I watched the Breakfast Club. Not a bad movie. It had some funny scenes in it. I admit I never would have watched it if it was not for my wife. Now I’m filled with questions.

The first of several questions that I have is where were the parents of these young adults? The dialog and brief moments with the parents picking and dropping kids off was really saddening. They really seemed to care less about their kids. This young adults were wrestling with the good and evil that exists in high school in a total vacuum of adult insight.

The adults proved to be little more than kids that never fully grew up themselves. Caricatures of adults at best.

How do we keep from becoming that? How do we work to become people that our kids can always talk with? How do we become our kids friends while remaining their parents and being good guides during their early years?

There is good advice in the letter to the Ephesians. It is one of the only direct references to parenting in the Bible so its pretty important.

“Parents do not stir up your children to wrath.”

What is God’s advice on parenting? Don’t stir up wrath. I want to avoid being a man of wrath with my kids. One of the opposites of wrath is grace and another is mercy. How does that practically look as we raise our kids?

As a Christian my job is not to raise my kids to be moral people. Honestly, I don’t think we should strive to raise moral kids. I believe we should strive to raise Christian kids. There is a difference. There is confusion about what it means to be a Christian. Some believe it just means that we are or become a “good person.” It is so much more than mere moralism.

I’m also working through how should I discipline my children. I believe discipline and punishment are two different things.
If I as a parent just create a set of laws/rules for my children to follow with punishments and rewards then how does that show Christ?

If I am creating law then does that not necessarily miss the mark of grace? Is doing that setting us up to one day stir up our children to wrath or is that just a necessary part of parenting?

Dear writers of the Breakfast Club why didn’t you bother answering those questions? The answer to that last question is I think they didn’t have a clue either.