TLP 110: Parenting is More than a Formula | Jim Newheiser Interview

The Bible Teaches Parenting as a Risk in a Fallen World

The Bible teaches that parenting is a risk, that if you choose to have kids, there's no guarantee it's all going to turn out happily ever after, because we live in a sinful and fallen world, and we're giving birth to children who are by nature sinners.

Truth.Love.Parent and the Introduction of Jim Newheiser

Welcome to Truth.

Love. Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster.

Thank you for joining us today for a show that promises to be informative, surprising, but hopeful. Today, I have Dr. Jim Neuheiser joining me at the mic. Dr. Neuheiser is a director of the Christian Counseling Program and Associate Professor of Counseling and Practical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He's also a fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and a board member of the Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals. Before that, he was the preaching pastor at Grace Bible Church and was the director of the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship.

I was first introduced to today's special guest while preparing for my certification through ACBC. Dr. Neuheiser was the main speaker in a series of classes I took through IBCD, and I thoroughly enjoyed each one, but there were two in particular that really caught my ear.

I loved them, and I immediately thought about how valuable this talk could be to you, the listener. The title of his sessions were Parenting is More Than a Formula, and I've invited him here to share an abbreviated version of that for us.

Thank you very much for joining us, Jim. It's my pleasure, Aaron. Now I have to say that this topic is a little awkward for somebody in my position. You know, we're discussing this whole thing about there not really being a formula for parenting, but by nature, a parenting podcast and parent seminars and things like that are basically oftentimes saying that they're going to do just that.

We're going to provide you a formula. If you can follow this little this plus this, you're going to equal, you know, good kids. You're going to equal Christ-honoring kids and things like that, and I think I want to be fair.

I don't know that I've actually said it that way, but potentially, I know I have put out there. We've talked about lots of things. We talked about being an ambassador parent. What does that mean? We've talked about being an evangelist parent and things like that, so it almost seems strange that somebody in my position would be asking someone like you to come on here and talk about this, but I believe it's so important, and I can't wait for you to share with the listeners what God has impressed upon your heart, which I believe really we all need, but I want to start by asking you, do you believe that there is wisdom in looking to the Bible for guidance via specifically methods, principles, or maybe what we might call quote-unquote formulas when it comes to our parenting?

Yeah, and I believe the Bible does teach us valuable God-breathed wisdom for parenting, and so when I say that parenting is more than a formula, I'm not at all denying that we should search the Scriptures to know how God would have us to raise our kids, and we should rely upon that.

My concern is that people misread the Bible to thinking, if I just do these things, then a result is guaranteed, and my understanding from Scripture is that we have responsibility to obey God in the way we parent our kids.

We're never going to do that perfectly, but they have a responsibility to respond to that, and we cannot control that response. What the Bible says about parenting also is relatively simple. It's summarized, for example, in Ephesians 6, 4, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So in a sense, you could say we have a threefold formula. You need to discipline your kids, that is, establish standards and enforce them, and Proverbs talks a lot about that. We need to train them. It's not enough to control them.

We want to instruct them in the Word, like Deuteronomy 6 says, and we want to avoid provoking them to anger through our own sinfulness. All of that, if you want to call that a formula, in one sense, that's fine, but sometimes by formula, people say, and if you do this, then this will be the result, but the Bible doesn't explicitly say, if you do this, there's an absolute guarantee that your kids are all going to turn out just the way you want, and that's usually what's implied with the formula, is you follow these steps and this will be the result.

To give you another analogy, does the Bible teach a formula for evangelism? Well, the Bible teaches us a lot about evangelism, tells us to be salt and light. We have the gospel. So we want to be faithful in evangelism, but there's not a formula that if you just do it this way, the people you talk to will always be converted.

Dangers of Treating Parenting Advice Like a Guaranteed Formula

Yeah, and I see that, and that really, I think also that applies to lots of other things in the Scriptures as well. It's evangelism, it's parenting, it's discipleship, it's counseling, because we really don't have any control whatsoever over the other person.

Right, and it's a mystery in terms of our responsibility, our children's responsibility, and God's sovereignty, but again, we need to focus on our need to be faithful. My concern would be that people would say you must do certain things in a certain way beyond what the Bible says.

