The Lighted Path

I got into a conversation last week with a couple of my neighbors.  We were talking about raising our kids up to make right choices and stay away from sin.  My kids are young, all eight and younger, but I believe it starts now.  My girls know right from wrong, they know the rules of the house, but are they really sinning when they disobey or are they just being kids and testing the boundaries?

I believe it’s both.  Yes, they are sinning.  Yes, they are making mistakes and they are consciously choosing to lie, be mean, or disobey.  And yes, they are just being their age and seeing what they can get away with.

So, how should I respond, what should I do as a parent?

Well, this week in particular, we sat down and talked about being appropriate with our bodies, and keeping our hands to ourselves.  My six year old thought it was funny to be patting her older sister’s butt continuously, and they erupted into a fit of giggles.  Is this a big deal?  No, it’s not.  Kids will be kids, and anything to do with a butt is immediately funny.  However, we have a rule in our family that we keep our hands off of other people’s private areas, and we also don’t let others touch ours.  So, the problem was not so much that they thought it was funny, but that they knew it was against the rules and did it anyway.

 This prompted a discussion about where our choices lead.  And believe me, that hour long lecture was far worse than any other punishment I could have inflicted, I’m sure.  But we talked, and I told them the truth.  I spoke to them like they were perhaps a bit older than eight and six years old.

You might wonder why this is important to me.  You might be thinking I am over reacting.  I hear that often, so it would not really surprise me, but here’s why this is a big deal to me.  At some point they are going to be faced with a hard moral decision.  They will have to ask themselves if they should do what they know is right, listen to their parents, and follow God’s path, or if they should give in to peer pressure, allow or encourage breaking the rules because it’s fun.

I know because I’ve lived it.  I was faced with those tough moral decisions, and I chose wrong.  I made a lot of mistakes, and I sinned a lot growing up.  I did not know then how easy it would be to go from one instance of breaking the rules, to continually making poor choices on a daily basis.  I know now that once you’ve lowered your standard of living and decide to accept poor choices for yourself, it gets easier and easier to continue to lower those self standards.

So, where does that lead us?  Well, I’ve asked my girls to “play the tape out.”  If they choose today to go against what I tell them, and they keep doing that, little by little, over the years, it’s going to be harder and harder to do the next right thing and easier and easier to lie and cheat.  You have created for yourself a sense of momentum that is difficult to stop and turn for the better.  However, there is hope!  If you choose instead to make the right decisions, continue to say no to sin, and choose what you know in your heart is the right thing to do, the momentum will again continue, and it will become second nature to be good, to tell the truth, and admit when you’ve made a mistake.

So I asked them, “Honestly, what kind of person do you want to be?”

There is an old story about each of us having a good and a bad wolf that lives inside us; they are battling to the death.  When the storyteller was asked which one lives, he simply replied, “The one you feed.”  This is true!  Whatever you are putting in to your day-to-day life is what in fact you will become!

So, do I think I can stop my kids from growing up and making poor choices?  No, that’s insane; they are human beings and will always make mistakes.  I do, however, think I can warn them and prepare them for those decisions, help them to see where certain things are mistakes and to not just accept that because our culture says they are okay.  Give them hope that they can make the choice to do good, and be good, and they don’t have to give in to what may seem popular or fun at the time.  Most of all, give them a mother who believes in them so much, that they know in their hearts I am always going to guide them down the lighted path and be here to help them clean up the mess when they go astray.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”  1 John 1:7.