Our pastor general, Gerald Flurry, has said a number of times over the years that in these urgent days, our young people need to grow up fast. Parents in the Church need to help our children mature. Recently, one of God’s leading ministers spoke on a subject that covered aspects of this vital theme, and it sparked a personal assessment. How well am I maturing my children?
Our children have a spectacular future in God’s Family, and parents have to wisely guide their children to success. If you have kids, you know this is not an easy job.
One of the most perplexing issues facing parents is helping their children transition into productive and mature adulthood to live an abundant life, to fulfill their incredible human potential, and to help meet the needs of God’s Family. Mr. Flurry has told campers at our Summer Educational Program that God sets our youth apart and wants them active in His Work.
Child development is a serious topic to God because it sets the stage for the spiritual maturity to follow. For this reason, God has given His Church a book full of practical parenting instruction. In Child Rearing With Vision, we find that maturity is layered in, step by step.
“Proper child rearing is designed to take time (two decades minimum) and patience,” the book explains. Physically, children grow quickly, but corresponding mental, emotional and spiritual maturity takes more time.
Maturity—spiritual or otherwise—requires bringing toughness into our education. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked …” (Jeremiah 17:9), and our children have human nature. This nature wars against the maturing process in our children.
Often, children are not motivated to mature. Because their immature minds are influenced by the devil, they can be arrogant, silly, selfish, moody and emotional. Parents must recognize that our children’s human nature wars against them maturing in a proper, godly manner and that we must counter this.
God is always working to anchor us to His law and truth—to reality—building spiritual maturity into our lives. Yet a poor grasp of human nature or a tendency to coddle children can seriously limit the process of maturing. Parents are responsible before God to help their children conquer themselves. And those victories produce greater maturity.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” the Apostle Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 13:11).
So, how can we help our children mature?
Bring Children Under Authority
How did Christ “raise” His disciples? Near the end of His life, He even referred to them as “little children” (John 13:33). At times they could be competitive and arrogant like children, even quite thoughtless. But they also wanted to learn, and they mostly respected His authority.
This is the first step to helping children mature. Like Christ’s disciples, our children need to be under authority so they can be taught. Much of this depends on them accepting and acting on correction.
God repeatedly tells us that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Job 28:28). Recognizing and respecting God’s authority opens the door for Him to teach us.
The same principle applies to training children. A child with no fear of authority lacks restraint. And an unrestrained child is an unteachable and unhappy child.
In Deuteronomy 6:5-7, God tells us to talk to our children about God’s law and teach them. Our communication with God the Father is the foundation of our lives. The parent is in God’s place for their children. To fulfill this role well, the parent must be talking to God. Spiritual discernment, and the application of right knowledge at the right time, is a major key to success. Our prayer lives are a pattern for the kind of communication our children should have with us.
As a child comes under authority, he learns to control himself. This is a crucial key to maturing our children: helping them to develop self-awareness and self-control. You know your children are growing if they are maturing. And you know they are maturing when they are learning to control themselves.
Chasten Your Children
In The Former Prophets, Mr. Flurry writes, “We must learn to war and fight like these tough soldiers who had faith in God and who really loved each other. God is telling us He wants us to be tougher.”
For a begotten son of God, this means repeated chastisements. As Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in the June-July 1984 Good News, “You will have to be willing to accept correction and repeated chastisements at [God’s] loving hands, for ‘whom the Lord loves He chastens’ (Hebrews 12:6).”
Our soft and easy culture tends to avoid correction and to overly praise and pamper children. But God corrects His children. He isn’t dazzled by talent or head knowledge. He gets upset about our sins and confronts. This doesn’t mean He doesn’t praise, but His wounds are faithful. They are for our good.
“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11).
In Revelation 3:19, Christ says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.”
Parents must discipline—but be careful not to discipline in a way that becomes ritualistic while neglecting to develop the child’s mind. Mr. Flurry wrote to the ministry, “We must love our children most of all, and teach them secondarily, but when they won’t obey, spank! It has to be done God’s way. But I think sometimes our brethren can just spank in rituals and not really know what kind of effect it’s having in getting to the minds of those little children made in the likeness of God” (Pastor General’s Report, Aug. 26, 2004).
In correcting our children, if the behavior isn’t changing, the correction has not connected. We are in the ritual zone.
When God punishes His children, He wants change. Proverbs 20:30 says, “The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly.” God leaves no doubt. His stripes clean the inside. Repentance is change made permanent. Maturity is locked in.
This is how we get out of rituals and mature our children. As Mr. Flurry has taught, correction should be measured and given in love—but it should be clear and calibrated to bring reality home. Done correctly, it achieves beautiful results in helping our children mature. “Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul” (Proverbs 29:17).
And remember Psalm 103:8-9: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever.” That is a wonderful example for parents to follow.
Bring Your Children to Reality
Child Rearing With Vision continues, “Emotional control and maturity should be taught to young children. It is a matter of true education” (emphasis added throughout).
In John 8:32, Christ tells us that it is God’s truth that makes us free. True maturity comes from thinking and acting like God. This makes a man or woman whole (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
Satan coddles this world with deadly delusions, and the world embraces his lies. Our world is self-satisfied and smug.
We are appointed to be our children’s primary teachers. We must be grounded in truth and then ensure that truth is the foundation of our children’s education. To help our children mature, we must guide them to truth rather than delusions, reality rather than fantasy.
