When you’re looking forward to your very first child, your imagination can sometimes run away with you. Will this little boy be the next Bill Gates (and put the whole family on easy street)? Will this little girl be the first woman president? It was no different for Adam and Eve, the first human beings and our original parents. This First Family had a promise from the Lord that one of their descendants would be a great deliverer and rescue humanity from the curse of sin.
As it turns out, God was actually talking about Jesus, who would be born in a place called Bethlehem thousands of years later. Adam and Eve, however, might very well have assumed the deliverer to be the baby in Eve’s womb. Could he be the promised one?
Finally the day came, and their firstborn arrived. They named him Cain, which means, acquired. In light of the promise of a deliverer, the name might have meant, “Here he is, I’ve gotten him.”
Adam and Eve named their second son, Abel, which means “frail.” Regardless of whether this was physically true or not, it would certainly suggest a difference in the attitude of these parents toward their two boys. Cain was the strong one, the first born. Abel, weaker and frailer, was not as strong as Cain.
The names tell the story. Son No. 1: Look, here he comes. … Here he is! Son No. 2: The weakling.
This strong hint of favoritism, found here at the beginning, may offer an insight into the family tragedy that would eventually take place when the boys were grown.
We have to be so very careful as we raise our children to avoid favoritism at all costs. Later in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we see this same pattern in the way Isaac favored Esau, and Rebecca, his wife, favored Jacob. The favoritism drove a wedge between the two boys, setting into motion a conflict that followed them well into their adult years and for many generations to come.
But did Jacob learn from those circumstances of his youth, bringing wisdom into his own parenting? Not a chance! Jacob so obviously favored his son Joseph that the young man became an object of hatred among his jealous brothers.
We must recognize that each child, though different, is a precious gift from God that we never, ever want to take for granted. They’re not there for us to form into “our image,” but rather for us to point them to God and help them to discover their God-given talents and abilities.
I read an article about this some time ago. It spoke of how parents, in their quest to raise happy, safe and successful kids go overboard in the praise department. They’re called “helicopter parents,” hovering over their kids and micromanaging their lives. They’ve bought into the myth that a child’s self-esteem depends on never experiencing even the slightest adversity, upset, failure or setback.
But this “no more tears” approach to raising kids is doing more harm than parents and teachers realize. “Of course we love our kids like crazy,” says Betsy Hart, a Chicago-area mother of four and author of “It Takes a Parent.” “But when we idolize and idealize them, we’re not doing them any favors. In fact, the result of these good intentions is often just the opposite. There’s strong scientific evidence that undeserved praise can do long-term harm. … What’s more, kids with a solution-minded parent constantly lurking don’t develop the mettle to solve life’s inevitable problems.”
One has only to watch the latest edition of “American Idol” to see this on display. When would-be entertainers shriek or warble out a horrific audition and are rightly panned by the judges, some of them erupt in protest. They scream, they storm at the camera, they shout expletives, boasting of their great talent.
All I can say is that someone over-praised these kids somewhere in life!
But then there’s the problem of under-praising a child as well. A child who is never complimented or encouraged by his parents is bound for trouble! Did you know that by the time the average child enters kindergarten he has heard the word “No” over 40,000 times? If he is only told what is wrong with him and never right, he will soon lose hope and become convinced he’s incapable of doing anything right.
A child needs approval and encouragement in things that are good, every bit as much as he needs correction in things that are not.
I read about a young man named Antoine Fisher. He was born in prison and sent to be raised in foster care. His father was killed by a girlfriend two months before Antoine was born. As the little boy grew, his foster mother tormented him with this singsong: You ain’t nothing. You’re never gonna be nothing, because you come from nothing.
What a wicked thing to say to a child.
Antoine eventually proved her wrong, but this certainly made his journey that much harder. Make sure you let your kids know you love and value them today. It seems Adam and Eve over-favored Cain and under-favored Abel.
But even if Abel wasn’t favored by his parents, he was favored by God! Those who are not favored by their parents often become the beloved of the Lord. With a gaping hole in their soul where the love of mom and dad should be, they turn to God with great desperation and desire.
And that’s a good thing.
In later years, that would be the case with a young man named David. Maybe you’ve heard that story. When David’s father, Jesse, understood that Samuel wanted to meet each of his sons, he paraded seven of his boys before the prophet. When Samuel said, “Is this all?” Jesse reluctantly called David in from the sheep pasture. And to the astonishment of everyone, the young shepherd was anointed as the next king of Israel.
It was so obvious – Jesse had little regard for his youngest son, and I can’t imagine that the old sheep rancher spent much time with the boy. Perhaps because David’s dad wasn’t there for him when he needed a dad (we know little of his mother), the young man turned to God as a father.
In later years he wrote: “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close” (Psalm 27:10, NLT).
Do those words strike a chord in your heart? Perhaps that was your situation. You weren’t favored by your parents. Maybe they divorced or never had time for you. But God is there as a heavenly Father for you, just as He willingly embraced David. He always has time for you, longs for your best, is more than willing to share His great wisdom and love, and will never fail or forsake you.
Take that truth to heart…and make sure your kids do, too.
