Determined Or Shaped

Biblical Anthropology and the Lenses We Use to See Our Children

Y 'all got the notes, right?

OK.

Let me pray, and we'll jump into it. Father, we're thankful for your goodness to us. We're thankful for the children you've given us. We're thankful that you have brought them into our lives to sanctify us.

You've brought them into our lives for us to raise them and have an impact on them. And Lord, help us now to learn together. And we'll thank you for all that you have told us in your word.

In Jesus' name, amen.

All right.

We all have lenses provided us by which we understand our children. We have ways of understanding who they are.

And what they've done.

So what provides your lenses? Who gives you your lenses for understanding your kids? Maybe it's your experience or the collected experience of people that you respect. Quite possibly, it's one of the many psychologies that are out there right now that tell you all about human behavior.

Maybe that's got your view.

Maybe it's the latest book on child rearing that's given you the answer. I was made aware of a new trend now called gentle parenting. And that seems to be the latest craze when it comes to raising kids.

It's interesting. I've not read a whole lot on it, just a few things. But there's something that provides the lenses. And you wear these lenses. We all operate with some kind of a system that gives us a framework for understanding human beings and thus our children.

I'm going to suggest that we use a framework called biblical anthropology. Now, don't take that word anthropology and get it mixed up with the social science that seeks to understand human origins and human societies and how they work in the social relationships of human beings.

Anthropology is also a theological term. Anthropology is a theological term that means doctrine of man, the doctrine of man. It tells us who man is, what man is, what's good about him, what's bad about him, what makes him flourish.

All those things are involved in that theological term anthropology. And listen, everybody operates with an anthropology. Whether it's a biblical one or some kind of other psychological one or sociological one, everybody operates with anthropology.

There's the way we understand what makes a human being and what makes him tick, what's his composition, all of that. So we want to begin with a biblical description of children. Now, your anthropology will have a major bearing on how you respond to your children.

If a child is basically good and has all the resources he needs to understand what he should and shouldn't do, well, then that way of thinking is going to affect the way you look at your children and how you respond to them.

You think they're basically good or neutral human beings who learn bad things from their environment or good things, that's going to affect the way that you handle your children. If he's the end of the evolutionary process and just the highest of animals, well, you're going to tend toward conditioning, behavioral conditioning.

You're going to condition them a certain way, stimulus and response. If he's motivated by the deep rumblings of an unconscious that drives everything that he does, well, then that's going to have an effect on how you respond to your children and what you do to raise them.

Your anthropology is absolutely central to how you respond to your kids. And so a biblical and accurate view of man will have a great influence on the way that you raise your kids. So the first thing you have to understand is what does the Bible say about our children?

What does it say about human beings that we need to understand if we're going to raise our children in the way that God wants us? Here's the first building block in our anthropology. Your child is a sinner.

Now, those of you who've never had children, you probably find that hard to believe. Those of us who have children have no problem with that concept, okay? Your child is a sinner. The idea that children are innocent or basically good or neutral is foreign to Scripture.

It's not in the Scriptures. It doesn't describe our children that way. It doesn't describe any human being that way. Scripture indicates that your child is inherently, naturally corrupt and guilty, okay?

They're naturally, inherently corrupt and guilty. Every child is born with a bent toward evil. He is not neutral. Now, when I lecture on child rearing in different venues and I'm asked to do that, I always tell folks, all six of my children came out of the womb shaking their fist at God.

That's just the way children are. That's the way every human being is. Psalm 51 .5, behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Okay, I'm conceived in sin. This is one that we're gonna talk a lot about probably.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. Folly, okay, again, folly in that context, in the context of the wisdom literature like the Proverbs, does not mean my child is foolish, she stuffs dandelions up his nose.

That's not what it's talking about. Folly is living in a God-created world, okay, folly is living in a God-created world without any reference to God. That's folly, that's foolishness. And the Proverbs says foolish people are on the road to destruction.

