Imago Dei Blog

Having grown up in the church, I seem to have developed an acute awareness of how I am supposed to behave. Things I should do, things I shouldn’t, things that will make me acceptable to God, and things that won’t get me in trouble with the Parents. At times my inability to live up to these expectations has been extremely disappointing. I don’t really worry too much anymore about the parents’ acceptance. I’ve mostly learned to navigate those relationships and have learned that they actually love me, not just because I act a certain way, but because I am their son. I seem to have a more difficult time thinking God is OK with me. How can you “behave” good enough for God? The answer might be quite obvious. But I inherently default to trying. Behavior is a funny thing.
I now have four kids. If I’m being honest, I really like it when they behave well. It makes my life much easier and people think I know what I’m doing. But I am also passionate about my kids growing up to understand that they are loved by God, not because they behave well enough for Him, but because they are in relationship with Him, as a son or daughter. This has been the catalyst for a significant amount of thought, prayer, study, and yes, worry. Where did I learn so strongly that God’s love can’t overcome my lack of “good behavior” and why does it feel like even when I’m doing pretty good, it isn’t quite good enough? And more pertinent here, how do I not transfer this feeling to my own children?
I began by implying that this awareness of “acceptable behavior” was tied to the fact that I grew up going to church, but as I have reflected, I’m not so sure how accurate that really is. I would imagine that many of you reading this had very little to do with church growing up, but still wrestle with the same issues. You still grew up with behavioral expectations. The truth is, as I look back at my family’s moral grid, I assumed that every rule we had in our house was because these were the rules for all church- going families, and that ultimately, these are God’s absolute moral rules. These are how you keep God happy with you. Is it possible that I assumed wrong, that I misread the situation?  Is it possible that the reason alcohol was strictly forbidden in our home was that my father had seen alcohol destroy his family and that he really didn’t want that to be a part of our home? Was the reason for tobacco being so despised in our home that dad had watched his father and brother die from emphysema? I don’t really remember them telling me that these things were forbidden by God, but I’m pretty sure I assumed they were. And this is the point I am trying to make. While I had a behavioral grid in the sense of what was allowed or not, I had no true grid for understanding where the list of acceptable behaviors came from or why they mattered. In my mind, they were simply lumped into the category of “things to make God happy”. I’m still not very good at doing all these things.

So the question becomes pretty clear. How do we help our kids understand behavior in a healthy way, in a way that will actually draw them near to God rather than drive them away? Is that even possible? I am certainly not assuming that the answer is to remove all behavioral expectations. The truth is, behavioral expectations are and will always be a reality for both parents and kids. And the truth is our kids will draw conclusions from our behavioral expectations, whether we have articulated them or not. I would simply suggest that rather than letting them draw their own conclusions, it is extremely important to help them understand behavior in a correct context. I drew the wrong conclusions and have spent a significant amount of my life trying to unlearn things deeply entrenched in me. So how do we help them understand behavior in a healthy way?

One of the most significant ways this happens is for us to actually have healthy understandings of behavioral expectations and then try to embody them. The reality is, for most of us, our behavioral grid is not something we really pay much attention to. As a culture, we are at a great loss for any sort of standard. We have sort of adopted the, “everybody does right in his own eyes” mentality. While this at times seems to make the issue even more difficult, I think it can actually be very helpful, because it can force us to not just look at what is socially acceptable, but to ask the harder questions. And that’s what I would like to do here. While it would be impossible to exhaust this issue, I would be quite happy if it compels you to begin to think through these issues and commit to being intentional about them.

What I would like to attempt for the next few blogs is explore the question, “How does the gospel shape our understanding of behavior?”  At the core of pretty much every religion is the idea that if we just do certain things, and refrain from doing other things, we can work our way to heaven, or into some other state of eternal bliss. While the lists of what to do and what not to do may be significantly different, the basic principle is the same, “You can behave good enough to get there”. At the very core of the gospel are two connected central ideas that are significantly different than any of this. First is the idea that Gods standards are extremely high. In fact, because they are based on His character, they are nothing short of perfection. Secondly, there is the recognition that none of us on our own will ever meet these standards. We are all dealing with the fact that we are not perfect. Most of us are highly aware of this, and that is why you care about this subject. This is our reality. The gospel has huge implications for our understanding of behavior and offers several lenses through which we can explore this issue. I believe that if we are willing to explore behavior through these lenses, we can actually begin planting gospel seeds and start to create healthy contexts in which our families can walk through life with gospel understanding built in.
While there are numerous ways the gospel shapes our understanding of behavior, I would like to explore in the next few blogs three gospel lenses that are central to the issue. First, I would like to look at the nature of God (and us being created in His image) as a basis for behavioral understanding. Secondly, I would like to ask the tough questions: “How does God deal with our imperfection?” and “How do we learn to navigate our own weakness?”  Last of all, I would like to contrast the differing concepts of shaping behavior vs. shaping the heart. I hope you will begin to think through some of these ideas now, and I’ll look forward to exploring these things together in the coming weeks!