You Really Idolize Your Children

One afternoon several years ago, I gently shoved my two kids, Joelle and Koen, through the door of a local music academy where they were taking weekly piano and guitar lessons. We were running late because, before their music lessons, they had an art class, and after their art class they both had to show me their self-portraits they made out of macaroni and rice (I gushed and acted like a proud dad, but really I found their work lacked originality and purpose). And, their art class was across town, and the 610 Loop was a parking lot (surprise, surprise). Also we had to swing by Starbucks for chocolate cake-pops because I had promised them cake-pops if they behaved during art class.

As we stumbled through the door, I fumbled through my bag to find the textbooks for their guitar and piano classes. I got down on one knee, looked them both in the eyes, and said, “Behave, stay focused, and make me proud, okay?”

“Okay daddy!” they lied.

When I finally sat down to exhale and take the last, gritty sip of my latte, the receptionist behind the desk must have seen the exhaustion in my eyes because she gave me the look that a puppy gives you when he’s worried about you.

Then she said, “I can tell you really idolize your children.”

I know she meant it as a compliment; these days, a man who idolizes his kids is considered the best kind of father. And while I appreciated her sentiment, her phrasing was problematic. As Christians, we know that to idolize anything, even your kids, is a sin. To idolize is to love excessively or to worship, but Jesus said there is only one Person to whom our worship and greatest love belong:

The receptionist was right; I am guilty of excessively loving my kids. My first reaction wasn’t guilt-ridden repentance, however; the first thing I felt was pride. “That’s true,” I thought for an instant, “I do idolize them. I worship the ground they walk on. I’m the best dad.”

Not only was I idolizing my kids; I was proud of it.

But I know I’m not alone; to me, Houston seems to be the international headquarters for SuperParents, Incorporated. Nowhere, and at no time in history, have more kids been privy to more vacations, clubs, socials, leagues, teams, tutors, classes, and other extracurricular activities than our middle- and upper-middle class 21st Century Houstonian kids. We’re over-parenting, and we’re proud of it.

Super-parenting (the over-the-top, materialistic, experience-driven, excessively-busy, my-kids-are-the-center-of-my-universe kind of parenting) is a perfectly fine way to raise your kids, unless you’re a Christian. But – believe me, it hurts me to say it more than it hurts you to read it – super-parenting is incompatible with Christian parenting. 

Why Idolizing Kids Is Problematic
If you put them on the spot, most parents – even most Christian parents – would say the most important thing in their world is their nuclear family, specifically their children. We come by it honestly; the prioritization of our children is deeply embedded in our genetic code. However, while “putting the kids first” may sound noble, it is in fact a surefire way to raise children who grow up believing they are not only the center of your universe, but that they are the center of the universe.

Here’s the heart of the issue for Christians: if a boy grows up knowing his parents worship him, who will he be prepared to worship when he becomes a man? Himself, most likely. If all a girl sees in her formative years is her parents bending to her will, her expectations, her schedule, her needs and wants, to what (or to whom) will she surrender in adulthood? Only to herself, right? Christian parenting isn’t a matter of putting your kids first in your life; it’s about helping kids understand how to put God first in their lives. That will only happen if your kids witness, firsthand, their parents prioritizing and worshiping God above everything and everyone else.

Many Christians are worried sick about how young Americans are turning away from the Church in droves as they reach adulthood. Christian institutions and denominations have probably spent a billion dollars studying the reasons for the mass exodus of Millennials and Gen Z. Some people say Christianity is too conservative for a relatively liberal generation. Other people say it’s our worship that’s the problem; it’s too boring, too shallow, or simply irrelevant.

After working with youth and young adult ministries for the better part of the last 17 years, I don’t buy it. If I could boil the whole issue down to one sentence, it would look something like this: Kids raised by parents who prioritize success, school, sports, Spring Break, and socializing over Jesus and the Church are destined to make the same choices, with even greater intensity, through their college years and beyond.

As parents, we have a choice to make. We can raise our kids to believe they are the most important people in our lives, and that they are entitled to just about everything, and our mission is to give them all the stuff we never had when we were kids. Or we can help them to see why Jesus is the most important person in our lives by modeling daily surrender to His will and by leading our families to love Him more deeply every day.

Super-parenting is all about success and achievement. Super-parents see themselves in competition with other parents (we’d never admit it but you know it’s true); what’s worse is that super-parenting tempts us to see our kids in competition with other kids. We’d like to think all our efforts to give our kids ample opportunities are motivated by unconditional love and altruism, but we know that’s not the case. Super-parenting always comes with strings attached.

In return for my extreme devotion to their countless classes, I expect to get something back from my kids: a little gratitude for starters, and come recital day (or game day or exam day) I expect the best. Those lessons, camps, and teams don’t come cheap, and I implicitly demand some return on my investment. Super-parenting is almost always conditional, and it sets kids and parents up for disappointment because it bows before the idol of achievement.

Super-parents are raising a generation of achievement addicts. Mary Bell, a counselor who works with high-level executives, said, “Achievement is the alcohol of our time…an ‘achievement addict’ is no different from any other kind of addict.” Achievement addiction comes with a false sense of security and identity; the addict bases his self-worth and life’s purpose on the merits of his latest accomplishment.

In his book, Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller writes about “the pressure cooker of competition, designed to produce students who excel in everything. The family is no longer ‘a haven in a heartless world.’ Instead, the family has become the nursery where the craving for success is first cultivated.”

This is basically the opposite of Christian parenting. In Ephesians 6:4, Paul encourages parents not to exasperate their children but to “nurture them in the training and instruction of Jesus.” The word exasperate here literally means frustrate, irritate, or provoke. Paul is telling Christian parents that we are supposed to be raising our kids differently. Instead of bowing before the myriad pressures and expectations of achievement in our culture, our focus should be on nurturing our kids along the way of Jesus. 

Grace Never Requires You to Prove Yourself
At the core of Jesus’ way is grace, the unearned, free gift of God’s unconditional love. Showing our kids how to receive God’s grace, and how to offer it to others, is the most important job a Christian parent has. Grace doesn’t care what you make on your ACTs; grace isn’t impacted one way or the other by what school you get into. Grace never requires you to prove yourself.

Parents: our acts of worship, prayer, devotion, and generosity are how we acknowledge the gift of God’s grace through Jesus. It’s important to let your kids see you pursuing deeper intimacy with God; otherwise, they may begin to think that religious involvement is just one more superficial achievement to mark off the list. Church volunteerism does look good on college applications, after all. Do your kids see you bowing to Jesus as much as they see you bowing before the idols of success and achievement?

In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer encourages believers to talk less to each other about Jesus and to talk more to Jesus about each other. Talking to people about Jesus is fine, as long as it’s an extension of your conversation with Jesus about people. Anything short of that is just empty religion. It’s our way of making Christianity something else to achieve.

I think this applies especially to Christian parents. Do you spend more time talking to your kids about Jesus than you do talking to Jesus about your kids? Have you given your kids the impression that Christianity is just something else to achieve, or have you shown them, by your own priorities and spiritual discipline, that following Jesus is about relationship, not accomplishment?

I’m not sure I want to answer those questions. I confess: I do idolize my children. Part of me wants to be super-dad. But we know where this gets us, don’t we? We have a choice to make: is it more important to us that our kids are accomplished and successful, or that our kids cultivate lasting, meaningful relationships with Jesus? My heart says the latter, but my parenting style, if I’m honest, screams the former.

Thank God for grace.