Christian Parenting: A Relational Approach

By Dennis McCallum

What does Scripture teach about parenting?

What insights can we gain from science?

Bible teacher and grandparent, Dennis McCallum has taught multiple courses on parenting over his fifty years in ministry. Here, McCallum offers the crux of his courses on the subject. The relational approach stresses relationship as the key to successful parenting. Come here to learn good ideas for:

• Establishing and nurturing a love relationship beginning with your baby
• Building on that relationship and winning further influence with toddlers
• Using your influence to draw your kids to real faith
• Ideas for building your family ethos during the school years
• How to anticipate and prepare for the difficulties of the teen years
• How to keep your family interested in relating even after the kids move out

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Paradigm Publishing
• Release date: Oct 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9798988508700

Dennis McCallum

Dennis McCallum is founder and lead pastor of Xenos Christian Fellowship, a nontraditional church composed of several hundred house churches. He also leads Xenos' college ministry at Ohio State University. A graduate of Ashland Theological Seminary, he is the author of several books, including The Death of Truth. Dennis and his wife, Holly, live in Columbus, Ohio. Their three adult children lead house churches at Xenos.

Book preview

Introduction

Why me?

Why would anyone want to hear my opinion on raising children?

My wife Holly and I were blessed with three children who grew up to be strong followers of Jesus, and who have each established successful families of their own. So, we feel very fortunate there.

Also, because of my preference for student ministry, I have worked with students and their families for decades.

I think that’s an advantage, because I see the outcomes of family life in the kids in our student ministries. I’m able to compare Christian and non-Christian raised kids. My ministry colleagues and I have spent a lot of time studying what leads to problems or success in young people, and there are patterns there.

Another advantage for me was our fellowship’s long-standing focus on personal disciple-making. As my kids grew into a fuller use of language, I realized that being a dad had a lot in common with making disciples. In both you build into a friendship with godly love. Then, in that context, you share truth and wisdom from God, while trying to help in other ways. I came to view my kids as my most important disciples. Raising up disciples—something I’ve been gifted at, and have worked on for decades—turned out to be a very positive and helpful way to view parenting.

From these experiences, I do believe I have been given some important insights. However, I cannot see myself as an expert on parenting. In fact, I was a poor father in so many ways. I have wept bitter tears of regret numerous times in recent years for my failings.

That’s why I know that our positive outcome was undeserved and a gift from God. And I’ve come to see that I can’t dwell on my pathetic failures. I have to leave them at the cross. That way, on the whole, I can look back with thanksgiving more than regret. I’m glad I did some good with my kids and with their kids, and I only wish I had done more. But I also long to see my adult friends avoid, as much as possible, having to shed those kinds of tears later in life.

That’s also why I’ve gone to real experts for my information. In this book, I report extensively on other books and scientific journal articles. Current research is unfolding a clearer picture of what is happening with children in our day, along with good ideas for how to respond. That’s why you’ll find many citations and footnotes in this treatment and they’re well worth reading.

Teaching parenting

In the 1980s as a new father, I was afraid that I might end up with dysfunctional and alienated children, like my family of origin. I felt clueless on how to raise children, other than the conviction that simply following what my parents did would be a big mistake.

As scores, and eventually hundreds of children popped up in our church, I suggested to our elders that our very young group urgently needed research and training on parenting. I asked that another elder and I be commissioned to take six months away from my usual class teaching, and spend that time doing research. Then, we would develop a class on parenting for our people.

That lengthy time of study was very enlightening and sparked important ideas for me. Since then, the church has repeated the move four times, relieving me (and sometimes a team) from normal duties to do new research and teach updated classes on parenting. Many of our findings are in this book.

Andrew Murray

As we open God’s word to learn what children and parents are and how they should interact, we need a teacher to explain the text. In this book, I’m going to follow the exceptional instruction from one of my favorite authors, Dutch Reformed Missionary, Andrew Murray. He lived in a different age (died in 1917), but the Bible read the same then as it does now.

Of all the books I’ve read on the subject of parenting, none spoke more clearly and convincingly than Murray in The Children for Christ. This book, originally published in 1887, is excellent. He bases all of his arguments directly on Scripture, and he is credible as a man who raised eight children to love and serve God. However, it’s also a whopping 460 pages! Even though the book is free online, something makes me feel that not many people are going to read this book. That’s alright. I will excerpt and summarize it here.

Chapter 1

The Theology of Parenting, Part 1

Before we can think clearly about how to parent children, we need to understand what parents and children are. We also need to know what God calls us to—the proper outcome of successful parenting—before suggesting best practices.

Creation

So often, to understand things in the world, we must begin at creation. Humans first show up in Genesis:

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them

Then God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. (Genesis 1:27-28)

Here we see the first mention of creatures made in the image of God. Human beings are not like other animals (a very important point when thinking through so called attachment parenting in a later chapter). To be created in God’s image—what does it mean?

