Godly Parenting: Justice vs. Mercy

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

RICHARD LAND: Jim, welcome to For Faith & Family.

JAMES LUCAS: Thank you very much for having me on the program, always a delight to talk to you, sir.

LAND: Let’s begin today’s discussion with the justice mercy paradox of parenting. How do we, as parents, hold before our children an uncompromising sense of justice, while at the same time, letting our children get away with all sorts of things on a regular basis?

LUCAS: You know, the Lord tells us that He will make justice the measuring line but He also tells us that mercy triumphs over judgment and so, He’s telling us, I’m going to parent you with this paradox. I am going to really hold a strict line. I don’t excuse sin, I don’t excuse bad behavior, but I am also, not only holding higher standards than anyone in the human world that you live in, I’m also going to hold up higher mercy and standards for mercy than anyone you’ve run into. He’s holier than we are but He’s also more understanding than we are and I think if we find, as parents, that we dispense justice without mercy, I think we end up building shame into our children, and I really do think we plant the seeds of massive rebellion because it’s just this relenting pressure that starts to feel like oppression and they don’t have any room to be human. But I think if we go the other way and if we dispense mercy without justice, we really don’t give children a sense of what being good really means. I think many parents don’t start this early enough. We see these little children, three and four and five years old and they are doing these things. We call them naughty and we have all these little words, and we start excusing this behavior. This is the time to win the battle with justice before they know there is a war. If they are old enough to say no, they are old enough to say yes, and I think that we need to not make excuses. He’s tired, he’s sick; he’s too little to understand how to do this, because bad behavior is going to be the fruit of that, so we have to know where to hold up the justice but we have to know that sometimes the best punishments are the ones that you don’t give. One of my children, as an example, overall a pretty good kid, had done a pretty good job but he missed curfew. We talked about it; we did some steps on this side. Then when he missed it a second time, and at this point I could see there was real brokenness, without me having to take initiative and say you’ve done all this and really go into that sort of parenting by nagging and lecture mode, I could just see that he was broken. I could see that he was on the ground, he was sorry; he was asking for forgiveness; he was thinking of ways to make restitution, and I got to say something to him that really I felt God say to me in my spirit many times. I said, “You know, I’m going to get to do now something for you that God has done for me, many times. I’m going to not punish you as you deserve.” He said he deserved to be grounded for a month or two months or three months, and he was just really very hard on himself. I said, “I am now going to do for you what God has done for me: I am going to forgive you and not require that of you, and I am going to watch how you respond to my graciousness. Just as God shows us graciousness in hopes that that will lead us to repentance and a better life, I am going to do the same with you, and I am going to watch and see how you respond, and if you take this as I’m going to change my life and I’m not going to do this again because I’ve been shown kindness when I didn’t deserve it.” Rather than, wow, I got away with this, and I’m going to take advantage of it, I think now we’ve applied mercy as a parent. We’ve also let them know the other side of the equation is still there, the justice is still there, and if you take advantage of this, you are going to be bringing that other side back into your life.

LAND: One of the most fascinating concepts to me in your book, Jim, was the distinction you make between discipline and punishment. Tell us what the goals of each are and how they relate to justice.

LUCAS: Very good. I see so many people, even Christian teachers and leaders, using those two terms interchangeably, Richard, disciple and punishment, and that we just say they are the same thing. But you know, its interesting because the root word of discipline is disciple and what we do with a disciple is we want them to become a follower of the “Way” and so, I think God clearly distinguishes between discipline and punishment in Hebrews 12 and many other places. Discipline is actually designed to make us stronger and keep going. Punishment is the complete opposite. It is designed to make us less weak and to stop where we are going. So when we are being disciplined, a parent who is working with a child who is struggling in school with their grades, for example, and going through that discipline and requiring them to spend the time on the books and to really get into it, your goal with that discipline of setting those boundaries and insisting on them and tying consequences to missing them and so on, is you want them to develop endurance and perseverance so that they can keep going. Punishment, on the other hand, is to deal with sinful behavior. There the goal is not to get you to keep going, but to do the opposite – to get you to stop. As a parent, I think, when we are dispensing justice, how long do we continue punishment related to sin? We don’t do it for twenty or thirty minutes or until a certain time out period is over; we should continue the punishment until they stop because that’s really the goal, and not get into that punishment pendulum where we are kind of tough and they haven’t really changed but we are starting to feel bad about things, and so we go the other way and start showing mercy when they haven’t really asked forgiveness or shown any repentance or made any restitution. So again, discipline – we want to introduce discipline, which may not seem pleasant at the time we are told in the Bible, but does produce a harvest of righteousness. We want to work with our children to show them how to continue to grow and persevere through hard challenging situations, and part of our parenting is going to be there. But we are not going to cut any slack when we are talking about sin; we are going to continue this punishment until they stop.

LAND: Where does mercy fit into the equation of master parenting and how important is it for successful parenting?

