Honesty. Integrity. Kindness. Generosity. Humility. Strength. Charity.
Look at all those pretty rows of tangible returns, gained through your loving and diligent teaching of “the Way” to your children. You’ve seen so much improvement in your child’s behavior over the months since you started training your child in Holiness. Where he had once stomped away in irritation from his crying little brother, he now stoops, with a glance over his shoulder to see if his ever-watchful Angel Mother is witness to his deed, to help him from his fallen condition. Where he used to grab greedily for the biggest piece of garlic bread, he now shifts his gaze, first to your hopeful face, and then to the smaller portion, leaving the larger for someone else.
It’s thrilling to see this child doing so much good! What can it be but the repentance that you’ve tried to teach him? Well, the chart is certainly helping, isn’t it? Now he knows he can do good, and you have bright, attractive displays to really remind him every day how good he can be, if only he will be mindful.
But don’t relax just yet, Mom. I’m impressed with your results, truly, and sometimes my children’s behavior is certainly more embarrassing to my carnal self than that which yours is displaying, if only by dint of our having no record to prove to you all the times that my child didn’t smack his brother in the head over a stolen five-cent piece of plastic named Lego.
You’re making me look bad, Lady.
In spite of all these results, though, there’s another step to all this character training. As far as I’ve perused these systems (which is to say, only far enough to sniff out the flaw in them), I’ve found them all lacking in one vital step which must not be skipped if you really want your child to learn to please God, rather than Mom, who is, after all, just Man with an apron and cookies.
If you do it this way, it might just work:
The next time you find your child in, not just childish rowdiness or disorder, but blatant sin, take that beautiful chart off the wall (or whatever record you had been keeping of all his good works). Don’t just take it down, mildly. Rip it down, angrily. It helps if you are a good actor, because it is unlikely that you, a sinner yourself, are going to be anywhere near as angry about your beloved child’s sin as Almighty God is about even the smallest perversion of his Goodness. Be wrathful, OK? It’s accurate.
Now, go outside. I hope it has been raining, because you’re going to need mud, the thicker the better. Lay…no, slam that poster down into the muck and mire. Jump on it with both feet (helpfully shod in your own nicest, holiest shoes) and really grind it in deep.
Now pick it up. Show your child what his works have accomplished. “This, son, is all your righteousness. This is your record of good deeds and attitudes. This is every good behavior at which I’ve caught you in the course of training you how to display character. You’ve spoiled it. Go clean it up and put it back on the wall in the same condition it was before you sinned. Go ahead!”
But that is impossible. So when he cries with the shame of what he’s done (or maybe with his unrepentant anger at you for ruining all his visible virtue), you can then give him the Gospel you should have been giving him all along. “Son, the wrath of God is on all of us, the same way I vented my wrath on your ridiculous works-chart. But he sent his own Son to take all of that punishment I just dealt out to you. He died so that your chart might hang on the walls of Heaven, not marked out in individual good works or intermittently cheerful attitudes, but in the Blood of the Lamb, which covers every stain.
My child, I’m sorry I taught you to tote up your good deeds, rather than storing up your treasures in Heaven, to be cast down at the feet of the only One who is worthy of praise. Forgive me. And seek Christ’s forgiveness with me. This chart can’t save you. It can’t even help you look saved for any length of time, for “God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” All this chart can do is make you feel like you’ve made gains against your own sin, and that is a lie. You can’t do that. I’m sorry I lied to you.”
Now, does this all seem too cruel to you, dear Reader? Too nitpicky and overly spiritual? After all, we’re just trying to avoid misbehavior and get better kids for our efforts! We’re not claiming that this will save them. Are we?
But children are very easily misled, just as we are.
And the disciples came to the other side of the sea, but they had forgotten to bring any bread. And Jesus said to them, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
–Matthew 16:6
It only takes a little yeast to leaven that little lump. I’m not being cruel or poking needless fun at your charts. What I just suggested you do with that record of your child’s visible “holiness” is nothing compared to what I’d have written if I’d really dug in and fully reflected Scripture.
“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. –Isaiah 64:6”
Polluted? Those are our righteous deeds?
Do you know what that “polluted garment” refers to? It is not just a skirt with some mud on it, mamas. The prophet here (I am informed by one who has a lot more book-learning than I do) refers, quite shockingly, to used menstrual cloths. Based on this, I had considered a much more dramatic and bloody suggestion for what you can do with your child’s proudly-tallied righteousness.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
“Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”
“It is written, none is righteous, no, not one.”
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”
“When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.”
How much of the Bible do I need to quote to convince you, Dear Reader, that character training is not just a potentially useful tool, or a help, or at the worst, a waste of time and resources, but an actual hindrance to the Gospel? Moms, stop pointing your child to these inadequate, self-righteous, works-driven “clean” spots on the outside of their cups. Give your children only the Living Water that can clean the inside and fill it so that it overflows and then washes the outside.
If, after this, you still think that “training in righteousness” by rewards and stickers is useful, or at least no harm, then tell me why. Not by your own result–that adorable, chubby-cheeked, compliant little cup of wrath you’ve been raising–nor by quoting the sellers and users of said devices, but by scripture itself, tell me what basis you have for teaching your child this way of becoming “holy“.
I’ll wait here, but not with bated breath, because you don’t have anything like that, and I don’t like what happens after I’ve held my breath for too long.
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