Crafting Courageous Kids in a Chaotic Culture

Introduction

With all the surprising imagery in Lord of the Rings - talking tree, armies of orcs, Hob- bits, elves and trolls - the moment that surprised me most was the end. After all their adventures, the Hobbits return HOME, only to find that there is ONE MORE battle to be fought. In their absence, communist bureaucrats have taken over the shire, tyrannizing everyone and making life miserable. Thus the LAST battle in Lord of the Rings is the battle for HOME. The battle for HOME. Today we continue our series of “MOVES” we must make for the future. And we have our own battle for home. Just this week a legislator said that encouraging dual- parent families is both dangerous and un-American. Yet the HOUSEHOLD, as defined by God, is the basic building block of society. NOT the individual. The worst thing that can befall any society is to have a generation of people under-30 without a job or a mate. But when a man becomes a Christian, he learns to read, and work hard. He stops sleeping around, and the cocaine bill goes way down. And pretty soon he creates a surplus in his life that benefits others. Which makes him very attractive to women, and he marries one, and they have kids . . . And when you have multiple households like that, pretty soon you have a COMMUNITY, where you did not have one before. So today we’re going to look again at the household, particularly PARENTS and KIDS, because building true households is the only way we rebuild what our genera- tion has been all-too-eager to tear down. 1

For my outline I’m going to explain the passage from Ephesians. Then we’ll drill down on ONE word from the passage. And then finally we will consider several practi- cal implications. 2

1. Explanation of the Text

Eph. 6:1-4 Let me read the passage again, from Ephesians 6: Ephesians 6:1–4 (ESV): Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. As with last week, here we have an example of a household code. EVERY house- hold has a code, spoken or unspoken. Not a matter of WHETHER you do, but WHICH one. And it’s not what you SAY is your code, or what’s placarded on your walls, but how you actually LIVE that demonstrates the functional household code of your home. How do we arrive at these codes? They are determined by whatever is the func- tional GOD of the home. If the god of the home is the kids, the household code will be permissiveness and manipulation. If the god of the home is the wife’s unrealistic and unmet expectations, the household code will be comprised anger, tension and eggshells. If the household god is dad’s lusts, the household code will be double- standards and rebellion. So the first thing we must see is that Paul is not just giving us some arbitrary rules from antiquity, that relate to a patriarchal culture. This code is timeless and unchang- ing, because it comes from God, and He is timeless and unchanging. Children 3

Ephesians 6:1–4 ESV

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Explanation of the Text: Children

He begins with children. And, if you are a child at home of any age, please come down to the front, and let’s talk, just us kids. God commands you to HONOR your parents. To HONOR means to OBEY, with a HAPPY HEART. OBEY, with a HAPPY HEART. The word HONOR does NOT MEAN that you OBEY with a bad attitude, with your low- er lip sticking out so far that a large bird could land on it. You obey with a happy heart, because the command is not just obey, but HONOR. Now, WHY does God command you this? For two reasons. First, because it’s RIGHT. It’s the law of God. This is why, in v. 2, Paul mentions the fifth commandment - “Honor your father and mother.” If God says something is RIGHT, well, that makes it right, right? Right. But the second reason is REWARD. REWARD. What’s a reward? Yep. God promises you that IF you obey your parents, you will experience long life and a good life. Now, one more thing. Paul also tells us the MOST important thing here. That is, HOW we obey our parents. Because, the reason we don’t obey is that we don’t FEEL like it. So where do we get POWER to OVERCOME those feelings, and obey? Here is the power - here is the grace: FAITH in the PROMISES of God. This is what Paul means when he says to obey your parents “IN THE LORD.” God promises you, that if in those moments, when your lip is sticking out, and you don’t FEEL like obeying at all, if you STOP, and REMEMBER His promise to you, and then obey - He WILL re- ward me. It’s our FAITH that makes us STRONG enough to overcome our FEELINGS. What you need MOST in your life is GRACE, and GRACE is what God gives us, through our faith. I know you don’t understand that yet, but I’m telling you, and I want your mommies and your daddies to keep telling you this, until you grow up: what you need most is GRACE. The older you get, the more you’ll see that that’s true. 4

So, you can go to class now, and I want you to ask your teachers if they ever had to do this in THEIR life - where they needed to believe in the promises of God, to over- come their feelings and obey. I bet they have a story or too. Because PARENTS need to follow this too. So go on, read some books.

