Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
I have coached soccer for nearly 20 years, working with boys and girls from a wide variety of families. Many of the kids from religious homes are Christian. I’m always interested in how these kids behave around their peers.
Does their faith make a difference?
One thing I’ve noticed is that the kids from Christian homes tend to swear less. Yes, this does make them a little bit different. But here’s another difference I’ve seen, and it’s heartbreaking: Most of these kids inhibit themselves more than their secular peers, and in the wrong way. They’re less likely to establish healthy boundaries with other kids or stand up for what’s right, defending themselves or others. It’s as if their training from toddlerhood teaches them that conflict is wrong — that nice boys and girls are cautious, compliant, and pleasant instead of assertive, virtuous, and courageous.
Long ago, Job lamented, “Where shall wisdom be found?” (Job 28:12). Today I might add to that timeless cry the demise of courage.
Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation, whether for ourselves or for others. Courage is pivotal, because in order to truly possess any virtue a person must be able to sustain it in the face of difficulty.
In other words, courage is the foundational virtue upon which others rest. Or don’t.
Raising Bold Children by Reflecting All of Jesus
Our children aren’t becoming wimpy because we’re teaching them to be humble, loving, and patient. These are noble, essential qualities of Christ-like character, but they’re only part of God’s instruction. As parents we often overemphasize certain aspects of integrity at the expense of other important character traits. We teach our kids to be kind, loving, compliant — yet marginalize or even eradicate the more rugged virtues of boldness and courage.
We need to help our kids understand and recognize a more complete picture of Jesus, the Jesus who said, “Leave her alone” (John 12:7). Read the Gospels, and you see that Jesus is the Lamb who was offered as a sacrifice for us. But read Revelation, too; do we know and remember that He’s also the Lion, God’s ultimate warrior?
Yes, Jesus is meek — He said so himself. Meekness means yielding and being submissive. But ask your kids: “What is Jesus meek toward?” We cannot read the Gospels and conclude that Christ was submissive to the will of man, which is tainted with self-interest and is sometimes wicked. Jesus is submissive to His Father’s will. This is what we should be teaching our children. And being submissive to our Father’s will sometimes brings us into conflict with this world.
Meekness isn’t false humility or timidity or fear of conflict. Meekness is knowing who we are, believing that what God says is true, and then submitting to Him because we love Him in response to His love for us.
Raising Bold Children: The Do Nots — but Also the Dos
I think many parents oversimplify what it means to have courage by telling children that they need to exercise courage to say “no” to others. Yes, that’s important. But courage is more than just what we avoid — it’s about the actions we choose as we encounter and interact with others.
Jesus chastised the religious leaders of his day for “straining out a gnat” while swallowing an entire camel (Matthew 23:24). They overemphasized minor matters and in the process ignored weightier matters like justice, mercy, and good faith. I sometimes do the same thing as a parent, and I’m not proud of the reason: I strain at gnats because in some ways it’s easier than teaching and modeling for my kids a Christ-like example of what matters most. T
his is a common theme in Christian parenting, and often in children’s ministry. We teach our kids that the way to build integrity is by avoiding sin — their spiritual training mostly consists of what a person shouldn’t do. What is missing is a full instruction about what to do. Yes, avoiding sin is good and right, but what about raising children known for fortitude, courage, and a love of justice?
Courageous Character
Help your kids recognize that courageous character is defined just as much by acts of commission — choices and actions that are wrong — as it is by the acts of omission: not making choices that are right. Warn your kids against ignoring opportunities to reflect God’s love or meet a need. When we fail to love, serve, or stand up for truth, we fail to follow God’s will for our lives, a point made very clear in Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and His admonition that loving those in need — the “least of these” — defines our service to Jesus himself (Matthew 25:31-46).
Raising bold children requires helping them see that a courageous, Christ-like love sometimes has “tough” implications. When we encourage our children to be more loving, we usually mean for them to do nice things for others. We must also show them that love includes caring so much about someone that you confront him when he’s wrong and defend him when he’s under attack.
Fear and Cowardice
Here’s another way of looking at it: How often have you diagnosed a child’s behavior as cowardice? What do you say to your son when he admits that he saw a friend being mocked or bullied and did nothing but stand with the group? Have you helped him recognize that the sludge-like feeling gumming up his soul is a result of cowardice? Do you explain that cowardice is a normal, but insufficient response to seeing someone unjustly treated? If you want to raise bold children, you need to remind him that being Christ-like does not mean he is to remain inert and innocuous?
I’ll admit, this isn’t an easy topic to talk about. Warning against the corrosive nature of cowardice usually isn’t even on our parental radar. But in example after example, the Bible warns against cowardice. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus condemns fearful living.
The Enemy of Love
YYes, fear opposes love significantly, but let’s be clear: We experience fear as a normal, perhaps even necessary presence whenever we have the opportunity to grow courage — or cowardice. What matters is our response to fear.
If we are to raise assertive — not passive or aggressive — children who are able to live abundant lives and are better able to love God and others, we must begin helping our children grow the tougher virtues of boldness and courage. I envision children who learn assertive living well and are likely to become powerful and redemptive forces for good. Children who as adults are better able to handle their own tears and to help dry the tears of this world. Children who throughout their lives can love their neighbor and “encourage the fainthearted [and] help the weak” (1 Thessalonians 5:14) through sharing their strength and goodness.