We can observe several important characteristics right here in the description of humans before their fall from grace caused wholesale changes that muddied the picture. You need to know about these features in order to do a good job with your baby. God included each of these elements in humans, and as parents, you will want to carefully nurture each of these in your child.

Leadership

Here, in Genesis 1, God says humans should fill the world and govern it (Genesis 1:28). To govern the world doesn’t mean naked exploitation and domination over nature as claimed by biblical skeptics. Critics of biblical teaching wrongly claim that Genesis pitted humans against nature and justified any action we take, no matter how destructive.

Remember, God is himself a leader, and a kind and good one. When God leads us he doesn’t needlessly restrict us or jerk us around in a capricious way. He certainly never exploits us for his benefit. Rather, he guides us away from dangerous and harmful things and leads us toward a life that is best for us—just like a good father or mother would guide their children.

Humans are not passive observers of the world. We don’t have to stand on the sideline and watch life stream by. We are endowed with powerful minds that give us amazing analytical capabilities. We have independent wills enabling us to interrupt the cause and effect sequence around us with creative change. This ability to govern means that we are also responsible to govern benevolently.

What a crucial realization for parents! This high order of creation means your kids will grow up with both the ability and the felt need to significantly impact their environment. Hopefully you will nurture this God-given ability, guiding your kids into truly significant ways they can fulfill their design, and not squandering their creativity pursuing vain goals that only serve a selfish ego trip. Christian parents know that only accomplishments that impact reality in an eternal way are ultimately significant. Lesser accomplishments also matter, but should not be allowed to interfere with more important goals.

The soul

Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. (Genesis 2:7)

The word here for person [nephesh] is usually translated soul (see NASB margin). Humans have a body like other animals, but we have more. The soul is the non-material me, the self. According to Scripture our souls will survive the death of our bodies. Some see the soul as distinct from the spirit—another dimension in humans specially created to commune with God—but this isn’t always clear, especially in the Old Testament. Therefore, we will treat them together.

The soul: Here is the answer to how humans can think and act freely without being trapped in the electrical-chemical cause and effect matrix that controls all matter and energy. Our souls are immaterial, so they’re not subject to physical law. If our minds didn’t have freedom from physics and chemistry, we would be unable to think rationally at the high order we see in ourselves. Our sense that we are individuals making free choices would be nothing but an illusion.¹

Parents quickly notice the presence of a soul in their kids even before they can speak. I saw it clearly in each of my kids, and I see it again in my grandchildren. The soul is clearly there from day one. The Bible indicates that God directly infuses each person with a soul or spirit some time before birth.²

The soul is a massive overlay that affects every area of parenting. Merely meeting your child’s physical needs isn’t enough; you need much more. A young human soul is sensitive. You’ll need to protect your children from trauma or abuse that can shred their souls. Also, the nurture of the soul is a challenging task. As we will see, the earliest years are among the most important in the development of the fluid soul growing in your child. This growth is probably linked to the growth of the brain, and the soul’s healthy control over the brain.

Also important are the early and late teen years where we win or lose our kids to a true, independent following of God. This is also typically when young people’s faith becomes their own in true conversion.

Creative accomplishment

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

God placed humans in a beautiful garden, not just to lie around enjoying it, but to cultivate it and keep it. Again, to be created in God’s image means that humans are not passive observers. Rather, we are active agents who enter the world feeling the need to work and accomplish things. Think about cultivating a garden: the gardener needs to be observant, watching changing conditions, considering the needs of various plants, and responding accordingly. Again, this passage portrays humans as beings who are active, effective, and creative.

God didn’t create humans simply to exist. A life spent lying around doing nothing or being entertained is sub-human. Today, observers are troubled by the fact that young people spend vast periods of time zoned out, fingering a video game control or staring at Netflix while accomplishing nothing. Will they snap out of it at some point? Not if we can believe the scary research findings we will study later. This area cries out for parental leadership.

Healthy people should enjoy accomplishing something. They should see themselves as part of a world and history larger than themselves, and children should feel excited that they can affect the world through their creative work—never truer than when they serve God.

Imparting this outlook to your kids will change their lives permanently. Children in godly homes learn how God designed them, and that if they don’t honor that architecture, serious life damage will result.

Free moral agency

In Genesis 2:16-17 we read,

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:16-178)

Here God reveals that humans have a capability available only to those with free will—moral and immoral choices. Some readers deplore the fact that God provided a forbidden tree right there in the garden, knowing people might, and in fact, would choose to access it. Why would God place a stumbling block in the garden?

God wasn’t interested in creating so-called free choosing beings who have only one choice. Such beings would have no real freedom, and that would make them sub-human. God could easily have blocked any possibility that humans would turn to evil. But by so restricting them he would be creating robots, not humans. That was not his will.

