Lifetime Guarantee (6 page)

The mother who never takes time to teach and train her daughter what it means to be a woman—baking, sewing, housekeeping, including the intimate tasks such as proper hygiene at the onset of menstruation—communicates to her daughter that she is worthless and stupid, that she is not worth her mother’s time. In effect, she fails to teach her daughter how to “female.” The girl can easily develop into a woman who doesn’t feel feminine.

This can also be accomplished by a dad who communicates to his little daughter that he’d wanted her to be a son and so has treated her like a boy. Such a girl often receives her initiation into the world by being given a masculine name at birth. She’s whipped before she starts by flunking the physical for acceptance. Often her only “acceptance” from dad comes by roughhousing with him “like a boy.”

The illustration of non-teaching, non-intimacy cited above with the mother-daughter relationship can, of course, be applied to the father-son relationship as well; and a boy who grows up in that situation often develops into a man who feels threatened in his male role.

My friend Chuck Solomon tells a story about an orphaned baby fox that a woman discovered in the country one frigid winter day. She took pity on it, carried it home, bottle-fed it, weaned it onto dog food, and taught it tricks such as pushing a button with its nose to fill its water bowl. She loved it almost as if it were a child.

Two years later, she had the most beautiful, full-grown fox in the county. But she began to realize that the time for her to set the fox free to enjoy the fringe benefits of adult fox life had arrived. So, she returned him to the site of their first meeting, and after kissing him good-bye put him out into the woods. As she drove away, her mind was churning,
Oh, how this hurts,
she thought.
I’ve poured my life into that fox for two years. I hope he can somehow appreciate that without me he’d be dead.

But what became of the fox? It was January and getting down to 5 degrees at night. The fox curled up into a ball to try to keep warm. As the cold dawn would break, he could hardly get unballed, he was so stiff. He was hungry and frigid. Something little would scurry past his nose. It was normal fox food, but he didn’t know it; he was looking for his dog food. He was thirsty, but knew nothing of searching out the spring a mile away. He was looking for his button to push. In two weeks he was a dead fox!

That woman killed him just as surely as if she’d shot him in the head with a .22. She killed him with what she called “love,” but it wasn’t love. She didn’t really have his best interests at heart (agape). Her treatment of him kept him from learning how to fox!

People do the same kind of thing to their children. They make all the decisions for them, tell them what to wear, how to stand, how to smile, when they can accept Christ as Savior, and when they can’t. They handpick private schools with teachers who will continue the overprotection process.

When such a kid reaches age twenty-one, his folks say, “All right, Charlie, we’ve done the very best we could for you, at great personal sacrifice. But the expense was well worth it. Now go out there and face the world! Find yourself a spouse and live the victorious Christian life. We’re expecting great things from you.”

The young “adult” then creeps out into the world looking for his dog food bowl and a button to push. He crashes and burns!
He doesn’t know how to people.
He’s hooked on needing someone to make all his decisions for him because
he’s
never been allowed to make any. Physically he’s an adult; emotionally he’s in elementary school. His feeler’s stuck. Color him feeling guilty, impotent as a person, and stupid.

Indulgence is one of
the
most destructive things a parent can do to a child. Its end product is a person with an unbridled, unbroken will who lives with one goal in mind—to take care of Number One. If anything goes wrong, it’s never
his
fault. If there are bills to be paid but his church is planning a ski trip to Colorado, he never bats an eye. “Man, I hope there’s a new snow cover when we get there,” is all he says.

This problem of indulgence seems to be escalating, and I personally believe it’s because we have so many working mothers. Admittedly it’s sometimes necessary for a mother to work outside the home, but often the motive is TV sets and boats. The working parents arrive home at 5:30 with Johnny in tow from the day-care center. Everyone’s tired, and the child misbehaves. The folks don’t want to discipline him, so they let him get away with things too much. Through this process, he becomes the acting head of the house. He runs things
his
way. He is Lord of the Family Ring.

Being a Christian means among other things that I submit myself to God’s authority over me. I agree to let Him establish His Kingdom inside me. I let Him sit in my chair. But the indulged person often has great difficulty submitting to
any
authority, unless he agrees totally with that authority, in which case
he
still remains in control. Color him feeling rebellious.

Parents will often bottle up their emotions and give their children few outward signs of how they’re feeling. It complicates matters all the more if a given parent is a quiet person who communicates only with “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and similarly uninformative answers. The child of such a parent, because of his need for acceptance, will begin to try to read mom by Braille. He’ll crank out his feelings antenna and search for emotional evidence that he’s making it with her. He constantly checks his emotions as
the
barometer of truth that determines how his mom is reacting to him.

Females are especially vulnerable to this, because the Lord has constructed them to be intuitive folks to begin with. The female has the ability to arrive at a conclusion via a mysterious inner “knowing” and be right on target—much more so than a male. Thus, girls can be deceived into working their intuition overtime, and it results in overly depending on their emotions as a valid indicator of “truth.”