The Bible says we as parents in general are responsible for the training of our children, but if somebody says, well, you know, this Awana program is the secret, or this kind of curriculum and homeschooling, or using Christian schools, or it can be, some people now have gone so far to say is do home church, or go to a church where there are no Sunday school classes for kids and the families all together.

So two problems. One is they go beyond what the Bible teaches and try to make that the standard for all believers, which is a kind of legalism. The second problem is they imply that if you just follow our formula, you're going to get a certain result, and that also is not scriptural.

Yeah, and it tends to also be in a way sometimes I think just, it's just deceptive. We leave people with a hope and a belief that something is going to happen, and when it doesn't, what are they left with?

Yes, and I've experienced this through counseling people where they have this idea that, you know, I trained, I quit my job, I homeschooled my kids, I taught them Bible verses, we had family devotions, we did everything right, we disciplined them lovingly, and now my 20-year-old daughter's pregnant out of wedlock.

How can this be? Well, the Bible never promised that if you did all those things, your 20-year-old daughter wouldn't get pregnant out of wedlock, because she is a responsible moral agent who's going to be exposed to temptation and may choose foolishly, and that's so much what the whole book of Proverbs is about.

It's presenting to the naive young person the fundamental choice of life. Are you going to choose wisdom, or are you going to choose folly, the real choice that young person can take, and we can be the voice of wisdom crying in the street pleading with a child to follow, but as they come of age, they're going to make their own choice.

We can't control that.

It's so true, and I love the direction we're going, and I want to fill this out a little bit more, get some more detail. But before we go down too far in that direction, I want to ask another question.

What are some dangers that people encounter as they search for parenting advice? What are some things that they should look out for so that they don't find themselves giving in to or following blindly a system that's promising something that the Bible doesn't promise?

There are two things I would watch out for. First of all, are they actually proving what they're teaching explicitly from the Bible? And if they're asking you to do things, you must handle issues, be it potty training or sleeping with a baby or how you educate your kids, if they're saying, this is the way to do it, I would be very wary of that if the Bible doesn't explicitly say that.

Now, if they say, this is what we found helpful, other people may do it different ways. That's fine. But if they say their way is the way and the Bible doesn't teach that as the way, and sometimes they'll even misuse Scripture.

Do the Bible verses they use really prove that? I would be wary of that. When they say we've now found the key and the key is some new thing, be suspicious. The second thing I would watch out for would be promises of results.

And I've read books like this where they'll describe how they did it this way and they never had any problem with their kids and everybody who followed their system all had great kids and the people who didn't follow it, they all had disasters.

And the Bible doesn't teach that. In the Bible itself, God himself in Isaiah 1 says, sons, I have reared up and they have rebelled against me. God is the perfect parent and his son Israel turns against him.

Jesus said in the same family, there'll be three against two, two against three. The gospel divides families that children grow up and sometimes they do not follow the godliness of their parents. Ezekiel 18 is another example of this where you have three generations of belief and then unbelief and then belief.

And so if they're promising you a result, they've misunderstood the scriptures.

Incidental Biblical Details Versus Binding Commands

I remember during the workshop that I heard you speak at, you mentioned somebody talking about Joseph and Mary's betrothal and then going off on this huge big thing about how Christian families should embrace this betrothing concept.

Right. And the problem with that is the person who is teaching that message in one of these settings was taking an incidental detail of what was going on there and trying to say the Bible affirmatively demands that we all do betrothal.

Even courting isn't good enough. Similar things have been done in terms of courtship, but the same principles could be taken where they say something, maybe it sounds biblical, that we as parents are to train up our children and say, therefore you can't use public schools or sometimes I'll even say Christian schools.

But all of us as parents are utilizing resources outside ourselves or the family, be it books we haven't written or videos we didn't produce. So all of us are going to be, to some degree, using resources that we didn't create.

And our children are to some extent going to be exposed to things we don't agree with. And it takes parental wisdom, but the Bible doesn't lay down, this is what you can or you must do to get what you want.

Yeah. And it's so true. And I have to say, one of the things that really just kind of surprised me as I was listening to your previous lecture, I never thought of it before, but you brought it out and I was like, he's so right.

And it was talking specifically about this concept of sheltering your children. You're protecting them from negative influences. Mom and dad should be the sole person speaking truth into their life and so on and so forth.

Right? But you look at the example of Adam and Eve and you made the observation that there were no bad neighbors down the street. There were no television programs, there are no video games. And yet we learned that Cain, he committed the first murder.

