confused, but she's kind of excited. Saturday morning, she looks out the kitchen window into the backyard, she sees me carrying these items. Pay careful attention here. I'm carrying a big tall ladder. I'm carrying branch cutters, an industrial grade pneumatic nail gun, and three bushels of red delicious apples. And I get up on the ladder and I very lovingly and carefully cut off all those organic hockey pucks. And I symmetrically nail three bushels of red delicious apples on that tree. From 75 yards, you would be viewing that tree and you would say, "This man must be the horticulturist of the century." If you're my wife, what are you thinking? You're thinking, "This is a big one. The doctor said he'd be this way if he lived." Now what's going to happen to those apples? They're going to rot because they're not hooked to the life-giving resource of the tree. But, parents, think even deeper with me. What kind of apples is that tree going to produce the next season? Organic hockey pucks. Because if season after season, that tree produces that kind of apple, there's something systemically wrong with a tree down to its roots. And if change doesn't take place there, change isn't going to take place in the fruit. Now check out what I'm about to say to you. I am persuaded that the vast majority of what we do in the name of Christian parenting is nothing more or less than apple-nailing. It has no energy to get at the heart. If sin is bad, you better not do it. I can give you the three most frequently used apple-nailing strategies. This is maybe dangerous to do, but I'll do it. Here's the first one: threat. "You do not want to know what will happen if I have to come up those steps one more time. It'll be on the news: 'Father Disciplines Children, pictures and details at 10.'" Now, threat is not dealing with the heart. Threat is an attempt to get a change without dealing with the heart. And think about this. The reason threat is attractive is that it's temporarily efficient. When you're way huger than your little child and you can loom over them with a loud voice and bulging eyes and red face, you are a threatening presence. But, parents, know this. There'll come a day when your children are not threatened by you at all. Some of you have teenagers right now, they're not a bit threatened by you. I have four children. My daughter is the shortest of our children. She's 6'1" and our children go up from there. So in the final stages of parenting when our children were still at home, I was parenting like this, you know? When your children are looking down at you like this, saying, "Yes, dad," you're not a very threatening presence. Second one, manipulation. Billy isn't getting along with his sister very well. So dad says to him, "Billy, you know that mountain bike you've been looking at on that website? If you just get along with your sister for one month – four short weeks – that mountain bike will be yours." Billy has four of the most loving weeks of his life. He's amazingly solicitous of his sister. Dad, with feelings of victory, orders the bike. It gets delivered. Billy and dad assemble the bike. He hops off on it for his first ride and ten minutes later, he's running his sister over with it. There's been no change in Billy. Hear this. Billy was not nice to his sister because he loves his sister. Billy was nice to his sister because Billy loves Billy. There's been no change. He doesn't love love. He doesn't love what is good. He hasn't committed to do what is right. He is selfish and full of self-love, and you have paid him to be that way. And you're teaching Billy the perverse skill of moral economics. He will begin to do a cost-benefit analysis. Is the price you're paying me worth the cost that you're asking of me? Someday Billy will negotiate with you. What's happened to us? Parents, hear me say this. That is neither Christian nor parenting and the minute you remove the reward, that child has no moral commitment whatsoever. He couldn't care less what's right and wrong. He's after the stuff. And you remove the stuff and you watch how fast he throws out your rules because it's never been a heart commitment to the rules.
Transcript: Session 3
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARENTING
47
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