Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture.
Paul:So I wanted to talk a little bit about the teen years of driving, and I'll get into this a little bit more, because I think it reveals that some of the bickering and the arguments that take place in the home They continue, I want to talk about sibling rivalry and how that just changes, but doesn't really change as kids get older so I invited my daughter to give an example So, uh, Michelle, uh, you were sharing a couple of stories and wanted to hear those one more time. Yeah, so my sisters and I, we commuted to school every morning together. My oldest sister, when she was able to drive, she drove us,, each and every morning. And something that I think is notable is my oldest sister and I are late people, meaning we have a very high tendency to be late. By default, one of us was going to be late every single morning. My middle sister is an on time person. She loves to be on time. She actually wants to be early. She's a rule follower to a T. And so, this particular morning, my oldest sister was making us late. She probably got in the car 15 minutes before her school started, but they still had to drop me off at my school. And my middle sister was upset. And so, they're arguing in the car, they're bickering back and forth, choice words are being used, and then Fight Club just ultimately breaks out. Just goes nuts. Yeah. I mean, there is, we'll just say, words just did not seem to be enough, and physical, the physical was brought in. And so, You know, you could sit here and say that it's not safe, that, I mean, it wasn't safe, but, um, I mean, that ended up happening, and so we, this wasn't the only time in the car that incidents happened. I think another time, my sister and I were arguing, we were bickering back and forth, and I just pulled the e brake on her in our little Honda Civic and tailspin down the middle of our neighborhood. And so, I mean, the car is kind of a funny place in a sense, because, So much arguing happened over that car, because we all shared it, we all used it, and we all needed it to have some level of independence, as well as my parents had expectations of how my sisters were going to use that car, especially when they were needing help with me or my other sister. And so all this to say is, arguments happened a lot, but also a lot of bonding happened. My sisters and I. We picked up easily at some point in time eight different people just to go to high school And we were going in a Honda Civic crammed in as many people as possible to get to school We had dance parties. My oldest sister would take us teepeeing in the middle of the night to different people's homes and Overall, we had a lot of great times in the car, but definitely a lot of conflict as well. Right, and so now I have to learn how to use the proper car seat materials to the nth degree. Yeah, car safety is no joke. Once you have two children, you enter into a new world of raising children. And while the Proverbs tell us that a brother is given in times of need, you may be wondering at times what was needed because the fighting and the arguments that have to be policed and dealt with And, and the scriptures give us several stories and more than these, but there's Cain and Abel, right? There's envy with denial. There's Joseph in his coat of many colors in which his brothers are so envious and, and they, you know, screw up his life and it ends up with him being forgiving them, not denying what they did, but forgiving them. And then of course the prodigal son, the envy of the older brother, because the younger brother is forgiven. I want to go to Cain and Abel because I think this story explains a lot about siblings in the first family. This is a story that unfortunately is often explained by focusing on the sacrificial system and the whole explanation sometimes will center around Abel's offering and the kind of offering he had. And the kind of offering that Cain presented and like grain versus livestock, the firstborn lamb versus whatever he harvested, like it's a process. I think we missed the heart of the story when we look at it that way, instead of seeing, well, what was the heart condition, what's actually happening here? Because what's happening is, if you're not familiar with the story, Cain makes a grain offering and Abel makes a livestock offering. God accepts Abel's offering. He rejects Cain. Cain, in his envy, which means to be so upset that he, that Abel got something that he didn't get. He then decides to kill. He murders his brother, Abel. But this is the root of envy. One of the seven deadly sins. And instead of, I think, focusing on grain versus the, the livestock or even the process of it, Augustine gives a really interesting explanation. This, he says, the reason why God did not honor Cain's gift is that it was wrongly divided in the sense that although he gave something of his own to God, He gave it to himself, and this is precisely what is done by those who follow their own will rather than God's. That is, who live in the perversity of heart rather than the righteousness of heart, and yet still offer gifts to God. They suppose that by the means of these gifts, they are buying God's help. You see here, now we're getting into the motive. Not in healing their debased desires. In other words, not coming and asking God for forgiveness. But rather in fulfilling them and and this is where he really gets kind of clear about this He says for the good make use of the world in order to enjoy God But the evil in contrast want to make use of God in order to enjoy the world It's an attitude that he comes with the gift. It is unrepentant He's not dealing with his heart. Luther even goes into this a little deeper. He says something along the lines of, you know, that Cain could have brought the empty shell of a nut, but he had, he come with a repentant spirit. Had he come realizing his sinful condition. And he refers to Hebrews chapter 11, verse four, uh, regarding Abel's sacrifice, it says Abel by faith offered it to God, a more acceptable, a more acceptable