As a parent, have your child’s behavior and spiritual condition ever caused you to be concerned about how this will reflect upon you personally? Whether or not you are into the idea of making resolutions for the coming New Year, every parent should resolve to put away any notions of “reputation-based” parenting. What is reputation-based parenting? Consider these thoughts:
Reputation parenting is primarily concerned with the spiritual reputation of the parent. You do what you do as a parent with the goal of having others see you as a respectable Christian parent.
We seek compliments from others for how great a parent we are and how well behaved our children are. Those words ensnare our hearts and build pressure in the lives of our children.
Because of that, we should strive to recognize the insidious way it entangles our home life. Think through the way you interact with your children.
- Is your first reaction to disobedience, “What will people think of me?”
- Is your main concern that your children “do the right thing”?
- Is your greatest fear that they rebel?
Whether we’d like to admit it or not, reputation parenting is our default mode of parenting. I recognize that deplorable facet of my own heart.
Our parenting must be saturated in the gospel and that cannot and will not happen if we are concerned with our reputation.
(From “Parenting with Sanctification, not Reputation, in Mind” by Aaron Earls at thewardrobedoor.com, found through a link on Tim Challies’ blog, www.challies.com.)
Read the entire article here.(Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)
