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Willpower will not make you a better parent.

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Welcome to this week's episode of Living Influence.

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I'm Scott Boyd alongside Bill Fraugh.

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And our topic on parenting this week is on how sin management affects your parenting.

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The sin management, if that theology is in my parenting, and it was in my parenting in the early years, it's a real negative effect.

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This is a hard lesson for a lot of Christians that I meet with.

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So let's just talk about sin management for just a minute so they know the context.

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Any theology that convinces you as a Christian that you are still a sinner is a theology of sin management.

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But I still sin.

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Ah, thank you.

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Thank you for that honesty.

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By the way, I know you do.

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I've been with you.

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Ah.

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But that's an interesting response because that's the response of a lot of people.

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Here's a different voice.

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It's the voice of Grace.

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Grace is...

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to find you as God sees you, a saint.

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How do I see myself is critical to my maturing.

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And let me say it this way.

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If as a Christian parent, I still primarily see myself as a sinner, I will parent out of my shame.

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We could stop the podcast and that's it.

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When the child did something wrong, it triggered Chris's shame.

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It triggers your shame.

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It triggers my shame.

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And we have to be really, really careful here.

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There's a big difference between my being responsible for what they did and my being able to help them deal with what they've done.

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Yeah, because if what they did triggers my shame, now instead of them experiencing me speaking to their person, they're going to experience me reacting to my shame.

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Which is therefore a reaction to their sin.

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Yeah.

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And all of a sudden, the relationship is about what was done wrong.

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Right.

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Instead of about the person who needs our help desperately as a parent when they've done wrong.

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So that this reality is kind of, it helps me to say it this way, a theology that convinces you as a parent that you are, in fact, the master of your own behavior.

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Like, if I just work harder on my sin, I'll become more godly.

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If I just work harder on being this, if I work harder on being that, and we don't use the terms Bill uses, but the term Bill uses is, if I could do this, that means I'm the master of it getting done.

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Because I have this innate sense that I have the willpower to do better.

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I'm sincerely going to stop this time.

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Or I have the ability to say no.

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And all of that is wrong.

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You don't have a chance.

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When I, through my theology as a Christian, see myself primarily as a sinner, shame will define me.

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Well, what do I then do as a Christian when I sin?

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Isn't the reality that I'm sinning the reality that I'm still a sinner?

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No.

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See, by God's grace, I have been introduced, you have been introduced to a new reality.

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I am now defined by who God says I am.

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Let me, we're going to do this in our next lesson, but I want to say it right now.

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This is what my God says about me, Bill Thrall.

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He said, Bill, Ephesians chapter 4, Bill, I have remade you in my image.

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Bill, I want you to know you're righteous.

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Bill, I want you to know you're holy.

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See, and everything in my sin management theology is, no, no, no, no, maybe someday in heaven, that can't be true now.

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But it's fully true now.

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Fully true now.

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And yet, you have flesh.

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I have flesh, and that's the key to the fact that I still sin.

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I told you the story about this pastor who was in one of my cohorts, and, I mean, he would just look at me and say, Bill, what you just taught is amazing, but it's not logical.

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Right.

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He said, isn't the person who sins a sinner?

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How can you not be a sinner if you sin?

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I said, because you're a saint who sins.

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And he'd go, that's not logical.

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And I said, no, it's not logical, but it is biblical.

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It is biblical.

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By the miracle of the cross, I ain't who I used to be, and I'm dead to sin.

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That's what the Bible says.

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I didn't make that up.

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I'm dead to sin.

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By the miracle and the power of the cross.

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And it's this spiritual power that we somehow our churches don't teach.

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When the dominant theology of the church is,

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is that Christians are still sinners.

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The dominant message of the church is to get Christians to sin less.

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That's the dominant message of the church.

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And those of you who are acting like you're not sinning much, you're the godly ones.

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And those of you who have just quit knowing it's no sense making, I'm not going to church anymore, I'm so screwed up.

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Yeah, you're the losers.

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No, actually, they're the healthier people.

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A parent, knowing the responsibility of the influence they have in their child, they as a parent are going to work hard at being good enough.

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while at the very same time they are convinced they don't know how.

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And it's an internal dilemma, Scott, that drives Christian parents, listen carefully, drives Christian parents to parent out of their authority because they don't trust their own person.

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I want to say that again.

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It's a dynamic that drives Christian parents to parent out of their authority because they don't trust their person.

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And if we don't trust our persons as parents, there's no way our children will trust us because we won't let them.

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And we can go back over all these lessons on parenting and come to the same conclusion.

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When I, as a parent, parent out of my authority, I will raise a child to be compliant.

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And that child will never grow up.

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I will work hard under this theology of sin management to get my child to comply to my authority.

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And you know what?

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They will.

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Because you're big enough, strong enough, and tough enough.

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You're bigger than they are.

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You're dead.

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Yeah.

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You know, and you've got to—

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stick or a belt or a hand, and they know it hurts.

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Or a voice.

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Or a voice, a big voice, a big, loud voice.

