Raising Up a Child in an Age of Deconstruction

“I never knew it would be so hard to win my children’s hearts,” recently lamented a friend with adult children. 

In my younger parenting days, I idolized those parents who were five or ten years ahead of me in parenting. You know the ones–their kids were polite, respectful, happy, Christian kids. I longed for my little ones to grow up like them. But now I have teenagers, and those older friends have young adults. It’s been with increasing dread that I’ve watched these further-along families crushed under a mountain of sorrow over their young-adult children who are walking into destruction.

Not all of them, of course. But also not just an occasional prodigal; there are far too many to count. These are families who did all the “right things”: gave their kids boundaries, were actively involved in church, ate family dinners, limited media consumption, guarded against porn, played games together, were intentional about their kids’ education, taught family devotions. They trained up their children in the way they should go, but when they were old, they still departed from it.

So many of those early parenting books guaranteed me otherwise. They treated Proverbs 22:6 as a promise, when actually it was just good advice. There is no promise in Scripture that if you do the right things as a parent, you are certain to produce a perfect child in the end. I sure wish there was, though. I’m a “tick-all-the-boxes” sort of person, so I was eager to follow all of the Good Christian Parenting Rules. I still am. 

Yet my priorities have shifted–no longer do I care about music exposure and second-language lessons, no longer am I anxious to ensure that every possible talent will be developed. I don’t worry about how many Bible verses they’ve memorized or how easily they can answer Bible trivia. I am far more concerned about their hearts.

Of course, that always was a concern of mine. But now it’s become the only concern, the priority above everything else. When my children were young, I didn’t worry about whether I would reach their hearts–that seemed like a given. Those books promised me that if I did the right things, there was no question about that. But the children of those further-ahead friends have proven them wrong. Joshua Harris, the poster-child of homeschooling and purity culture, has proven them wrong. And Abraham Piper, John Piper’s son, who is an internet sensation for mocking Christianity. If the Harrises and Pipers aren’t guaranteed model Christian children, who is?

Duh, no one, of course. There never was a guarantee. But this is terrifying for me, still in the thick of parenting and watching my years of influence tick by faster than I can take a breath. 

Right now, I’m not confident that any of my children have saving faith. Gil and I never felt good about giving assurance of salvation from repeat-after-me-sinner’s-prayers or “asking Jesus into your heart,” because what does that mean anyway, especially to a kid? Salvation doesn’t come through a prayer, it comes by faith. I remember that once an elementary teacher said about one of my children, “This child exudes the fruit of the Spirit!” And I thought, No, that’s actually just this child’s personality. The fruit of saving faith looks different–and we’re not sure we’ve seen that yet. For now, I’m thankful we waited to give assurance, because as our kids have gotten older, they aren’t so sure anymore about what they believe.

This is scary, honestly. On one hand, I’m thankful that my kids feel the space to think and question and doubt. But on the other hand, I’m terrified. I believe my children’s souls are at stake–so why wouldn’t I be afraid? I desperately want to give my children assurance of salvation. But sometimes I wonder if that desire is more about them, or more about me. Do I want to feel they are saved more than I actually want them to be genuinely saved? 

If you’re on Twitter you know that the Christian hot topic these days is “deconstruction,” and many young people and some not-so-young people are all about deconstructing their faith, which usually means throwing aside all orthodox Christianity and becoming an avant garde Christian or, a lot of the time, no religion at all.

And about that I think, well, deconstruction can be a good thing. Any kid raised in a Christian environment is going to need to deconstruct at some point or another–I sure did. Especially in America, where Christianity has become a culture, a machine filled with camps and radio stations and schools and bumper stickers and short-term mission trips. It’s easy for our kids to get caught in the machine and to feel so comfortable in there that they think they want to be Christians because it’s all they’ve ever known. So when the machine itself starts getting mucked up with child abuse scandals and corruption and hubris, the world outside it might seem like a more attractive place.

This makes me wonder, what version of Christianity do my kids see from me? Is it just a Positive, Encouraging KLOVE version, a sanitized Jeremiah 29:11-on-a-coffee-cup type of Christianity? Or do I allow them to see me wail and lament? Do I let them hear my questions and my doubts? Do I let them see me wrestle with my sin and find grace before God? In an age of deconstruction, could this kind of transparency–which I would fear could drive them away from my faith–could it actually be the very thing that draws them close?

What if we as Christian parents could actually help our children to deconstruct early on? Is there a way to peel back the Christian culture and help our kids to see beyond it, to think and ponder about other worldviews and religions? Can we proactively push them to evaluate what they believe and why? Can we give them room to deconstruct, to question, while still teaching them that Truth can be found? Can we teach them the gospel while still allowing them to make their faith their own? Can we balance teaching them what we believe to be true, while still allowing them to find that truth for themselves? 

The hope would be that they would then be able to construct a robust and real faith for themselves. But of course, despite our best efforts, that might not happen. We can keep trying to do better, and in the end, it still might not matter. I feel like I am grasping at straws, desperate for something that I know will work. Paul Tripp wrote, “You cannot make your children love, believe, surrender, respect, confess, forgive, serve, speak the truth, be pure of heart, and worship God. Only God can do these things.” I so want it to be in my control. But it’s not. 

Perhaps this is why the Bible never gives us a parenting formula to follow that will guarantee us certain results. We desperately seek that formula and eagerly gulp down whatever new-and-improved parenting guru promises us what we want. But in the end, all we get from the Bible are very general principles: Love. Discipline. Model. Teach. How we wish it was more specific! I mean, how am I supposed to know if I should homeschool? What is the appropriate age to give them a phone? If every parent is different and every kid is different then the room to differ on what’s best must be deep and wide. Which is why I have become quick to show grace for others’ parenting choices and slow to take pride in anything I’m doing that seems to be working.

And besides, I have no idea if anything I’m doing is working. I don’t have a happy ending story to share here. I am right in the middle of the plot, and I don’t know what the end will look like. On some days, I get glimmers of hope that God is doing marvelous things in my children’s hearts. On other days, I am in despair. What I do know is that there is always so much going on that is unseen, behind the curtain. I can do my part, but ultimately it is God writing the story. And if it’s a happy ending, it will be a story about grace, not a story about me.