As healthy parents, we long to intervene in the suffering of our children.  We want them to be well and comfortable.  In infancy, this is good and ensures that their basic needs for food, shelter, and love will be met; however we should begin to allow some autonomy as our children try and assert themselves.  When they begin to walk, we must allow the occasional fall.  On the other hand, we must not be so over-bearing as to engineer circumstances to bring about their suffering, and at any rate it is hardly necessary as every created thing is groaning in pain under the weight of The Fall.

It is our task to provide them with the whole truth while shielding them from evil to the best of our abilities.  It is not our work to prevent their suffering.  Personal suffering to some degree is the very thing that leads one to God at the point of justification, and later at the various points of sanctification.  It is ordained that each and every Christian will suffer at the point of glorification due to the death of the physical body, the actual separation of spirit from flesh.  Though, we may cite an instance when a person is said to have “walked away with God,” this does not mean there was no pain in the metamorphosis that had to take place, and salvation is complete when it has passed through these three stages.  We may be sure the thief on the cross passed through them; albeit in an unusually rapid manner.

Scripture does not allow that we make personal peace and prosperity our goal in life, and as parents we are on occasion unhappy in our own suffering.  We occasionally desire, though it be momentary, to escape our hardship.  We may attempt this in a variety of ways- some seemingly benign and others completely unhealthy.  We may influence our children to attempt their own flight.  Also, in this we may inspire our children, though unwittingly, to go forth and right the wrongs that we’ve suffered within the roles and circumstances that God has designed and allowed  for us.  This we must strive against as suffering is ordained for the Christian.  The Christian by very definition, is the one attempting to navigate this fallen world in a manner that is pleasing to His Father God.  A Christian is one who has recognized his own offenses before God (his sin) and has purposed to live in a fight against further offense.  Therefore, to ignite in our children a desire to escape this difficulty is to inspire our children to abandon God.  May it never be!  

Copyright 2023.    L. L. Shelton.