So when the Proverbs use the word folly, it's essentially talking about this inherent corrupt, corruption and depravity. You know what your children are gonna do? They're gonna distort and suppress the truth, okay?

Romans 1 .18 talks about that, when it says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. They all know there's God, but they suppress that truth.

To be human is to be aware that there is a creator and we suppress that truth. Our children are born with a bent towards that. Ephesians 4, 17 through 19, now this I say in testifying the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Our children are bent that way. They come out of the womb bent toward this futile way of thinking, alienated from God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts, which leads them to pursue sensuality or to put it in our language, doing what makes you feel good, okay?

They're bent that way. Here's a question that we always need to ask. Is my child fundamentally depraved or is he deprived or depraved? Is he maladjusted or malicious? Okay? Is he deprived or is he depraved?

Is he inherently maladjusted or malicious? Now look, your answer to that question is going to have a profound effect on the way you respond to your children, the way you act toward them. For example, here's the boy who hits the teacher, steals from his classmates, and is always picking fights on the playground.

What's the problem? Well, they take him to the counselor and they try to figure out that something is wrong, either, you know, as a lot of parents do, well, the teacher is, it's only her second year of teaching, what does she know?

Or it's the kid next to him or something like that. In fact, you'll hear people describe that same boy like this. Well, I know Tommy is having trouble at school, but you know, he really is a good boy at heart.

Have you heard that kind of talk?

That's ridiculous.

He's not a good boy at heart, okay? He's not a good boy at heart. He is not deprived as if something was withheld from him and so he ends up this way. He's depraved. He's not maladjusted. He is malicious.

Now, what are the implications of this? The implications of that is that if he's basically depraved, he needs discipline and the work of the gospel. Now, let me give you an example here of how your anthropology affects the way you respond to your children, okay?

So I'm starting to, since someone brought this to my attention, I'm starting to poke around at this latest trend called gentle parenting. And when you read it, there's a lot of good stuff in it. The stuff that I could say, yeah, that's what the Bible says.

But it's founded on some things that are a little bit shaky. No, a lot shaky. Listen to this. This is an answer to the question, what is gentle parenting? Gentle parenting is a parenting approach that encourages a partnership between you and your child to make choices based on an internal willingness instead of external pressures.

All right, now, take that one statement, and you tell me, what is the anthropology behind that statement? What's the anthropology that pushes that and produces that way of thinking? Just start throwing it out.

Child's basically good, okay? Yeah, they'll be willing. And if you read a little bit more, it's talking about, you explain to them, right? Instead of pick up these toys, I told you to do that. It's no, you know what?

We can't use the room like this. It's all messed up, and other people aren't gonna be able to use it. So, you know, we need to pick up the toys. I mean, that's an example that I got from some of the little bit of reading that I got.

What is behind that, right? It's basically saying a child is basically good, that he will be willing, right? There's no concept here of a twisted will that says, I don't wanna do that. I wanna do what I wanna do.

Well, think of that statement.

That is totally contrary to how the Bible describes human beings, you know? Yeah, they will choose to do what's right if given the chance, okay? All right, so that also, by the way, eliminates what we talked about last week.

Eliminates the idea of authority. Now again, it's probably more nuanced than that, but, and there's more to it. You know, I've got a lot more research to do, but just that one statement that we talked about.

There's a whole anthropology behind that. Listen, these kinds of ways of rearing children don't come out of anywhere. I mean, don't come out of nowhere. They come out of a philosophy of looking at life, okay?

They come out of a philosophy of looking at the world, and from that grows those ideas. So we have to have an accurate anthropology, and the first thing we have to get into our minds is that our children are sinners.

The Image of God in Children

Here's the second thing. God says your child is an image-bearer, okay? Don't lose sight of that. You know, in our circles, in our Calvinistic Reformed circles, we tend to lean real heavy on the sin-bearer part and go light on this, but we have to remember this as well.

A child is an image-bearer, and so as a reflection of God, each child has a moral consciousness, emotions, sovereignty, creativity, intellect, and self-reflection. That's all part of their being. That is true of them, okay?

