Parental Control

I just noticed an icon on my laptop called Parental Control. Hmm. That elusive aspiration. 

I remember those days when toddlers begin to test their independence, when behaviour became a battle of wills which I did not always win. One child, who shall remain nameless, once started kicking me in the shins when he’d had enough of a grown-ups meeting. Soothing words, scolding words, bribery, threats – nothing worked and we had to leave before he broke my legs.

I remember those days when teens really began pushing the boundaries. Parental Control? We may have tried to exert it, but our power was met with an equal and opposite force. 

My sympathies are with today’s parents, who have to establish some sort of Parental Control over internet use and telly viewing, because there is such a lot of rubbish out there that you don’t want influencing your young person’s mind. 

But not all parents seek to control. I’ve been reading a book suggesting a new theory for raising kids – a theory which I’ve watched a young family implement so far to good effect. It embraces the idea of empowering children from an early age by teaching them that they have choices, but that every choice has a consequence of some kind, be it for good or for bad. 

So, if a child’s shrieks reach ear-splitting levels, the dad might call for a pause and then tell the child that his choice to scream has robbed his dad of peace by giving him a headache and hurting his ears. I haven’t seen what the next step would be if the kid went on shrieking. What I saw was the awakening of the kid’s compassion and understanding and his choosing to stop his screaming. 

The parents are eager to reinforce their children’s understanding that they have power, and they have choices of how to use that power. So far it seems to be enabling these tiny kids to exercise compassion and understanding, and to make good choices when the issue is presented to them.

It’s a Biblical pattern, of course. God put his children, Adam and Eve, in a garden. Everything in it was beautiful and good, and there were very few rules. But there was one rule, and as long as they resisted breaking it, the garden remained a heavenly place in which to live. Good food, good company, stimulating conversation during long walks with the Almighty God. 

But on that fateful day when first Eve, then Adam, made a bad choice, the consequences were inevitable and they were cataclysmic, not just for those two people but for the whole world. God knew that would happen. He had a plan from the beginning, of how to restore things. But in order to succeed, someone needed to pay the price for that first bad choice, and all the ensuing wrong choices that we all make. Jesus stepped up and volunteered to take the rap for us.

Not so different from what most loving parents would do for their kids, then. Even though a kid has made a bad choice, a loving parent would rather pay the price himself than have the kid live with the consequences.

God the Father still gives us a choice. We can choose to believe in and love Jesus, and enjoy a higher quality of life starting from right now and extending on into forever, or we can choose to turn our back on him. 

It’s our choice. We have the power to choose right, or not. God doesn’t have a Parental Control app or icon. All he has is everlasting love.