He participated in violence that up until that point he'd never even seen before. And so obviously sheltering your child or doing your best to be the only voice speaking into their lives isn't guaranteed to do anything.

And that was appreciated when you mentioned that in that one workshop.

Thank you. Yeah. Cain illustrates several important points. Another would be that you could get extremely wise counsel. God himself in Genesis 4 counsels Cain when Cain became angry and Cain still didn't listen to that.

That shows the depth of human depravity as does the fact that he had sin in his heart. He didn't need MTV or violent movies to tell him what his wicked heart wanted to do. And all of our children are conceived as sinners and it takes a great work of God by his spirit to change that.

And we are evangelists from day one, presenting Christ to them and even showing how the gospel is, how we need the gospel, how the gospel has impacted our lives. We discipline them to try to restrain their sin.

We teach them to try to point them to the Lord, but then on the human level, they have to respond to that and on the divine level, God has to work in their hearts.

Different Children, Different Methods, and the Limits of Systems

So true. I am curious though, just this kind of came to me as you were talking earlier. You know, you do have people and they do create systems and oftentimes, so obviously not perfectly, but oftentimes a lot of people have success when they're implementing a certain system.

Do you believe that's potentially just coincidence? Is it possibly providential? Do you believe that maybe it'll work for some, quote unquote, personalities better than it will work for others? What do you think causes that to happen?

Well, this is true in many areas that we're talking about counseling more broadly, that like in sanctification, some people have been amazingly changed by just focusing on what Christ has done for them.

And some people have been changed when somebody gave him a kick in the pants. 1 Thessalonians 5 says, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak. There are different kinds of people.

So the different kinds of families and the Lord, in all cases, actually, when things turn out well, the Lord has worked in spite of us and through us, but it's not our merit. None of us is parented perfectly.

Hebrews 12 references that. So I think also that some things may work for some kids and not others, even on a human level where some kids use the example in the talk you gave. Some kids are wonderfully trained using skittles or M &Ms for potty training, and some kids that doesn't work for them and they come out differently.

The Bible is magnificent in its wisdom is that what it says is universal, is universally true. And then as we apply the Bible to particular kids and in particular families or even particular cultures, we never go outside of scripture.

We never violate scripture. But there are different ways of doing what the Bible says. There are different ways of training our kids or different ways of disciplining our kids. And so being sensitive to ourselves, our children, our environment, we exercise wisdom.

And I don't mind at all. Somebody says, this really worked great for us. If it's an application of what the Bible says, but if the Bible doesn't explicitly teach their system, I think they need to be humble enough to say there may be other families and other children who do it a different way that's still just as biblical, and we can't be critical of that.

Methods That Work for Some Families but Not Others

Yeah, and that's a huge thing that's easy for us to do, especially if we see that our way is quote unquote working, at least at the moment.

One example would be there was a very popular program 20 years ago or so that was teaching parents how to put their infants on a schedule, saying that at a very young age, they'd sleep through the night if you just let them cry.

And for some people that worked, but for some people that didn't work. Because the Bible never promised that in three months, your kid will sleep eight hours. And kids are different and families are different.

And you can't condemn somebody if they say we're going to demand feed. There's no verse in the Bible says you can't do that. You're not sending to feed the child and the child's not sending to be hungry and want to be fed.

But you're also free to if you can get them to skip a feeding, good for you, probably great for everybody's sleep. It'll work for some kids and may not work for others. So don't confuse. Here's a method that may be helpful with here's what the Bible teaches you must do.

Yeah.

And that. Yeah. And I find myself so often in my ministry here at Victory Academy for boys in that exact same position, because what ends up happening is a boy will come into my house and so often he will start to change and his behaviors will get better.

Oftentimes you haven't come into a place where he accepts Christ as a savior. And it's wonderful. And we praise the Lord for that. So sometimes the parents will call me up and say, okay, well, you know, what do I do in this situation?

What do I say? How do I handle this? And I found myself on so many occasions just going, to be honest, I don't know that I can answer that for you. I can tell you what I would do if he were in my house with the relationship that we have as the person he is with the person I am.

I can definitely tell you what I would do, and I'm more than happy to do so. But please understand that it might not work for you. You have a different relationship with your son. It's in a different setting with a different context and different rules.

