I have a confession to make, I love the tv show "The Office." And while I am confessing this bit of information, I will make another confession, Dwight K. Schrute is my favorite character on the show. There is a scene (in clip below) where Dwight talks about learning his rules as a child.
While this is funny, the thought hits me as I watch this, how many Christian parents raise their children in the same way. Now of course we would never tell our children they will get eaten in their sleep, well at least most of us, but how often do we still use fear, especially fear of rejection and loss of love, to manipulate our children's behavior to meet our standard. I fear, and in fact I see evidence to support this is true, that many children are raised in a way that they view God as one who loves them or rejects them based on their goodness. And what troubles me even more is they get this from the picture of God that they get from their parents. This view of God completely destroys the beauty of the gospel. The gospel is that God loves us in spite of our rebellion through the righteousness of Christ. God doesn't love us based on how well we "learn our rules" but rather based on the righteousness of Christ imparted to us. Are we raising "godly" children who live a life in fear of rejection if they do not meet a standard? Or are we raising a generation of students engulfed with the love of God through the work of Christ Jesus? We must strive as parents to display the gospel to our children in how we raise them, not behavior modified religion.
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