Wonderful
teaching from Lucy
Peppiatt on spiritual parenting. In the Bible, parenting is not
primarily for discipline (disciplinarian) and training, but to hand on to you
your identity, to give you your identity in God; to give love and security; to
teach you about the faith, the nature of God; to fan your gifts into flame; and
to heal the inner child in you, so that you can be whole and not damage those
around you.
(This
is not about having earthly children, biological or adopted. The early church
venerated those who did not have earthly children. Everyone needs parenting,
and, indeed, more than one spiritual mother and father.)
God
does not control—violating personhood, agency (paternalism, and maternalism,
infantilises)—but empowers us by convicting of error and convincing of the
right way. This leads to maturity.
The
goal of parenting is to prepare people to leave you, to go off and have their
own lives, their own homes, where they will do things their way...
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