How Many Faithful Kids Does an Elder Need?

The free will question

A few weeks ago I wrote on whether parents are accountable for the souls of their children once the youths enter adulthood.

To briefly recap, I posited that yes, parents are expected to produce faithful children. I took the principle of generational faithfulness expected of Israel in Deuteronomy as proof that God not only thinks it possible to raise faithful generations; He requires it.

The article received numerous comments, so this article will serve as a part 2/de facto mailbag to respond to the chief questions and critiques.

Elders are only accountable for their children’s faithfulness while they’re at home

If we set the age of accountability around 14, and kids leave home at 18, that means elders are only required to have a good 4 year run. After that, they’re in the clear even if the kid becomes the town scoundrel.

Does that really seem in keeping with the spirit of the qualification? Does God want men who can shepherd people while they’re in church but have zero ability to positively influence the members’ behavior Monday-Saturday? What kind of disciple making leadership is that?

We’re in generation three of the majority of Christian youths walking away. Do you think dismissing or watering down this qualification is helping the problem get better? If we don’t expect our leaders to raise faithful kids, why should we be surprised when no one else does, either?

Playing the percentages

Many say that, in the lack of specifics in 1 Timothy 3:4-5 and Titus 1:6, the idea is that a man would have shown he can raise some faithful kids. 3 out of 4 would prove sufficient competency, for example.

To that I would say two things.

First, what if the three were gentle-spirited, compliant kids and the fourth was the stereotypical “difficult child?” That means God just doesn’t expect the parents to train up that child in the way He should go?

Second, as soon as we play the percentages game we’ve strayed from the text and the standard becomes arbitrary. 3 out of 4 seems really good. But is 2 out of 4 enough? What about 2 out of 6? That would technically mean he has “believing children” if more than one are still saved.

The minute we stray from the plainest reading of the text, that a man’s children should be Christians before He can become an elder, it’s impossible to define an objective standard.

Adult children have free will

To be frank, I don’t understand this objection at all. This is literally the point at hand. Of course the kids have free will. If parenting is not training children how to use their free will to choose right over wrong, what is it?

Hebrews 5:14 equates maturity with having one’s senses trained to discern between right and wrong. Successful parenting is raising mature, wise children (see Deuteronomy 6, Proverbs).

Or are we saying children who remain Christians don’t have free will? That their parents took it away?

Of course not. Their parents trained them to love God and keep His commandments. But saying even that makes this whole house of cards fall down.

What do I mean?

The unspoken, underlying assumption in this objection is that successfully raising faithful kids is basically the luck of the draw. Because if success is a matter of cause and effect, then so is failure, and we can’t stomach the implications of that.

One Biblical account which destroys this luck of the draw ideology is that of the Rechabites. In Jeremiah 35 we see this family turn down an offer of wine because of a commitment their forefather, Jehonadab, had made for their family.

Here’s the kicker: that family vow had been going strong for over 200 years (see Jehonadab in 2 Kings 10).

Every Rechabite had free will to totally ignore their forefather’s commandment, and yet they kept it going. Why? How? They were trained to honor father and mother, and they did.

Could you imagine a Christian today honoring a specific commitment handed down generation by generation, starting with an ancestor who lived through the George Washington administration?

As radical individualists, we can’t imagine that at all. Our misunderstanding of free will keeps us from submitting even one generation backward. And that’s why we misunderstand this issue.

Who’s responsible?

Closely related to the free will point is the argument that once they are adults, the children are responsible for themselves and the parents are off the hook.

This is the same fallacy often seen in the modesty/lust debate. There is not a pie chart of blame that needs to add up to a clean 100% for the entire matter. When a person is told to do something, they are 100% responsible to God for their obedience. Parents are fully responsible for raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and return them faithfully to Him, as was expected in Deuteronomy. Adult children are 100% responsible for their own faithfulness.

Again, radical individualism makes us separate everybody into atomized parts when that’s just not how it works.

God’s success rate

Some pointed to Adam and Eve’s fall as proof even God can’t produce faithfulness in those who don’t want it. That situation and the Biblical teaching around parenting are so dissimilar that I think it would be a long rabbit trail away from our topic to get into it here.

Re-raising the bar

The biggest indictment against all of these arguments is this: there are too many real-life examples of Christian parents who have raised fully faithful families. If it can be done, it should be done. Or at least, it should be the goal and expectation.

Why are we quibbling over what’s “good enough” when there are standard bearers who should be leading the way? One person kept trying to send me material from a man who lost children on why it isn’t his fault (or any other Christian parent’s in that situation).

This will sound harsh, but that just may be my lot in life—saying obviously true things that get me labeled as a meanie:

Why would we look for advice from people who failed when people who succeeded can be easily found? I don’t want the guy who built 8 out of 10 structurally sound houses to build my house and telling me it’s ok that sometimes houses collapse. I want the guy who built 10 structurally sound houses.

As I said in the first article, it is heartbreaking to lose one’s children, but it’s infuriating to refuse to let anybody else learn so they might avoid the same pitfalls.

In one comment I posited my theory that our wavering on this issue comes from a lowered bar, and if we were not three generations in to failing at this we would have a higher standard.

One response, and a fair one, pointed out this debate goes back even to the early church, as we can see in this quote from Jerome around AD 400:

"Parents should not be faulted if, having taught their children well, these turn out badly later. Indeed, if anyone had taught his sons well, it was Isaac, who must be viewed as setting even Esau on a firm foundation. But Esau turned out to be profligate and worldly, when he sold his birthright for a single meal. Samuel also, though he invoked God and God heard him, and he obtained rain at the time of the winter harvest, had sons who declined into greed."

To that I would say, Jerome and I might be reading different Bibles. Isaac was an awful parent. He played favorites, raised a son with no impulse control, built a family who warred with each other, and utterly failed to do what his father had done for him in forbidding marriage to the Canaanites.

Similarly, Samuel was such a train wreck of a father Israel demanded a king because they knew his sons could not be given authority (1 Samuel 8:2-5). He was the classic trope of the man who busied himself with God’s work everywhere but at home. (The fact that it’s a trope might say a lot about the problem in itself.)

Maybe it’s not a matter of modern mediocrity… maybe this is a problem that God’s people have faced for a long time.

So we had better do something about it.

A Christian elite, for lack of a better term, has to rise up to help the church recover its strength. This will not happen if we continue to soften the standards and accept the mediocrity of generation after generation straying from the faith, especially among our leaders.

---

Reminder: my new book, co-written with Dr. Brad Harrub, is now available!

The next book, Sunday School Catch-Up, is in the finishing stages. Pre-orders will be shipped ASAP!