In Grace-based Parenting, Tim Kimmel argues that Christian parents are susceptible to two extremes in parenting: erasing the boundaries or drawing in the boundaries more tightly than they need to be. He critiques a variety of Christian parenting models (fear-based parenting, evangelical behavior-modification parenting, image-control parenting, high-control parenting, herd-mentality parenting, duct-tape parenting, and life-support or 911 parenting) before offering an alternative: grace-based parenting.
Grace-based parenting encourages parents to offer their children the same grace that God offers His children. It recognizes the boundaries actually found in Scripture but gives grace in the wide range of gray areas. Kimmel argues that a grace-based home recognizes and fulfills three needs children have and gives children four freedoms they require.
According to Kimmel, Children need three things: a secure love (that children don’t have to compete for or earn), a significant purpose (both general, specific, relational, and spiritual), and a strong hope. In order for a child to experience grace in the home, Kimmel suggests, he needs to be given four freedoms: the freedom to be different, the freedom to be vulnerable, and the freedom to make mistakes.
I have some quibbles with certain more specific parenting techniques Kimmel suggests (he suggests that parents should be willing to fund trends, but not fads – which seems a reasonable idea for those who are looking for a moderate way to manage the wardrobe demands or whatever of teens – but which belies the fact that some parents may choose to fund necessities, not fads OR trends), but his main points seem solid enough.
Well, except for his mainest of main points. He summarizes it thus at the end of the book:
“You have been singled out to do a favor for God. He is asking you to be His representative to a small but vital part of the next generation. He needs someone to be His voice, His arms, and His heart. He chose you.
He chose you to assist Him in a miracle. He gave you children and then said, ‘Now go, and give these precious lives meaning.’ It’s a mandate that comes with a great reward if you succeed, but a heavy price if you fail.
This is where many parents panic. When they realize that their job is to raise up children to love and serve God, they wonder how on earth they will do that.
The answer isn’t on earth. It’s found in heaven. It’s sitting on an eternal throne. He has many names, but among my favorites is ‘The God of Grace.’ You wonder, How am I to raise up children to love and serve God? The answer is actually not that difficult. You simply need to treat your child the way God treats you.
He does it in His grace
And here’s the good part. If the only thing you get right as parents is His grace, everything else will be just fine.
I hardly know where to begin in detailing everything that’s wrong with this passage – but I’ll begin with what I see as the most glaring mistake: the assumption that somehow parents are responsible for giving their children’s lives meaning – and that they must be perfect reflections of God’s grace in order to do so. The truth is, it is God who gives our children’s lives meaning. It is He who causes them to love and serve Himself. Our children’s meaning in life and pursuit of God is not dependent on our reflecting grace perfectly to them but on God pouring out His own inexplicable grace on them.
Yes, parents who have received grace should lavish grace on their children – but not out of fear. Instead, our motivation should be to give what we have freely been given.
The answer to how our children will learn to love and serve God is not “found in heaven” in our imitation of God, but is found in God Himself. Yes, parents should imitate God, but first they should bask in the grace they have received from God, and trust Him to graciously call His children to Himself, even as they fail (again and again) at modeling his grace to their children.
Rating: 3 stars
Category: Christian parenting
Synopsis: Tim Kimmel offers an alternative to legalistic Christian parenting models by encouraging parents to extend the same grace to their children that God offers to them.
Recommendation: Valuable information on how to parent with grace – as long as parents already have a good grasp on the grace God has extended to them (because I don’t think Kimmel does a good job AT ALL of extending grace to parents, who will inevitably fail to reflect grace to their children, and who need above all to recognize that it is God’s grace, not their own, that will save their children.)
Thanks so much for this. I’d heard of this book bit just never made time to read it. but what I’ve heard others say in regard to grace-based parenting raised some of the same concerns you expressed. Your last sentence sums up perfectly what I was thinking as I read your review.
When I was first contemplating being a mother, one of my biggest fears was that I was going to make a mistake with my children. One day I finally realized that of course I am going to, and though that wasn’t a reason to do my best not to, depending on His grace, it was an acknowledgement that my children were going to be raised by sinful, imperfect parents even at their best, and His grace was sufficient for even that.
Even in that little quote, he makes it sound like extending/mirroring grace (perfectly) is EASY!