Christianity Today Bible Study: The Myth of the Perfect Parent

Christianity Today Bible studies are available for download at ChristianBibleStudies.com. This one, "The Myth of the Perfect Parent," is based on an article in the January 2010 CT.

Christianity Today has graciously allowed me to post the studies I have written to this site, usually one or two a month. If you would like to use them for anything other than your own spiritual growth, I ask you to download them at the CT Bible study site mentioned above. You can go here to purchase the study for your group.

According to Leslie Leyland Fields in “The Myth of the Perfect Parent,” Bible-believing parents have imbibed the philosophy of John B. Watson, an early 20th-century psychologist who boasted he could train any child. Christians often follow the same kind of behaviorism, giving it a Christian veneer with selected Bible verses.

And yet many children in evangelical homes are not “turning out” the way we hope or expect. Plus, many biblical saints were either products of bad parenting or bad parents themselves. And if we judge God’s success as a parent by how his children turn out, then he doesn’t pass our test either. Our expectations of parenting are clearly off-kilter and need to be rethought.

Here is a link to the study for your personal, individual use. Your feedback is always welcome.

HT: Thanks to Mary DeMuth for allowing me to use this link.