Peter Witkowski Parenting

John Bunyan’s Message For Today’s Parents

bunyan-blogJohn Bunyan’s arrest, trial, and 12 year imprisonment never had to happen. He could have declined his last invitation to preach. He could have followed his friends’ advice and fled the meeting house before the constable arrived. And, he could have promised to never preach again and been quickly released. He could have walked away from the whole commotion quite easily.

But Bunyan could not deny his God and Savior. He could not abandon God and “blaspheme the gospel.” As he told one of his accusers, “If I were out of prison to-day, I would preach the Gospel again to-morrow, by the help of God.”

Bunyan’s Story

Bunyan’s convictions would cost him dearly. When he was imprisoned in 1660, John Bunyan left behind a pregnant wife and four children, the oldest of whom was blind. When his wife Elizabeth heard of Bunyan’s arrest, she went into premature labor and gave birth to a still-born child. And for the entirety of his twelve-year prison term, Bunyan provided a meager income for his family by making and selling shoelaces.

As a loving husband and father, Bunyan’s heart was tormented by his family’s sufferings. At times, he felt that he “was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children.” As Elizabeth, would later tell a judge, John Bunyan truly “desired to live peaceably, to follow his calling that his family might be maintained.”

Although Bunyan longed to care for his family, he knew his ultimate allegiance was to Christ. No matter how much he loved his family, Bunyan could not abandon his Lord and Savior. And he was able to trust Jesus through this time because he knew that God could and would care for his family. Bunyan truly believed Jeremiah 49:11 which says,  “Leave your fatherless children, I will preserve them alive: And let your widows trust in Me.”

Furthermore, Bunyan was convinced that denying Christ to save his family would ultimately lead to his and his family’s destruction. He wrote:

If I…venture all for God, I engaged God to take care of my concernments: but if I forsook Him and His ways…I…should count also that my concernments were not so sure.

Whether in or out of jail, Bunyan knew that God was the one that preserved his family. John abandoned his self-sufficiency and entrusted his life and his family to the God of the universe. And as a result of his faith, Bunyan was able to boast that, “Jesus was never more real and apparent than now; here I have seen and felt him indeed.” His family was preserved by the grace of God. And Bunyan got a new family becoming the spiritual father of thousands through his writings.

Lessons For Today

The world has changed much since Bunyan was imprisoned. We no longer travel by horseback. And we no longer hide our retirement account in a chest above the fireplace. But, we can still learn much from John Bunyan, the parent. And my biggest take away is this: Christ is everything.   

As parents, we long, like Bunyan did, to give our kids the very best things. We take them to church. We sign them up for softball. We select great piano teachers. We do anything and everything to help them excel at life. But at the end of the day, our kids really need only one thing, Jesus. The rest is all fluff.

Bunyan understood this truth. He understood it to the point of separating himself from his kids’ so that they could achieve the thrown of grace. He would rather suffer for his faith and see his family confined to poverty than provide comforts for his children and see them miss heaven. Bunyan lived out Matthew 16:26, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

Friends, we must take time to listen to Bunyan’s message. We should not sacrifice the church and the gospel for our kids’ worldly advancement. Rather, we should do the opposite.

We must see that sports, musical skill, and even our own careers are secondary to the gospel. If sacrificing these things enables us to reach our kids with the gospel, then we must sacrifice them. We must be willing to sell all that we have and follow Jesus.. No half measures will do. Christ must be primary. We must build our family and our family’s schedule around the gospel. We should listen’s to Bunyan’s message and make Christ everything.

Are you listening?

Peter Witkowski Parenting

Two Ways To Ruin Your Kids Spiritual Life

backpackI was an idiot – enthusiastic – but an idiot. On my first day of college, I bounded off to class. In all honesty, I more lumbered about campus like John Bunyan’s Christian, carrying every single book for every single class in my backpack. I must have been toting around at least 70 lbs. of pure academic pain. Who knew, you didn’t have to take every book to class? Thankfully, by the end of the first week, I figured out that my zeal was a little misplaced. I discovered the beautiful truth that carrying five to ten pounds of pens, textbooks, and notebooks was more than adequate.

Often in our zeal to live out the gospel, we can be tempted to lay heavy burdens on our kids. We can become focused on secondary things such as our kids’ media consumption, their bedtimes, their education, their clothes, and their friends. We praise our little ones for embracing our schedule, for wearing the right clothes, and for having the right friends. We praise them for meeting our standards. And in the process, we may subtly swap out the gospel for our traditions. Instead of experiencing joy, our kids will begin to  feel weighed down because they are carrying all of our traditions around with them.

In Mark 7:1-13, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for burdening their followers with extra biblical principles. The Pharisees were substituting the commandments of God for the commandments of men. They were holding the Jews to extra biblical standards of cleanliness. And at the same time, they were downplaying the conviction of the law.

Jesus took exception to the Pharisees because they were missing the heart of the gospel. They were turning God’s free gift of salvation into a pay-for-play scheme. The Pharisees thought people could reach heaven through good works.

Jesus disagreed. He proclaimed that God cared about the heart. The child who doesn’t watch TV is no closer to heaven than the kid who watches TV 18 hours a day. The girl who dresses modestly is not closer to salvation than the gal showing off her navel piercing. Salvation is a matter of the heart and not a matter of following conservative family values.

