The Enemy Of Control

From The Christian Reader:

The Enemy of Control


by Robert Andrews



(This is Part Two of a series. Click here to read Part One.)



What if your child is a teenager who is still resistant to your will? What should you do? If you have decided to bring your child under control, and you are ready for the battle that will ensue, let me suggest the following procedure. Sit down with your son or daughter, and explain to them that God has placed you—as the father—in a place of leadership in your home, and that you have not ruled well in the past. Admit that where the family is now is, in fact, your fault. Tell them that you want to repent to them for not ruling well and giving them the leadership that they have needed in the past and ask them to forgive you. Explain to them that, from now on, by the grace of God, you are going to love them enough to provide that leadership. Tell them that you expect them to obey what you tell them to do. Then tell them what the consequences will be for disobedience (we will cover this shortly). Then expect the battle to begin.



If you are still able to physically control your child, or if the child submits to your discipline, there is still hope. If the child will not submit to your discipline, and is too big to control, he cannot remain under your roof. There must be but one will in the family, or there will be no peace in the home. You cannot compromise your leadership by tolerating rebellion. Along with the provision that you supply as the head of your home comes mandatory obedience to your rules. No obedience, no provision. This view of ruling may seem harsh, but it is the way the kingdom of God functions.



A nineteen-year-old daughter of one of the elders in our church felt that her father was too controlling, and began to strongly resist his authority in her life. At a men’s meeting, he shared what was occurring in his family, repented of his failure to see and deal with his daughter’s rebellion when she was young, and then stepped down as an elder to focus his efforts on his family, based on the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3:4-5. His daughter moved out, and was estranged from her family for almost two years. Her father would not allow her to partake of the benefits of the family without submitting to its authority structure. The parents were broken-hearted as they watched their daughter dive headlong into the world.



Finally, she called her father in tears and said, “I know the requirements, and I want to come home.” He was very skeptical, making it very clear to her that to come home meant submitting to his demands. She knew, and she yielded. That has been some three years ago now. He has been restored as an elder, and his daughter, after standing before the church and repenting in tears (there were no dry eyes in the building!), is now a vibrant, functioning member of her family and the church.



By following kingdom principles, this father’s daughter was restored. As my father told me years ago, “Always do the right thing, even if it’s hard.”







Rebellion—The enemy of control



What is it that makes controlling a child so difficult? It is the same thing that makes us want to slip off our shoes and wriggle our toes on the lawn with the sign that says, “Don’t walk on the grass.” The same urge causes us to look for a pebble when we see an empty house with the sign, “Don’t throw rocks at the windows.” That urge can be masked by respectability, like, “I have to be my own boss. It’s too hard for me to work for someone else,” or “I can’t seem to find a church where I can fit in.” These are all symptoms of the same root problem that manifests itself in a child, making him difficult to control. It is called rebellion.



Satan rebelled against God. He did not like God ruling over him. Adam rebelled against God. He did not like God telling him what he could and could not eat. And we, as Adam’s descendants and having inherited his nature, rebel against God and His delegated authority. For, as they say in the South, “I ain’t takin’ nothin’ off nobody.”



Our children are simply demonstrating the unsophisticated version of that same natural, inborn tendency. We are all sinners; therefore rebellion proceeds naturally from our hearts. God has given parents the initial task of confronting that rebellion in their children, breaking it, bringing those children under control, and causing them to be soft and malleable under the hand of God.



He has given us a specific method for this, which, if properly used, will guarantee results. But first we need to be able to recognize rebellion when we see it; it’s not always easy.



Recognizing rebellion



There are two kinds of rebellion: active and passive. Active rebellion is more commonly associated with boys and is easy to spot. Grocery store lanes are filled with examples. The child who says “no!” to his mother, hits at her, kicks at her, belligerently refuses to do as he is told, screams when she comes to get him, defiantly tells her to go away, throws a temper tantrum, sulks, pouts, argues, talks back, refuses to listen, refuses to answer, walks away while being talked to, etc. You get the picture. Children with these characteristics are all actively rebellious children.



