If I teach my kids to share their toys and food, give away their crayons and pocket money, donate everything they own to charity but do not teach them the love of Christ, it is shallow. (John 3:16)
If I manage to teach my kids every verse in the Bible, such that they can quote them with proficiency, but haven’t given them the message of grace and of how we have fallen short of the glory of God without whom we are all destined for eternal damnation, then I have failed to show them the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (Romans 3:23)
If I make my kids attend every Sunday school class and every Bible camp, and if they can pray the loftiest prayer with incredible oratory skills far beyond their years, but if they have not grasped the humility of Christ, then I am on my way to raising self-righteous, pompous, boastful adults. (Mark 10:45)
If I allow my kids to say “it’s not fair” every time someone else gets the bigger cookie or when things don’t go their way, and I am tempted to make it up to them by buying them the biggest cookie I can afford, then I have failed to make them understand that Jesus dying on the cross was never fair. It should have been us. We deserved it, yet he died for us. (1 Peter 3:18, Romans 5:6–8)
If I teach my kids that following Christ means a bed of roses where every prayer is answered, complete with cuddly puppies and cute kittens, rainbows and chocolates, a happy-clappy walk in the park, then I have successfully managed to reduce God to a genie and belittled His sovereignty and absolute dominion over our lives. (Job 1:21, Habakkuk 3:17–19)
If I teach my kids about self-worth and self-esteem, citing those wonderful quotes that remind us again and again how incredible we are, the ones that keep telling us that we are destined for greatness, then I have allowed their world to revolve around them and shifted their gaze off of God. If I keep telling them how beautiful they are without teaching them to first and foremost behold the beauty of the Lord, then I am raising a self-centred, insecure generation who need to be validated constantly. (Psalm 27:4)
If I become the role model for people across the globe and am voted “Parent of the year”, and if I manage to teach my kids all the important things they need for life and equip them with every skill imaginable under the sun, and yet have not taught them to treasure God’s Word in their hearts and to know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then I have achieved nothing. (Psalm 19:7–10, Psalm 119:11, Proverbs 9:10)
Contributed by Lal Zadeng Changkija
Lal, a servant of Christ, makes her home in Delhi with her husband and their two delightful daughters.
