Would you feel like a success as a parent if, by the time your child turned thirty, they had accomplished the following?
Studied and memorized almost the entire Bible.
Maintained near-perfect church attendance.
Respected in their community.
Gives faithfully to their church.
A great many good Christian parents would look at that list and say, “Yes! We have won. This is success.” Their children have kept the faith and found success in the world. We get to have our cake and eat it, too.
Herein lies the danger.
The list above describes many of the outward characteristics we might associate with the Pharisees Jesus encountered in the New Testament. Yet something is missing, something infinitely more valuable than all these accomplishments.
Jesus repeatedly confronted the Pharisees, saying:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”
— Matthew 23:15, ESV
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”
— Matthew 23:23–24, ESV
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.”
— Matthew 23:25–26, ESV
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
— Matthew 23:27–28, ESV
When Paul wrote about his own credentials in Philippians 3:4–8, he listed his religious heritage, his zeal, and his outward righteousness. Yet he counted all these things as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord. In verse 8, he even described them as skubalon, a Greek word translated as “rubbish” or “dung.”
The point is not that religious discipline, education, or respectable living are inherently worthless. Rather, none of these things can compare with knowing Christ. None can substitute for Him.
The Never-Ending List of Parenting Decisions
As parents, we are constantly inundated with an ever-growing, often competing list of what we must do for our children.
Vaccinate or not vaccinate? Homeschool, private school, or public school? What movies, shows, social media platforms, phones, and tablets should we allow our children to access? What diet should our children follow? What kind of discipline should we practice? What is the proper balance between sports and education? Should my teenager be allowed to date?
Each of these decisions involves different considerations, varying degrees of wisdom, and answers that may differ from family to family. Some decisions have clear biblical implications, but Scripture does not prescribe one specific answer for every situation.
You can make all the “right” choices and still miss what matters most.
Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second was like it: to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:30–31).
You can make wise decisions in every category, teach your children to obey, and raise upright citizens who are deeply involved in their church and community. Yet your child can still grow up without knowing Christ.
Outward conformity cannot save them.
Because, in comparison with the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, all these things are skubalon.
Homeschooling versus public schooling? Skubalon.
Vaccination versus no vaccination? Skubalon.
Perfect diet? Skubalon.
Never having any screen time? Skubalon.
Perfect church attendance? Skubalon.
Tithing perfectly at 10%? Skubalon.
Respect in the community? Skubalon.
These things are not all equally wise, nor are they all equally important in their practical consequences. Some may be good gifts, and others may involve serious moral considerations. But none of them can take the place of Christ. The point is not that these decisions are meaningless, but that they are worthless as substitutes for knowing Him.
There are things commanded in Scripture, and we must not make light of them. There are also things that may be wise for Christian families without being explicitly commanded in Scripture. We must learn to distinguish between the two.
What matters most is not whether we made every possible wise decision or trained perfect obedience into our little angels. What matters is whether we faithfully pointed our children toward Christ and modeled before them the humble love of our Savior.
Guard Your Tongue
One of the easiest ways to create Pharisees is to praise outward obedience without shepherding the heart.
We must guard against allowing the pride of correct living to infect us or our children. Remember: what is whispered in judgment within your home may be shouted by your children in the years to come.
If our children constantly hear us belittle other Christian families because they make different educational choices, follow different household practices, or reach different conclusions about matters of wisdom, what are we teaching them?
We may think we are teaching discernment. Instead, we may be teaching pride.
We must not merely ask whether our children are doing the right things. We must also consider what they are learning to love, what they are learning to value, and how they are learning to view their neighbors.
A child can learn to recognize every perceived error in another family while remaining blind to the pride in their own heart. They can learn to defend a particular parenting philosophy while failing to demonstrate the patience, humility, and love that Christ commands.
We should care about obedience. We should teach our children to pursue holiness. But we must never confuse the appearance of righteousness with the transformation of the heart.
Adiaphora Is Just That: Adiaphora
The Christian tradition has a word for matters that are neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture: adiaphora. These are matters of indifference in the sense that Scripture does not establish one universally binding rule for every Christian. This does not mean every choice is equally wise or that our decisions have no consequences. It means we must exercise discernment without turning our preferences into God’s commands.
We must guard our tongues when discussing matters of wisdom and personal preference. We must ensure that we are not training our kids to pass judgment on believers who differ from us or reach different conclusions about matters Scripture has not commanded.
If you homeschool, fantastic. My children are homeschooled, and I believe there is much wisdom in that decision. But make sure this choice does not become an opportunity to belittle those who choose differently.
The same principle applies to every other area of family life. We must be careful not to elevate our own judgments into universal standards of faithfulness.
Our goal is not simply to raise children who do things the way we do them. It is to raise children who love Christ, love His Word, love His people, and love their neighbors.
We can do everything we believe to be right and still fail to cultivate humility. We can train our children to conform to our standards while neglecting to teach them the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ.
May God protect us from being so consumed with raising respectable children that we forget to point them to the Savior.
The Love of Christ
Our children model and amplify our attitudes. If we display pride, they will magnify it. We must model the gospel before them rather than self-righteousness. We model it in how we forgive and ask for forgiveness. We model it in how we speak of other people made in the image of God. We model it in how we handle issues of conscience.
There is truth and wisdom, and we want our children to embrace both. We want them to embrace not only the words and commands of Scripture but also the heart of our Savior, who is “gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29).
Jesus had perfect theology and perfect righteousness. No one He encountered could surpass Him in either. Yet He showed compassion toward sinners, welcomed the repentant, and confronted those whose self-righteousness blinded them to their own need. He repeatedly condemned religious hypocrisy and those who neglected the weightier matters of the law.
Perhaps this danger passes us by because we hear our children echoing our own thoughts. We hear them repeating our judgments about other families, defending our convictions, and pointing out the perceived shortcomings of others. We smile because they sound just like us.
But listen closely.
Are they learning to love their neighbors, even when those neighbors make different choices? Are they learning humility, or have they simply learned to defend their own righteousness? Are they growing in their knowledge of Christ, or are they merely learning how to keep the outside of the cup clean?
We must be careful that, in teaching our children to recognize what is wrong with the world around them, we do not neglect to teach them the gospel that exposes the sin within their own hearts.
Our children need more than parents who know what is right. They need parents who repent when they are wrong, extend grace when they have been wronged, and demonstrate the humble love of Christ in the ordinary circumstances of family life.
May our children see in us not merely a commitment to doing what is right, but a deep and abiding love for the One who alone makes sinners righteous.
The goal of Christian parenting is not merely to raise respectable children. It is to faithfully point our children to Christ, in whom alone is found the surpassing worth of knowing God.
"May God protect us from being so consumed with raising respectable children that we forget to point them to the Savior."
Very well said. And yet – it's so much more difficult to measure what a living and active faith looks like. I can get why so many of us go for respectable behavior as an outward marker of inward change, even when we all know that it isn't necessarily the case.