LUCAS: Well, you know, it’s interesting because I know so many Christians through the years, Richard, who have been so thrilled that God showed them mercy, many of them tough stories, deeply into areas of sin and so on, so glad and sometimes the ones who got the most forgiveness, it’s almost like we can turn around and without even thinking about it, become that unmerciful servant, where we are given all of this forgiveness and mercy, and then we turn right around and partly with good intentions, we say, boy my parents didn’t have any boundaries around me and let me get into this, and now I’m going to go put these very restrictive, maybe even oppressive, boundaries around my children. The intentions may be good but the results of those things, because we are leaving mercy out of the equation; we are forgetting that we don’t want to go to the other side of the pendulum. We want to maybe have tighter boundaries than our parents had for us, but we also want to keep the mercy that we are glad we got from God in the equation. I think that is what allows us to do this. I’ve seen parents say to their children, “What’s the matter with you?” And I think if we can just remember, Richard, it’s the same thing that’s the matter with us. What’s the matter with them is fragile human nature and sin, that’s the same problem that we have and so, I think, when we approach our children, we need to say, I’m always going to have mercy in view, even when I’m distributing this justice, even when I’m carrying through this punishment. When I see real change in this child, whether they are six years old or twelve years old or whatever, I am going to do it, and I’m going to insist that I see the results in fruit of change as well. If they’ve broken one of their sibling’s toys, I don’t think they need a lecture; I think they need to feel sorry about that, ask forgiveness, and I think they need to either work to pay for that toy, or they need to sell something of theirs that they value to get the money to pay for that toy. There needs to be obvious fruit. There needs to be obvious restitution. But if we see that, I think we need to have a heart that’s just ready like the prodigal son’s father that you were talking about recently that we are really to receive them back in and celebrate because the punishment is no longer needed. They got it, and they’ve turned around.

LAND: My wife is a psychotherapist and earlier in her ministry she was doing some counseling using narrative theology. There are two stories that they would tell from the Bible that always resonated. One was the story of David and Bathsheba, and the other was the story of the prodigal son, and my wife said it was clear everybody wants a father like the prodigal’s father, and, of course, the great truth of the Scripture is, everyone can have a father like the prodigal’s father and they can have God as their Heavenly Father. What would you say is the key to teaching our children the values that we hold dear in our hearts?

LUCAS: You know, I think that I’m a very values-oriented person. I am actually working on a new book on this whole idea of ethics and values, and I know that’s a subject very near and dear to your heart, and I think because I’m also a teacher, it’s very easy to fall into the trap that all of it has to come through what I say – that in the Bible it tells us that God will teach us his ways. But He also says we must bear or grow through the consequences, so I think that if we teach the values verbally in our home, which we should do, but if that’s all we do, but we shield them from results, I think we are going to end up with irresponsible, immature, frankly self-righteous hypocrites who know the truth but haven’t really had to face the consequences of living it out. I think if we go the other way and just expose them and say, you know, the school of hard knocks is going to teach them, but we aren’t giving them all the values to go along with it, you know, we are reluctant to talk about the sexual issues that they might face as they go along or the bullying issues if we have younger children and how to deal with those things, I think they are going to be out there dealing with constant trial and error, and so what I would say is let’s not shield children because they are small; let’s find a way to use what we call the greenhouse approach, where when they are really little, of course, they need full protection, and we are going to keep them in the greenhouse because the elements are too strong and they can’t deal with it. But as they start to get a little bit older, let’s start putting them outside. Let’s start giving them exposure to maybe friends from church or friends from the neighborhood, and let’s watch how they act, that when those children start getting them into bad behavior, let’s watch how our children respond. Not let it go too far, but watch how they respond and instead of saying, the answer here is they can’t ever see anybody again. I am going to send them to their room for ten years and hopefully the influences won’t get them; to say, you know, I just learned something about my child. I think it’s just very important while they are little to begin to learn those lessons and not for us to feel that we are going to have to push this child into the kingdom of God or push this child into right thinking, but that we are going to find ways if we talk about not complaining, if we talk about being gracious, and we find ourselves in the store and we find them asking for everything, one of the principles that I think teaching through results says is, you know the Bible says do everything without complaining or arguing. You are complaining and so what you are complaining about, you are going to get less of. If you complain about an 8:00 bed time, we are going to move the bedtime to 7:45. If you complain about too much broccoli on the plate, we are going to give you more broccoli, and you can’t have the dessert you want until you finish your broccoli, and I think what we’re saying is, we are going to let the consequences do the talking – not just the values. The Bible tells us that a servant will not be corrected by mere words; though they understand, they won’t respond. I think, I see a lot of parents of younger children failing at this point because they are so little and we feel so protective, that it is easy to excuse their behavior. And I love the response that Florence Nightingale, who founded really modern nursing, at the end of her life they said, “What would you attribute your success to?” And she said one thing, “I never gave or took an excuse.”

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