{"id":8853,"date":"2014-01-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.familylife.com\/flministries\/?p=8853"},"modified":"2014-01-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T00:00:00","slug":"giving-our-children-a-clearer-picture-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/parenting\/foundations\/spiritual-development\/giving-our-children-a-clearer-picture-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Our Children a Clearer Picture of God"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Most of my life I\u2019ve had nearly perfect eyesight. I\u2019ve also largely taken it for granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A while back, I started getting bad headaches at the end of most days. At night, especially while driving, I had a harder time with depth perception and I noticed that light seemed streaky in my peripheral vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went for an eye exam since it\u2019d been a few years. (Okay, it had been six years<\/em> when I looked at my medical file. Kids are why we can\u2019t have nice things, like brain cells, anymore.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to one of those retail centers where you can get your eyes examined and your frames and eyeglass prescription filled at the same time. A technician used a series of machines to test my eyes. (Raise your hand if you want to vote the \u201cpuff test machine\u201d off the island.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the technician used the thingamajigs, the doctor brought me into a room with the lab results, put a series of lenses in front of my eyes, and asked me, \u201cWhich is clearer? This? Or that?\u201d Somehow, based on my answers, the doctor wrote me a prescription.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All I\u2019d ever needed before were weak reading glasses. The prescription this doctor wrote was wildly <\/em>different than anything I\u2019d ever been prescribed. She wanted to correct for both near- and farsightedness as well as astigmatism, a diagnosis no other eye doctor had ever given me. Also, I\u2019d have to wear these glasses all the time. <\/em>Like a grown-up!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted another opinion. In the course of a month, I went for two more eye exams. Each doctor\u2019s prescription was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One told me I needed only reading glasses to correct my farsightedness (even though he said I\u2019m both near- and farsighted) because he felt reading and using the computer were causing my eyes the most strain. The other wanted to correct both my near and farsightedness with bifocals. Neither doctor said anything about astigmatism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was starting to feel as if they were just guessing. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was time to enlist a friend who had been an optician. I brought my exam charts to her one afternoon and supervised our kids in the backyard while she looked over everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked her to use small words to explain to me what was going on. She said different types of eye doctors use different ways of notating prescriptions, like different languages. But even once she\u2019d translated and compared them, there was still a significant difference in the prescriptions each doctor wrote. What were <\/em>consistent were my lab results. All three labs measured my near- and farsightedness as nearly identical. All three labs showed me as having astigmatism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo why the different prescriptions?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell,\u201d she said, \u201cMeasuring people\u2019s eyes and diagnosing vision deficiencies has gotten very precise with modern diagnostic tools and technology, but prescribing <\/em>isn\u2019t an exact science. It relies on the doctor\u2019s clinical experience, instincts, and the way you respond to his \u2018this or that\u2019 questions when he tries out lenses on you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn\u2019t building my confidence in the process. \u201cSo three different doctors had basically the same information about my eyes, but they all took a different approach to correcting my vision?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the \u2018practicing\u2019 part of the term \u2018practicing medicine,\u2019\u201d she quipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich prescription should I go with?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust pick the doctor you felt best about, fill the prescription, and see how you like your glasses after a few weeks. With a good prescription, you\u2019ll see well enough that you won\u2019t think about your vision anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, I\u2019m not going to achieve perfection here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNope. We can\u2019t perfectly <\/em>correct vision with artificial lenses, but we can get close enough that the distortion doesn\u2019t distract you anymore\u2026 at least not while you\u2019re wearing your glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Imperfect lenses<\/h2>\n\n\n

As parents, we are the first lenses through which our kids see God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way we parent our kids can have a profound impact on how they view God. As my friend said, prescribing isn\u2019t an exact science and different parents will have different approaches, but the ideal is that we don\u2019t create a distracting amount of distortion in how our kids see God, and the best way we know how to do that is by parenting our kids the way God parents us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parenting (and disciplining) our kids the way God does requires that we see our Father for who He really is. It\u2019s hard to copy a picture you can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the way many parents were parented themselves gave them a distorted view of God. None of us has perfect parents, though in my opinion mine are the best, and many of you might say the same of yours. But if your parents were misguided in their approach, or worse, absent, abusive, or neglectful in their treatment of you, it\u2019s tainted the bonds between you that are supposed to be a representation of God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s good news that no matter what kind of lenses your earthly parents are (even if they\u2019re amazing), and no matter how distorted our kids\u2019 lenses are (that\u2019s us), God is still the same. <\/em>How crisply we see Him or how distorted our view of Him is as a result of our lenses\u2014those things haven\u2019t changed His character; they’ve only affected how we see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God loved you before the world was formed, and the fact that He still loves you after all you\u2019ve done might seem unbelievable based on the impression you got from your own parents. That you are offered the full measure of God\u2019s favor and His grace regardless of what you do or don\u2019t do might seem all but insane based on distorted lenses and what we know of our human capacity for love and forgiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are image-bearers of God, which is why we have any capacity for love and forgiveness, but we eventually come up against our own limitations. Yet God\u2019s love, favor, kindness, forgiveness, holiness, knowledge, and grace have no limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best news as children of earthly parents, and now as parents as ourselves, is that God\u2019s love covers a multitude of mistakes (1 Peter 4:8), whether those mistakes are our parents\u2019, our kids\u2019, or our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we will accept it, God\u2019s grace serves as the self-healing mechanism for our inadequate lenses when we fail at love, forgiveness, and grace itself. His grace can make us into good-enough lenses:<\/p>\n\n\n