That is true of them. They have all of those things inherently because they're made in the image of God. Genesis 1 .27, so God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female, He created them.

Now, so we're made in the image of God, but the Bible also tells us that that image is marred and distorted by sin, okay? Colossians 3, 9 and 10. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

So the gospel has to come in. It is marred. It is distorted by sin, okay? Y 'all, any of you remember Silly Putty? I love Silly Putty, not because it could bounce or anything like that. It's because I could put it, I could take our newspaper and put that on there and get a picture of somebody and just really do really weird things with their face.

Well, that's what sin does. It's like the Silly Putty. It just distorts the image of God in us. It's still there, but it's marred. It's distorted. You can make out the image of God. It certainly is there, but it's been defaced, if you will, by sin.

Now, this has implications then for how we raise our kids. If I believe that he's made in the image of God, then a child is not someone that is merely forced into obedience or conditioned like an animal, okay?

Now again, as we're gonna move on, we're going to see is discipline necessary? Yes, but that's not the whole story. You don't, it's not that you always force them into obedience. It's not, and you don't condition them like an animal, stimulus response.

Let's get the environment right and so forth. A child is someone to know. And again, this is important for us as parents. We need to know our children, their hurts, their desires, their views of life, how they look at the circumstances of life.

Those are all areas that we have to enter into, and we have to get inside. I like to say we have to get inside our children's heads. We have to understand what they're like, what they're thinking, how they're interpreting.

A child's mind, his moral consciousness, his creativity, his emotions, all the things that make him part of the, that says he's made in the image of God must be engaged. It must be engaged. You see, for example, in Ephesians 6, 1 -3, right?

Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Okay, that command addresses children as responsible human beings, right? It doesn't say parents, just slap them back on the tracks. It addresses children as responsible human beings.

It appeals to children. And so we have to do the same thing as well. It means, it does mean that yes, there is a place for reasoning with your children. You can explain to him the consequences of behavior.

You can explain right and wrong. You can help them see why it's wrong and why the right pleases God and is better for them. All those things are involved. But since the image has been marred, it can only be renewed through the ministry of the Gospel and the Spirit, okay?

So if he's in the image of God, but it's been marred, what does Colossians 3, 9, and 10? It says they have to be renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator, of his creator. So all of these things are true too.

So as I build my anthropology, I say, okay, I have a child who's a sinner, but I also have a child who's made in the image of God. And so therefore, but that image has been marred, but nevertheless, he is still an image bearer.

By the way, by the way,.

The image of God is the very definition of a human being. And therefore, the image is not eradicated. If the image was eradicated by sin, then they wouldn't be human. You follow? And so they still are in the image of God.

That's the very essence of being a human, an image bearer, but it's been marred and it's been distorted. And we need to take that into consideration. We need to be thinking about that as we minister to our children.

By the way, let me, I'm just gonna, this is a freebie, this is a footnote, it's whatever. I believe that part of the image of God in us is the fact that we have the ability to create. Now, we don't have the ability to create like God does.

He just speaks things into existence. Here's a theological term, you need to learn it. It's called a creation ex nihilo. It's a Latin term that means out of nothing. God can do that, we can't. But yet, we image God in our creativity, right?

Art, art is a great thing. You know, Christians got a bad reputation because we tend to denigrate art. Well, maybe we denigrate bad art, but art, art is part of the image, or art is a product of the image of God.

You know, when your kids sit down and they, you know, little Deanie over there gave me a picture of me one day as I visited and he whipped it out in like two minutes, right? I got this flat hair like this going on and you know, you got two sticks coming out for your arms and two sticks coming out for your feet.

I mean, that's part of the image of God. He's creating something there. He's taking something in his hand and creating that. Anyway, see that was neither here nor there.

It's just free.

Ex nihilo, E-X, that's the first word. Second word is nihilo, N-I-H-I-L-O. Okay, E-X-N-I-H-I-L-O. All right, now here's the third building block. Your child is a product of shaping influences.

