“….and the greatest of these is love.”
Hands up if at some point in time, while correcting or disciplining a child, the response you got was a high pitched, “You don’t love me!”? Yep, I knew I wasn’t alone in this. Now, hands up again if you feel you’ve had this thrown at you by someone who is not one of your children? Yep, me too! While the tone is not the high pitched shout, the message is the same – if you love me, you won’t tell me I am wrong.
This topic alone is difficult because there is a fine line between lovingly correcting, and merely judging. It is a fine line on the side of the giver and of the receiver. Honestly, no one likes to hear they are wrong and our capacity to respond appropriately generally comes with maturity.
Helping our children understand that love doesn’t condone, turn a blind eye, or eliminate the consequences of wrongdoing is essential to their emotional and moral development. But, it can be hard – well, at least for me it is! I want my children to learn right from wrong as much as any other parent. However, I don’t want the opportunity to learn empathy, grace, forgiveness, and charity to be lost in the belief that life is about following rules or not getting caught breaking them.
We live in a culture today that has redefined and twisted the meaning of love and how it should be expressed. Sticking simply to the dictionary definition, we will find that love is a noun meaning “an intense feeling of affection.” It is also a verb described as a “feeling of deep romantic attachment.” Love is a feeling one person has towards another person or thing.
If we look at it biblically, there are several different terms used that are translated to love. On one end is “Eros,” a passionate love similar to how it is culturally described today. On the other end is “Agape”, a selfless, sacrificial, and unconditional love which expects no reward or recompense. Agape describes God’s immeasurable, incomparable love for humankind. Between these two descriptions are words that describe more familial and brotherly love.
For the record, neither our dictionary nor Bible describes love as “let me do whatever I want; otherwise you are a hater.” Right?! Amen to that Mama Bear!
So where do we start?
Jesus said in Mark 12:29-31, “The first [commandment] is….’ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
So let’s break it down.
To love God with our whole being is often described as to die unto oneself to be fully present and available to God’s will. That is hard! Come on Mama Bears; our days are full – keeping our kids alive sometimes feels like a full-time job, let alone all the other responsibilities in and out of our homes. When I have a lot going on, I tend to become entirely laser focused, leaving little room for the gentle nudges and whispers of the Holy Spirit. If I had to be honest and rate the percentage available that I make myself to God’s will, it becomes clear I have a lot of work to do still. And God willing I have many years ahead of me to keep working on this.
However, still working on the first commandment does not mean we should not be working on the second – to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The most common response I hear to this is, “But I don’t love myself”. Followed by, “I beat myself up”, and” I am my own worse critic!” Nod your head if you’ve thought or said this. I’m nodding.
So before we go on, hands up if you ever just barely made it through a traffic light as it turned red and thought to yourself, “Geez, where is the cop when we need them? I warrant a ticket!” Not likely. Who has received a bonus at work and thought, “I don’t deserve this, someone messed up and should come to take it away!” Yep, not likely either. And who has gone to the store and found that one item you wished for is not only in stock but also marked down 50% and said, “I won’t buy it now because I don’t deserve a good markdown.” If you said yes to any of these, you might want to skip this post. No! We are humans that celebrate our good fortune, in a little way maybe even feel it reflects our worthiness. That my Mama Bears is the love of self. It wishes the best for oneself.
So when we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, it means that whether we like them or not, we want for them the best that God offers. Knowing that none of us deserve it or earn it, it is bestowed by our loving God in so many different ways. We want for others grace, blessings, and God’s goodness as much as we want it for ourselves. We want them to know and love and serve God with intensity and intimacy that we too hope for ourselves. So much easier said than done!
Correcting vs. judging.
Let’s come back to the fine line between lovingly correcting and judging. Correcting is the action of putting right an error or mistake which sometimes means telling someone that they are wrong. Judging is forming an opinion and often leads to giving a verdict – a judgment. Judging and discerning should not be confused. Discernment is a perception, in the absence of judgment, intending to obtain spiritual guidance and understanding.
