Shepherding a Child's Heart

by Tedd Tripp

When parenting short-circuits to behavior we miss the opportunity to help our kids understand that straying behavior displays a straying heart. Our kids are always serving something, either God or a substitute for God—an idol of the heart.

One of the most important callings God has given parents is to display the greatness, goodness, and glory of the God for whom they are made.

The old ways of parenting no longer work. Old authoritarian ways are ineffective, but we do not know any new ways to do the job.

Let me overview a biblical vision for the parenting task. The parenting task is multifaceted. It involves being a kind authority, shepherding your children to understand themselves in God’s world, and keeping the gospel in clear view so your children can internalize the good news and someday live in mutuality with you as people under God.

Our culture tends toward the extreme poles on a continuum. In the area of authority, we tend either toward a crass kind of John Wayne authoritarianism or toward being a wimp.

The Centrality of the Gospel

The central focus of parenting is the gospel. You need to direct not simply the behavior of your children, but the attitudes of their hearts. You need to show them not just the “what” of their sin and failure, but the “why.” Your children desperately need to understand not only the external “what” they did wrong, but also the internal “why” they did it. You must help them see that God works from the inside out. Therefore, your parenting goal cannot simply be well behaved children. Your children must also understand why they sin and how to recognize internal change.

These passages are instructive for the task of childrearing. They teach that behavior is not the basic issue. The

basic issue is always what is going on in the heart. Remember, the heart is the control center of life.

What must you do in correction and discipline? You must require proper behavior. God’s law demands that. You cannot, however, be satisfied to leave the matter there. You must help your child ask the questions that will expose that attitude of the heart that has resulted in wrong behavior. How did his heart stray to produce this behavior? In what characteristic ways has his inability or refusal to know, trust, and obey God resulted in actions and speech that are wrong?

Your concern is to unmask your child’s sin, helping him to understand how it reflects a heart that has strayed.

This is only one conceern and it is not the main concern of child training. Parents who primarily see their children in terms of being sinners and therefore keep their focus on sins might drive home the theological fact that we are all sinners but communicate these children are always sinning, that nothing is acceptable to God or parents or others, that there is nothing commendable about their lives. This violates the very things Colossians 3:21 (do not discourage their hearts) and Ephesians 6:4 (provoking the child to anger). I know many who have grown up with this type of family dynamic. They are angry or depressed people who are living out of a life filled with shame. Their internal voice keeps telling them how they always sin and are therefore always failures. There was a father of two children who refused to commend anything the children did because he believed since the children were sinners, nothing good could be found in them or in anything they did. The one child is now a professed atheist.

This book will address all the facets of childrearing.

This book does not address ALL the facets of childrearing.

child development.

But the book does not discuss the full spectrum of child development, just how issues of the heart are manifested at various ages of children. It does not consider typical age appropriate brain, emotional and social development in children. Rather SCH sticks to a one dimensional perspective - trying to get at the child's heart.

clever methodology

What does this mean?

I have seen families get hold of the principles in this book. I have seen parents shepherding happy, productive children who are alert to themselves and life.

I have seen this with a few families as well. On the other hand, I have seen this philosophy applied by well-meaning parents whose children become angry, frustrated, and discouraged. They did not turn out happy, they question the Faith, and some abandoned the Faith altogether.

The resulting synthesis has produced bitter fruit.

This has not been our experience. Twenty years of parenting in this type of narrow model produced some very damaging and bad fruit.

clearly unimpressed with the likeness between their young lives and swine troughs.

Understandable. As a young boy, I would not like to be compared with a pig's trough either, regardless of the intended metaphor.

Shaping influences are those events and circumstances in a child’s developmental years that prove to be catalysts for making him the person he is. But the shaping is not automatic; the ways he responds to these events and circumstances determine the effect they have upon him.

It is true that there are events and circumstances that shape a child's development. The latest research in brain and child development show that who we are is approximately 60% of our experiences. It is only partly correct that the ways a child responds to the experiences determine the effect they have on him. The author ignores is brain development. Perhaps this is because it is in a field not addressed by the Bible and a field composed by secular scientists, physicians, and researchers? What the author does not do is point out that key, memorable events on which we focus shape us. Those events provoke emotions and emotions play a very critical part in our thought process, memories, and relationships. Helping children to think correctly about those events and circumstances is the implication of how parents teach Gods thoughts about life found in Deuteronomy 6.

The person your child becomes is a product of two things. The first is his life experience. The second is how he interacts with that experience.

depicts the structure of family life.

These are interests explored and studied by social scientists, psychologists, and child developmental specialists.

Are the values of your home based on human tradition and the basic principles of this world or on Christ?

This is a legitimate question. However, our lives and our families are not so easily disentagled. We live in the milieu of both. Even the "best" or most godly Christians cannot help be influenced by the culture in which they live. We can have it our goal to live by the values of Christ, just as God wants us to, but at any given moment we either lean into or live out of the more predominant value at that moment. Since the very early Church, well meaning Christians have strived hard to live absolutely consistent with only Christ's values. They ended up segregating themselves from others; some in monasteries and some as hermits.

A related shaping issue is how the parents deal with their children’s failures. Childhood is filled with awkward attempts and failed efforts. Immature children learning to master the skills of living in a sophisticated world inevitably make mistakes. The important issue for our purposes is how those failures are

Quite so. The challenge I've encountered in our family and with others, is how to recognize whether a failure is a sin. Biblically, we live life out of hearts tainted by sin. Some take that to mean that every mistake, every thought, every action, every failed attempt is sin. For example, a three-year-old is at the table and keeps putting his little glass (given to him by a parent) by the edge of the table. The father keeps telling him to put the glass by the top edge of the plate. The toddler does so when the father reprimands him. Then, the toddler accidentally knocks the glass off the table, spilling milk and shattering the glass. The father gets angry, scolds the toddler for disobeying and for making such a big mistake. Is this a failed effort (toddlers have undeveloped memory abilities, immature eye-hand coordination, and problems with impulse control)? Is this sinful rebellion? Sadly, I've known parents who interpret such things as a direct result of sinful actions and disobedience.

