Our family’s Shih Tzu wore a harness 24/7 during his younger years. We had originally gone with the traditional dog collar until one sunny summer afternoon in the backyard when he blithely shucked off his cute, leather pet store circlet with a single energetic twist of his muscular little neck. He disappeared through an impossibly tiny gap between the boards of the fence faster than a speeding bullet on the heels of a terrified squirrel.
My daughter, who was probably nine at the time, wept her way through the neighborhood looking for him until some observant elderly gent pointed to her pup sitting in a nearby yard basking in his newfound freedom.
Motive and Opportunity
Those of you who have ever owned a Shih Tzu or other brachycephalic dog breed like a pug or bulldog will immediately understand why: the little guy had a flat face and a neck as wide as his jaw. Everything else up there was fluff. Speed and energy made a collar on that neck as functional as the jeans around the waist of your fifty-something overweight plumber confronted with the forces of gravity. For our female readers, this is why your aging husbands sometimes sport suspenders, even if you don’t find them flattering. Gravity will be what gravity will be. So will matter and energy.
So that’s why young, energetic dogs with flat faces wear harnesses. Youth is all the motivation they need to do things that are probably not the best for them. The flat face is just opportunity presenting itself. A similarly young and energetic squirrel-chasing Collie, Shepherd or even a Chihuahua in the same backyard is going nowhere. The standard collar would catch on his jaw and never make it over his nose.
So then, sin requires both motive and opportunity to manifest in the world. You wondered where I was going with that, didn’t you?
Socializing Children
Any Christian parent raising a decent sized family knows his or her children differ from one another on the social hierarchy. Child #1 takes to the hierarchy like royalty assuming the throne for which it was groomed. His obvious physical assets, natural confidence and palpable charisma operate like genetic gifts, opening for him more doors than he will ever have time to walk through. Child #2 desperately wants to play with others, but can’t figure out how. “Why don’t they love me?” he wonders, bewildered at the way his efforts to connect with his peers go predictably awry. Child #3 says, “What hierarchy?” … and only if you ask him first. He’s got stuff going on in his own head that’s WAY more interesting to him than what his peers think about him. He may not know he HAS peers.
Child #1 has both motive and opportunity. The temptations facing him to sexual sin, social success and a life in which God may be intellectually acknowledged but never really obeyed with a whole heart are ten times as frequent and orders of magnitude more powerful than you and I may ever experience. Children like this rarely remain in Christian circles for long. The distractions out there are too overpowering, even if they will ultimately end in misery, loss and a wasted life.
Child #2 has motive but no opportunity. He is fully prepared to succumb to any and all of the myriad temptations his brother faces if only the world would just offer them to him, but it never will. He lacks that “it-factor”, and it can’t be faked or donned like a costume. He could still end up sinning very badly indeed, but his temptations are of a different sort: misogyny, hatred, anger and bitterness. He’s more likely to become a porn addict than a fornicator.
Child #3 has opportunity but no motive. For him, climbing the social hierarchy is of no interest at all. He lives in another world, and has to be taught how to relate to this one even if he has the physical tools and natural appeal to succeed socially. For him, relating to others will always be a burden to be borne rather than a skill to acquire or an appetite to be slaked at all costs. His sins will be those of indifference or inattention, or perhaps occupation with false gods or abstractions rather than the needs around him.
As my children grew, I figured the differences out eventually, and learned how to deal with each situation with some degree of success. But it would have helped me to learn from our straying Shih Tzu.
On Being a Good Dog
There are dogs so timid or well tamed that they need neither collar nor fence. These are not “good dogs”, but their disposition, natural or inculcated, makes disobedience an unattractive prospect.
Then there are dogs desperate to shake off the rules, but some feature of the way they were born, like an inconveniently large jaw or nose, currently makes doing so impossible. These too are not really “good dogs”. They merely comply because they cannot do or be anything else. Maybe the day will come when they can. Then … watch out!
Finally, there is the dog with both the drive and ability to shake free of restrictions and chase life’s squirrels. Watch this guy. He needs a harness, not a collar. He also needs you to help him avoid getting lost out in the world or hit by a car until he learns to heed his master’s voice. After all, the squirrels always get away, and the yard is much safer than the street. One day a collar may be perfectly fine for him, or nothing at all, but it will be after he learns to manage his own nature and the plethora of opportunities it affords him to get in trouble.
Scripture bears out the truth that socially successful children produce higher rates of spiritual disappointment. The apostle Paul writes:
“Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”
That’s not to minimize the spiritual risk for other types of children. A child that attracts ten times as many temptations as his or her siblings should not eat up ten times as much of their parents’ time. Other types of children have equally pressing needs of their own. These may be far less obvious than the temptations to narcissism, solipsism or egomania their brother or sister faces.
The Work of a Lifetime
The Lord has a perfect place in his kingdom for each of our children, no matter their natural dispositions, gifts and attributes … and no matter the apparent lack thereof. But we will not get them there by treating them all the same way, and we will not get them there by catering to their instincts and inclinations. All of these may need to be laid aside or vigorously rejected in order to become the person Christ wants them to be.
For parents, learning how to manage that is the work of a lifetime.
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