Dec 2, 2008
Does good parenting call for some measure of hypocrisy?
Raising children to be better than yourself—Who wouldn’t want that?—requires inconsistency: Hoping for them things you can’t live up to.
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Man…I sure hope so. Every time I go to discipline either of my sons, a flood of memories comes back to me of my own failures as a child and adult–and how my parents and God treated me with firmness and mercy.
I’ve thought down this road before. Kids are natural hypocrisy detectors. I think we’d better pray that God would make us better than we are today and then let that improve our parenting, rather than holding our kids to a higher standard than we are able to achieve.
The number one thing my husband and I have determined to do is to tell the children about our imperfections and failures as sinful young adults (teens), so that we can speak with authority and give first hand information of how sinful actions do effect your future as grown ups and to remind them that even their parents are sinners in need of a Savior. So to answer your question I would have to give you a resounding YES!
I think that by modeling repentance and change, we convey the importance of the standard while simultaneously dealing with the reality that we cannot live up to it. Hypocrisy would be acting as though I continually achieve the standards that I have set for my children, when I clearly do not.
Yes, but…
I’ve asked myself the same question, and lately have realized I think this is the right way to think about it.
At it’s root, what is it we are trying to teach or children–to just do good things, or, to obey God? Where does our obedience to God come from? (God. Rm 6:17, Rm 6:22-23.) So, my kids and I are all dependent on God to do anything good. Yet, we still need to do good, so we teach our kids to do good. But, the doing is God’s gift to us. So, I try to explain this when I am correcting my kids. It also serves as a humbling reminder to myself of my dependence on God.
So, what could be a fatalistic “just do it” based on a hypocritical example becomes an opportunity to display and explain our true source of obedience, and that it’s something to be fought for. I think that takes the focus off the hypocrisy.
My ministry to high-schoolers reminds me of my failings at that age so I can have grace while holding up a higher standard.
Amen to that. I struggle with this all the time.
Why would I want my kids to make my same mistakes? But I do feel like such a loser when I’m reprimanding them for a sin that I committed tenfold.
I try to teach my kids that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace as we constantly fail him. However, I really have to be deliberate with this, because they tend to just assume that mom and dad don’t struggle, and never did struggle, with meeting the high standards we find in the Bible.
Of course, some day they’ll ask AP what their dad was like as a kid, and he’ll tell them that their dad tried to give him a swirlie in the fourth grade.
Seems a bit Pauline to me….
What you said is right on. I don’t think it’s hypocritical, though, because we know and acknowledge that we’re screwups. Now, if we claimed we had no sin, sinned, and then told our kids not to sin, that would be a different story. As it is, we teach our kids what to do fully knowing that they will sin, and thus teaching them about repentance and forgiveness (partly by repenting to them and asking their forgiveness!).
If I hadn’t read the title, Abraham, I would never have thought this was a post about hypocrisy. Nope, sounds like *hope*!
So amen to Jake’s comment. Trouble comes when I lie to myself and then my kids (usually by omission) about my own mistakes. And the really big trouble comes right after that when I demand something from them in exchange, say, for my approval or affection, that God has not demanded from me for the same.
So, no. All my bad parenting has been tangled up in “some measure of hypocrisy.” None of the good has.
Naturally, we’d like our children to know what we wish we’d known earlier than we knew it.
Maybe it’s hypocrisy… or hopeful?
I believe that our children will see our inconsistancy more than anyone else. So as a mom, I’ve begged God to make me authenic with my children and with those around me, so there is not a public Heather and a private Heather. (Or a public marriage and a private marriage, or a public John (my husband) or a private John…etc) I believe this will be one of the greatest things I can do for my children.
My goal as a mom is to teach my children to obey, so one day they will obey God. I wish that would have been drilled into my head more as a child. I got away with too much and I see how that effects my walk with God.
Is it hypocitical? Not sure..because I am striving right along side them.
The important point to remember is that it is not hypocrisy to call everyone in the family to live according to God’s standard. A parent must be equally willing to admit when he or she has fallen short of the mark, as they are to call their children to the standard. Hypocrisy is claiming something is true when it is not. We can call our families to God’s standard, without claiming we have reached the mark, and with humble reliance upon God’s Spirit to make us increasingly like Christ. Humility in parenting is very important!
I agree with Chris It is really important that my children need to understand that their parents are not the standard. My behavior will always reflect a heart that is inconsistent in its desires and the actions that result from those desires. What we both need is a heart and mind and soul that are being progressively changed by God.
I don’t want my children to merely be better than dad. If that is their goal then their aim was completely wrong.
really good point.
major confession:
i played my kids’ Webkinz games late last night. i wish i were kidding. as i was beating my top “smoothie moves” score, i recalled saying to them, “video games are such a waste of time…there’s nothing God-glorifying about playing video games…blah, blah, blah…”
i was playing THEIR webkinz, dude. i have a problem.
but have you seen King of Kong, Fist Full of Quarters? It’s pretty good. Documentary about major Donkey Kong players. And get this, one is apparently a Christian.
Hey, go easy on yourself there, Jenna. If you’re not depleting the critters’ health and happiness–or lying to the kids about playing–where’s the problem? Maybe you just got a little too exercised in your earlier lecture to them…
(Full disclosure: I’ve never played my kids’ Webkinz, but sometimes I find myself standing behind them watching like it was the World Series or something.)
It seems it would only qualify as hypocrisy if we are claiming that our standard is, in fact, our own “performance” as a child. The Biblical standard for child-rearing does not put the focus on “what kind of child were you”, but on Godly attributes that apply to each of us and, in this context, the responsibility is on the parent to try to promote those attributes in the child. It’s also good to keep in mind that good parenting is not dependent on potential accusations from the child about possible hypocrisy!
Mangled that last sentence…..it’s good to keep in mind that good parent should not include fear about potential accusations from the child about possible hypocrisy!
I don’t think it is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy says, don’t so something or do something (depending on the case) while still taking pleasure or glorifying the exact opposite. I think we see this today when parents say don’t smoke pot, but then constantly glorify their past when they used to do it or still do it.
Love says don’t smoke pot, not because I have never done it, but because I have done it and I regret it. Nothing good came of it and it did not glorify God.
We don’t have to lie to our children, rather be honest and talk with them about the poor decisions we made in the past, and how we want them to make better choices.
I think there is something wonderful when you can identify your own sins in your kids and then say, “I struggle with this, too.” It provides a compassion to fallenness that makes it easire to struggle together against sin. In my mind this isn’t hypocrisy. It’s honesty. Hypocrisy is denying the faults exist.
[...] December 2, 2008 Wow–the blogosphere is full of moral dilemmas today. Abraham Piper wonders if it’s hypocritical to want your kids to be better than you were. Related posts:Brain scientist: virtue must be [...]
Jen B. I highly agree with you. Well said!
I don’t really want my children to be ‘better’ than me.
I just want them to be of service to God in the building of his kingdom in their own particular way, according to their own particular talents, with all their warts and weaknesses intact.
after such erudite discussion this will seem paltry, but what do you parents out there in blogosphere do about Santa? the tooth fairy..? I’m single with no children, and the challenge is one I wonder about….
Karen, I have a post brewing about that.
dear KP,
i have been known to feed the critters. it’s a shame, i tell you.
it IS my world series.
okay. i’m kidding…okay…i’m not…