• All things being equal, our children will become some version of who we are — not what we teach them, but who we are. Most people who read the two great imperatives of Deut. 6:5 and following (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart… you shall teach [these words] diligently to your children”), pass over the former and invest heavily in the latter. The result is a kind of quest for the perfect method of training children, some silver bullet that will put them beyond the reach of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And all the while, they are simply becoming who we are. If love for God rules our lives, it’s likely that love for God will also rule theirs. If not then… not. This is the covenantal promise of Deut. 6 and how it works.
• Your guess is as good as mine why we pass over the command to love God. Certainly we imagine we already have some fluency in that love, that somehow we’ve already fulfilled or satisfied the command. I suspect we neglect love for God because it’s far easier to address a method of teaching than the weakness of a love. We are attracted to the tidiness of a method: it is external to our souls, it can be easily described through principles and actions, the results can be quantified and compared with those of other methods. But how we love, and what we love — these may remain mysteries to us. We may not want to know the answers. And we may fear discovering how misguided our passions are, and how powerless we are to change them.
• A father with a child in crisis once came to Jesus (Mk 9:14ff), and Jesus began to interrogate the father. It turns out there were two crises: one immediate and very visible (a boy rolling around on the ground, convulsing and foaming at the mouth), and one of long standing, entirely invisible (the unbelief of the father). It’s a fascinating exchange and ends with the father’s well-known words “I believe! Help my unbelief!” While the crowd would have identified the “problem” as the child (rolling around, convulsing, foaming), we know Jesus saw the problem as the father and the condition of his faith.
• It may seem as though the challenges of parenting are all bundled up in your children and how they are being instructed. But the real challenges are in your own heart. And I urge you — hopefully long before any crises arrive — to come quickly to the issue as the father does in Mark 9. His words are insightful: “I believe; help my unbelief!” He knows he is not devoid of right knowledge and impulses, yet he knows he is deficient and therefore cries out to Jesus. Do that: cry out to Jesus regarding the loves of your heart. Do it now. Do it for your children. Jesus will answer, just as he did by solving both crises in father and child.