When our firstborn was a toddler we used to play a little game. Well, he thought it was a game but I knew it was actually a training session. He would run across the yard and when I yelled, “Stop!” he would stop. It was basically a two-person round of red-light, green-light. We did this because I wanted him to learn to stop on command. Too many times I’d watched a terrified mom trying to catch her oblivious child who was running straight toward a street of danger. She yelled stop but the child didn’t obey.
I think “Because I said so” has gotten a bad rap. There simply are times when a child needs to obey without any context besides “because I said so.” They may not understand why but it is for their own good. Obedience can be serious business. And teaching it is part of a parent’s job.
God possesses certain attributes perfectly and infinitely that are His alone. Omnipotence is one of those. He has all power and authority over all things forever. Scripture teaches that He rules over the heavens (Psalm 103:19), the earth (Isaiah 40:12), the weather (Psalm 147:16-18), world leaders (Daniel 2:21), even the unseen spiritual realm (1 Peter 3:22). “Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever He pleases” (Psalm 115:3).
Part of authentic worship is our contentment being the human and letting God be God. Thank God He doesn’t share that kind of power with me and you! However, He does entrust us with real, limited authority. Including authority in the lives of our children.
Left to their own impulses, children will stay up all night watching terrible TV, eat candy for breakfast, and never bathe or brush their teeth. They need loving authorities to save them from themselves. God placed you in their lives for that purpose.
But not just to keep their teeth from falling out! According to scripture, God has given us a much deeper responsibility. Parents are to lovingly discipline and instruct their children, encourage them, train them and diligently teach God’s word to them. And the expectation for children is that they would obey (Ephesians 6:1-4, Colossians 3:20-21, Proverbs 22:6, Deuteronomy 6:6-7).
Then as our children mature, the way we exercise authority changes. We increasingly give them reasons, understanding, personal freedom and responsibility. Eventually we release them into the world as adults responsible for their own choices before God. The goal of parental authority is not to maintain control but rather to prepare our kids to live wisely under God’s authority when they are no longer under ours. That is the kind of generation we want to raise.
“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children,that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Psalm 78:5-7).
As parents we work hard to reject the extremes of becoming either all powerful or pushovers. With God’s help we can faithfully exercise the authority He has given us and prepare our children to someday do the same!