“Season of Parenting”—Lesson 8
This week’s lesson again teaches good moral truisms. It covers the reality that some people do not have children, either by choice or by nature. It says nothing either egregiously bad or insightfully helpful.
The Teachers Commentary, in fact, spends a good deal of its space discussing various translations of of Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” In reality, though, whether this verse should be considered a promise, a general truism, a rhetorical device, or a passage naming Methuselah and Enoch and suggesting that a child raised to live like Enoch would not depart from that model if he lived to be as old as Methuselah, is irrelevant to most parents.
When a child stands in front of his mom or dad and stubbornly refuses to do what he is told, or when he is punished and he passive-aggressively refuses to show remorse, intractably “winning in his head” as if nothing is happening, the meaning of Proverbs 22:6 is a moot point.
Perhaps the most upsetting thing in this week’s lesson, however, is an Ellen White quote in Friday’s study. The quote, which I share below, reveals Ellen White as the fraudulent “prophet” that she was. Found in Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 218, these words reveal the root of the dysfunction and abuse that so deeply marks so many Adventist families. Here is what she wrote:
“Parents, you should commence your first lesson of discipline when your children are babes in your arms. Teach them to yield their will to yours. This can be done by bearing an even hand, and manifesting firmness. Parents should have perfect control over their own spirits, and with mildness and yet firmness bend the will of the child until it shall expect nothing else but to yield to their wishes. Parents do not commence in season. The first manifestation of temper is not subdued, and the children grow stubborn, which increases with their growth and strengthens with their strength.”
To be sure, the Bible states that children are to honor and obey their parents, but it also says,
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).
Ellen White’s counsel that parents should discipline infants in arms, bending their wills until they have no other impulse than to yield to their parents’ wishes, is not only unbiblical but cruel.
In fact, I have known Adventists who followed this advice. A newborn, less than a week old, would cry—as all babies do. As the child’s mother and grandmother held it, they would spank the infant and say, “No! No!”
Of course, the spanking and verbal rebukes did not cause the child to stop crying. Instead, those punishments led to deeply rooted fear and resentment that broke the child’s trust. The parent who should have given that infant its formative sense of safety and comfort eventually lost the relationship she had dreamed of having with her child.
A child who grows up with a parent who does not seek to understand her child’s cries and frustrations is a child who feels invisible. In fact, such a child can grow up believing that his or her own thoughts and desires are sinful because they don’t mirror the parent’s wishes. The anger, despair, and loneliness of such children often leads to acting out or withdrawal, and he or she sometimes becomes unable to concentrate, finish school, or maintain a job.
Jesus had very different words to say about children than Ellen White did. Matthew 18:1–6 records:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Instead of treating children as non-persons who needed to have their wills broken so they would never try to think or act apart from what their parents wanted, Jesus used children’s innocent trust in a parent to illustrate how adults should trust God. Jesus was not referring to children with fearful, broken wills who trembled in uncertainty for fear their parents would strike or shame them. He was using normal trusting children who were secure in their parents’ love as examples for how to trust God.
Furthermore, Jesus had some of his strongest words for those who cause a “little one” to sin: “It would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
A person who bought into Ellen White’s counsel above, however, would definitely be provoking, or exasperating his or her child. To cruelly “train” a child with no concern for the cause of his or her fear or pain or frustration would leave that child simmering with fear and rage. A person who hurt a child in order to break its will would yield a child who would inevitably sin because he or she never learned to trust or respect others as they deserve.
A true prophet of God would never give the advice that Ellen White gave above. It is cruel and can only yield a deeply dysfunctional relationship and cause the child to be insecure and unable to know his or her own mind as he or she matures.
Needed: a new heart
Once again, the bottom line for this week’s lesson is the need for the reader to know the Lord Jesus. A religion that turns to an extra-biblical prophet who advises cruelty as discipline is a religion that is not based on the gospel.
A parent can only hope to raise grounded, secure, and God-honoring children if he or she is alive in the Lord through trusting the finished work of Jesus. No amount of good advice will help if the parent hearing it is still dead in sins. Moreover, no advice from an extra-biblical false prophet will help a parent to raise successful children.
Only in the Lord Jesus is there the wisdom and love necessary for navigating the tumultuous water of parenthood. Only if we know the Lord and trust His finished work will we be able to love our children for God.
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Very insightful, I know I was raised according to EGW’s doctrine.
Colleen, Thank you for these insights. Insights that my 7 years of therapy, could not even bring out. All my therapist can say , I was most definitely treated badly in childhood (and continue to be, by my dad) . She sees I don’t make eye contact very much. I hang my head when I talk. One therapist even thought I was Autistic, but since then, it has been determined, just socially stunted. I’ve been described as too sensitive, childlike, indecisive etc. etc. We were not allowed to think or be. My families whole life revolved around my father’s moods and wishes. We would all scatter to our rooms, when we heard the garage door go up and we knew he was home. Negativity, name calling, not good enough, blaming the family for any of his problems. And yet, strangely, I still live for his approval of me. What a mixed up mess. But, yes, breaking my will, he did.
Dear LotsOfHope, thank you for writing. I am so sorry for what you went through; I believe you. In fact, what you have described is true in a great many Adventist families (as it also is in other very conservative, legalistic churches and religions).
Ellen White left a legacy of broken lives and spiritually deceived followers. I am thankful that our true Father is both Just and the Justifier of those who believe! He sees, and He is the One who said vengeance is His. We can trust Him with those who have been cruel, and we can entrust our hearts to Him. He will give us Himself and love us truly, and He will deal justly with those who have not trusted the shed blood of the Lord Jesus.
Colleen