When I was at The Gospel Coalition Conference, Tim Keller preached on the exodus. It's a phenomenal message, but here's a serious-yet-funny tidbit from the message:
"Now, there's another kind of bad parenting that I call self-esteemism. That's where you tell your child over and over again that you say, 'You can be anything you want. You can do anything you want.' You say, "Uh huh, I'm 23 years old. I'm 5'3". I'm 125 pounds. But, if you want to be an NFL linebacker, you just have to go for it with all you've got because you have to climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow.' And, when you do that to kids, they do grow up with this incredible sense of entitlement. And, it almost seems impossible to make them feel ashamed or guilty for anything. Yet, I don't believe you can put out what all human beings know - that we should be perfect (that we should love God, that we should love our neighbor)." (paraphrase)
3 comments:
Is this like someone telling you that you can be a good Biblical exegete, and then you felling entitled to not being critiqued when your exegesis is suspect.
I'm not sure I quite get what he's getting at. Is there maybe a word missing from his last sentence or 2?
How far is too far when it comes to encouraging kids to follow their dreams? I guess I can kind of see what he's saying - we have the families like the ones on American Idol who tell their kids what great voices they have, only to have them humiliated on national TV because they just really have no talent. I think I see what he's saying there. But the last part seems a little jumbled up to me. Can this paraphrase be clarified a bit?
Anon - Yes, that can be the case.
Gwen, the conclusion he was making was that no matter what background you come from, he believes every human being believes that they should be perfect.
He's not putting down people helping their kids or encouraging the kids. Before this he was talking about the other extreme of parents idolizing their kids and being oppressive. So, I think your American Idol analogy is in line with what he was saying.
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