Believer's Interpersonal Relationship (Parent to Child)
How does the the Psalmist describe the children?
WHAT?
A. Provoking children to anger (v. 4)
Verse 4 instructs us not to “exasperate your children.” The Bible does not tell us what this means. Both wrath and exasperate come from the root word anger. A study of human and family behavior can shed some insight on how we might exasperate our children and provoke them to anger. The following examples will give us a good starting point for understanding this instruction.
1. Overprotecting children: Parents who do everything for their children and do not let them gain any degree of independence or self-determination.
2. Overdisciplining children: Parents who overly restrict where children can go and what they can do, who never trust them to do things on their own, and who continually question their judgment. Certainly, a proper amount of this is necessary. We are talking about overdoing it.
3. Expecting more than the child can ever perform: Perfectionistic parents for whom the child’s performance is never good enough.
4. Expecting less of them than they can perform: Parents who discourage the child’s decisions and dreams—never approving, affirming, or encouraging.
5. Failing to sacrifice for their children: Parents who make the children feel as though they are an intrusion and burden.
6. Verbal and/or physical abuse: Parents who abuse their children, either by actions, negligence, words, or attitudes.
7. Legalism: Parents who use the Bible, religion, or God to browbeat the children into behavior that is not required by scriptural teachings.
8. Imbalance: Parents who fail to balance affirmation and discipline, who affirm without discipline, who discipline without affirmation, or who do neither.
These eight things will provoke a child to anger; they will exasperate a child, and we would be well-advised to avoid them.
As you consider cultivating the environment to foster spiritual growth, you must consider two aspects. First, you must eliminate the negative, and then accentuate the positive in the home environment. What, in your home, encourages spiritual development in your children, and what discourages it? You reveal your value system to the world, and ingrain it in your children, by what you have in your home and by how you treat what you have in your home.
What pictures do you have on the walls? What books do you have on the bookshelf? What magazines do you subscribe to? What television programs do you watch? What music do you listen to? What friends do you invite in? What do you talk about? What recreation do you engage in?
All these things combine to create an environment in the home, and it is not neutral. It is making a significant impact on your child’s worldview, on his value system, on what is important to him and not important to him. If you have things in your home that influence your child in a direction other than toward Christ, you are contributing to a spiritual breakdown as the baton is passed from your generation to your child’s generation.
Each Christian home must be carefully analyzed as to the messages it sends to the children. It is building into their value system and either encouraging or discouraging Christian behavior.
There is more to this than “material” environment. A spiritual and emotional environment is created that either encourages or discourages spiritual development. What do you talk about in the home? What do you laugh at? Do you laugh? Do you affirm and encourage one another? Do you have fun together? Do you ever have people into the home and talk about spiritual things? If you do, this creates one environment. If you don’t, it creates another, and the spiritual and emotional environment has an impact on the spiritual development of the children.