These parents are sure that a proper environment will produce a proper child. They respond almost as if the child were inert. Such a posture is simply determinism dressed in Christian clothes.

Agreed.

You must do all that God has called you to do but the outcome is more complex than whether you have done the right things in the right way. Your children are responsible for the way they respond to your parenting.

In the end, this is true and a very good point.

Whatever the shaping influences of life, it is the child’s Godward orientation that determines his response to those shaping influences.

Yes and no. One's orientation does help to shape but does not necessarily ALWAYS determine the child's response. For one, there are other dynamics at play: mental/cognitive ability, emotional maturity of the child, the brain (diseases, disorders, injuries), biological makeup (the child is influenced by a mother's health while a child is inutero). For another, children have not developed spiritually to have that kind of clear impact on their perspectives. A child could be regenerate but will still say, think, or do things that are trespasses. Another child might have no heart for God but her disposition, temperament, and personality leans in the direction of a strong moral bent. Parents can teach and direct but we cannot know for certain if indeed a child has a healthy Godward orientation.

Proverbs 9:7–10

Verse 10 helps us see what ultimately determines whether a child responds as a mocker or a wise man. It is the fear of the Lord that makes one wise and it is that wisdom that determines how he responds to the correction.

Out of context. Little ones have not become foolish or wise yet.

Everyone is essentially religious. Children are worshipers. Either they worship Jehovah or idols. They are never neutral. Your children filter the experiences of life through a religious grid.

Theologically correct.

In the language of Romans 1, your children either respond to God by faith or they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. If they respond to God by faith, they find fulfillment in knowing and serving God. If they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, they will ultimately worship and serve the creation rather than the Creator. This is the sense in which I use the term “Godward orientation.”

Not really

The person responds to God’s goodness and kindness with love, delight, and worship. He wants to know and serve God better.

Not always, not completely and never flawlessly this side of heaven.

David reminds us of this in Psalm 58:3: “Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are wayward and speak lies.” The words of Psalm 51:5 are even more familiar: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” These verses are very instructive.

Again, this is theologically true. However, why do we not read as much about the godly characteristics of a heart for God? So much of the focus in SCH is on the negatives, the deficiences, and the sins of children.

One of the justifications for spanking children is that “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15). The point of the proverb is that something is wrong in the heart of the child that requires correction. The remedy is not solely changing the structure of the home; it is addressing the heart.

your children either worship God or idols.

We all are like that. Based on this, we should all be beaten by a rod.

He is either worshiping and serving and growing in understanding of the implications of who God is, or he is seeking to make sense of life without a relationship with God.

Excellent point.

Parenting cannot be concerned only with positive shaping influences; it must shepherd the heart. Life gushes forth from the heart.

Parenting ought not also be concerned with sin and sinful behaviors or negative shaping influences, which is what I see with so many parents who adopt this model.

He interacts according to the nature of the covenantal choices he is making. Either he responds to the goodness and mercy of God in faith or he responds in unbelief. Either he grows to love and trust the living God, or he turns more fully to various forms of idolatry and self-reliance. The story is not just the nature of the shaping influences of his life, but how he has responded to God in the context of those shaping influences.

Another good point.

How do we explain Joseph? He had a lens through which he viewed all the events of life. In the midst of difficult shaping influences, he entrusted himself to God.

But did he have this mindset as a child? This was his perspective as an adult.

we don’t like being authorities.

Such a negative and untrue statement to paint an entire culture like this. Some thrive on power, control, and authority. Some do not want to have authority. However, it is silliness to say this is true of the whole culture.

Our culture has no notion of intelligent, thinking persons willingly placing themselves under authority.

Really? What about the military or scouts for children?

Christian parents must clearly understand the nature of godly parenting and children must be trained that God calls them to obey always.

This is the crux of his book.

Your right to discipline your children is tied to what God has called you to do, not to your own agenda.

What?

When you direct, correct, or discipline, you are not acting out of your own will; you are acting on behalf of God.

Not necessarily and not always

Preliminary even to decision making is the importance for children to be under authority.

This is true in terms of decisions between right and wrong but one does not need to learn how to be under authority in order to make decisions about the mundane.

Our culture has reduced parenting to providing care.

Again, this is pretty broad and judgmental to paint the entire culture as having this perspective. Some have reduced parenting to providing care. However, the prevailing professional literature (as of 2018) on the subject of parenting children defines it as providing a caring, safe, secure, nurturing environment for the overall welfare of the children.

If you are going to direct them in the ways of the Lord, as Genesis 18 calls you to, you must know them and their inclinations.

Genesis 18 calls fathers to direct their children to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Being a parent means working in God’s behalf to provide direction for your children. Directors are in charge. It involves knowing and helping them to understand God’s standard for children’s behavior. It means teaching them that they are sinners by nature. It includes pointing them to the mercy and grace of God shown in Christ’s life and death for sinners.

Redundant

bringing the reproofs of life

It is bringing his censure of sin to these subjects of his realm. He is the King. They must obey.

Many parents lack a biblical view of discipline. They tend to think of discipline as revenge—getting even with the children for what they did. Hebrews 12 makes it clear that discipline is not punitive, but corrective. Hebrews

Right. However, this cannot be the complete picture from the Bible.

Programs are developed and marketed.

Does this not also apply to Shepherding the Heart ministries?