Thoughts on Family Focused Faith, Part 1

Given that I’ve spent some time thinking about family focused faith recently, I thought I’d share a few quotes from Voddie Baucham Jr.’s book, “Family Driven Faith”, and some thoughts about it over the next several posts. I’m not sure how long the series will last, but I’d like to hear what you have to say in response.

In laying the groundwork for his book, Voddie writes some observations on the apparent parenting goals of many (if not most) modern-day Christian families:

Many families have been lulled into what I like to call a full-screen view of parenting. We look at the biblical mandate and compare it to societal norms, and there appears to be something missing. We believe that somehow we are depriving our children of experiences that will make them more liked, more respected, more normal. Hence we trade in the biblical standard for a cultural norm that hovers just below mediocrity. All of a sudden our desires for our children change. Now all we want for our kids is what “every other parent” wants for their children.

Voddie spends a bit of time elaborating on this “full-screen” vs. “wide-screen” view of parenting. If you’ve ever watched wide-screen movies on DVD (and have a standard TV set), you’ll know what he’s talking about. Wide-screen DVDs take up the entire width of your screen, but have black bars at the top and bottom… it looks like something is missing. Full-screen movies don’t have the black bars, but the entire screen is filled by cutting off the sides of the picture. Hence, full-screen movies appear complete, but are, in actuality, missing quite a bit of the big picture.

Voddie notes that many of us prefer the full-screen view of parenting, even though it cuts out part of the full “wide-screen” picture of Biblical parenting. We focus on ensuring that our kids grow up “normal”, and we lower the bar for our parenting efforts, sacrificing God’s standard for the lesser standards of the world. We make our goal for parenting our children any number of things: ensuring they get a top notch education, helping them to become great athletes, preparing them to find their future mate, etc. While these are certainly not bad things in and of themselves, we often place these ideals as the consuming goals of parenthood… far above that of ensuring that our children learn what it means to be devoted followers of Christ.

Think about the time you spend with your children talking with them. Think about the things you spend time teaching them about. How much of that time is spent talking about matters of faith?

What do these things say about the importance you place upon instilling faith in your kids?

When I go through this exercise, it’s eye-opening. While I profess that the number one goal for my parenting efforts is to foster the growth of my kids’ faith, the reality of how we spend our time says much more.

So what do you think? Are Christian parents generally missing the boat with our parenting efforts? Why or why not? Do you think we generally choose societal norms over Biblical standards, or have we just become complacent? What can we do to better maintain proper perspective on parenthood?

Any thoughts on what Voddie has to say, or in response to any of the questions above?