Speaking of growing teenagers, Mr. Armstrong wrote in The Missing Dimension in Sex, “All these years the normal individual has been learning rapidly. There is a great deal to know before maturity, and he is not mature yet! Many, in their own minds, know more than Dad or Mom. You see, what they do not yet know, they don’t know that they don’t know! But there is still much to learn.”
A child’s mind is not naturally grounded in reality. He is prone to self-deceit and self-praise. We must confront these tendencies. Replacing these thoughts with truth leads to reality and to growing maturity.
Children should be given honest evaluation and correction. They should be taught how to honestly assess their own performance, abilities and character. Fawning over your children or flattering them is as ruinous as withholding critique (e.g. Proverbs 26:28; 29:5). A child who thinks (or worse, talks) as though he can run 100 meters faster than a rocketship needs to be set straight. They need to be told the truth about their abilities, all the while being encouraged to stretch those abilities through hard work and a positive mindset.
In 1 Kings 1:5, God draws attention to Adonijah’s folly and arrogance—and then links that directly to the soft, coddling parenting of his father, David: “His father had never rebuked him at any time by asking, ‘Why have you done this?’ Adonijah was also a very handsome man …” (verse 6; Amplified).
Permissiveness is not love. A “you are just so wonderful” child rearing is self-serving and builds immature children who live in a fantasy world. They are touchy and fragile, lacking the humility and mental toughness to hear the hard things about themselves and to mature.
We shouldn’t kid ourselves about our kids. God doesn’t coddle us. We want to encourage our children and help them fulfill their potential. But we must ground them in reality, or we are setting them up for failure.
Be candid with your child in detailing your observations and expectations. Poor performance is not good enough or acceptable anywhere in society, let alone to God. To get your point across, you have to speak plainly. For example, if your child’s work ethic is poor, tell him so. Make it clear. Then show him what he needs to do to fix it. Teach him, and give him the tools to improve.
Give Them Opportunities
Open doors of opportunity for your children. Give them something ambitious to reach for. Encourage them to take responsibility. Entrust them with more as they prove themselves capable. Maybe that means getting their driver’s license or getting certified in some skill set. Team sports are an excellent conduit to growing maturity.
Allow them to do things they’re not quite ready for. Doesn’t God do this with us all the time? It is amazing the responsibility He gives us despite our obvious lack of qualifications. Our children won’t succeed at everything, but if they are aiming high, they will grow and mature tremendously through that process.
Set your bar of expectations high. Young people will rise to the bar you set for them.
At the same time, it is good for children to be confronted with their limitations. That supplies a platform to greater maturity.
Don’t shield them from the consequences of their failures. Let them feel the sting of disappointment. Keeping them out of activities at which they may fail, or bailing them out of every difficulty, will stunt their growth.
Some Common Pitfalls
Sometimes, young people can be really quiet, or they might not be as alert and sharp as they could be. Some have dull minds, made lackluster by inaction. Maturity can be stunted by inattentive parents, lack of goals, video games, fornication, wrong entertainment, lack of productive reading, inferior education, or hidden gaps in education. It can result from being a recluse, not interacting with adults or a wide range of people, pairing off, cliques, or other mind-destroying habits. If a child is not maturing, these are just some areas parents can carefully examine.
At times, children act too young for their age. Silliness certainly indicates immaturity. Yet something as simple as children’s clothing on a growing young adult will shape a young person’s view of themselves. They should be dressed in age-appropriate clothes.
A lot depends on the parents’ understanding and expectations. Parents should not stunt their child’s maturity by trying to purposely slow their children from growing up or from leaving the home. Reality dictates that we toughen them up and get them ready for the bigger challenges to come. Guide them through the stages of maturity as outlined in Child Rearing With Vision.
Note that God highlights the names of some mothers, whether of good or of evil men (e.g. 2 Samuel 17:25; 1 Kings 1:5; 11:26). By doing this, God emphasizes the enduring influence mothers possess. A woman’s application of godly parenting principles and management of God’s government in the home will either weaken or reinforce the child’s maturity.
Changing as Parents
There is one closing aspect to be aware of. In counseling with one of God’s ministers about my child rearing, I learned something important. You find in Scripture that Christ gave His disciples time to process what He taught them. I wasn’t giving my children enough time to grasp the deeper concepts. I had made the mistake of trying to apply toddler parenting to my growing children. After some careful examination, I could see that I had wanted them to learn fast so I could move on. But that’s not how it works. Convenience is a terrible teacher.
The fact is, I had to grow up. To change my children, I had to mature and change my thinking first. We first have to see reality and truth before we can ever teach it to our children. I had to learn to better follow in Christ’s steps (1 Peter 2:21). It takes time to mature, to develop character and wisdom. It is important to keep that in mind when working with our children.
Children are taught how to think by ongoing interactions with their parents. We see this pattern set for us in Isaiah 1:18. Tell your children to go and think (e.g. meditate) about what you have said and come back to you later to reason with you about what you told them. Let them talk. Our children need to learn how to think like God now.
Sometimes one child will grasp a concept faster than the other. Another will excel in one area better than another. So it is in the Family of God. Our children have a wonderful future before them, including so many opportunities in God’s Work today. God wants our children maturing so they can fully embrace their wonderful future!