Materials



Anger Management, A Lesson For Fathers
Ephesians 6:4
by R. Todd Bouldin


Since many of our women are attending the women’s retreat today, I thought this might be a day to speak to our men, and particularly to fathers. I wish to begin with a verse from Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of The LORD.”

Nothing contributes more to a cycle of anger and violence in the world like a father or mother who provokes their children to anger. If we are to break the cycle, we must break the anger.

Prayer

Just this past week, I’ve had counseling appointments and conversations that all centered around one thing: parents who have provoked their children to wrath, many times very silent and passive wrath that is eating away at the soul of their children. Now, to be fair, perhaps the children have provoked their parents to wrath too. It cuts both ways. But in most of these cases, the children’s behavior (and I am speaking of adult children here) is much caused by parents who just can’t let go of being a parent, and this insistence on managing and controlling the lives of their children is leading to a gathering storm.

In many cases, this behavior comes from an angry or controlling mother, just as much as a father. So I suppose that the fathers here today might rise up and protest to Paul, “Paul, are you crazy? Why did you pick on us fathers? It’s our mothers who are making our children angry.” Why Paul tells fathers, as opposed to mothers, not to exasperate their children is a matter for debate. Perhaps, some might say, that he knows that exasperating children is something that fathers do more often than mothers – given how fathers generally are more given to exercising power and authority in ways that are harsh, cold or authoritarian. Perhaps fathers are more likely in need of this instruction. Perhaps others would suggest that Paul had a controlling father, and he is just working out his own anger here.

I think Paul addresses fathers because they lived in a society in which the father was paterfamilias, an authority figure with life and death authority over his children, literally. A father could order that his son or daughter be killed. Now, I don’t mean those kind of statements that you fathers make to your children after a long day at work, and you’ve told them ten times not to do something and they keep doing it anyway. I mean literal life and death. Society might frown on that type of behavior – just as we frown upon fathers or mothers given to temper tantrums – but he certainly had the legal right to execute his children.

Now you might think that is unusual, but it wasn’t uncommon then. I recently heard of a first century letter from a husband in Alexandria, Egypt on business to his wife back at home who was expecting a child. The husband wrote to his wife with much affection and he seems like the most loving of husbands. But when he turns to the coming child, he wishes his wife well and tells her to throw out the baby if it’s a boy. I read a New York Times article about some villages in the Middle East today, granted, not all Muslim villages, where some Islamic fathers feel honor-bound to kill their unmarried daughters if they are sexually active, or even suspected of it, or raped by one of their father’s friends. That certainly is a different understanding of fatherhood from ours, but perhaps now you can get a little understanding of why Paul might have included this passage in the same context as his instructions to masters and slaves. Paul seems to be saying that the Gospel of Christ turns power in these relationships on its head so that the relationship is defined by the bond of love and not by the exercise of authority.

That is why Paul says that fathers (and by implication in our society, mothers too) should not exasperate their children. What does that mean? You know it when you see it. Children let you know when they are exasperated. There is a look and a tone, and you can’t mistake what it means. To recognize when a child is provoked or exasperated isn’t rocket science. But you have to stop long enough to take note that it is happening and readjust your behavior. And this is true into adulthood. It is God’s signal to you that your own attitude may need a readjustment. It may be your message, or your tone, or your timing. But change something because something is wrong. Here is another way to see it: In that moment of exasperation, God is on the side of the child. God always is on the side of the weak, the vulnerable, and of those victim to careless abuse of authority. So don’t provoke them to wrath. Don’t infuriate them. The parallel text in Colossians 3:21 says, “Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged.”

Children are easily discouraged. They are little, young, and impressionable. Even an adult child can still grow discouraged from their attempts to please a controlling or determined parent. To change this, parents have to look for what is right and not just for what is wrong. Perfectionist parents who insist that children live up to their standard “or else” are sure to provoke their children, and often leave them with deep wounds of discouragement, inadequacy and even anger for life. Yes, you do have to establish standards and set a bar. But your insistence on that standard so much that you will manipulate and guilt your children into following it will not lead to a healthy obedience but to an angry compliance.

