Intentionally Parenting

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise."

 

Increasingly, I have been contemplating these words and realizing how poorly I actually take this commandment of God.  What I mean is, I am intentional about discipling other people, even other people's children; I am frequently on the lookout for ways to share Christ, train in godliness and open up the Scriptures to them, but, when it comes to my own family, and my children in particular, I seem to take a more laissez-faire approach. 

 

Why is this?  I am not sure, maybe because they are always with me and I can get to it another day; maybe because I am tired, maybe because it feels too much like work to do with my family, what I do for my vocation.  I am not sure, but one thing I am certain of is this: God commanded intentional parenting.  God wants families that take seriously the call to instill the Words of Life, the Life of Christ and the Spirit of godliness into their children. 

 

And others can't do that.  While many Scripture passages are spoken of in the plural, all of the you's in these verses are in the singular.  It is a parental responsibility.  Youth groups, Christian schools, pastors, Sunday school teachers and the like, while contributing to this, are always secondary reinforcers of the parent's role in the primacy of training their children.

 

Why is it that so many parents are eager to delegate these responsibilities to others?  Why is it that so many parents like me, approach this task with such lackadaisical passivity?  The answer resides in the idea of difficulty.  It is difficult to train up a child in the Lord, for that requires me to actually know the Lord myself and to know another intimately enough to bring God to bear upon their life.  That takes work, difficult work. 

 

So what am I doing?  So far my feeble attempt at being more intentional has been to read my kids a bible story each night and to ask one of them to pray at a meal each day.  But I have been fiercely independent in doing my devotions and prayer times.  I haven't invited them into these?  Why not?  I don't know? But how else does one disciple a child to pray, or read the Word, or study it? How does one bring Christ into every activity of life? 

 

The answer seems to lie in the invitation to open our lives up and let our kids participate in every aspect of our relationship with God and others.  And that means we must spend copious amounts of time with our children. Maybe the urban world has actually contributed to the degradation of family  by separating our lives more and more, culling fathers to the workplace, and mothers to the soccer field instead of wedding our lives to greater and greater degrees.  Maybe we are in need of a return to rural lifestyles and ways of life, where our children can participate in every area of our life, where our work is the field and the shop.  Maybe the home-school movement is one such counter to the pressures of society, are there others?  Is the church cognizant of these realities and do our structures contribute to our detract from the call to intentional parenting?

 

These are the questions I am struggling through.  I hope you will share your thoughts on them with me.  Let's be intentional parents, regardless of our age, or the age of our children.