Regardless of the particular sins we may see manifested in our children, one fact applies to all: to sin is their nature, and the only cure is the gospel. Rick Holland offers this needed reminder:
Parenting is a multi-level maze of challenges to navigate and sins to mortify—both in parents and in children. The concerns of parenting are as numerous as the number of children. Dealing with the depraved infection natural to our children’s souls on the septic morality of our culture is far beyond the intuitive abilities of loving parents. Sin’s pulverizing destruction comes from both the outside—culture’s moral chaos—and from the inside—the soul’s pervasive sinfulness.
Parenting can be wrongly interpreted as a process of keeping our children good and pure. The truth is that every child is born sinful. The goal is not to keep children from becoming messed up by sin; instead it is to see their inborn sin covered by the gospel. As a friend of mine puts it, “parents can’t mess up their children; they come that way as a result of Adam’s fall.”—Richard L. Holland, “Christian Parenting and Homosexuality,” The Master’s Seminary Journal (Fall 2008): 218.
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