Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee — Number 5

Represent holiness and happiness as opposing (or even alternating) experiences.

"Let it be the principal part of your care and labour in all their education, to make holiness appear to them the most necessary, honourable, gainful, pleasant, delightful, amiable state of life; and to keep them from apprehending it either as needless, dishonourable, hurtful, or uncomfortable. Especially draw them to the love of it, by representing it as lovely."

Richard Baxter, 1615-1691, Baxter’s Practical Works,

The 2001 film, Chocolat, is a fable—almost a parable—of contrasting life perspectives. Set in an old-world, European village, the physical context is as much a participant in the story as the human characters.

A face-off unfolds across the cobblestones of the town square. The towering, grey-stone face of an ancient cathedral forebodingly occupies one side of the courtyard—guarded by the stern-faced, stone visage of a revered, deceased spiritual dignitary.

Opposite this edifice, the neglected shop space of a former pharmacy is pleasantly renovated, by a journey-woman and her young daughter, into a welcoming chocolaterie—a cafe of tantalizing, finely-crafted sweets.

On this stage, a heavy-handed, living spiritual dignitary and a kindly, beautiful, irreligious shopkeeper do battle for the heart of the village. Pleasure, friendship, and tender care—at the chocolaterie—compete with power, guilt, and Lenten-sacrifice—at the church—each seeking to claim the loyalties of and offer hope to needy souls.

The chocolaterie wins.

This tale effectively captures the common perception of countless people—often well-earned and reinforced by the church itself—that the conflict between religious life and "real" life is a contrast between accusation and acceptance, law and love, hypocrisy and honesty, hell and happiness.

To be clear, the gift of saving faith in Jesus is not an earthly path of unmixed spiritual, emotional and physical ease and pleasure. The deceitful prosperity gospel and hollow "happy, happy, happy, all the time" Sunday school ditties have done no service to the credibility of the Gospel and are not the life promised by grace.

Actually, life—after the fall and under the sun—according to Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes—can, from one angle, be summed up, in the words of Wesley (from Princess Bride, not the Methodist preacher): "Life is pain your Highness, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

But that is just half of the message of Ecclesiastes—the Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, "life is meaningless" half.

Even in the Old Covenant, waiting-for-the-promise world of Solomon, the often-neglected full message of Ecclesiastes (after his long experimentation and reflection) is: remember God, fear God, obey God, and enjoy life!

Since we are living in the hope of life over the sun, the forceful command of the wisest of the wise is to stop grasping and clinging to things that pass away like a vapor, so that you can finally feel free to enjoy them as gifts from our Lord.

Clinging to earthly pleasures, it turns out, is idolatry—offering as much satisfaction as "chasing the wind." On the flip-side, enjoying your labor, your food, your wine, your strength, and the intoxicating wife of your youth—is the natural fruit of God-centeredness and it is the uninhibited freedom of the one who starts worshipping the Giver instead of the gifts.

Joy—present and future—is the rightful and reasonable possession of the holy and the heaven-bound. Satisfying or sustained joy is not the reward of shortsighted hoarders or impatient hedonists.

The hope and holiness that come from grace provide two extraordinary freedoms:

1.) Freedom from slavery and addiction to the things God made to be gifts not gods, and...

2.) Freedom to enjoy those same things with Godly gratitude and hearty delight. According to the Scriptures and the Gospel, not only can true holiness and lasting happiness coexist—they cannot exist separately!

Pharisees manipulate and mangle God's gifts - either gorging on them in hypocritical self-indulgence or gagging on them in hypercritical self-righteousness. Those who love grace, enjoy good things, because they love their extravagantly-generous Lord more than anything else.

The eternal happiness of God and the stunning discovery that God's passion is to be known for boundless grace and generosity are a perfect recipe for our stalwart joy.

Freed prisoners dance. Redeemed slaves sing. Pardoned felons clap and shout. Cured terminals laugh and cry and get downright giddy with the breathless recovery of a hope that had been staggered. We are all of these! And—next—a permanent, brilliantly perfect tomorrow awaits us.