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But tragically, as we've said 10 times, in this dynamic, because of the shame that I'm experiencing, because I don't know grace, I'm afraid to be known.

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Because this is so weird, Scott.

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See, I'm actually afraid I'm going to hurt my kids.

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Oh, yeah.

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I'm actually afraid I'm going to hurt my kids.

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Yeah, I remember having that fear.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Yeah.

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I'm actually afraid I'm going to hurt my kids.

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And therefore, I don't trust my own ability to not hurt them.

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So what I do is I reduce my parenting to the level of compliance from my child that satisfies me.

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I don't know me.

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They don't know me.

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They don't trust me.

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I don't trust them.

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That's called a family full of haddock.

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Mm-hmm.

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Now this is kind of an issue, I don't want to hurt my child.

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I love my child.

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But I fear I begin to manipulate them because they're desperately wanting my acceptance.

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And if you just behave better, you'll get my best.

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And tragically, that's a tragic truism that fits this bad parenting model.

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And the child will learn to do something.

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Tragically, they will learn to not trust me.

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But worse than that, they will learn to resent me.

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Right?

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Scott, I would say over the many years that I pastored, I would say that I've met with hundreds of parents who with deep, deep tears talk about the fact that their children resent them, don't love them.

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And they've never, maybe our times together over long sessions, come to grips with the reality that their manipulation is smelt by the child.

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And if I have to earn your acceptance, Dad, that's not acceptance at all.

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These are big deals, of course.

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Yeah, they are.

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And...

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So they resent that, but they also resent not being heard.

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A theology that condemns you will be a theology that allows you to condemn them.

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Condemn them.

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It has to be true.

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So therefore, I spend my parenting time trying to do what never should have started.

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I spend my parenting time

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trying to manage their behavior rather than deal with their heart so they can come to grips with their behavior.

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We'll talk about that next time.

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I think I can remember in those middle years, those critical years, of like, I know I can't keep this standard, but you need to.

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Exactly.

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I mean, just feeling that it was there.

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Oh, of course.

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I mean, it is there.

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Because shame says two things.

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If you just try a little harder, you might get it right.

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And then it says, you'll never be enough.

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And it says both.

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At the same time.

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At the same time.

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In the same circumstance.

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And so in the middle of that, you're parenting and you want better for your kids.

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And so, yeah, this is what you need to do.

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I believe it, but I haven't figured out how to trust it and have it be my reality.

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Right.

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And Scott, that's a great example of the church life of a lot of Christians, especially in a legalistic environment.

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where everybody can authority is making sure that you out there are doing better at dealing with your sin than we are, but we never admit to you how badly we're doing.

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I was in Guatemala.

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And I go, it's a very legalistic culture.

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And this woman was telling me, oh, we were taught never share something you're struggling with with one of your members of your church.

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Yeah.

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Couldn't.

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You don't share your struggle because that'll give them permission to struggle more.

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No, you've got to tell them that they need to stop it.

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They need to get beyond it.

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And so they're teaching their leaders to hide.

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Absolutely.

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Good for you.

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Tragically good for you because you just told us something that we need to talk about for a minute.

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When my theology convinces me

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that I am a sinner, it'll trigger my shame, and when my shame is triggered, I will hide from you.

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Yeah, and so I'll hide from my children.

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You'll hide from, so again, in your hiding from your children, what you're doing is you're making a declaration that I should not be known.

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And the minute you make this, you never would say this with words, Bill's words.

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The minute you say that I should not be known, what you're really saying is I should not be trusted.

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Here's the penalty.

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It's the penalty box.

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When as a parent, I decide that I should not be trusted, my child, in their inability to trust me, will never experience my love.

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downer number 71.

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But it's huge.

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Oh, I want my children to love me.

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I want my children to experience my love.

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Great.

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I know you do, mom and dad.

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Do you know how that happens?

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It happens through trust.

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And some of us are going to have to really come to grips theologically.

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with what our theology is teaching us about us.

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So we don't condemn our children with the same condemnation we feel because that's what our theology does to us.

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This is a big lesson.

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Yeah.

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You know, our whole series is about grace and grace and parenting, and that's our next lesson actually in podcasts, and that is how does grace therefore affect my parenting?

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But this is, you know, I've said this probably three or four times in this parenting sessions,

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There are some downers here.

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I like to be bold in declaring the downers because I want to give hope to the possibilities of grace.

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If I believe I'm a sinner as a parent, then as I parent my child, my child's actions will trigger my shame.

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And I will react to my child and be unable to love their person when they make a mistake.

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Mm-hmm.

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And they will.

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And they can mistake.

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I mean, they may make 10,000 mistakes.

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The only way we grow up is to make mistakes.

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Exactly.

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This message of grace is so, so, so important to our parenting well.

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And I'd also say this message of grace can change your parenting even if all your children are already adults.

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It has mine.

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Absolutely.

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We appreciate you watching, and we hope to see you next week on Living Influence.

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Thanks for being here.

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Thanks for listening to Living Influence.

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We appreciate you.

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Just a call to action.

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We would love it if you would share our podcast with one or two people this week.

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Thanks again.