Letter From a Strong-Willed Child: Part 1

No, my name is not Casey. 

But I was the kid who stole multiple times from a grocery store and brought her brother into the strategies of a young crook. When Grandma gave us giant chocolate Easter bunnies and Mom rationed them out as a reward for us drinking full water bottles, I also taught him the common sense method of the laundry room drain. I ate pop rocks for the first time behind my mother’s back (and had the living daylights scared out of me). I was the sibling whose name got put on the fridge for Dad to deal with after mom had a full day of spanking me. I always wondered how he knew I wasn’t really asleep when he came into my room. Or maybe he just didn’t care about waking up a child trying so hard to look angelic in her sleep. I was a sneaking, conniving, secretive sinner bent on rebellion and getting around the rules.

Things may have gone differently for me if my parents had listened to Kirk Martin’s podcast on “The Myth of Immediate Obedience” and taken his advice.

The Death of Our Own Way

The parenting I experienced was not a matter of legalistic requiring of outward behavior but a striving to lay before me a way higher and more beautiful than my own. My “own way” was portrayed as an assassin of true and lasting blessing. God’s commandments—and my parents as placed in authority over me—was the way of life. My parents did not “give me space” to express my own rebellion and discontent and decide how and when to finally obey. They believed in the principle that Jonathan Edwards called “the Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” They made it their business to set before me in a myriad of ways the beauty and desirability of obedience and to highlight the blessings it brought, as well as the sorrow and alienation resulting from disobedience. 

They knew that requiring obedience alone was not enough. For my own self to be taken off the throne of my heart something else would need to replace it and they knew this was not something I would naturally take to. No, this was a battlefield, and they took up arms on my behalf and taught me to do the same as I matured. 

Expressions of rebellion did not indicate that I was fishing for an argument or power struggle that I knew they couldn’t win, as Kirk describes, but the overflow of a sinful heart. Had they “exited quickly” as encouraged by this podcast, rather than confronting me in my resistance wherever and whenever it arose, I would be a far different person today. Elisabeth Elliot said once that a strong-willed child is not one who refuses to obey, but one who has learned to curb his own desires and actions and submit them to a higher authority. My parents made it their business to instill in me that discipline and self-control and to do so by 

Obedience Whose Way?

I found it troubling that nowhere in the podcast was the holiness of God mentioned as a motivation for obedience. If parenting can be seen as a sort of microcosm of the Christian life, a greenhouse in which children learn principles which will guide them in their walk with God for the remainder of their lives, then how shortsighted to not apply the same overarching principles which drive our lives as Christians to the way we parent. 

As Christians, we are called to be holy precisely because God is holy (1Pet. 1:16). He is “a consuming fire”. In Christ, we are blood-bought heirs and God is our Father, but there are plenty of reminders in Scripture to caution us against presumption and casual approach to God. He is the perfect, righteous One who will judge all sin at the end of time and it is only because of Christ’s covering blood that we can approach him without fear.

God is very clear about His commands in scripture. Bad things happen when people toy with the exact details of his instructions.

In Exodus, the people of God were commanded to build the temple exactly according to the pattern shown to them—no variations allowed (Ex. 25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8; Num. 8:4). 

Sure, Nadab and Abihu offered fire on the altar in the tabernacle, but they were killed for doing it apart from the prescribed method (Lev. 10). 

Achan helped fight against Ai as God had instructed the Israelites, but he grabbed a few things along the way and that brought about Israel’s defeat in that battle (Josh. 7). 

Uzzah was doing what he thought was best when he reached out to steady the Ark during its transport to the temple, but he too was killed for going against God's explicit directive for its treatment (2 Sam. 6).

Annanias and Sapphira sold their property and gave a chunk of money to the church, but they lied about the whole sum and were struck dead (Acts 5:1-11).  

The list could go on for some time. Biblical obedience is not something we do our way. We do it God’s way because He is the One who not only rightfully demands all our obedience, but can—and does—dictate the manner of our obedience. The learning of this principle has been exponentially easier for me as I have matured in Christian faithfulness because I learned to subordinate my own way of doing things to that of my parents, even when it didn’t make sense and even when I later decided to do some things differently as an adult apart from their oversight and authority.

Whether it was a rule set by my parents or one instituted by God, I was taught from a young age to discern the disjunction between these instructions and my own stubborn heart which wanted no rival and to strive to actively overcome that divide without the sabotage of accommodating for my “strong personality”. This was one of the best gifts my parents could have given me and one I hope to give to my own daughter as she grows—no matter how strong willed she may be.