Children of God, loved by Christ, we are the only ones with countless reasons to live and laugh and love and learn, to play and eat and tease and cheer, and to pour out our resources with abandon, so that others might be invited and welcomed to the celebration.

In the parable of the rich fool, in Luke 12, the man with extra large crops designs a plan to hide, hoard, and hold on to this unexpected windfall—to secure a hope of his own making. I doubt that his sin was, as many seem to think—his plan to eat, drink and be merry (that’s the actual command of Deuteronomy 14)—but, rather, that his plan was to carry out this celebration by himself, on his own terms, and on the basis of his self-sufficient security—without the nasty uncertainties of faith or the rich-heartedness of gratitude.

Redeemed fools, with extra large crops, don't build bigger barns. They build bigger banquet halls, so that they can eat, drink and be merry with thanksgiving, with announcements of God's goodness, and in fellowship with any friend, foe, fatherless or friendless fellow-fool they can get in the door.

Children who are raised by these kind of redeemed fools learn what it is like, passionately to love God, expectantly to trust His provision, constantly to long for more and more of His flowing generosity, and uninhibitedly to share the windfall with everyone in sight.

And they might just stop by the chocolaterie on the way home from church.

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We would love for you to listen to this week’s companion podcast episode: “The Holiness of Happy Lovers” at the link below! (Due to be posted early this week.)

This series of blogposts is being posted in conjunction with Season 2 of the “No Mere Mortals” podcast (this link is to the Apple podcast app, but NMM is also available at Spotify and in other podcast apps). Jump on over to the podcast to listen to Lisa and my conversations on grace-rooted, joy-shaped, self-righteousness-suffocating home life and relationships!

Track along with all that we are doing here at Enjoying Grace Story Co. at Don’s Instagram

Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee — Number 3

Discipline them before you delight in them.

“Don't give me money, Mr. Boffin, I won't have money. Keep it away from me, and only let me speak to good little Pa, and lay my head upon his shoulder, and tell him all my griefs. Nobody else can understand me, nobody else can comfort me, nobody else knows how unworthy I am, and yet can love me like a little child. I am better with Pa than any one--more innocent, more sorry, more glad!"

Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

The less we laugh with our children, the less they will benefit from any of our instruction, correction, or discipline.

The usefulness of our correction in their lives will never exceed the depth, comfort, and constancy of our whole-hearted connection with them…and them with us.

Do not misunderstand me. Loving correction and gracious discipline is a priceless gift to a child. No greater unkindness is done to any young one than to "protect" him or her from caring, consistent correction. 

So I will say, again - the less we laugh with our children, the less they will benefit from our training.

Here's my earnest proposition for your consideration:

Our correction or discipline of our children is only as effective as the environment of joy it interrupts.

Too many parents are laboring to discipline their children into children they can (eventually) enjoy. They rightly assume—affirmed by the wise proverbs of Solomon and the general observation of life—that an untrained child will bring little pleasure to a father and mother - or anyone else in the general vicinity. 

They are right.

Misapplied, this wise observation can hazardously reverse the right order of pleasure and punishment. Deep joy in our children must be plainly evident before judicious discipline of our children can produce any happy results. 

We must delight in our children before we discipline them and, again, our discipline will—plainly and simply—be effective in direct proportion to the delight it interrupts!

Disciplinary failures, both of abuse and avoidance, are rooted in the exact same misconception about what correction is. 

Here is the logic of the issue.

Most parents training their kids understand that there is a conduct/consequence connection that they are seeking to weave into their daughter’s or son’s discernment. Therefore, they rightly (in one sense) assume that the greater the discomfort of the correction, the greater the effect will be on the child's conduct. 

The great trouble (and potential, enormous harm) comes in misunderstanding what is the true source of loving, effective discomfort.

If we assume that physical, verbal, or emotional punishment is the primary, effective “discomfort" of discipline, then we are certain to be driven to one of two dangerous, heartbreaking, and fully unfruitful patterns of correction—even if they seem like opposites.

