Parenting: The Many Worlds of a Parent

As adult or parents, don't say, "You must believe this!" Rather, "This is what I believe. This is important to me." That's how our children learn that we are real.

In the last few decades we have witnessed a retreat of spiritual authority in the home that is devastating. Read Christopher Lasch's Haven in a Heartless World for a fuller treatment of that theme. Our culture has passed authority to the peer group. Parents are often neutral. Parents don't often share what is most important in their lives. But the children of these families are devastated. Lasch says,

"The child who scorns his parents as weak and indecisive ... conjures up another set of parents in his fantasies ... they appear to be as vengeful and punitive, as terrifyingly arbitrary and unjust, as the real-life parents are helpless, reasonable, and bland." Lasch goes on to say that when a child perceives parents as remote -- morally neutral, if I could add that -- the child comes to believe that issues of justice and morality are reduced to the issue of strength. Anything is okay as long as you can get away with it.

Lasch goes to great lengths to describe family today. He describes parents as cool and detached -- parents who then ask, why the drugs, why the suicides? Teach them about God, Moses says. Teach them. Make God's ways known. Tell them who you are. Tell them what is important to you. Let them know where you stand.

When I was a teenager my grandmother mentioned to me, in one of our late evening talks, that there was a certain point of time on weekend nights when some kids went home and others stayed out. She suggested that I know which group I wanted to belong to. She didn't tell me what I had to do or threaten me with punishment. She told me what she knew and laid it on my heart. It was a wise word and I learned from it.

So I say to you, glad parents, faithful adults: teach them, teach them, teach them. Make God's way known to your children and to every generation, for they are not even ours: they belong to God. Just as we do.