As most things do in the Christian life, it often comes down to trust. How does a child become trustworthy? How do they become children who live up to your expectation without you insisting on it? Fear-based religion teaches us that God can trust us when we prove ourselves trustworthy, and that view of God often has informed our parenting. It goes like this, “Well, son, you have to earn people’s trust. One false move and you will spend a lifetime paying for it”. But there is another way to view God, and another way to view children. What if trustworthiness comes as a result of being trusted? What if we begin to obey God’s commands because God first declares us worthy through Jesus Christ, even while we were sinners? You get a trustworthy child by going ahead and trusting them. Sometimes even in face of the evidence, even in the face of your worst fears, you have to trust them. Trust changes everything. When you begin seeing your children for how they can be and not just for who they are, you begin to get a different result.

Nothing will exasperate your children like your guilt-laden and manipulative tactics to get them to comply with your demands. The Gospel changes that dynamic between parent and child because it insists that our own character is the product of grace and trust and not angry insistence. Another way to exasperate your children is to insist on your own expectations for them rather than letting them become the unique person God created for them to be. We all expect the best from our children; but it has to be their best, not ours. Who they are should arise out of their own God-given gifts and uniqueness. As the song “The Living Years” by the band Mike and Mechanics says, children should not be held hostage “to all my hopes and fears”. Kahil Gibran instructs in his book The Prophet, “Your children are not your children. They come through you but not for you. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.” (pp. 17-18).

What if you began by trying to discern what kind of person God has made your child to be? What talents and skills do they have that are uniquely theirs? Are you insisting that a young artist become an accountant, or that an extroverted child become an introvert? Are you open to helping your child discover who God created them to be and not who you insist that they be? Try to see the world from their perspective. Stop and think of how you look to them and how you sound to them. There is nothing mushy or liberal about that kind of parenting. It starts with the most basic and central thing in our lives: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is to enact in the relationship between parent and child the principle of Jesus: do unto others what you would have them do to you (Matthew 7:12).

So Paul instructs these people in a “father knows best” society to not exasperate their children. Don’t discourage or demoralize them. Instead bring them up in the training and instruction of The LORD. What does that mean? I think the contrast here is not to substitute your commands with God’s commands. I think the contrast is to substitute your expectations with God’s expectations of them. That means trusting God to work out His plan in their lives, trusting them, teaching and nurturing them in the ways of God. That means you won’t teach them to obey “because I said so” but to love and trust, to worship, to live for others unselfishly and sacrificially, to forgive, to be filled with The Spirit. There is so much more to parenting and obedience than instructions to take out the garbage and to be home by 10. Good parenting is to teach your children to make God the center of their lives and loving Him their greatest desire. The rest of good parenting has to do with learning to trust God and let go.

So how does that look practically? What if you realized that you may have done about all the parenting that your son or daughter can tolerate? What if you just relaxed? Quit working so hard at being perfect parents. Quit trying to overprotect your children from their mistakes. Stop being fearful about mistakes they might make. Let go of your expectations of your children and allow them to unfold as God’s person in their own unique ways and in God’s timing. There are more important things in your child’s life than whether they are protected from mistakes and whether they meet your expectations of them. The long-term matters more. It matters more that they learn to trust and to love, both you and God, and that begins when you learn to let go.

What is at stake when Paul insists that fathers not exasperate their children? I think Paul’s vision of how the Gospel transforms relationships is much larger than your parenting style. Paul envisions a Gospel that transforms the exercise of power and authority in all relationships, and this transformation will break the cycle of violence and anger that characterizes relationships and a society based on that kind of exercise of raw power. One angry generation follows another. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Because of the Gospel, there need not be another angry generation. Jesus can turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. But that will happen if, and only if, Jesus is at the center of our lives, including our relationships between parent and child. So the next time your child is exasperated, don’t make it worse. Break the cycle. Take it as Jesus’ gracious invitation to you to enter into His vision, to imagine how the world could be if we all loved, forgave and trusted more and insisted on our way less.

That vision is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. But it won’t be primarily your church that teaches your children how to live in trust and not anger. Here, we tell a great story called the Gospel that can begin to break those old patterns in every aspect of our lives. But it will be how you will parent at home that will determine whether your child will grow in trust or in exasperation. Do your children seem angry at God, or at you? Perhaps it’s time to stop blaming them and look inside yourself. That cycle can end when you allow the Gospel to pervade your life in such a way that you enter into a new vision of your relationship that is built not on mere compliance but on trust, forgiveness, prayer, and humility. Ask for their forgiveness. Confess your brokenness to them.

Breaking the exasperation begins with acknowledging your own exasperation and coming Home to the Loving Father who longs to forgive you, welcome you and heal you so that you too can welcome home your prodigal child.

Amen.


October 9, 2005


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