I have attempted to describe briefly some of the major mistakes that may have been made by your parents that could have resulted in your growing into an adult Christian who has a lot of difficulty making the Christian life work. But I believe we have yet to hit upon the devil’s biggest weapon. His most effective technique, visible in epidemic proportions, is “performance-based love,” or “performance-based acceptance,” which I’ll sometimes refer to as PBA.

It works like this. If you perform (act) as I want you to, I’ll accept you; if you don’t, I’ll reject you. In other words, I realize that I possess something that you need—love. So I’m going to use my “supply” to control you.

The youngest of our four sons is named Wade. Suppose I caught him lying to me when he was eight. Watch me blow it as I interact with him. “All right, Wade, you lied to me!” This is okay, so far. I’m nailing his poor performance. “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a
liar
.” Oh, oh; I’ve ceased to deal with
performance
and have switched to criticizing the
performer.
“And your mother can’t stand liars either! We promised each other thirty years ago that we’d never tolerate a liar in this house, but it looks like we’ve got our first liar! And God hates liars, too! ‘All liars shall have their place in the hell of fire!’ I’ll show you what we do to liars around here! We spank ’em! You get into that bedroom, you liar!” And I lay it on him.

Rear Wade this way for several years, and then interview him at age fifteen. If you could get him to open up to you, this is what he’d say: “I
feel
like dad can’t stand
me
because of the way I
act.
Neither can mom. She can’t stand to be around me. It’s just this
feeling
I’ve got. I know it’s true. And I
feel
like God is mad at me most of the time, too, because of the way I act. Oh, I see all those verses in the Bible about how much God loves me, but I just don’t feel that way about my relationship with Him. And you know, I don’t blame any of them, because I don’t like me, either! Fact is, if they
did
start to act like they loved me, I’d think they’d lost their marbles.”

See?
His feeler is stuck on rejection.
That’s the result of performance-based acceptance. I don’t want to do that to Wade, and neither did your folks want to reject their children that way. That’s the devil’s work. But I’ve got to deal with Wade’s lying. How do I accomplish this without destroying his personhood?

It’s really pretty simple once you see it. You deal with the performance, not with the performer. Here’s how I should handle the lying: “All right, Wade Gillham, you lied to me.” I’m rejecting performance. “And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s
lying.
” I’m still rejecting performance. “And your mother can’t stand it either. Thirty years ago, we swore that there was one thing we would never allow in our house, and that’s
lying.
We never have, and we don’t intend to begin with you. And God can’t stand lying, either. He hates it! Christ died because of stuff like that!” Now, have I said anything about Wade? No, I’m talking about what he
did,
not about him. I’m dealing with his performance, not his person.

I could continue: “Now, Wade, if I didn’t love you, I’d let you go ahead and lie. I’d indulge you and let you generate a big, green highway for lying to people to get your needs met. But I won’t fail you like that. I love you too much. So, I’m going to help you with your problem. You get into that bedroom. I’m going to spank you for lying to me.” Can you see that the very act of disciplining Wade will now be a demonstration of my commitment to him and my love for him? “Those whom the Lord loves He disciplines” (Hebrews 12:6).

If we interview Wade at age fifteen after having been reared under this system, he’d say, “Dad can’t stand the way I
act
sometimes, but he sure does love
me.
Mom’s the same way. Sometimes the things I
do
really bug her, but there’s no doubt in my mind that she loves
me.
And God is displeased with some of my behavior, too, but this one thing I know. He loves
me.
Hey, I don’t always like the way I
act,
either. I’m working on that, but I accept myself. I like me.” Do you see the difference?

Every religion from Mormonism to voodoo is based on PBA, humanity’s seeking acceptance from God by earning it. Christianity, however, is
relationship,
not religion. God reaches out to us with grace (unmerited favor) through Jesus Christ’s finished work. This relationship is not for sale. Jesus bought it with His life. It cannot be earned through PBA. You don’t earn a gift, you gratefully accept it.

The world system, on the other hand, is based totally on PBA, whether you’re trying to get the acceptance of peers in the jungles of the Amazon or the jungles of Harlem; whether you’re reared in a Mafia member’s home or a pastor’s home. Performance is the name of the game. Perform well enough and you can earn your love supply out of your environment, even in your church.

One of the best examples I can offer in our culture is the school system. Now, I’m not setting out to condemn the schools, but let’s face it, they weren’t handed down from Mount Sinai. They are part of the world. Even the Christian schools are not exempt from PBA.

I’m going to use Bill, my number three son, as “Exhibit A.” I saved some of his first-grade papers to illustrate my point about PBA in our schools. He’s a grown man now, a delightful brother in the Lord who’s an editor and a musician. Illustration 2.1 depicts one of his spelling papers.

Now, let’s say that I decide I need to go up to the school to discuss Bill’s progress (or lack of it) with his teacher. I say, “Ma’am, I see here that Bill’s given it six shots, and he’s got three right and three wrong, which got him a grade of U. But what about this word
nine
? He got that one right, but you didn’t say anything about that one. How come?”