Are we guilty of having swapped traded out the gospel for our traditions? Have we burdened our kids down with a bunch of extra traditions? How can we know?

We typically add burdens to our children’s lives by holding them to ridiculously high standards and/or by downplaying the significance of the Bible. Let’s Take a look:

Ridiculously High Standards:

First we need to ask ourselves are we adding to the law of God? In Mark 7:5, the Pharisees were demanding that the Jesus’ disciples follow the priestly code of conduct. They wanted the disciples to achieve a certain level of human cleanliness that God did not demand of them.

We need to make sure that we are not demanding more from our kids than they are able. We cannot hold children to the same standard that we demand of our pastors. We cannot expect grade-schoolers to be fully hospitable, peaceable, gentle, content, and sober-minded (Tim 3:1-7). Our kids cannot live up to these expectations. And if we punish them for not achieving the character of an elder, we will break their spirit. We will weigh them down, causing them to view every sin as a crushing defeat.

We must not do this. We must extend grace to our children, expecting them to get angry and expecting them to be selfish. We must see our children’s childhood as a time of training and formation, patiently helping them to grow in faith. We must not expect our kids to already be pastor material.

Downing Playing the Bible:

Second, we must not devalue the Word of God. The Pharisees were more concerned with ceremonial washings than with people honoring the parents. As long as your hands were clean, they thought a person could ignore his parents suffering and still be considered godly (Mark 6: 8-13). The Pharisees were seemingly crazy.

What about us? Do we devalue the Word of God? Are we more concerned about our kids clothes than whether or not they lied to their teacher? Are we more concerned about our kids’ media time than their constant outburst of anger? Are we more concerned with applying our traditions and then applying the Scriptures? What do we care about most? This is hard to wrestle with. But to raise of kids in love, we must get this right. We must be more concerned about our kids’ heart issues and their obedience to God than their conformity to our traditions.

Now admittedly these things can go hand in hand. God can often use our standards and rules to draw out our children’s heart. The child that rejects our view of modesty has heart issues. Her disobedience maybe driven by a fear of man and by a belief that her friend’s opinions matter more than God’s love. But the ultimate goal is not just to get our kids back inline with our standards. Our ultimate goal is to see their hearts changed. Our ultimate goal is to see our daughter abandon her fear of man and put her trust in Christ. Our ultimate goal should be to see our daughter’s heart more closely knitted to the heart of Christ.

And now back to our question: “Parents, have we burdened down our kids with traditions or are we seeking to reach their hearts with the gospel?”

Peter Witkowski Parenting

Are Vasectomy Parties Wrong?

viThe new parenting trend is not to parent. As the new slogan goes, “Cats, Not Brats.” Increasingly, husbands and wives are celebrating being ‘child-free.’ These couples are posting child-free announcement on social media, are hosting vasectomy parties, and are asking their friends to help them name their new boat. In short, couples have declared themselves free from the traditional family narrative.  As their Pinterest boards make clear, they have left the narrow road of historic, societal expectations and are seeking to celebrate a narrative that is indicative of their experiences. And now, it’s cool to employ ‘birth announcements’ to celebrate the arrival of our new car coming in at 3,460 lbs.

As Christians, we should be deeply troubled by this trend. Our God values and loves children. And he designed marriage to be a place where children could be created, loved, and discipled. As John Piper says,

Marriage is for making children. Yes. But not absolutely. Absolutely marriage is for making children followers of Jesus.

Couples can have good and healthy marriages without having biological kids. But no couple should want to be kid free. Even couples that do not have their own biological kids should be diligently seeking for ways to reach and care for the next generation by coaching, helping with nursery, or participating in foster care. As Christian couples, we must not flee from the presence of children. We must embrace them as Jesus did.

And such an embrace is actually quite natural. Our whole understanding of the empirical and spiritual world is built upon the ideas of marriage, birth, and family. Christ was born. And we are called to embrace Christ through rebirth. To be human, we have to work within this frame. Kids are not something we can simply write out of the human experience.

And the conversation around vasectomy parties makes this fact abundantly clear. To celebrate their childlessness, couples have to employ child rearing terms. On their Instagram feeds, they talk of birthing businesses, of taking family photos with their dog, and of vasectomy reveals. To have a meaningful discourse with their neighbors, these trendy couples have to work within the bounds of nature and of the natural family unit. Every person celebrating their sterilization was born a baby and helped into adulthood. All our friends and neighbors also share this experience. To be human is to be born and raised. For this reason, Jesus came into the world as a baby. He did not appear as an adult. No one enters the world fully grown. At the end of the day, birth is not a societal construction. It is a biological reality within which we all live, move, and share.

We cannot escape the world of babies. But at the same time, we must recognize that true life is not found in delivery rooms. Nicodemus could not reenter his mother’s womb (John 3:4-5). True life is found in Christ by being born of the Holy Spirit.

Couples that seek to escape the burdens of child rearing so that can celebrate sex, homes ‘filled with sharp furniture,’ and increased spending power will be unable to find true life in being child-free. Instead of building our narratives around our view of babies, we need to return to the narrative of the Scriptures. We need to realize that true meaning and joy are found in Jesus. And as we do, we will find the ability to value both birth and our adult lives without making either of them into our means of salvation.