I dare say that my role as a pastor for students and their families is considerably more challenging than my previous one as an airline captain. That’s not to downplay the demands of the airline profession — trust me, it’s intense. It’s just that when you find yourself embedded in the clouds, with no land in sight, the instrumentation, airport technology and air traffic control perform exactly as they’re designed to: guiding the plane safely, under zero visibility, to the runway. And, let me tell you, when you break out of the cloud deck at 50 ft. above the runway while hauling toward the Earth at roughly 150 miles per hour, it’s exhilarating … but, predictable … quite the opposite from children and teens.
There is the messy business of being called to “Train up a child in the way [they] should go” so that when they are older, “[they] will not depart from it” Proverbs 22:6. That begs the question: In which way should they go?
Dr. Seuss has a few suggestions, as do the authors of Nurture Shock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. They set out to identify a list of “supertraits” hoping children with a firm grasp of “gratitude, honesty, empathy [and] fairness” would become “good children” in which problems such as “stealing, feeling bored or distressed, excluding others, early sexual activity and succumbing to peer pressure” would essentially “bounce off them just as easily as bullets bounced off Superman.” What they discovered though, through copious amounts of research, is that these “supertraits” can’t be relied upon to act as “moral Kevlar.”
In this absence of a predictable outcome, control has become our new idol. In the documentary Trophy Kids, one parent of a 9-year-old shares his belief about the goal of parenting: “Get [your] kid to buy into your dream and to your ambition, that’s the key.” Another parent with twin 14-year-old boys informed them that their identity is in playing tennis, and that her will for them, for which she’s made a covenant with God on their behalf, is that they become tennis superstars.
Maybe the aforementioned parents teeter on the extreme, but a new generation of controlling parents has materialized called “Helicopter Parents.” Dr. Tim Elmore in his book Generation iY: Our Last Chance to Save Their Future says this of Helicopter Parents: “These hovering ‘helicopters’ can be controlling and obsessive in their efforts to ensure that everything goes well for their children and that no negative incident affects their self-esteem or their prospects.” Little do these parents understand that, because of their actions, their child isn’t learning the ability to fail and persevere. The “hovering” parent is “[preparing] the path for the child instead of the child for the path.”
In Scripture, time and time again, God prepares the individual for the path, not the other way around. Take David for example. Battling Goliath wasn’t his first altercation. In 1 Samuel 17:33 we see that David “has been a warrior from his youth”— going all commando against lions and bears (“Oh my!” says every parent). Prior to the big match-up, Saul offered up his armor to David, which he declined, knowing it wasn’t needed. (How many times do we try to put our identity — that we rationalize as “armor” or “protection”— on the children under our care?) Later, we see that David “ran quickly toward the battle…” 1 Samuel 17:48, signifying his eagerness and trust in the Lord, slinging the stone, which had the same take-down force of a .45 caliber pistol, into the forehead of the towering infantryman armed with a spear — talk about your classic bringing a knife to a gun fight — “… thus David prevailed over the Philistine” 1 Samuel 17:50.
In David’s story, we see God’s design for the way a child should go — to prevail. They are to be equipped through undergoing challenging experiences, yes, struggles that reveal a true relationship with their Father, creating in them a secure understanding of their identity — who God has ordained them to become. From there, we can trust (in God) that they will eagerly take up their calling and accomplish — prevail in — His work, not ours.
C.J. Wetzler is the NextGen pastor at First Baptist Church of Deerfield Beach. Before transitioning into full-time ministry, CJ was a commercial airline captain and high school leadership and science teacher. For questions or comments, he can be reached at cj@deerfieldfirst.com.