Shaping influences, what is that? Those are the events and circumstances in a child's developmental stages that prove to be catalysts for making him the person he is, okay? So there are influences, there are events and circumstances that shape us, that make us, that play a part in making us who we are.

Now, scripture acknowledged these things. For example, Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7, right? Teaching your kids when you're walking along, when you're rising and laying down and so forth. Deuteronomy 6 indicates that children must spend considerable time with parents who teach if they would grow up to serve God.

Ephesians 6, 4 warns fathers, fathers do not provoke or do not exasperate your children. So it recognizes that I can do something that will have an effect on my kids. Colossians 3, 21 says to dads, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged, lest you take the wind out of their sails, okay?

Proverbs 29, 21, if a man pampers his servant from youth, he will bring grief in the end. So it recognizes that there are shaping influences that we have to take into account. However, I want to give you a caution here.

There's a caution here. Shaping is not automatic. Influences are not automatic. The way a child responds to those events and circumstances determines the effect they have on him, all right? He's not merely acted upon.

And again, too many Christians have bought into this, that, oh no, all these things are there and it's gonna make him this way. No, this is not an inert piece of clay. This is a human being who responds, who interprets, who thinks about all these things.

So remember this, children are never merely passive receivers, but are active responders. You have to keep that in mind, okay? You have to keep that in mind. He's not just a passive receiver. He's an active responder.

He responds according to the Godward orientation of his heart, right? And Godward orientation doesn't just mean, yeah, he believes in God. It takes in everything. Do I interpret reality in the way that God wants me to,.

Right?

Do I interpret reality in the way that God wants me to? Do I see human beings in the way that God wants me to? So there's all kinds of things that play into that, but he responds according to that, okay?

So let me give you some examples. Structure of family life can have an influence, right? Do you come from a traditional family structure? How many parents is the child exposed to, right? Single parenting homes have a, children come out of single parenting homes have a different way of life than most children who come out of a traditional family structure.

How are other children, are there other children, are there other children or is the family life organized around one child? Is he the oldest? Maybe he's the youngest. All those things have influences on a person.

So Sally and her husband come in for marriage counseling because they're really having problems and one of the things you find out is Sally's an only child. And so she's grown up with parents who made the world revolve around her.

And now she's married, she's finding out the world doesn't revolve around her, right? And so that has an influence. What about family values? Those have a shaping influence. What is important to the parents?

What's important to the parents? What is worth fussing about and what passes without notice? Are people more important than things? Do parents get more stress over a hole in their kid's school pants or a fight between schoolmates?

What's real important to them? Does mom rebel to get her way? Or does she manipulate? Or does she do what dad says? Ted Tripp writes, I know one home in which the children are required to put on their father's socks and shoes because he is obese and finds it uncomfortable.

Since he is cruel and harsh in the way he requires this service, the children are being shaped by powerful statements about their place in family life. Okay? You can see how that would have an effect.

What about things like family roles? I just said that, didn't I? A family conflict resolution. How does the family deal with problems? How do they know about the problems? How do they talk about the problems?

Do they resolve problems or do they simply walk away?

Right?

Do they sweep the problems under the rug and ignore them until they get too big? Do members of the family clam up? Or do you come from a blow-up family? All those things. Are the problems solved by biblical solutions or by power?

Right?

All those things will have an effect. I mean, you know what? When my dad got mad, my dad got quiet.

Right?

My dad got quiet. We'd be sitting at the table and he would be deathly silent. And I'm thinking, uh-oh, something's wrong. And then my sister, who you all know, would say something like, what's wrong, Dad?

It's like pulling the cork out at that point, you know? But here's what I found out. When I get angry, you know what I do?

What do you think?

I get quiet.

Right?

I get quiet. And then I have people bugging me and my family saying, what's wrong, Dad? Nothing!

Right?

So, yeah. Becca came from the opposite kind of family. It was like, we're gonna tell the truth and if it takes your head off, we told the truth.

