Recently my 8-year-old son Winston and I spent a week with my dad on a beautiful lake in Montana. Being a very large mountain lake, its water temperature wasn’t exactly warm.
Whereas the air temperature was a delightfully dry if intense 92° (F), at its surface the water temperature was somewhere in the high 60s (by contrast, water temps in, say, Destin, FL, run in the low 80s in August).
And together the hot Montana sun and the cool, freshwater lake were unbelievably refreshing, having an invigorating, even quasi-medicinal effect…
IF one could get past the initial “shock” of the “cold” water.
And here’s where I failed–at least at first–as a parent.
To his credit, Winston played along the shore throughout the whole week, giving full vent to his seemingly boundless 8-year-old imagination. At times he had even waded into the water up to his knees or waist.
But in response to my daily invitations to swim further in or, more courageously, to jump off the dock, he respectfully expressed his reticence and, at the earliest opportunity, returned to playing. Each time I wasn’t sure what to do, but I always decided to honor his preference.
Until the last day came.
“Hey, Winston!” I playfully yelled from the furthest tip of the dock, “it’s time to jump in! It’s going to be great!” His head popped up from the shore, and I could tell he was apprehensive, sensing a novel parental resolve. He had successfully evaded all week and was now searching for one last escape route.
I laughed and said, “Winston, I’m telling you, it’ll be really cold at first–but in a rather funny way; and then in a few minutes it’ll be great. I promise. So here are your options: I’m either going to throw you in, or you’re going to jump in all by yourself. What say ye?”
He looked at the crystal-clear water, sighed deeply, and asked if I would jump in along with him. I said, “I would love to!”, sadly hiding the fact that I myself wasn’t exactly looking forward to the cold water either.
He jumped in. I dove in. Immediately we both surfaced, loudly gasping and grousing.
And then we started to giggle. And we even guffawed. We frolicked about in triumph. It was beautiful.
And the rest is history: it was one of the best afternoons we’ve spent together. Grandpa soon came out and dove in, and the three of us swam, dove, cannonballed, bellyflopped and jetskied the afternoon away. We were in heaven.
My only regret: why had I waited all week, depriving my son of something so very good?
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Three weeks prior to our Montana getaway, my other week of summer vacation had been spent with my twin 15-year-old daughters on Florida’s Gulf Coast. We swam, shopped, and soaked up the sun.
One morning, having gone straight to the beach without breakfast, we then left around noon famished. I suggested that we try some oysters.
My proposal was met with silence. And then one of them said, “Um, I don’t like…oysters.”
I laughed. “Now wait,” I inquired, “have you ever even tried them?” From the backseat there came a quiet, concessive “No,” followed by more silence. But guess what was happening 45 minutes later…
Both twins were sitting at a table of the Acme Oyster House, devouring chargrilled oysters and intermittently slurping their virgin pina coladas. I watched exultantly (as I myself partook).
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To pick up the metaphor of the second story: in life so much of what is truly delectable is in fact an acquired taste or, at least, counterintuitive to our inexperienced taste. As children, our palates are necessarily provincial, completely unaware that there is a whole world of culinary and, more importantly, cultural delicacy out there…
IF we’re willing to venture out and find it.
And that’s where we parents come in: from the two-year-old who’s too stubbornly shy to say “Hi” to the ten-year-old who won’t eat their steak to the teen who only and ever watches Stranger Things or superhero movies or who sits staring at their social media, if we parents allow our kids’ social, psychological and especially spiritual appetites to determine their daily diet, they will die of either a corresponding anorexia or obesity.
This is all the more true during the present tyranny of technology.
French philosopher Jacques Ellul once defined technology as that which separates us from nature. The more the digital world defines both what we desire and what we dread, the more we are distanced from both the discernment and delight that can only be developed through a “real life” encounter with the divinely-designed world–that is, with real people in real places, leaving us with real (vs. virtual) perceptions:
how Winston “felt” about the lake changed only after he had actually “felt” the lake…
and my twins’ taste for oysters changed only after they had actually tasted them (though, admittedly, with a good amount of butter and cheese on them!).
When we parents give our kids the “freedom” to choose according to their paltry preferences, we are actually confining–perhaps even enslaving?–them to the (unsurprisingly) dull and even dangerous limits of their premature palates.
But true parental love forces kids to feed on a feast–why?–so that over time they discover not only to a far more satisfying fullness but a veritable (vs. virtual) freedom.
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Such parenting is simply a reflection of how God the Father parents us.
From the forbidden fruit in the opening chapters of Genesis to the wedding feast of the Lamb in closing chapters of Revelation, the Scriptures are replete with culinary images. And all too often God’s people do not like what’s on the menu. They prefer the “the fish we at in Egypt at no cost–also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic” to the manna of the wilderness.
In Deuteronomy Moses reminds them of their forty-year wilderness wandering, how God “humbled you, causing you to hunger and feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
In Psalm 81 we find Israel’s God instructing her to open her mouth wide:
“I am the LORD your God,
who brought you out of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth,
and I will fill it….
If my people would only listen to me,…
you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
Similarly, the prophet Isaiah pleads:
“Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.”
In judgment, says Isaiah, Yahweh refines them with “the bread of adversity and the water of affliction.” Yet he speaks of a coming eschatological “feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine–the best of meats and the finest of wines.”
In the Gospels, and especially in Luke, Jesus goes from meal to meal. At what was surely an awkward meal, Jesus tells a parable of a man who prepares a great banquet, in which all who are invited flippantly and foolishly decline at the last minute, leaving the incensed host to instruct his servants:
“Go out into the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.”
To state the obvious: we parents fall ever so short of being like our Heavenly Father in many ways. Knowing when and how to “force” our children undoubtedly requires not only parental insight but parental example, an example that imitates our Lord Jesus, who was keenly aware of his own seemingly impossible divinely appointed destiny (symbolized as a cup): “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but your will be done.”
And so in a manner like our Father’s love, parental love at times compels kids who, in their inexperience or imprudence, have absolutely no idea what they’re missing out on. Why?
So they’ll never fear missing out on what is most meaningful.
Hope Unbroken 
You are a great father, Bruce!!!
Excellent and creative article, Bruce! So true!!!