Hi, I'm Peter. I'm one of the campus pastors here. Today I'm going to talk about the real consequences of a successful Valentine's Day, which is children.
Hopefully not for you guys yet, but one day maybe. I know raising kids is future stuff for most of you. As far as I know, none of you have children right now - maybe some secret love children that I don't know about, but anyway.
Today I want to talk about relationships, the Bible, and the BS we all believe about raising children. Some of you want kids, some of you really want kids, and some of you do not want kids. We're all in different baskets. But the reality is that no matter if you have kids of your own or not, if we live in community, kids will be a part of your life. If you're a good friend with deep relationships with multiple people, at least one of them is going to have kids. Then you're going to be wondering, what do I do to help raise this child?
Many of you already have experience with children, and if you do, you probably know they love to ask one question: Why? It's such a simple question - just one word, three letters - but it's so difficult to answer.
"Why are you eating that?" "Because I like it." "Why?" "Because it's spicy." "Why do you like spicy food?" "Because my parents gave spicy food to me when I was a kid." "Why did they give you spicy food?" "Because that's what they grew up with." "Why?"
And then you start questioning your entire existence, wondering if you've just been brainwashed your entire life to like spicy food. Like somebody along your ancestral line decided that pain is good.
But this question of "why" gets us down to very foundational ideas. It breaks things down to the core thing, or at least it tries to. I think it's a very good question for us to ask in more areas of our life, including raising children, because it gets us down to: Why do I do this thing? Why am I choosing to raise my kid this way? Why am I choosing to live my life this way?
One of the longest running conflicts in my marriage is the question of Santa. My wife grew up with Santa, believing in Santa. Her parents were very big about doing all the Santa things, and I did not grow up with Santa. I didn't even know there were children who believed in Santa. So when we were dating, we had to figure out what we would teach our children.
I was against Santa because why would you lie to your children? That sets such a bad precedent. Also, no gifts, because we are not going to raise spoiled children.
But then my wife asked, "How will our children learn to be grateful? How will we teach them to say thank you if they never receive anything?" And I thought, "Oh, that's a good point."
So when you ask why and keep asking why, you get down to: Why do we do this whole gift-giving thing? This whole Santa thing, this magical enchantment of a season versus not? And once you've gotten to the core of the thing, as Christians, we have to ask ourselves one more question: Do I look like the world or do I look like Jesus?
If I'm just giving gifts to flaunt my money or increase my reputation, do I look like the world, or do I look like Jesus? Or if I'm giving gifts so that I'm teaching my children gratitude, do I look like the world, or do I look like Jesus? It's the same action - we're giving gifts. But when we get down to the why, then we can examine: Is it like the world or is it like Jesus? Because it's not always easy to tell.
But in order to raise your kids purposefully, you have to ask yourself these two questions: Why? And then: Do I look like the world or do I look like Jesus?
God is the perfect parent, and Jesus says that if we've seen him, we've seen God the Father. That's in John 14. They're so linked together as one that Jesus says, "I and the Father are one."
For many of us, someone has looked at us and said, "You look just like your mom" or "You look just like your dad." We read Psalm 139:13-18 because I wanted us to get an idea of what kind of parent God is. It says he knit me together in my mother's womb, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. "How precious to me are your thoughts! How vast is the sum of them!" This is who God is. This is what kind of father he is. First John also says, "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God."
I think for all of my life, I've always wanted a kid. My mom will say that when I was a small child, she would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I definitely went through the firefighter phase, the police officer phase, and the astronaut phase. But she says that the first career choice I ever told her was that I wanted to be a dad.
Obviously I wasn't ready for a long time, but I wanted to be a dad. I loved my children before I even knew what they would be like or what they would look like. And I think that's a reflection of who God is. God loved you long before your parents even did. God loved my son before I did. He is the parent I want to be like.
I think we want to be like our parents in all of their good ways. And when you have a good, perfect father, you want to be exactly like him.