And so what I do and that has been quote unquote working here, honestly may not work the same way in your home. And I think it's so valuable for both the teacher to acknowledge that and for the student to realize that there's no guarantee, as you said, for anything that's outside of biblical teaching.

Right. I mean, giving you another example, we've got a rebellious teen and I had a family who bought a bunch of bricks and they kind of ran out of things to make him do or ways of disciplining him. They decided he was too big to spank.

And so their punishment when he would live mouth off to his mom would be to move these bricks from one corner of the yard to the other and like kind of stop until they did that. And it was a creative solution.

But the Bible doesn't say thou shalt go to Home Depot and buy 100 bricks. And for some kids that might not be effective. Some families may not have a yard that would accommodate that very well. If you're living in an apartment, it doesn't work so great.

So it's a way the general principle is you discipline bad behavior. It's it's discipline. You know, he mouths off to his mom. He has a consequence that is painful enough that even if he's not wise as he should be, even a fool will do what is right if the consequences of folly are so great.

And but it's not for everybody.

Influence Without Control in Proverbs, Kings, and Ezekiel 18

Now, we've already touched on it, but I think we need to spend a little bit more time on this, because one of the best things I heard you say in my class was this, and I'm paraphrasing, but you basically said we're responsible to influence our children, but we don't have control to change our children.

This was one of your main points. You said you actually said if you don't get anything else I'm saying today, you need to understand this. Will you explain a little bit more what you meant and then tie that into this discussion of this formulaic parenting?

Sure. Well, I think the best way to prove the point that we're an influence but we're not in control is what I referenced earlier from the book of Proverbs, where the father lays out to the son the blessings of wisdom, the consequences of folly, but implicit in all of that is the son is going to make a fundamental choice.

And actually the first nine chapters is a sequence of extended discourses pleading with that son to fear God and to choose wisdom. Now, if you look, if Solomon is the author, Rehoboam is the son, he didn't listen very well.

Just being under a good influence doesn't necessarily produce a good result. We see this throughout scripture as well, where you have certain kings who are godly. You go through all that list. And so often they had ungodly sons.

You have an Ezekiel 18 where you have a godly father. You can turn there and read the chapter sometime. And he does all the things according to the law and he stays away from the sins of the law. But then he has a son who does the opposite of him.

And again, these are choices that they make. And so we try, we plead with our children to turn to the Lord. And of course, the other issue would be we all fall short. If there was a formula for perfect parenting, we would all fail because we ourselves, we can't keep the law.

We're dependent upon God's mercy. But God, who is the perfect parent, he had Israel as his son and Israel still rebelled. Another example I could give, you have good influence and good instruction would save people.

Then how did you explain Judas, who was with Jesus, who was the perfect mentor? He was sinless. He saw all these things. And yet there was a wickedness in his heart. He could still betray our Lord. And sadly, our children are born lost.

And it takes a work of God that a parent cannot produce to transform that heart from sin to righteousness and to see themselves as sinners and to fall before Christ and receive him and receive forgiveness of the cross.

And then by God's grace, having a new nature, being able for the first time in their lives to pursue wisdom and seek to walk in the spirit.

Parenting as Sanctification and the Hope of the Lord

Now, I can imagine how much of this could potentially sound discouraging to a parent, a parent who's having trouble with their child, who's been, you know, the library's filled with self-help books and all of these things.

And even Christian bookstores are filled with books that make these promises. You know, but in essence, we've said that there's really no guarantee. There's absolutely no guarantee from our side as the parents that anything we say or do is going to guarantee that our kids are going to turn out right.

So in this age of, I think more and more people are buying into this parental determinism, you know, we've been told that we're special growing up. We've been told that we can do whatever we put our minds to.

We've been told to follow our hearts. And if our heart says that we're going to have perfect children, if we have the right plan, everything will be okay. You know, in this age in which we live, our discussion may kind of seem a little weak.

It may seem unsure. Like, yeah, you can do all the right things, but there's no guarantee. So how would you encourage a parent? What would you say to a parent who feels that way to instill with them the hope that God has in Scripture for us?

First of all, I would say that our hope as parents has to be in the Lord and not in our kids. Amen. As you read the Bible and you read it carefully, some of what we believed when we were younger is not taught in Scripture.

