There were two interesting cases on the news lately that reveal quite a bit about our idolization of children’s status. I would like to preface this conversation by saying that parents should have high regard for their children and desire their good spiritually and academically–in that order. Yet, very often there is a fundamental twisting of priorities. It seems that no matter how much we stress the futility of high grades at the expense of the virtues of godliness and conviviality, we still find ourselves going back to that ol’ mirage of status.
Here is the summary of the events:
a) A local mother conspired to manipulate votes for a home-coming competition. She hacked the system and conveniently gave her daughter 250 additional votes crowning her beloved 16-year-old the homecoming queen; a crown with a short-lived shine.
b) A local mother created libelous fake photos of girls on her daughter’s cheerleading team. She photoshopped them to imply the three girls were naked, drinking and smoking. The three girls had turned on her sweet daughter, so she thought the most natural thing to do was to ‘deepfake’ images to raise her daughter’s status in the group and mom is now charged with harassment and cyber harassment charges.
The interesting way to navigate such news is to realize that parents can easily idolize their children’s status. Whether they wish to live vicariously through them in athletic pursuits (a fact), or whether their desire for their children is academic superiority over others, or whether they desire the parental acclaim/reputation at a local school for having children who accomplish x, y, or z. Of course, these things are fleeting but they are persuasive enough to cause parents to do some insane things.
Now, I am an academician myself (a recent 260 page-dissertation to prove it), but it’s not the academy that’s the problem, it’s mom and dad. When parents instill the values of good grades or status as the sole determining factor of success, they will create children that interpret success through the lens of worldly gain. And, we know that the Holy Spirit said lots of things about gaining the world, and he also told us that it’s not a good thing.
Parents need to re-assess their vision for their children. A child who succeeds in grades but yet fails to engage the Christian faith seriously will likely become a threat to the church. A child who succeeds athletically, but yet fails to love his father and mother will likely become a threat to the church. The status of being a child of God, a faithful covenant disciple, a productive member of a local church is infinitely more important than the child who forsakes all those virtues for status in a community.
It’s not one over the other, but it is certainly one first and then the other. We can have children who fulfill to some extent all those requirements and they are rightly celebrated and seen as examples to follow in the community. But more often than not, such priorities are malnourished. We may be too sophisticated to hack into systems or deepfake images, but we are not too sophisticated to skip the Lord’s Day to catch up on a child’s work, or treat the child as a failure for not reaching the 4.0 average, or exalting academic achievement so much in the home that godliness–which profits much–is seen as a secondary or tertiary pursuit once homework is over…if that.
Now, are there parents who lazily make their way through life uncaring about their children’s resilience in academic pursuits? Yes. They need some encouragement to establish healthy habits in the home. But the reality is that for the vast majority, we have chosen our child’s status before the world as the ultimate solution to our appeasement. If this fits our mindset, we need to be really honest with ourselves.