Right?

Um, I know that's hard for you to imagine. But all those things have an influence. You can see that. We all know that, right? The Bible recognizes that. And there are other influences that come up. I mean, the fact that I grew up in a little town of 400 people in the middle of dairy country, I'm gonna be different than a kid who grew up in a ghetto.

Right?

It's, those kind of things influence us. But, one thing we have to be aware of, or beware of, is Christian determinism. You gotta be careful about that. So many Christians, thinking they're biblical, have bought into the fact that our children are determined by their environment.

Now, shaping influences must not be ignored. They cannot be denied. They do have an impact on the people that we become. But beware of this kind of, of Christian, of this determinism. A terrible mistake.

Child rearing is nothing more than providing the best possible shaping influences for your child. That's a terrible mistake to make.

All right?

There's a lot more to it. And we buy into that determinism when we get that way. Some Christian parents are Christian determinists because they think that if they provide the best possible influences in childhood, their children will turn out okay.

Now, do not hear what I'm not saying. Okay? But I think, after a generation of the homeschool movement, you know what we've seen? We've seen that the loss of children to our culture, the percentage, has not changed.

It has not changed. It's essentially the same before the homeschool movement. Now, why is that? I would suggest to you, it's because parents have said, keep them away from evil, and we'll just make sure that they have all the right influences here.

And if we pull all the right strings and push all the right buttons, we're gonna get a kid on the other end that's gonna be great. And they've forgotten all kinds of other things that are involved in rearing children.

I'm not saying, am I saying I'm against homeschool?

No, I'm not. I'm not saying that.

I'm just saying, so many people have bought into this kind of deterministic thinking, even in Christian circles, that they think, if I just do the right, do, if I just give the right environment, everything will be okay.

All right?

So, you gotta be very careful. Shaping influences are important, but they do not determine us.

All right?

Now, having said that, you need to be aware of those shaping influences. Now, don't think I'm contradicting myself.

I'm not.

You have to be aware of those shaping influence. Although they're not all to the task of parenting, they are really important factors. Okay? They are important factors. Now, having said the importance of family or shaping influences, we also have to talk about that a child is not just a product of that, a product of his Godward orientation.

Now, what do we mean by that? We're talking about the religious bent of every individual through which all experiences are understood and processed.

Okay?

It's the bent through which all experiences are understood, are interpreted, and are processed. Okay? Let me just take a moment to explain that. Let's at least understand something. There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to looking at the world.

Okay?

There's no such thing as neutrality.

None.

There are no neutral observers in the world. So, for example, Levi, in his biology class, will say, you know, there are some people who believe in intelligent design. There are some people who believe in the evolutionary process.

Why do you think that is? Why do we have those two different camps? And, of course, some of the kids will respond, well, because they're biased.

They're biased.

They're not neutral. They haven't take the scientific viewpoint to which Levi responds, there's no neutrality. Either you're committed, you've already committed yourself to these naturalistic presuppositions that say, I will only accept this truth, those things that you can prove by the scientific method.

That's the only way I'm going to allow any statement to stand. Is that a neutral stand? No, it's not a neutral stand. You know what it's saying? It's saying, you can understand the world without God. Keep God out of it.

Can you? Can you really understand the world without God? They've already committed themselves to something that rules out God from the very beginning. God can't even get in there. It's not that they're neutral.

They've committed themselves to a presupposition. And with that, they interpret the world. Then you've got these people in intelligent design. They say, well, God's revealed himself. And creation shouts about God.

By the way, they're not neutral either. So the question is, are you interpreting and processing the way you know with the lenses that God gives or the lenses that other people give? All right, you understand what I'm driving at?

So that's what we're talking about. We talk about this Godward orientation. Now, here's the thing to remember. Everyone is essentially religious. Everyone, including the most hateful atheist is essentially a religious person.

No one is neutral. He will either worship God or idols. Now, your child is worshiping, serving, and growing in his understanding of who God is and making sense of life in relationship to God or without relationship to God.