And maybe it's because we've been badly taught and maybe because we wanted to believe it. The Bible teaches that parenting is a risk, that if you choose to have kids, there's no guarantee it's all going to turn out happily ever after because we live in a sinful and fallen world and we're giving birth to children who are by nature sinners.

And we ourselves are imperfect parents. Parenting is not a way to demonstrate how great we are. Parenting is a way that God shows us how weak we are. I think sometimes we approach parenting as, I'm going to accomplish something.

I'm going to show people I'm the best parent that's ever been. And God instead humbles us. And Paul said, when I am weak, then I am strong. And he shows us how weak and incapable we are. And it makes us fall on our faces before him.

Another aspect of parenting is my parenting has taught me to love others as God has loved me, which is when they disappoint me and when they didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. And yet nothing can stop me from loving them, even when it's hard.

And so parenting is an instrument or sanctification. It's a bit like marriage. Since we get married thinking it's going to be easy and then we find out we're a sinner married to a sinner and there's a lot to be worked out, in a sense, parenting is even more difficult because I assume most Christians would marry other Christians and you've got that on your side.

But you have these kids who aren't believers and you've got to get along with them. You have all of this responsibility and there are great joys and blessings. Psalm 127, you know, it's children are a blessing from God, but children are a risk and children are a challenge.

And it's going to be used by God to sanctify you and probably make you cling to him like you ever would have if this hadn't happened.

Jim Newheiser's Family Story and the Pain of Shattered Dreams

Now, I think it's really important for my listeners to know maybe a little bit more about you and your life and in the journey that you and your wife, Caroline, have had with your three sons. I think it'd be really great if maybe you could tell us a little bit about that and then share with us some of the things that you personally have learned in the unique experiences that you've had with your children.

Sure, some of our journey in terms of shattered dreams began, I guess, in 2001 when our oldest son would have been 19. It was interesting in God's providence that I'd actually been preparing material that later went into some of these books I've since written.

But at that time, each of our sons professed faith. Each of them had been baptized, had joined the church, seemed to be interested in the things of God. I was doing a lot of counseling with families who had troubled kids, rebellious kids, and I'd actually prepared material to teach at a conference where really is a lot of what we're talking about today, that we can't control outcomes.

And little did I know how much it would apply to me. And over the course of the next several years, our kids who had professed faith as they became adults, they all became responsible adults in a common grace sense.

But none of them is following the faith that we taught them as they grew up. And even though intellectually I knew the things I've been talking about today, it came as a great shock because for the first 19 plus years of parenting, it seemed like we were following the formula and it was working.

And the Lord humbled us and the Lord has taught us many things. And so we have a good relationship with our three adult kids. They're now 29 to 35. And we see a lot of what we taught them in terms of wisdom and a common grace sense is being lived out in their lives.

But none is following Christ the way we had hoped. And that's been very hard for us. It's humbled us. It's also given us a lot of compassion for people who are hurting and struggling. Amen.

Amen. No one wants to be in that situation. But there are so many truths in Scripture that it's easy to accept it on the outside. When we're on the inside, oftentimes we don't want to hear it. We don't want to hear about God's sovereignty.

We don't want to hear about how the responsibility. My mom used to say, you know, it doesn't matter what anyone says. It doesn't matter what anyone does. I'm responsible to God for my own reactions. And like I said, on the outside of a situation, it's easy to say, yes, I agree with that.

But when you're going through the situation like what you've gone through, it's very different. And I found that it is those situations that God is specifically using in the parent's life to help us become the people that he wants us to be.

And we don't see parenting that way. We say parenting is God is using me in their lives to help them become who God wants them to be. And that's true in many ways. But God is also using them in us.

I would love, in a sense, to have, you know, one child is a missionary and one is a seminary professor and one is a Christian businessman or something, you know, all following in our footsteps. But that wasn't up until now what God's plan for us has been.

And so we feel our weakness and our sadness. And yet we also have a great love for our kids. And it's just taught us in ways we didn't really intend to be taught. But that's where we trust the Lord in the midst of all of this.

I've been encouraged even I recently read the biography of J .C. Ryle, and he had a son, J .C. Ryle was a great evangelical Anglican bishop in the 19th century in the UK who stood firm for the fundamentals of the faith.

And as I read his biography this past summer, I read that he had a son who also went into ministry and theology, but was very liberal. And I've had the same thing where I have a son who's a theologian, but his beliefs are opposite of mine.

