem to be a random requirement. It will be clear that obedience is an opportunity to be part of the order and beauty of creation and is an act of trust in God” (p. 83).
A helpful question to consider would be: to what degree would my child/youth/teen see obedience as an “opportunity to be part of the order and beauty of creation”? The degree to which they see it as an opportunity is the degree to which they understand that all of life will reflect God’s authority in various ways. I know that I haven’t made those connections for my own children, showing them that throughout their lives they will be under various forms of authority as expressions of God’s authority. But I see now how that can help them embrace submission to mom and dad as that opportunity.
Second, the Tripps also helped me see how I could teach submission to my authority more positively with the helpful locomotive illustration on page 88. After highlighting ways that “it will go well for (them)” as they obey (Eph. 6.1-3), they provide this illustration in the side-bar that shows the fallacy of what we think of as true freedom. Simply put, the locomotive is not confined to the tracks in some freedom-restrictive way. Quite the contrary is true: the locomotive is free to be free in the ways it’s designed to be as it runs on tracks laid for it. Imagine if we said: “‘What a shame that [the locomotive] is restricted to the confines of the tracks. Let’s set the locomotive free and allow it to run across the meadow, through the woods or wherever it would like to go.’ How free would the locomotive be? It would be quickly mired in the soft ground of the meadow” (p. 88).
So we protect and serve our children as we consistently teach them the importance of submitting to our God-given authority in the home. May they (and we) learn this lesson well, and be free to run on the tracks God has put before us!
-Tab