This crucial piece of what creation in the image of God again sets us apart from other animals. We all know that a dog that kills another dog in a fight isn’t guilty of sin. Dogs can’t be moral or immoral, because they lack high-order consciousness. Their thinking is hard-wired and instinctual. But humans are intensely moral, whether for good or for bad. That’s an important point when it comes to parenting. Our kids are spiritual beings, and therefore moral beings. Here, believers have a perspective unknown to secular parenting experts. Bonhoeffer explains:

The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men…. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner.³

Believing parents need to stop and get their bearings. Consider the fact that no secular school of counseling in use today has a category for sin. How likely is it that we will agree with their advice for raising children? Maybe sometimes, but we have to be careful.

Any time we read advice from non-Christian thinkers, we must read very carefully, bearing this foundational difference in mind. Secular parenting theories begin from a point different than what God tells us. Then they aim for goals that also have nothing to do with God. While some secular observations are valuable, we can expect little agreement in our overall approach.

Importantly, this capability for moral action isn’t there at first. Isaiah talks about a time in a young boy’s life saying, …before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good… (Isaiah 7:16). Infants and young kids lack the power of moral choice because they don’t have the necessary knowledge and understanding. This lofty capability develops slowly. That opens a window of opportunity for parents. Children at their most vulnerable and naïve age are entrusted to parents. We literally watch their moral natures form. Parents have the opportunity to sell their kids on a life of goodness.

Of course, the fact that we are moral beings opens the area of justice. God is not morally neutral. He opposes wrong, and rewards good. His nature is just. That’s bad news for fallen moral creatures. But he didn’t leave us under his judgment. Already in the shadow of the fall he promised that the seed of woman would crush Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15).

Children comprehend God’s rescue in Jesus at a surprisingly young age. They will still have to make a later, adult decision to follow Jesus, but childlike faith is proverbial (Matthew 18:2-4). Parents are perfectly positioned to guide their children into a good early relationship with God.

Danger lurks, because free moral agency can be lost. Our freedom is already compromised because every human is born with a sin nature. As we live out of our sin nature, committing more sin, it further impairs our freedom, resulting in what Jesus called enslavement: Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin (John 8:34).

This free agency also means there can be no roadmap that will guarantee you success with your kids. They always have the power to turn away from God and from you. However, by following sound biblical principles and values, and by loving your kids sacrificially, you can put yourself in a position where very few kids turn away.

As a godly parent, you will long to raise up well-adjusted and free children. If you negligently allow your children to become addicts, it could ruin their lives. Addiction is a danger even if you aren’t negligent, but you can greatly reduce the chances of that fate, as we will see later.

Relational

Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper corresponding to him. (Genesis 2:18)

During the creation account in Chapter 1, God repeatedly looked at what he had made and saw that it was good. Finally, we find him here saying, It is not good. God was ready to teach Adam something very important about himself.

In the following verses, God showed Adam various animals. That must have been fun. But after going through the animals, Adam saw that, although the animals were awesome, "…for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for [or ‘corresponding to’ NASB] him" (Genesis 2:20).

The NASB margin reading is correct. God was showing Adam that, while the animals might be amazing, they aren’t on the same level as a human created in the image of God. Adam needed something no animal could provide. He needed to give and receive love.

At the zenith of human nature is the potential for real love. The Bible teaches that God is love (1 John 4:8). This love is far beyond the herding instinct, the desire to cuddle up to another warm body, or the primal loyalty animals have toward their young. This is spiritual love, known only to high order personal beings like humans and God. At the center of their beings, humans are relational.

Love also turns out to be the key to good parenting. In this book I advance a relational approach to parenting as opposed to what could be called a behavioral approach. Having a love relationship with your child, and empowering him or her to love others are the best things you can do as a parent. It’s also your responsibility to teach your children that the relational side of life is where joy, purpose, and happiness are found. This contradicts the messages from prevailing culture: that happiness comes from riches, sensuality, and prestige.

Intellectual creativity

Next God had Adam name the animals.

The Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 1:19)

As God presented each animal to Adam, he created a name for it. Adam pulled these names out of thin air by making them up. Adam was using his high-order consciousness and thoughtfulness to categorize and create, and this intellectual creativity is very human. As humans, we enjoy using our minds to create language, names, and concepts. We also create art, literature, music, and other things.

Humans can observe, analyze, and act into situations in a way that is unique. Second-order thinking involves thinking about our thinking. We can wrestle with a train of thought for days or weeks on end. We can engage in problem solving via discerning cause and effect relationships. We can grasp how the same rule can apply in diverse situations, and many other skills. These abilities are found in no other animal. This same high-order intellect also uniquely enables us to understand and appreciate abstract things like truth.

As good parents, you will be spending plenty of time developing your children’s minds. Such a critical task cannot be simply entrusted to schools, daycare, or even your church. Those cannot give your children the time and attention they will need. Children who only receive what school and preschool can deliver are significantly disabled compared to children who receive strong family nuture in the form of parents reading to them, discussing complicated things, improving their language skills, and generally building their minds.

Sexuality and unity

And the man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man. For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:23-24)

In this remarkable scene, God created woman