And it gave me compassion for Ryle. It gave me appreciation. Others have had to walk this journey. And then we learn to love people not because they fulfill our dreams, but sometimes in spite of the fact they've shattered our dreams.

But we're still called to care for them and show the love of Christ to them, hoping that he would one day open their eyes.

Praying for Parents Who Are Suffering and Trusting God's Will

Amen, amen. And I would I would just call really to our listeners today, if there's if the Lord impresses upon your heart, you know, we need to be praying for each other. Dr. Neuhauser has really expressed here something that's very, very real to him and his family.

You may never meet his children or meet him and his wife. But if this comes into your mind throughout the course of a day, you think about it. Pray for him. Pray for him and his wife and their relationship with their children.

Pray that God would save their children as you pray for your own kids. And as you pray for other people, you know, we need to be sensitive. We need to turn our eyes out and we need to be a blessing to the larger body of Christ in this.

And as we've seen, the Lord doesn't always see fit to answer our prayers the way we pray them. So may we always pray that the Lord's will be done and that we respond correctly to it, because that's what he's called us to do.

Now, I have a couple of questions left for you. One of them is really, honestly, it's for me. It's for me and my team here. How would you counsel me and everyone here at Truth Love Parent really to engage our listeners so as not to make promises that the Bible doesn't make, but to present truth that will help them, Lord willing, in their parenting in a way that would honor the Lord?

I really appreciate what you're doing and even in your vocation as well, where you're helping parents and you're dealing with really great struggles. The best thing would be really to repeat what I said before, and that is we need to put our hope in God and not in our kids.

In 1 Samuel, chapter two, Eli's the classic failed parent in the Bible. And the words of judgment upon him that are so striking to me is that he was guilty of honoring his sons above God. And we need to honor God above our children.

We need to rest in him and hope in him and do as he would have us to do, not seeking fulfillment from our kids, not trying to keep our kids happy, doing what they want, but to seek as best we can to please him, honoring him most of all.

And we have to entrust our children to him, humbly accepting what he has for them and for us. The other thing I would say is I think it's really important as you teach on parenting, as I'm sure you will be, just to be careful that we don't go beyond what the Bible has promised.

We explicitly teach the scripture. I think even just making a distinction between here's a way that's been really helpful for many people. And you're free to describe a very particular methodology that people have been blessed by.

But to make a sharp distinction between thus says the Lord, you must do these things. And here is a way that some have found helpful and others might find helpful while clearly acknowledging that other people may have other methodologies to accomplish the same biblical ends.

Recommended Books on Parenting, Marriage, and Adult Children

Amen. That's fantastic advice and Lord willing, we will continue to do that. Now, you mentioned, you alluded to the fact earlier that you have written and I know that you've also co-authored a number of books.

And I actually, on our website, truthloveparent .com, are really building our resource library, adding more and more titles there. I just got back, as you did too, from the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors Conference.

And I was there looking at all the books they had on parenting. A number of them were from you. And I want to add that to our website. But I was curious, which ones would you really suggest would be great books for us to get into?

Maybe for some books potentially for parents whose kids are right now, you know, glorifying the Lord. And then perhaps some books that we have parents whose kids are not walking in the way that the Lord would have them walk.

I'm very thankful for a co-author and publishers who have allowed me the privilege to write about some of these things. Although I would admit that I'm more excited about my new book on marriage because marriage has been such a blessing to me.

It's wonderful to write about something that's gone great. Not because I followed a formula, but by God's mercy. But in terms of parenting, the three things I've written. One is Parenting is More Than a Formula, which is a short mini book by PNR, which really lays out a lot we've been talking about in this discussion that the Bible teaches simple things about parenting.

We need to be careful not to be legalistic or deterministic, and we need to entrust ourselves to God's mercy with our kids. It explains biblically why kids turn out the way they do. And I think it shows that we're not in control of that.

Ultimately, I also co-authored with Elyse Fitzpatrick, When Good Kids Make Bad Choices. And that book is really about what do you do when you've tried to follow the biblical standards and yet now your teenager is rebelling and you sense the bad attitude and they're getting into trouble.

You sense they're losing them. And this is written out of experience we both have had and talks about both the need to control their behavior when they're in the home, but also the need to show them unexpected love where we can and even dealing with the ultimate situation.