Every child is unique, and every child must find the ways she can fit in the world and the manner in which she is not to be of the world. A child who is too hesitant to buck the world’s system must be called to test the boundaries of convention in order to obey God. On the other hand, a child who can’t seem to conform to any rule must find how to be sufficiently “in” a larger world to engage it with her Christian perspective. Each child will have a bent in one of these directions: either to be “of” the world by conforming too closely to its values or to be “not of” this world and to stand completely apart from it. It is our task to affirm and then challenge the bent. If our child is either a rebel or a rule keeper, it is both good and not good. The good must be grown, and the not-good must meet the strength of parental resistance. The dilemma is that we seldom see good in being a rebel, and we fail to see ill in being a rule keeper. We must work both sides of the aisle to accomplish God’s purpose in developing a tender and strong heart in a child. We must grow a child’s ability to fit the world and also to resist the world.
Dan B. Allender, How Children Raise Parents (Waterbrook Press, Colorado Springs, CO: 2003), 41-42.
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