A columnist named Janet Chusmir wrote: “It has gotten so I hesitate to ask about the children. I hesitate with friends because it will open wounds and with strangers, because so often it ends up that I am treading on their painful and often embarrassing ground.

“Once a woman I was interviewing brought the subject around to her daughter. “I like my daughter. I respect her. I enjoy being with her.” She said it with such warmth and joy and enthusiasm that I... taken by surprise… wrote her words down in my notebook. Liking? Respecting? Enjoying? a child? That was news.”

In the window of a Washington D.C. toyshop some years ago, there was a large poster telling of the changing “advice to parents” over a 70-year period. Of course it is a gross oversimplification and a bit dated but we can recognize the outlines:

1910... spank them

1920... deprive them

1930... ignore them

1940... reason with them

1950... love them

1960... spank them/lovingly

1970... liberate them

1980... forget them

Nowadays its “sell to them.”

A half-century ago advertisers learned that Baby Boom children were significant customers in a growing industrial economy. The Disney media conglomerate today is traceable to Walt Disney’s own recognition of the enormous marketing power of television. I had the Davy Crockett hat, the gun, the vest and the pants – the whole nine yards – and I was the first one on my block.

Children and young people learn the consumer ethos quickly. Status and self worth are defined by consumer goods. One of the chilling messages of the Columbine killings was the way a perceived lack of status and social acceptability contributed to the boy’s murderous resentment. On the other hand, children of wealth and prosperity, who have everything materially and almost nothing spiritually, are likely candidates for addiction and sexual indulgence. That is a huge problem in Ventura County.

Perhaps it is time to turn to the original baby book --- the one written by the creator of the design -- and see what He has to say.

In Ephesians 6, the Apostle Paul speaks to parents and says, “Do not provoke your children to anger.” This command immediately follows the instruction for children to obey their parents and precedes the alternative to provoking to anger which is to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

The culture to which Paul was writing was not a culture that was especially receptive to advice or instructions for parents.

In Rome, for example, the family was organized around the principle of the “patria potestas”, the father's power. A Roman father had absolute power over his family. He could sell them as slaves, he could make them work in his fields, even in chains. He could punish as he liked and could even inflict the death penalty.

When a child was born it was placed before its father's feet. If the father stooped and lifted the child it meant that he acknowledged the child and wished it to be kept. But if he turned and walked away, the child was exposed to the elements to die.

There is a letter dated from 1 BC from a man named Hilarion to his wife, Alis. He has gone to Alexandria in Egypt on a lengthy business trip and writes home:

“Hilarion to Alis, his wife, heartiest greetings, and to my dear Berous and Apollonarion. Know that we are still even now in Alexandria. Do not worry if when all others return, I remain in Alexandria. I beg and beseech you to take care of the little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you. If...good luck to you!...you have a child, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, throw it out. You told Aphrodisias to tell me “do not forget me.” How can I forget you? I beg you therefore not to worry.”

That's a strange letter. It is so full of affection yet it is so callous toward the child to be born. Had the child been sickly or deformed it would have not had a chance at life. The philosopher Seneca, a noble man in many ways, wrote: “We slaughter a fierce ox; we strangle a mad dog; we plunge a knife into sickly cattle lest they taint the herd; children who are born weakly or deformed we drown.”

It is against this type of situation that Paul wrote to parents calling for a new style of parenting in the church of Jesus Christ. If we are ever asked what Christianity has accomplished for the good of the world, one place we can start is the changes affected in the status of children as well as women.

Now back in the first century, Paul wrote specifically to the fathers. They had the power. In our modern setting his words are for both fathers and mothers.

And, despite the legal and societal protections children now enjoy, Paul's words are still very much needed. We have our problems too.

On December 11, 1989, a 51-year-old man named Lindsay took a shotgun. He put it to his head, and pulled the trigger. Less than 24 hours earlier, he had watched Bing Crosby’s famous feel-good movie, White Christmas.

Christmas was supposed to be a happy time. But for Lindsay, it was filled with painful memories of an abusive father. During the Christmas holidays, his father would take Lindsay and his brother out to the family farm and work them harshly. If he felt they weren’t doing good enough work, their father would belittle them and beat them, even to the point of drawing blood. Lindsay lived in fear of his father’s brutality, and he came to hate his father and to hate Christmas.

“I hate Christmas because of Pop and I always will” Lindsay once said. “It brings back the pain and the fear I suffered as a child. And if I ever do myself in, it will be at Christmastime. That will show the world what I think of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.”

And so, on December 11, having watched “White Christmas” one last time, Lindsay Crosby, Bing Crosby’s son, shot himself.

I went to college in Spokane, Washington where the Crosbys lived. I did an internship as a news reporter with a television station. I certainly became aware of Bing’s reputation.

Hopefully none of us are closet Bing Crosby’s – warm and smiling on the outside and abusive on the inside.

But even good parents who are loving can abuse their children – all with the best of intentions.

We find this psychological abuse of children in our own community in the way some parents insist on living their lives through their children -- pushing them to compete and excel not for the child’s well being but for the parent's ego. Sometimes it seems that children are never allowed to be children because they are being pushed to excel in sports, excel in music, excel in school, and excel in social relationships.

It’s not just an American thing. Dr. Thomas Dann of England’s Warwick University stated in British Medical Journal, “Old age now begins at 15. We are getting 10 year old insomniacs,” Dann writes. I am appalled by the pressures being put on children; pressure to do more and more at school and at home. These children are being forced, not for their own good, but to satisfy the competitive instincts of parents and teachers.”

