What are the things that you’re tempted to boast about in your children? What are you most defensive about? Or most keen to point out about them?
“Your child learned to swim aged 4? Mine was 3.”
“My little girl is very advanced at reading – she’s got the reading age of a 10 year old, and she’s only 6!”
“My child would never hit another child like that.”
“My baby started sleeping through the night at just 4 months.”
“Little Bertie has an amazing imagination, it’s so vivid.”
Chances are that whatever you’re most keen to point are the things that you think give your child status. And your child probably knows it. They probably know that what you think is significant about them.
An important question to ask is this: is this what we want to teach our children? Do you want them to think that these are the things that give them status?
A consistent strand to Jesus’ teaching is this: the things that give people status and significance in this world are not what matters in the kingdom of God. In fact he goes further than that. It’s not even that they are neutral. Very often they are negative.
An example from the Bible
We see it in the many encounters between Jesus and the pharisees on the Sabbath. Jesus is presented with someone in desperate need – facing a debilitating illness with no hope of relief. No hope that is, except divine intervention. Yet the pharisees are so committed to their status as the religious elite that they’d rather see a man suffer than see him healed on the Sabbath. Even though they themselves would do things on the Sabbath to help things that matter to them – like help their child or ox that’s fallen in to a well.
See Luke 14 for example. It’s the Sabbath, and Jesus is at the dinner party of a prominent pharisee.
Whilst there, he heals a man suffering with abnormal swelling, and then confronts the pharisees with the exact scenario I just mentioned:
Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” And they had nothing to say.”
They had nothing to say. Why? Well if they said it was wrong to pull them out, their status would be affected – they would seem callous and uncaring. But if they agreed that they actually would pull them out, then their super-religious credentials would be tarnished.
So rather than celebrate this incredible and miraculous compassionate act of God, they say nothing. Their status matters more to them.
Jesus then goes on to highlight this exact issue in a parable. It’s a parable about the jostle for the most prestigious seats at a wedding party. He finishes his parable with one of those pithy, profound phrases that he often uses:
For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Humility.
That’s what all of this comes down to.
At the root of humility is a recognition that we are needy people.
We all are.
Some of us are materially needy. Others emotionally, physically, mentally or relationally.
Some of us are none of those things, and would rank high in the world’s status ranks.
But we are all spiritually needy. And we must remember that.
All of us come before God with empty hands, offering nothing. We come in need: in need of forgiveness, in need of mercy and of grace.
To be a Christian is to be humble – humble in the sense that we recognise our bankruptcy in our status before God.
Let’s not play the comparison game
In this sense, none of us rank higher than another on the status ranks. This is profoundly humbling. And it puts us on a level playing field with everyone else. It means that we cannot look down on anyone, even if by the world’s status ranks we would be higher or lower than others.
It’s this profoundly humbling reality that will enable us to respond to God, and respond to others appropriately. This is where the pharisees went wrong. Their high sense of their own status led to a low opinion of others. They couldn’t and wouldn’t care for the most needy in society because they looked down on them from their lofty position. They thought they were better than them. They needed to be humbled.
How to teach our children humility
So this brings us back to what we want to teach our children.
We want to be parents who celebrate the skills and abilities that God has given our children, of course. It would be ungrateful to God to not do that.
But we want to make sure in all of that that our children never forget two things:
- All we have is from God, and that means we can never boast.
- In the stakes that matter most – how we stand before God – we are utterly dependent, and offer nothing.
These two realities, if God lays them on the hearts of our children, will ensure they develop humility.
Humility breeds deep confidence and assurance
And here’s the counter-intuitive effect of being humble -with that humility will come a deep confidence and assurance. They will not build their status on their achievements which can crumble in an instant. They will build their status on the reality that they couldn’t be more loved. The God they have rejected is the same God who has gone to the greatest possible lengths to humble himself so that they can be exalted. Even to death. He has not spared his own son, for them. They are loved. They are accepted. They are blessed.
When they are humbled in this way, it will overflow into a humility towards others too, as they see others not as inferior to them, but as equal. Even those who the world sees as “needy”.
So let’s be careful. Let’s be careful in the way that we speak to our children to not develop in them a sense of entitlement. Let’s avoid trotting out the usual lines that make our children think they are important because of their status that they achieved through sporting/academic/social accomplishments. We can celebrate some of those things with grateful hearts. But let’s not puff up our children so that they feel exalted over others.
Instead let’s (prayerfully, by the power of the Spirit) seek to nurture in our children a deep-rooted confidence in the status that matters most. The status that they have as dearly loved children of God who have been lavished with his grace and mercy. Let them be humbled under the wonder of that. And let them be exalted in the way that truly matters.
We’d love to hear how you do this with your children. Why don’t you comment below with some of the questions you ask your children, or comments you make to help your children find their status in how God perceives them in Christ, not in their accomplishments.