On the one hand, some—wrongly believing that the punishment (of whatever type) is the discomfort reinforcing the correction—will inflict serious wounds, of many kinds, upon their—seeking to make their discipline more effective through intensity. 

This is horrifying and so many have experienced it.

On the other hand, others—with a right and healthy loathing for severity—will neglect consistent discipline of any kind. The errors and harms of both abuse and avoidance arise from the same false assumption.

Listen—any specific application of correction is intended to awaken and alert a child to the heart-breaking, harmful, impoverishing consequences of destructive or hurtful behavior; but the correction itself is not supposed to be the consequence of misbehavior.

Stay with me here.

If my son does not know, without question, that I both permanently love him and immeasurably enjoy him and want his joy, then effective discipline is simply impossible. Only in the context of my ordinary, predictable, growing, and fully-felt delight in him, will the sting of any correction get to the heart of the good we want for him and the danger of foolish behavior.

Lovingly applied, correction does not primarily draw my daughter's attention to the brief discomfort—it draws her attention to an interrupted delight. The pain of that brief loss, and, therefore, the effectiveness of the correction, is measured by the extent of normal pleasure that my kids enjoy in the days of life spent with me.

How much more true, even, is this whole principle, as we move on to guide, challenge, gracefully correct, and urge maturity and vision into our older children? 

If the harder conversations, even corrections, are not interrupting eager-conversation, honest-about-ourselves-conversation, knowing-them conversation, exploring-everything conversation, curious- and questioning-conversation, silly-conversation, intimate-conversation, always-conversation—then the fruitful effect of the good (but challenging) corrective conversations will lay cold on the heart—more likely to stir up distance and resistance and withdrawal, than responsive, appreciative growth.

If the experience of discipline for our children is more an addition of emotional or physical discomfort than it is a brief loss of familiar delight, then our training is unlikely plant in them a hopeful, expectant vision of their future or stir them to love the happy kindness of God’s grace. 

It’s far more likely that the painful intrusion will incline them toward resentment and rejection or perhaps toward habits of approval-seeking through legalism and external obedience. 

Pharisees live to avoid God's punishment more than they long for the embrace of His wholehearted pleasure. 

The child who is trained to earn his parents joy through obedience is well equipped for skilled religion (or rebellion) and is likely to be suspicious (at best) about the offer of God's free, affectionate, and extravagant grace.

From my first amazed tears in the delivery room, alongside each accomplishment or heartbreak or even stumble—until this very hour—am I living and laughing and lingering and looking and learning—with my son or daughter—in a way that shouts to them that it is too good to be true that I get to have each one of them be part of my life? 

For life!

Do I linger at the door, so disappointed to leave the delightful commotion of home; or do I linger at the office, more than content to limit my participation in the treasures and tangles that may await me when I return? 

Do we anticipate with more pleasure the last day of the school year when our kids will start spending their days at home with us or the last day of summer break when the kids will head back to school? 

Our honest answers to these questions have more impact on the effectiveness of our training and nurturing of our children than we would ever imagine.

The more we laugh with our children, the more they will benefit from our correction. The more we enjoy our children, the less severe—and more effective—our discipline will be. 

Because, again, the effect of our correction is measured directly by the experience of joy that it interrupts.

Every dad and mom should go out on dates, and, at the same time, we should nearly have to be told to do so. And when we do enjoy a night out, the kids should see our eagerness to return to them, more than they sensed our relief on the way out the door.

* * *

We would love for you to listen to this week’s companion podcast episode: “Delight-based Parenting” at the link below!

This series of blogposts are being posted in conjunction with Season 2 of the “No Mere Mortals” podcast (this link is to the Apple podcast app, but NMM is also available at Spotify and in other podcast apps). Jump on over to the podcast to listen to Lisa and my conversations on grace-rooted, joy-shaped, self-righteousness-suffocating home life and relationships!

Track along with all that we are doing here at Enjoying Grace Story Co. at Don’s Instagram