As one astute observer wrote, “Great minds and high talent in most cases cannot be hurried and, like healthy plants, grow slowly.” If a person cannot accept himself while he is growing, his talent and mind might still develop, but his personality can hardly help becoming distorted. If he cannot feel good about his own being in himself, he will buy acceptance from his peers. And sometimes young people pay a terrible price in drugs and violation of their sexuality to buy what to them is acceptance that they get nowhere else.

The question we face is how to exercise proper parental authority without breaking the child's spirit and thereby defeat the very stewardship God has given us as parents -- which is to help children grow into mature, adult, Christian human beings.

Eugene Kennedy in The Joy of Being Human writes of one of his colleagues who stood with a wondering father outside the doors of a hospital emergency room where the father's son was seriously injured from an automobile accident. The father was talking about the subject of trust and what it had meant between him and his eighteen-year-old boy. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t give him the keys to the car lightly. I thought about it. I thought well, maybe, I could drive him to the prom. But I did that when he was 14 and now he’s 18. It was time for him to drive himself...and they all looked so nice going out. Who would have thought that they would be sideswiped by a drunk driver?”

He shifted his position and sighed, “But if I had it to do all over again, I'd give him the keys. For I would have hurt him in another way far worse than the way he’s hurt right now.” That father has a lot of wisdom about letting a boy grow into a man.

It’s important to let the real person develop. Our children are individual creations of God with all kinds of creative potential. John Huffman of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach suggests that one great commandment be added to the other ten, “Thou shalt not frustrate the holy in thy child.” Isn’t that really what Paul is saying when he writes, “Fathers, do not sour your children, for fear they will grow up disheartened.”

Children also develop into the people they can and want to be when there are boundaries put lovingly around their lives – freedom and discipline in a fine balance. It is necessary for parents to discipline their children so that they learn to respect authority. There will always be authorities in life whether it is teachers, the police, a boss, or just a faster gunslinger. But the parent must remember their authority is not the whole story.

Many parents recognize it is not the discipline they exert that makes a difference. What makes a difference in a child is who the parent is. I like the analogy Dr. William Farson used. He wrote, “We have treated our children as if we could shape them the way a sculptor shapes clay. But that’s not the way it is. It’s more like we are running along and we fall on a pile of clay. We leave an impression, all right, and that impression is distinctly us, but we have very little control over what it looks like. You see, in child raising, what parents are is terribly important. I suspect that kindness and decency, for instance, are learned by being around mothers and fathers who are kind and decent, and the same is true of other qualities. Parents who have high aspirations for themselves seem to produce children who have high aspirations.”

We badly need to teach our children. Christian values now are so different from mainstream culture that the task of Christian education has become enormous. It certainly can’t be accomplished in a one hour a week Sunday School class – and we have a great Sunday School.

The Bible is explicit in its charge to “teach the next generation” To do this in today’s world requires more than good intentions. We need to make the training of our children a priority. As Christians we believe that we have the greatest message the world could ever know. Our children need to be grounded in that message.

It also makes a difference. The Los Angeles Times reported, “After all our ambitious child-rearing with Discovery toys, Suzuki piano lessons, conflict-avoidance classes, 4 a.m. swim practices, SAT prep classes, driver education and summer flights to study folk music in the Republic of Georgia, people might have done as well (and saved money) by just bringing their kids to church.

Late last year, a commission convened by Dartmouth Medical School studied years of research on kids, including brain-imaging studies, and concluded that young people who are religious are better off in significant ways than their secular peers. They are less likely than nonbelievers to smoke and drink and more likely to eat well; less likely to commit crimes and more likely to wear seat belts; less likely to be depressed and more likely to be satisfied with their families and school.

The commission members said that religious congregations benefit teenagers by affirming who they are, expecting a lot from them and giving them opportunities to show what they can do. Now as the panel noted, the same could be said of clubs, sports teams and other youth organizations (such as the YMCA, which helped fund the study). But what sets the religious groups apart, however - and makes a surprisingly big difference to kids, according to the panel - is that they promote a “direct personal relationship with the Divine.”

Wow!

We need to find ways to show children the love and affection of Jesus, who took them in His arms and blessed them. Children will inevitably look for love. They are vulnerable to anyone who seems to provide it, frequently without discriminating between healthy and unhealthy attention. The church can offer a powerful witness by demonstrating the reality of a community where children are loved intentionally and honorably.

Parents, exercise your God-given authority, but realize you are not God and your authority is not absolute. Discipline your children with respect, care and love. And be what you want them to become. The goal is to train them for responsibility as a part of the family of God. In the meantime, let us remember this: Our children’s perceptions of God as Father will largely grow out of their perception of us as parents.

Several years ago I heard a Roman Catholic Priest on the radio discuss the important theological concept of “When does life begin?” He pointed out that some feel it starts right at the moment of conception while others are convinced that it starts when the baby takes the first breath. But, he pointed out, there is an increasing number who feel that life doesn't really begin until the last kid leaves home and the dog dies.

That is not the way God intends it to be. Parenthood is derived from God as Paul points out in Ephesians 3. We are stewards entrusted by God with the care and the nurture of children who will someday stand before God as independent, responsible human beings. We are not the owners of our children and we are not forever responsible for them. They belong to God as we belong to God and He will call us to answer for the stewardship we exercise while they are in our care.