gift to God, right? He, Abel's sacrifice was accepted because he offered it. In a trusting way and by faith, right? So the Corinthians tells us we live by faith, not by sight. Ephesians says we are saved by grace through faith. In other words, we're trusting the grace of God and our need for it. And so Cain's coming with the exact opposite. He's coming living by sight, not by faith. He's focused on his brother's gift. So you see what we're getting at here is that Cain is not living by faith. Instead, he is living for himself. He delivers a lot of rebellion. You can hear it in questions. When God says, where's your brother? And this is of course, after he has killed him. And he says, am I my brother's keeper? You see, what, what are you asking me a question for kind of that sort of response, completely disrespectful of God who has asked the question. And of course, God already knows the answer. A God also says, well, why are you angry? In other words, why is the countenance on your face? Why do you look this way? God knows the answer. And then God gives him the answer. God tells him, well, you've let sin have dominion. In other words, sovereignly governing you. Instead. You have to have dominion over sin, and that's the thing that comes from God. That's why we've got to go to God, not necessarily with some, you know, super sacrificial perfect gift, but coming with the idea that the gift of giving something opens us up to receive and understand and become more dependent upon God. The story ends up with Cain being made to wonder the earth for having killed his brother and Refusing to repent and come to God the the issue of sibling rivalry Is going to contain some sorts of correction there's some sort of parental justice system, but the part of That that involves the heart is going to take more than parental justice, the parental court system. Now, this came to my attention this week. I was reading this book on parenting and the author made this sound like, you know, if you have the right leadership technique, in other words, you set the right expectations and then you enforce them. Through the parental justice system, where you can avoid all these, these things, these slices of life that cause us problems. And it was almost like missing the fallen nature of our kids that Jesus died to restore the sin issue of having a small view of God, the sin issue of not trusting your parents, the, that living for yourself, living in the moment and we are given a responsibility of the. To work out this in nature while our kids are under our roof. And if you notice the way God handles it differently than, than just the justice system, he asked Cain, why, where is your brother? And why do you look the way you look? And then he advises him. Well, the reason your, your countenance looks the way it looks is because the sin in your heart. And this is what we're striving for and why we need faith to be added to Our parental courts., I want to say that these arguments and these disputes and as difficult and sometimes as annoying as they are, right? We just like, I just want peace. Everybody get to your neutral corner, get your gifts that you were given and just go play with your own stuff, right? We, we tend to see that that way and we, you know, we're, we get fed up with it, but they're actually opportunities to come to terms with a sinful nature. This is part of our priestly duties within our home and our priestly responsibility yes, each child has some things under their domain and learns to respect other domains. And that's important. I'm not saying it isn't. But we also have to use these times. That's why I wanted to introduce a few of these stories because the thing I want people to realize as we're talking about this, is these, fighting and these little arguments that start in the young years, They actually get more complicated and more fierce at times in the teen years. And then you throw in the hormones, right? Because you can't rationalize with hormones. The agendas of each of us as we move into adolescence and young adulthood. They get, they become more prolific. We've all got now schedules that have to be prioritized. We have transportation systems, who's going to get to go to prom and who's going to get to go to their sports event and how do we manage all that? And so what I want to want to talk and conclude with is ultimately in these challenges is we got to help our children be set free from their own sinful nature and we got to learn to recognize. I want them to recognize that this battle that happened is actually something you need to see so that you understand your need for the Savior, the power of the Holy Spirit. And some of our kids are going to get this faster and quicker than others. But getting it at all is the question we have to try and run the best system of justice, equal opportunities as possible. But while explaining there's no such thing as totally equality, not the way the world's trying to describe it, the world's always trying to come up with these explanations that everything can be fair and that the only way to suppress our anger is to accept and trust God and his plan and his ways of what is fair and equitable. And because that seems to be the way that God works. So, what are we going to do? Well, we're going to use the scripture. And trust me, you're going to think that it's not going to work. You're going to get exhausted in the patience of it. You're going to wonder if any of this is catching on because this is a long term, repeated and over and over scenario. And because that seems to be the way that God works. Sibling rivalry. Is because our homes are the training ground for learning to live with others, to deal with the power of sin and practice our faith. We cannot do what needs to be done apart from God, and we hope by the time they leave our home, they've started on that journey of trusting God and letting God in his Holy Spirit empower them to have power over sin. The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong. Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.