The Power of Parents in the Worship of Children

Everyone knows that parents have tremendous power and influence in the lives of children, particularly in their younger years. And everyone knows that children have tremendous power and influence in the lives of parents.

The first is what God intended. The second is moving toward the effects of the fall in the reversal of creation-based roles.

The irony of the title, “The Power of Parents in the Worship of Children” is that we parents have often become almost powerless because we worship children. They run our lives by commanding our responses that flow out of a heart unchecked by the worship of God.

It should be the other way around. That our power in the lives of our children is driven by our worship of God, and our children’s worship is instructed by our worship of God rather than our worship of children.

As Israel departed Egypt in the exodus, the Passover was instituted by God as a reminder of his powerful deliverance, a deliverance that their children and grandchildren would never see. Yet in the initial instruction concerning the Passover, God envisions a day when the children will ask “What does this ceremony mean to you?” (Exod 12:26). “Why are you doing this?” they will say.

Embedded in this anticipated question are several important things.

First, there is the assumption that the parents are continuing in the commanded worship of God through the observance of the Passover. They have not let the immediate, internal complacency, or the passing of time shove aside their commanded worship and remembrance.

Seccond, there is the assumption that parents are participating in the observance in a way that makes clear that there is a meaning to it beyond the mere passing observance of a religious ritual. There is the assumption that the meaning of the Passover has been internalized by the parent.

Third, there is the assumption that the children are involved in the observance, that this worship is not just for adults. It is a family observance.

Fourth, there is the assumption that parents are able to answer the questions of their children because of their own spiritual knowledge of the history and the meaning of God’s work among them. In fact, there is the assumption that the parents will give God’s answer, "that our God delivered us from Egypt’ (Exod 12:27).

Thus, when children see it and ask, parents can answer in way that instructs their children and brings about the worship of children, that is, children who worship because of the mighty acts of God that they never saw but have only heard about from their parents.

In an age where parents worship children, we are often tempted to avoid the hard things. It is often easier to put our children to bed than it is read the Bible with them and pray with them before bedtime. It is often easier to let the sports schedule dictate the church schedule rather than fight the fight of missing games rather than church. It is often easier to address sin issues with non-biblical or quasi-biblical instructions rather than address the matters of the heart.

Parents who have no internalized the worship of God will usually take the easy road. We just want them to be quiet, to stop fighting, to get their homework done, to get to bed, to win games, to clean their rooms. And we will say or do whatever it is necessary in that moment to satisfy our children enough to get them to do what we want.

And in that, we often miss a teaching opportunity, however brief it might be. It’s the opportunity to teach them that at that very moment, they are worshipping something. They are professing allegiance to something—their selfish desires that bring fighting, their sinful desire for the immediate gratification of laziness rather than the harder task of completing homework, their arrogance that convinces them they know more than the referee or the teacher.

What we should want is for them to see how all these things are connected to the worship of God and the  filling of their God-ordained roles at this stage in their lives. What we should strive for is to root all these responses to life in the mighty acts of God in creation, deliverance, and community.

Sure it’s hard. And if we worship children, we will do everything we can to make them happy and to appease them.

But if we will worship God, we will approach parenting with the goal of teaching and reminding our children constantly that we all—ourselves included—have someone greater to answer to and to worship—namely, the Creator and Deliverer, God himself.

And so when our children ask, “Why do you do that?” let us make sure that the “that” they are asking about is our counter-cultural and other-worldly worship of God and the radical approach to life that stems from it. And let us make sure that, when our children ask, we have an answer that can lift them above the pressing needs of this hour and direct them to the eternal values of God.

Santa for (Some) Christians

Christmas always brings out the best in some people. And I mean that in the most sarcastic way.

It seems there are always some people every year who feel it is their job to rid the world of the idea of Santa Claus. They want to protect kids from the enormous evil of thinking that there is a fat guy in a red suit who brings children presents, somehow making it to all the houses via a sled being pulled by reindeer through the sky, landing on roofs, and sliding his little fat self down the chimney into a roaring fire without even getting his long white beard dirty.

Spoiler Alert: I am about to reveal that Santa is not real. Kind of … If you don’t want to know that, please turn away from the screen. And now would not be too soon.

Trigger Alert: If hearing that stories of Santa are mostly made up and grossly over-exaggerated will send into a holiday depression or other traumatic decline, please stop reading here.

I will give you thirty seconds to move away from the screen.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Okay, now that the crowd has dwindled, let me continue.

Santa (as in the fat guy in red who brings presents down the chimney) is not actually real. There are some fat guys out there, some who even wear red. And I imagine there are some people in chimneys. (Check yours now.)

But there’s no need to clean our your fireplace because he won’t be there tonight.

In the spirit of Christmas cheer and giving, I am going to let you in on a little secret. Your kids will not be forever warped if they don’t know that yet. In fact, it is highly likely they won’t even be temporarily warped. The chance your children having issues from a belief in Santa Claus is pretty small. They are in more danger standing out in a thunderstorm.

You aren’t lying to them by allowing them to have a little imagination. The older I get, the more I am inclined to let kids be kids for a bit. They will grow up all too fast. But for now, in the right proportion, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of fun and imagination at Christmas.

Poor Santa is the subject of an awful lot of folklore, mostly found in Christmas songs.

The truth is that Santa’s not making a list, and he most certainly is not checking it twice. He doesn’t particularly like being called “Santa Baby.” He puts up with it for the sake of holiday cheer. (He told me that once in an unguarded moment.) He also thinks that being called jolly and old is putting his man-card at risk.

But the kids who “… Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” weren’t quite as traumatized as one might have imagined. It has a lot more truth in it than most kids realize. I have it on good authority that mommy kisses Santa Claus. And he doesn’t mind.

My kids used to ask me, “Is Santa real?” I always responded with either “What do you think?” or “Of course he is.”

My oldest recently said to me, “Santa Claus isn’t real.” I said, “Really? Why do you think that?” He told me it was because he knew who Santa was at the library.

I told him, “If you think that, that’s fine. As a family, we do some things that are fun for all of us, so don’t ruin it for other people.”

In the end, they will find out all too soon that Santa is real, and that he is not nearly so impressive as they thought. The sleigh is actually a well-traveled minivan with six cylinders instead of eight reindeer. It won’t fly though it has been known to try when a few kids have made it almost impossible to be on time for school.

But Santa loves them a lot, and loves to see them having fun, even if an imaginary fat guy in a red suit gets the credit for it.