When the child reaches teen years the symptoms are a little subtler, but not much. They include acting “cool,” bored, disrespectful to parents and other adults, deliberately disobedient, putting others down, having trouble with teachers at school, not wanting to be with parents, and following the world’s pattern for teenagers (which is rebellion) in terms of dress and music. Those are all signals that the young person is actively rebellious, has exerted his will against that of his parents, and is not willing to let them rule over him.



God designed children to model themselves after their parents, and that can be a serious problem if the parents are still in rebellion themselves. If the children see that their father is resistant to authority at work, at church, or to the civil government or that the mother functions autonomously from her husband and does her own thing, it will be very hard to address the rebellion in the children effectively.



If you see yourself in that category and want to see the rebellion in your children broken, face yourself and repent to God who is the one whose authority you have resisted. If your children are older, tell them what you have done. Tell them that you didn’t have the benefit of parents who broke your rebellion when you were young, and that it has created much difficulty for you in your adulthood. By the grace of God, tell them that you love them too much to watch them go through what you have had to go through.



Passive rebellion



Passive rebellion is much more difficult to spot, and parents must be vigilant not to miss it. If rebellion is not recognized when the child is young, then it is shocking when suddenly it appears as he or she enters the teen or adult years. Often the comment is, “They were too strict with her, and when she had a chance, she rebelled.” No, that’s not the problem. The rebellion did not suddenly appear because the child now had the freedom to rebel. It was there all along, but it was of the passive variety. Rather than being too strict, the parents were too lenient. They did not recognize the passive rebellion and confront it when the child was young. Now it has come to the surface as active rebellion for all to see.



A family, very involved in our church, had two children who spent the majority of their grade school and junior high years in our cooperative home school. Both mother and father are first generation Christians, so without a Christian background it was often difficult for them to recognize rebellion in the lives of their children, though they desperately wanted to be good parents. The boy was the focus of most of the attention from the father, because his rebellion was, as is generally the case with boys, of the active variety.



The girl, on the other hand, was very polite, quiet and docile, and even had a gift of serving others. However, some of us could recognize passive rebellion in her, particularly when it came to her studies. It was difficult for her parents to see. When she reached high school, they moved about 45 minutes away, and though they continued to come to church, they enrolled their children in public school.



A few months ago, after a brief confrontation with her mother, the girl told her that she was pregnant. As the girl told my wife, “At school everyone had a boyfriend, and I felt left out.” The father of the unborn child is very violently anti-Christian. The girl has just recently run away from home for the second time. The story is yet to be finished.



I share the bare outline of what has occurred not to embarrass the parents, but to illustrate two extremely important truths. First, the girl is a classic case of passive rebellion. She told her parents what they wanted to hear, while all the time living a lie. Second, the father’s actions illustrate beautifully the proper way to handle this situation.



He stood before the church the Sunday after his daughter had run away the first time and told us in detail what had happened. Then he accepted full responsibility for not seeing and dealing with his daughter’s rebellion. There was no attempt to blame the public school, the boy who had gotten her pregnant, or even his daughter. He was in authority, it happened on his watch, and he took the blame. The church responded with a mighty outpouring of affection and prayer for the whole family. When one accepts responsibility in this manner, the church wants to cover that one with love in a way it cannot when others are blamed. No one said, “It’s not your fault,” because we knew it was. Yet, we also knew that only the sovereign grace of God separates the rest of the fathers in the church from the same experience.



Because the father was quick to accept blame for rebellion in his family, there have already been some very positive results. I will not go into detail concerning what the father is doing specifically, but let me say he is very proactive in his approach to saving his daughter, following carefully the principles of the kingdom. He is demonstrating a new soberness, a new maturity about the things of the Lord, and new wisdom and insight he has never had before. He is suddenly seeing other areas in his kingdom that are awry, and he is addressing them. In short, he has become a man of God.



His son, now 15 years old, has seen the firmness and resolve with which his father is dealing with his older sister. Any tendency toward some similar defiance of his father has, I am sure, been reconsidered.



To be continued…