Parenting For Fruitfulness (Part 2)
What Exactly Are You Doing?
As an undergrad I heard a story — probably a “preacher’s” story — that stayed with me. A father is outside playing ball with his young boys. The mom, worried about the aesthetics of the yard, yells out to them that all the running and sliding and roughhousing is gonna kill the grass. The dad responds, “We’re not raising grass. We’re raising boys.”
There’s a couple things I dislike about that story, but it does raise an important question about how we approach parenting: What exactly are you doing?
Perhaps a better metaphor is that of carpentry vs gardening. As a youth worker, I experienced many parents who approached parenting as carpentry. Carpenters measure twice in order to cut once. There is a precision we want in carpentry. In order for the house or piece of furniture to work, carpenters start with a rigid and detailed set of outcomes, and everything they do is designed to mold that outcome.
Some parents do the same. “My son, my daughter will be like X. They will dress a particular way, speak a certain way, maybe even pursue particular careers.” I have these folks in my church. Like most parents, they want the best for their children. This is simply their approach to it.
In this approach, children arrive on earth more or less like blank slates which parents can write on, or pieces of clay for them to mold to their likeness. Sometimes it works. A mother in my church recently told me that the school and career choices her adult children were now perusing where her decision. For her, parenting was and is carpentry.
An alternative approach is gardening. Gardeners cannot approach their tasks the same way carpenters do. Gardeners decide what to plant. Then they nurture the earth in which the seeds are planted. They cut back weeds. They eliminate threats like rogue animals and pests. They buy and install chicken wire, etc…. But gardeners also know that they can’t make it rain. They don’t control the sun or weather. Their job is to be attentive to the conditions on the ground and in the air. They know they cannot control all of them, and sometimes they can’t control any of them. Life happens. It is unpredictable. Gardening is a mixture of prediction, attentiveness, and response.
Too few parents and future parents ever bother to ask, What exactly are we doing? Carpenters and gardeners are equally attentive to their tasks, but they go about it differently.
I am only one person, but in 26+ years of congregational ministry, more times that not, to be frank, gardening turns out better than carpentry. Neither, for sure, is foolproof. In my experience, human beings cannot be hammered, glued, and nailed into a predetermined design. Even Jesus, who was a carpenter, did not treat people that way. The Pharisees did. “Follow the script,” they said, “if you want God’s presence.” Only God, in Jesus, did not follow their script. He understood and empathized with the slings and arrows, ups and downs on real life being lived by real people.
Parenting for fruitfulness is less about masonry or woodworking and more about nurture — tending the grounds, maximizing sun light, protection from threats, being attentive to the conditions and so on. Carpentry, more often than not, is about hammering into a predetermined pattern. Hammering hurts. Plus, what happens when Junior grows up and does all mom and dad molded them to do only later to realize little of their lives was their’s to do? In adulthood, they torch it all, because they never cared for it in the first place. More times than not, after dealing with thousands of people, this is what I have seen.
At any rate, the choice is yours as a parent. What exactly are you doing?