A Garden of Grace

A Garden of Grace Posted on Saturday, November 3, 2012 by Douglas Wilson • 1 comment One of the temptations young p arents face is the temptation of wanting to learn some “techniques,” some 1,2,3 tricks for sure-fire success. When you feel lost, it is easy to want to resort to easy solutions. If you already feel like you are in over your head, why would you seek out solutions that are over your head? This is why, to reapply an o bservation from Peter Drucker, they are more concerned about doing things rightly than about doing the right thing. What is the right thing then? Before answering the question, it is important to note that things can be over our h eads for different reasons. The obvious way is that it might be really complicated, like trying to explain advance d calculus to a third grader. But there is another kind of teaching that feels like it is “over ou r head.” That is the way of the Spirit when we want to operate in the way of the flesh. Turn the other cheek? What kind of sense does that make? But notice that he lack of un derstanding here has nothing to do with complexity. So what is the right thing in p arenting little ones? The fundamental right thing is to see the relationships rightly, to understand what is going on. What is your relationship to God, and h ow can you mimic that in your relationship with your children? Therefore be imitators of God, Paul says, as dearly loved children ( Eph. 5:1). We are to be children to God, and this will help us understand how our children are to be children to us. We are to learn the nature of all our authoritative relationships by imitation. So if you look at the sweep of redemptive history, you see that our story begins in a garden, and it ends in a garden city. Our task as forgiven sinners (who have been given access back to the tree of life) is therefore — through the gospel — to rebuild Eden. You are called, fathers and mothers, to rebuild little Edens in your homes, only better. This cannot be done apart from worship, obviously, but you need to make sure you bring a coal from the altar back to your home every week. So what was Eden like? Here are just a few initial thoughts. They are only initial thoughts — I have discovered that going back to the first chapters of Genesis is a process that repays us with new glories every time we do it. First, don’t go into it thinking that God is looking for opportunities to crush you. If He were doing that, you would already be flat. The ways you are failing your children (in ways we will shortly discuss) are not ways in which God is failing you. And when you fail, He does not respond to your failures the same way you tend to respond to those who fail you. Now there are those who double down on their failure, which is what we would call a refusal to repent, a hardening of the heart. There we have the plain teaching of Scripture that unforgiving people are unforgiven people, and so I want to emphasize that the doctrine of grace does not turn

A Garden of Grace

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