Beyond Deserving

Being a parent is a lot of fun.

However, it is a huge existential crisis. What is my role in influencing someone else? How do I help a little human life develop spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally? And more prosaically – how do I manage the family life, like getting kids off to school, getting them to get their homework done, and stopping them from fighting like cats and dogs? Robin and I often talk about this – and stumble along together!

I have been reading a great book that has helped me to think through the very role and purpose of parenting – grounded in the theological concept of grace. It’s called ‘Beyond Deserving’ by Dorothy Martyn. It has helped me in my thinking. I highly recommend it.

The basic thesis of the book is that parental love (and any kind of mentoring love) works to the degree that it breaks the cycle of ‘this for that’ justice. True, nurturing love moves beyond rewards and threats to the much more powerful force of unconditional alliance with the child. She is really taking to task the common (and very tempting) mindset of rewards and bribes.

She uses Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) who all received from the generosity of the lord. Fairness and merit disappear in the face of love which transcends “deserving” all together.

That may all sound airy-fairy – but it is a really helpful book! Here’s a quote from the conclusion:

A good parent doesn’t simply wash his or her hands of hurtful behavior and abandon a child to impulse. He or she recognizes that the out-of-control child, attempting to act on a destructive impulse, is at the the mercy of a force within that he may not be able to withstand alone.”

“Understanding what it is like to be under siege, the good parent, as well as the good mentor, intervenes powerfully and unconditionally on the side of what is good for the child, standing with the child instead of standing over against him in judgment. Such a stance is in fact derived from the way that God enters into human suffering with mercy, moving first with grace – not waiting for bad behavior to change – and with patience, that is to say, sustaining and accompanying the human being without coercion.”