As I prepared to become a parent, I thought a great deal about my parenting philosophy. I thought about all of the different methods of discipline and the purpose of discipline. I thought about what outcomes I wanted to achieve through discipline. And I thought about what kind of motivations I wanted my children to have for doing the things they do.
I realized that I wanted more than just specific outward behavior. I decided that my goal was not going to be to control my children’s outward behavior. I decided that I would not motivate my children through guilt, manipulation, or fear. While these motivations may result in short term behavior management, they do not result in long term convictions of the heart. I came to the conclusion that what I wanted for my children was for them to develop their own personal lifelong commitments to love, truth, and the value of other human beings. I wanted them to be motivated from the heart by the desire to cultivate life in all situations. And I wanted them to understand that God’s way brings life and that God is the source of Life.
Here are Some quick examples of the different types of motivations. Let’s take stealing. You could motivate your child not to steal by telling them that they could go to jail, you would punish them, you would be angry, they would embarrass your family, and it would make them a bad person. These motivate through guilt, fear, and shame. Or you could teach your child that every person has dignity, value, and worth and that when we take something from someone we are not honoring the dignity of a human being. Also, if we as parents treat the child with dignity and respect throughout her life, then she experiences being valued and respected. She learns her value and therefore recognizes the value in others. Her motivation to not steal is to honor the dignity of others rather than fear of punishment or shame.
Take drug abuse as another example. You could motivate your children through guilt and fear, or you could explain to them the destruction that drugs bring to our body, mind, and to our relationships and families.
When children understand and believe at a heart-level the truth of something, they don’t need any outside force to make them do the right thing. But if they don’t internalize and believe something at the heart-level, they will only continue to do the right thing as long as the external consequences are threatening enough.
Over the years as I have thought about these concepts in respect to my children, it has given me insight into the different ways that we can be motivated to follow God. Many people are motivated to follow God out of fear. They are afraid of going to hell, or they are afraid of God being mad, or disappointed, or leaving them. Many times this is exactly what other well-meaning Christians encourage them to feel. They may also be afraid that other Christians will judge them or look down on them.
But my question is what does God want us to be motivated by? Why does God want us to follow Him? Why does he want us to behave a certain way? Is it because he just wants complete control over us for His benefit? If so, maybe He does motivate through anger, guilt, and shame. But maybe He wants us to follow Him because we were made to be in relationship with Him. Maybe He knows that being in a relationship with Him and receiving His love, grace and acceptance is the fuel that we were made to run on as humans. Maybe He made us and knows how we were designed, and what ways of living will bring death and what ways will bring life. Maybe He is actually motivated by love, and maybe He wants us to be motivated by that love. John 3:16 says that because God loved the world so much, he sent Jesus to die on our behalf to save us, Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrated his love for us by dying for us, Ephesians 2:4-5 says that because of His great love for us, God made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgression, Titus 3:4-5 says that when the kindness and love of God appeared he saved us, and 1 John 4:9-10 says, “this is how God showed his love: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.”
As I read the Bible, what I see is a God who is motivated by His love for us. I don’t see a God who is motivated by selfishness or anger. And I believe that God expresses His love for us throughout the Bible because that is how He wants us to be motivated. God wants us to understand that He loves us and knows that we were made to be dependent on Him for Life. He knows how we are designed and the ways of living that bring life rather than death. He wants us to flourish and he wants to show us how. As we decide to enter into a reconciled relationship with Him, He wants us to do it because we see His goodness and the truth that he reveals about ourselves and about life. He doesn’t want us to pray a prayer and try to be good because we are afraid of punishment. Consequences are mentioned in the Bible but I don’t think that they are meant to be a scare tactic or threat. I think God simply wants us to know the reality of the consequence of our actions. I think many people take those portions of scripture and make them the focus of the gospel. When we overemphasize consequences, we make that the main motivation, and that is too shallow of a vision of the Life to which God is calling us.
As I think about how I parented my children, I wanted them to do and understand certain things because I loved them so much. I wanted them to understand that the things that I taught them bring life and not death. I did discipline and I did give consequences for their poor choices but it was always motivated by love, never by anger. Discipline was an aspect of my training but not the focus. I used discipline very sparingly. It was always to help them to learn what is true, loving, and life-giving. I had no intention of controlling them for my benefit. I taught them for their own benefit. If we can learn to parent in a benevolent way, how much more must God be a benevolent Father?
Maybe it is easy to understand that God loves us and forgives us of our past when we are first saved, but many Christians struggle with understanding that God still has the same love and acceptance for us when we sin even after we are saved. They switch from being motivated by love and truth to living in fear of rejection and condemnation for their behavior. But God’s love does not change based on our behavior. We can be secure in God’s love and acceptance; we don’t have to live in fear. God’s love for us is based on grace and mercy not on works. There is nothing that will cause us to lose our place as God’s child. God invites us to Life. He shows us a picture of who we really are and how things were meant to be. When we let Him, He transforms our hearts. A different way of living naturally flows out of a changed heart. A changed heart doesn’t need to be motivated by fear. Fear motivates us to use will power to change our outward behavior, but heart transformation is a change of all of our most deeply held beliefs and values on the inside.
If you are thinking, “but what will cause us to be ‘good’ if we have nothing to fear,” maybe you haven’t experienced how life-giving God’s love is, and how living according to God’s design brings life and flourishing. When you understand these things in the depth of your heart, it is a whole different motivation.
Amen!