Judgment is reserved for God as only He can judge rightly and righteously. The power to judge is a great responsibility with endless consequences. And I will be the first to admit I am not worthy of casting the first stone. Nor do I want to be in that role. In a world full of opinions described as facts or truths, we need to lovingly remind our children that there is one source of truth – God. In a world full of other voices shouting so-called truths, they are called to discern. And in that discerning, in hearing the nudges of the Holy Spirit, will know when to lovingly correct. Stopping immediate harm or endangering action is obvious. But correcting more subtle behaviors and thoughts that we know differ from God’s calling requires the foundation of trust in a relationship.
Shortly after my oldest, Alexandra, was born I was still carrying a few extra pounds. Leaving the grocery store with my husband and a few friends, I saw a man with papers. He looked at John and our friends and didn’t approach. He saw me and came straight up to hand me the paper. After I walked away I looked at the ad – it was pushing a weight loss program. I was devastated. I mean, I had just given birth to an over 9lb baby for goodness sakes. I was still nursing her which meant a rapid weight loss was not good for her or me. And seriously, what right did he have to tell me I needed to lose weight? Maybe I was big boned, or naturally “pleasantly plump” as my mom liked to describe. What if I had a medical condition? Who in the world was this man to stand at the door of the store and judge a book by the cover and do this?
I know this feels like a strange story to fit in here – but this is an example of judging. He didn’t know me. He simply looked at all of us, formed an opinion, and passed the verdict that I needed to lose weight. Now, my OB at the time, Dr. Fox, knew me for years. In that time she had heard my joys and fears. She knew who I was before and after having Alexandra. She said to me that it was safe to manage my diet and fit in exercise, without jeopardizing my ability to breastfeed Alexandra. As much as I didn’t like hearing I had a few pounds to drop to be healthy, her conversation in a relationship with shared trust, was a gentle and loving correction of poor choices. She was correcting my mistakes, free of judgment, and I knew it came from a place of caring for my wellbeing.
How do we talk to our children about correcting them doesn’t mean we hate them?
Our children need to learn that we correct them because poor choices will chip away at their self-worth. And as it chips away at their self-worth, it is easy to turn away from God in shame. We are correcting them because we know them, we care about what happens to them, and we love them! So when they shout, “You don’t love me….no one loves me….you hate me!”, I find myself responding with, “It is because I love you that I can’t let you hurt yourself by doing [insert action] that is wrong.”
We each have our own way of correcting and disciplining our children, but here are 5 things I think each child needs to understand in the process.
- I love you and I care.
- It is because I love you that I care what happens to your physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually when I see you doing something wrong.
- I will always love you. Sometimes I might not like what you have done, but that doesn’t take away my love for you.
- Loving you doesn’t mean you get to do what you want.
- We are all human and we make good and bad choices every day. All our choices have consequences.
- It is because I love you and want you to grow in wisdom that you must learn from the consequence of choices.
- Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do.
- You are not bad, you made a bad choice.
- You will always be more than the sum of all your good and bad choices – you are a child of God, made in His image, with immense potential and worth.
- Making a mistake doesn’t mean you are a mistake. We all make mistakes, but how we handle them is what matters.
- Everyone is learning every single day – lets give each other grace in the journey.
- I forgive you.
- We are all human, and we all make mistakes, I forgive you and I will have times I need your forgiveness.
- All I do for you comes from a place of deep love, but that doesn’t mean I too don’t make mistakes.
- God will ALWAYS love you!
- When we are ashamed of what we have done, it is easy to turn away or hide because we don’t want to be reminded. When it comes to God, He doesn’t want that distance. He wants to love and comfort us so that He can help us make better choices.
- God wants to give us the grace and guidance to “agape” Him and our neighbors.
Teaching our children how to “agape” starts at home, in our domestic churches, and can be oh-so-hard because we are all still learning ourselves! To grow in love of God and love of neighbor, we must teach and model love that is counter-cultural. In a world that often pushes the purpose of life to be our personal pleasure, we need to model a love that meets and honors the basic human needs of others. A love that doesn’t condone or remove consequences, but that in trust and relationship, brings closer to God. A love that emulates the model that Jesus himself showed us. A love that serves. A love that wishes all of God’s goodness for others.
xoxo
Catherine