How to Raise a Pharisee
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Carey Hardy, Senior Pastor at Twin City Baptist, in Winston-Salem, NC, gave a seminar a couple of years ago at the Shepherds' Conference on How to Raise a Pharisee, which contains a number of helpful reminders of what not to do as a parent:
- Majoring on external instead of internal issues
- Excessive control
- Overreacting to failure
- Being unforgiving and impatient
- Elevating preference over biblical principle
- Unnecessary separatism
- Judging others…other families
- Being “belligerent”—a fighter
- Favoritism
- No humor
- Building up their self-esteem
- Lack of genuine spirituality
Labels: parenting
posted by JT at Saturday, March 10, 2007
11 Comments:
Can you give some further insight on how building up your childrens' self-esteem is a negative? (And on an unrelated note, doesn't the title of the seminar perpetuate a misconception about Pharisees?)
I can't speak for Justin but "self-esteem" is synonymous to "self-worship" in my opinion. Building up one's self-esteem (one's view of himself) is inherently sinful because it takes the glory off of the only one worth building up...Christ.
Homeschooling is not a synonym for excessive separatism (Point 6). Some homeschooled kids are maladjusted ticking time bombs. Some are well adjusted Christians making a difference in the world. Gee, maybe the home schooling is not the key factor.
Ken, I agree with your statements abuot Homeschooling, but I find this to be a real soft spot with a lot of home school parents, and not always, which the article in no way suggested, but sometimes, with anything we hold dear, good or bad, people defend their position instead of asking if there is any truth to the statement about it. His statement was for "many" not all. If there is no truth to his statement for a particular family, they have nothing to be concerned over. If there is truth to the statement, does it hurt a family to ask, "How can we watch out for this?"? Just my thoughts.
Not to pile on Homeschoolers for separatism issues, I have seen it happen with Christian school kids as well. No matter how it manifests itself, it is a temptation for parents to react toward the culture with fear and then find ways to separate themselves from it
Justin,
I don't think Carey Hardy was at the conference this year.
Drew
Carey is no longer at Grace. He now serves as the Sr. Pastor at Twin City Baptist, in Winston-Salem, NC. This seminar was from 2005. It does present some very good points to think through.
Is this a Lutheran Pharisee or a New Perspective Pharisee that we're raising?
Pastor Carey Hardy was at the 2007 Shepherd's Conference, but he was not a speaker this year. He and 3 men from TCBC flew out for the conference. What a great blessing to have such a man of God and his family at TCBC.
Thank you for posting this very helpful information.
My kids tell me all the time about the "fakers" they know. Referring to those who's desire to be approved of or grouped in the "godly" group by the authorities (parents, teachers, pastors) in their life causes them to act one way when being observed and another (very different) way when not.
We all expect good behavior and certainly there is a battle going on with the flesh that must be fought. But, in reality, we are all ungodly and won't be completely godly until we pass in to glory.
Teaching our kids that "behavior" increases righteousness is simply legalism. Of course no one would knowingly teach that, but we may very well be teaching that without knowing it by our reaction to and focus on …”behavior”. We should be reminding our kids daily that we are all wretched sinners whose hearts are deceitful.
They should be walking around grieving for the unregenerate kids they know and amazed and grateful that God would condescend to save anyone most especially them. That is the sign of a humble heart that knows no boasting (Eph. 2:8).
Let’s be sure as parents, teachers and pastors that we teach our kids correctly by battling our own judging, prideful hearts that would indicate that behavior is more important than a humble heart that pursues the Savior.
WooW =)
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