Many times when I talk to parents, they want me to tell them exactly how they should handle whatever difficulty they are facing with their child. This is understandable, because it would be way more comfortable to have a written rule about how to respond in each circumstance so we could be assured of always doing the right thing. However, God seems to want us to need His guidance day by day, and to use what we know of ourselves and our children to make decisions.
The reality is that Scripture does not provide a systematic doctrine of child-raising. Instead, what we have is partial, anecdotal, and somewhat random. There are enough biblical cues and clues to discern what God wants us to know about parenting, but from my study it seems clear that He has purposely left the subject incomplete—He leaves it to our discretion to take the pieces He provides and make the whole. Why? I believe He doesn’t want us enslaved by conformity to only one “right way” of child raising; he wants us free in Christ to parent in the power of the Holy Spirit by faith. Faith and freedom should be the nature of our life in the Spirit, and it should be the nature of our life at home as parents.
Perhaps you’re continuing a journey you’re already on and are just looking for new parenting ideas. Perhaps you’re stepping onto the path of lifegiving parenting for the first time, looking for God’s direction for your home. Or perhaps you’re considering a new paradigm for your Christian home—moving from a legalistic model of form and function to a lifegiving model of faith and freedom. However you come to lifegiving parenting, and whatever it leads you to do in your home, keep Paul’s admonition in mind: “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17, NIV). You’re free in God’s Spirit to discover what is right for your home.
