The Disinherited

I can remember, somewhere around age eleven or twelve, watching a feel-good movie about a kid who is thrust into an ethical quandary of the ever-typical music crescendoing through the console television kind, as the father gets eye to eye with his child and declares “We are [insert last name here],”; instantly solving the moral dilemma. The identity of that family covenant spurs him on to choose rightly, leaving those of us who have never experienced such a momentous occasion wondering if we are missing out. I have shilly-shallied between shunning this sentiment and yearning for it my whole life.

When I had four children, all under the age of five, and I was spending my time reading parenting books, searching for the one that would just tell me exactly how to parent perfectly, I came across a book interviewing Amish mothers. The question was posed, “How do you stay so calm when your children are misbehaving?” The answer was what I had been looking for all along: “My child’s sin is not my problem; it is theirs.” This revelation aptly depicts what I would consider one of the most flawed presuppositions evangelicals hold in relation to parenting. I bought into this view because it released me of any deep responsibility that would press me toward the floor in confessional submission to the Lord.

In 1 Samuel 2 we read about Eli’s disobedient sons, Hophni and Phinehas, who “were worthless men”. They sinned against God by treating the offering with contempt. Eli was old and well-versed in what his sons were up to. This leads us to believe that either he didn’t have any closeness of relationship with them or he he didn’t think that their business was his business. The hyper-individualist may be able to proof-text from Scripture that our children’s sin is not our problem, but they would have to ignore how God addresses this issue with Eli:

“Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?...I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever...Behold the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house...” (1 Samuel 2:27-31).

God takes Eli to task by reminding him of the established covenant with His people. The Lord then draws Eli’s attention to the sins of his children, and reprimands him:

“And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them” (1 Samuel 3:13).

This is just one of the many examples that fly in the face of the notion that our children’s sin is not our problem. Not only does this way of thinking tend to be wed to a decisionalist view of salvation, but it also tends to contradict itself entirely as soon as we try to wrangle our children into any kind of Christ-like schema of morality. If you ever encourage, reward, consequence, or discipline your child, then you do, in fact, believe that your child’s sin is your business. 

The sin of the average evangelical family is one of offering the stories of the covenant to our children, but not the promises; offering the church building to our children, but not the Lord’s Table; offering separation from the world, but not inclusion in the covenant. No wonder so many walk away after being kept in the foyer for years on end.

The desire that I felt as an adolescent to verbalize a family line which would in turn sure up my place in a large family tree is a need that should not and does not need to be unmet. As parents, our children’s sin is most definitely our problem. It belongs to us and to the group of believers that we have committed with to be in covenant. Our children belong in the church, as the church. We need to teach our children now, in the context of the covenant, that they are most assuredly a part of it, so that the inheritance that we leave them is not a surprise to them when the will is read.