Explanation of the text: Fathers

Now, Paul turns to fathers. First, with a negative command, v. 4: do not provoke your children to anger. The word provoke means behavior that is repeated, that one in authority does to one under him, when he thinks he can do whatever he wants with that underling. Could be out and out abuse; or it could just be low-grade mocking or critique. It’s what a weak beta-male does with those weaker than him - he takes his pathetic effemi- nacy out on weaker ones, in order to somehow satisfy himself. So then, the positive command: take that same energy that you would spend pro- voking and use it to raise them up in discipline and instruction. But you don’t get to define those terms for yourself. There’s that phrase again: “of the Lord.” You don’t get to do whatever you want with your kids. And you don’t get to raise them just the way your father raised you. You have another Father, and this is HIS household. He writes its household codes. But that’s for our great reward. Notice how children and fathers are to fulfill their role “in the Lord” - by FAITH in the Lord. Instead of nit-picking and provoking, parent by FAITH, Paul says. Raise up your kid in the correction and instruction that GOD stipu- lates. And PAIR that submission to God with an optimistic FAITH, that God is able by that submission to raise up a courageous adult, useful in his generation. Now, we need to drill down on those two words: discipline and instruction. 5

2. Drill-Down: Paideia

The second word translated here as “instruction” is straightforward enough: it means basically to instruct the mind. What is it that God wants the children of His households to know? The Bible. Teach your kid the Bible, and then teach them to read the world through Bible lenses. That’s basically it. Easier said than done, but the marching orders are pretty clear. It’s the first word, translated “discipline” by the ESV, that requires more explana- tion. Because this word was FILLED with meaning to the first-century Roman, the way the word DEMOCRACY is freighted with meaning for modern Americans, or, as one writer puts it, as the word CASH means so much to a televangelist. It was a very important word to them, and it was full of layers of meaning. The Greek word, if you want to study it later, is PAIDEIA. This word also has an educational sense to it, but not so focused on the mind, on what we would call “education.” It more has this sense: paideia: to insinuate into a particular culture. X2 By “insinuate”, I mean that word in a horticultural sense. It’s what you do, after that first part of the gardening season. In the cold months you start out with a seed, and you plant it in a starter container over your kitchen sink. And once you have a sprout, 6

THEN you take it and you “insinuate” into the culture that is your raised bed outside, purpose-built for that growing plant. You don’t keep it in the kitchen. You also don’t insinuate the plant in the middle of the lawn, nor in a crack in the sidewalk. Every plant by definition grows in SOME kind of culture, and some plants grow miraculously, in SPITE of their CULTURE. But Paul says, because God commands fathers, to see to it that our children are planted, insinuated, surrounded within, a PARTICULAR culture - the CULTURE that is OF THE LORD. Raise them up, like a careful, wise gardener, in THAT culture. Thus the word means “enculturation.” To intentionally plant, nourish and raise up the sprout in the culture OF THE LORD. This is nothing less than the engine of God’s work of world conquest. Yet He doesn’t do it by OVERTHROWING rival kingdoms, but by REPLACING those king- doms. And we do that by discipling the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to do all that Jesus taught us. And some of those pagan Gentile heathens are in our own homes. Our mission is to enculturate Muslims and Vietnamese and illegal immigrants and even Canadians into the kingdom of the Lord, and the same goes for our kids. The Culture of the Lord. So then we should ask, what is the “culture of the Lord”? Let me say what it is probably NOT. We should see first that when Paul wrote this, there was no such thing as a “Christ- ian culture”. We, on the other hand, USED to have one, but now it’s like an old car sit- ting in the junkyard that we mine for parts, because nobody makes them anymore. So this PAIDEIA culture is NOT what you probably think of as “Christian culture”, or “Chris- tian conservatism.” As we said last week, Christ calls us to conserve all that he con- serves, to liberalize all that HE liberalizes, and to progress in all that he’s progressive about. Which is NOT MODERN Christianity, which wants to be able to say that it’s tight with Christ while staying hip with the cool kids and still cherishing its pet idols. 7

Nor does Paul mean some kind of sectarian culture - like Presbyterian, or Pente- costal, or Baptist. It is simpler than all that - simply the culture that arises when the crucified and res- urrected Jesus is merely made SOVEREIGN KING and GENTLE SHEPHERD over all. Whatever the god of the system is, that will determine the culture. Paul simply means the culture that grows up around Christ as Savior and King. Thus he doesn’t mean a hiding place FROM culture, but a DISTINCT culture from the default culture, the floating down the stream culture. So then, Paul means a youth group? Probably not. Youth groups have only existed for about the last 120 years of Christianity’s 2000 year history. And depending on your youth group, many are simply the fun and efficient pooling of UNBELIEF. Many are the precise opposite culture from the one God is commanding FATHERS to plant and raise their children within. For the Ephesians, that Christian culture was the church as a WHOLE, probably partnering with other churches, like the one in Colossae down the road. In a Bible- grounded, Christ-reigning church, your children have grandparents in the Lord, and Sunday dinners in the Lord, and crazy uncles and kindly aunts in the Lord. And they have peers and friends in the Lord, and fun in the Lord, and camping and fishing at Mt. Shasta in the Lord. And girlfriends in the Lord, and jobs in the Lord, and wise ad- vice in the Lord, and gentle discipline in the Lord, and strong encouragement in the Lord, and a general atmosphere of DELIGHT and OPTIMISM in the Lord, about the 25- year-old version of that young person. All of it fired and energized by GRACE - that is, POWER, the POWER of God. Where is God’s power found? Ask it this way: what created everything? That’s right - His words. 8

