The value of the father as a spiritual guide. (Part III. Love)

SUMMARY: Parents need to demonstrate love to their children in order for them to heed discipline and instruction. The use of power without love corrupts authority and undermines the biblical concept of subjugation. Christian parents need to understand that they are born anew in Christ and should model their love on God's love. Children need to be loved, accepted, consoled, encouraged, and admonished based on unconditional love. Lack of love is the primary cause of children's anger and exasperation. The revival of love must begin at home, and parents should hug their children to make them feel loved, accepted, and forgiven. The Christian home filled with love makes children feel safe, happy, and privileged. Prodigal children in the home need love, acceptance, and forgiveness. By cultivating love in their children, parents can effectively discipline and instruct them, and their children will praise God.

A son will not heed the discipline and instruction of the father if he is not persuaded of his love. We are specialists in demonstrating the supremacy of the father at the family level, hegemony and dominance in the hierarchy of the home. We are parents, usually the strongest, and sometimes we look the weakest. But power is not the same as authority. Power tends to be a capricious and inordinate use of authority when exercised without love. Power is corrupt - even in the home - when it rules out of concepts of false manhood over those loved ones whom we are obliged to serve first and then lead.

God has not endowed us with such power to rule children, but with authority in Christ. An authority clothed in love. Without love there is no government that prevails, no son and wife that allow themselves to be led or subjugated biblically. The home continues to be the best ground for the exercise of parental authority in God's way. As Christian parents - I am the first - we still have a lot to learn. We must leave behind the past, the memories of our own parents who raised us in a hurry, without love perhaps, without giving us the attention we deserved and the encouragement that we will one day need. We cannot continue to hide behind their mistakes to justify ours.