Fathering Your Children

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Eph. 6:4)
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​As a father, not angering your children is nearly impossible.  Every time I discipline one of my children or tell them they have to do their chores rather than play outside or simply give them an answer they do not want to hear, they can easily be made angry.  But Ephesians 6:4 is not about never making your children angry.  To accomplish that goal would mean giving your children whatever they ask for or always saying yes.  This certainly would not make them angry but would, of course, spoil them and engender an attitude of entitlement.  Rather, Ephesians 6:4 is about applying the second great commandment to your children.  We can sometimes think the second great commandment only applies to the people who live next door to us or across the street from us or whom we work next to or attend church with.  However, “loving your neighbor” is as much about your own children as it is about your next door neighbor, no matter how young they are.  Thus, we as fathers, should always strive to be the kind of father to our children as we would want for ourselves, if we were children.  We should not be arbitrary in our rules, tyrannical in our authority, abusive in our discipline, or harsh with our words.  We should never say the sort of things to our children we would not have wanted spoken to us by our fathers when we were children.  Telling our children they are dumb or not smart or saying, “What is wrong with you?” is never helpful at best, and harmful at worst.  As fathers, we should strive to be the kind of father to our children we would have wanted for ourselves—firm but fair, patient but not spineless, protective but not possessive, godly but not legalistic.