And we find power to re-create this culture ourselves, by IMITATING God. God spoke words, and all things came into being. We speak His words, and submit our- selves to those words, and live by faith in those words, and new worlds come into exis- tence. Children are raised up; households are built; cultures appear; nations are re- born. Has been happening for 2,000 years. No other way to explain history. All through optimistic faith in the creating power of God, through His Word. 9

3. Practical Implications

Now, we need to consider the practical applications of the commands to children and fathers, and especially about the word PAIDEIA.

1. Women, too

I need to clarify that Paul does not exclude mothers from the equation. He simply assumes they’re there. But he also assumes the husband acting as the head, and taking the responsibility to see to it that this paideia and in- struction actually happens. It’s not up to HER, men; it’s OUR responsibility. She may be a big DOER in the process, but that her nurturing nature, as your help-mate. It’s OUR responsibility.

2. Basic tools

Togobacktothegardeningmetaphor:youhavethreebasictoolsinyour shed. Word, prayer and fellowship. Word, prayer and fellowship. If you ac- quire a journeyman skill with each of those tools, you’ll do well. And then, in Christ, you have great freedom as to how you employ these tools in your home. Do what makes the most sense to you in this season. You don’t have to follow another person’s script, but you DO need to use the tools.

3. Hard Work

There is no substitute for hard work. Gardening is hard work, and so is child rearing. Intelligent, focused discipline. Farming, you know, requires work before the harvest.

4. Imagination

Butthisdoesnotmeanwewalkaroundfollowingwoodenformulas.Build- ing a culture means walking through the world with your child with an imagination, inflating their imagination, too. If Christ is raised, then the whole world has been created as a vast theater for the display of His glory. Every tree, rock and bush carries in it some of his character. Look for it; point it out. 10

5. Empty-nesters

you may have been there and done that, but God never gave you walking papers, to retire from building and being a vital part of this culture. You are INCREDIBLY important to it. This is why the fourth statement in our membership covenant is this, for ALL of us:

“4 To carefully raise up all those under our care in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

6. Bathed in cross-blood.

Let’sallstop,rightnow,anddosomething,thendoitagain,likeeverytime we breathe in the future. And that is, to remember and preach to ourselves that everything we are talking about is covered with the blood of Christ. Because if you are a human parent, you’ve made mistakes, and you have moments or habits or seasons that you wish you could go back and do dif- ferently. But we parent IN THE LORD, covered by His mercy, all our sins paid for. There is, Romans 8:1, therefore now NO condemnation for those who are IN Christ Jesus. Breathe IN the gospel, and breathe OUT your re- grets, your self-hatred, and your shame.

7. Give-and-take

ThisChristculturemeansthattherewillbeagentlegiveandtakebetween folks, about their kids. You’re sitting there, in church, you realize that the child in front of you was gifted with both a very active motor, and a voice box that could stop entire armies. At first you cover it with love, but eventu- ally, you remember this sermon, and you decide, you’re going to say something. And you should, but let me recommend to with the words of CURIOUS LOVE - INQUISITIVE MERCY to the parents. How’s everything go- ing? What’s the pressures on your life these days? How can I pray for you, in parenting? In your marriage? 11

But then, if you are the parent, and someone tells you that your kid was THAT kid this Sunday, or every Sunday for the last few months, you HAVE to resolve, right now, to NOT get resentful about it. And you have take into account that you do not see your kid all the time - others might see some- thing that you never see. THAT is GRACE - not comfortable grace per se, but grace all the same. All of us, realize that this kind of give and take is NORMAL for a Christ-cul- ture. Without it, we are sub-Christian.

8. Christian education or bust

As for the second command, the INSTRUCTION of the Lord: I don’t see how we can fulfill this in public schools. Because public schools are not only instructing our kids, but they are ENCULTURATING them too, very intentionally. Our children spend 8 hours a day in school, and they are very intentionally discipled there.

What I’m saying is that I don’t see how we obey this command WITHOUT giving our kids a rigorous and Christian education. Not sectarian - merely Christian. (No offense to public school teachers.)

9. Check yo-self

OK, one more, and this is for you young people that are still here in the room . . . 12