They're born, they're born not wanting to do that. Okay, they're born that way. But you know what? It doesn't matter whether you're worshiping God or not. Everyone is a worshiper, okay? The question is not, will he worship?

The question is, who or what will he worship? Because when you read Romans 1, what does it say? It says that it's plain from creation that God exists, but what does man do? He suppresses the truth and then does what?

You remember what it says in Romans 1? What does he do then? And does what? Worships created things. Man at his very heart is a worshiper. It's not a question of whether one's a worshiper or not. It's a question of who or what will he worship, all right?

Now, your child may not be conscious of his religious commitment, but he's not neutral. He's not neutral. In fact, what have we said? He has a bent toward not wanting to see things from God's way. Even if he doesn't know that yet, that's the way he's bent.

Now, whatever the shaping influences you may have, the God word orientation, it's that that determines the response to those influences, okay? Luke 6 .45, the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Okay?

Proverbs 4 .23, keep your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life. Life's experiences are all filtered through that God word orientation, all right? All of life's experiences are filtered through whether I'm oriented toward God and what he says or I'm oriented away from that.

All of it is going to be interpreted, it's gonna work through, it's gonna be processed by that. Either the child responds to the shaping influences by faith or he suppresses the truth and unrighteousness.

So, let's say here's a victim of molestation, right? Here's a victim of molestation, right? Can that have an influence on you? Absolutely it can. Absolutely. But what happens when someone says I am a victim, right?

I am a victim. Does that, they've processed everything and they come out with I am a victim and that's as far as it goes. Or there's someone who says I was a victim but I know that God wasn't turning his back on me.

I know he wasn't ignorant of all this stuff. In fact, I know that God had a purpose in that. God was working his purpose through that. Do you think there's a difference between the two? Circumstances are the same but the difference is how you interpret that.

You follow? And our children are interpreting all the time, right? They're interpreting all the time. So, for example, children, they're just interpreters. We all are by nature because we're made in the image of God.

So, you know, I was listening to this, I love this, or I like this NPR show called This American Life. And they had one where they just talked about what kids said, right? And so here's this little girl sitting next to a guy on an airplane.

And she says to him, when do we get small? Well, now what was she thinking? Every time she saw a plane take off and fly away,.

What happens to it, right?

So she said to the guy next to her, when do we get small? See, she's interpreting. She's trying to make sense of the world. We all do that. Children do that, right? So, you have to ask, are their lives organized around God as Father, Shepherd, Lord, Sovereign, King, or do you see them living for some sort of pleasure, living for approval, living for acceptance, or some other false God?

You see, the shaping influences are coming, but my Godward orientation is going to do something with those, okay? You can also, these things can also be identified as idols of the heart, desires, ruling principles, motivations, expectations, all those things.

These are the things that are responding to the shaping influences. Our children interact with shaping influences based on their desires, based on their expectations, based on the motivations, the ruling principles of their life.

Either he grows to love and trust the living God or he turns more fully to various forms of idolatry and self-reliance. All right, let's take an example. What about Joseph? I had a friend of mine once say, put it this way, look at Joseph's life and tell me, why is it that he became a better person and not a bitter person?

What was the difference? You look at the shaping influences of his life and you have to ask, how did he end up the way he did? In fact, a lot of times in counseling, I will make that assignment. Okay, if you don't know how biblical counseling works, you always give homework.

All of you who are here probably know that. So sometimes I'll be dealing with someone, I'll say, I want you to take your Bible and read Genesis 37 through 50. And I want you to read, I want you to identify all the places where Joseph suffered.

Write down everything you can see, the bad things that happened to him. And I'll say, and then you write down the bad things that have happened to you. Then I'll say, I want you to read his story and I want you to be looking for clues.

I want you to try to figure out, how is it that this guy ended up the way he did with all the horrible things that happened to him?

What are the clues?

Read the story and look for the clues. What you find is a man who said, you know, when you come to Genesis 50, verse 20, you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good, the saving of many lives.