Grace Based Parenting: Chapter 2

Once again, a very moving experience for me. There is so much in this book that is revealing my life, my upbringing, the current issues in my heart. My mom and I were just talking (after that email I posted on) about why we act and react the way we do towards each other, what my feelings are about the way they raised me and how those feelings are affecting my decisions about raising Eden. This book is actually answering a lot of the questions that we weren't able to answer about why I respond the way I do to certain things they say. I was telling her that I would have never wanted to be raised without the standards, Biblical knowledge and discipline that I was, but somehow there's a disconnect to me feeling free to become my own adult person and there were a lot of times growing up when I realized, after the fact, that other people did things differently than we did... and that it wasn't sinful, as I had thought... just different.
I'll share just a few things in this chapter that resonated with me.

In regards to my concern that grace is an excuse for lazy parenting with no boundaries, Dr. Kimmel says:

"...grace does not lower the standards in our homes; it raises them. It doesn't push people away from holiness; it pushes thim toward it. It doesn't cause them to despise truth; it propels them to embrace truth all the more. It encourages people to aim higher in their relationship with God and helps them dream bigger dreams."

He quotes Titus 2:11-14, part of which says:

"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.  It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives..."

In regards to staying "safe" and keeping our kids "safe" in our cocoon of Christian environments, Dr. Kimmel offers a story of a father who visited a youth group, the group that the Kimmel kids attended.  This visiting father was very disturbed that Dr. Kimmel would allow his kids in such a seemingly secular youth group.  There were all manner of clothing styles, from modest to midriff baring.  A row of boys in the back even had their hats on... backward... in CHURCH.   The music was in the style of rock and the father noted that the worship leader seemed to be more like an MTV MC on a music countdown.  Dr. Kimmel explains to this concerned father, who he describes as blinded by his passion for Godly obedience,  that at least the kids struggling with drugs, premarital sex, and rebellion

"were there in the church- the hospital that God left behind for them.  They were the very kinds of kids I wanted to see in our youth group, rubbing shoulders with young people serious about their faith."

He goes on to say,

"I felt that these were exactly the kind of young people I wanted my kids to reach out to."

Wow.  Others focused and not inward focused.  Confident and not fearful.  That's how I want to raise my children.

Good stuff.