Spark of the Divine
What do I mean by divine? I am referring to God. In order to understand what drives our parenting philosophies, we must first explore our beliefs about our relationship with God. Believe it or not, that belief drives almost all of our motivations in life. That is why it's the first topic in the series!
I have a clarification: While God is a gender neutral term, in conservative circles the pronoun used for God is “he” as it appears in the Bible. I want to make it clear that I do NOT believe that God has a gender, but because of my childhood upbringing it is automatic for me to refer to God as “he”. So rather than fight my automatic use of “he” for God, I'm going to use that pronoun with the understanding that I believe God is gender-neutral (and actually without “human form”).
So my spiritual journey has gone from a legalistic one to a more moderate philosophy where I embrace the idea that God is unconditionally loving. In fact, 1 John 4:8 states that "God IS love”. I may even periodically use the word “Love” instead of God because for me it a more accurate descriptor of what I believe God to be.
I believe at times we limit God by our imaginations and words sense we are limited as humans, but for me God is bigger than humanity, bigger than anything we can imagine. In fact I often ask my clients three questions about God to demonstrate how we tend to humanize him. Question one, can you surprise God? Question two, can God be disappointed? Question three, does God have expectations? I believe the answer to all three is “no”. Surprise, disappointment, and expectations are all human characteristics we learn from our parents and have attributed to God. But if God is God, he is bigger than our parents. When God is that big, then his opinion of us is trustworthy and reliable. And his evaluation of us is always good! Let me explain further.
I’ve been on a spiritual journey all my life. I was raised, like so many Christians, to believe God is someone who is disappointed when we sin, and happy when we don’t. But that's a childhood belief we carry through most of our lives if it goes unchallenged. I get why. When teaching children about this intangible concept called “god”, adults often start simple with concepts children can understand, like disappointment and happiness regarding their behavior, because their tangible parents show those emotions frequently. Unfortunately this concept of God is often taught in an attempt to control bad behavior. Almost like Santa Claus list of good boys and girls. In fact, Santa Claus may have become a distorted symbol of God in the Christian community.
The problem begins when we carry those childhood beliefs into adulthood because we don’t challenge that childhood belief about God. Often we develop belief systems in our childhood that are not accurate, but make sense to our childhood brain development (usually during the concrete stage of development, ages 5 to 11, we’ll tackle that topic later in this series). We then hold that those belief systems established at a young age as true for all of life. But the child's brain has limited conceptualization, limited ability to conceive of something intangible like God. As adults, however, we have more tools, a more mature brain that can grasp abstract concepts, so our belief about God needs to be challenged and matured as well almost daily.
If we hold that God is divine, and if we’re to understand our own divinity, we have to at least try to release God from the human attributes we innocently assign to “him” as children. When religions teach that children are broken or sinful, they are basically stuck in a childhood belief system about God, paralleling God to their parents. But God is not parallel to human parents. This belief, however, significantly effects parenting philosophies and actions.
Now let me focus on the idea that we are a spark of the divine. Please consider with me two universal truths: 1) God is divine and eternal, not human, so “bigger” than our human emotions, and 2) as humans we are all born and we will all die. Life is not something the body gives us, but something given to the body from somewhere, or someone, bigger than humanity, someone eternal. To support that idea, consider that when we die, life leaves the body, but the body remains behind. So the body is not the source of life, but simply the container of life for a “short” time.
You could even go back to conception and see microscopically that the two cells that join to form a human have life in them because the “host” is alive. The same cells exist in dead bodies, but have no life in them to create life, so the truth is life comes from life. If God is bigger than humanity and eternal, then God is the source of life. I believe God is divine, meaning “good”. If life from “good” is breathed into you, then you are also good.
I realize that there will be many challenges and disagreements with my conclusions, and we can certainly argue if you like, but more importantly please consider how your belief system influences your parenting skills.
To begin developing a healthy parenting philosophy, it is important to recognize what we believe about God, and thus about ourselves and our kids. If you want to challenge yourself, ask a simple question, “What happens in you and your relationship with your child when you believe your child is born “broken” or “sinful”? How do you feel about them, and yourself?
If you have a concept of God, ask yourself what do you believe about God? Is God good? Does God have a good “heart”? Or is God mean, and punitive? What you believe about God is what you will believe about yourself and your children. In fact, a clue for you of what you believe about God is what you believe about yourself. And consequently what you believe about God and yourself is how you treat other people in your life, including your children.
If you believe God is good, but your children are “born sinful or broken”, that is often a contradictory logic that can cause internal conflict, which often gets taken out on the smallest and weakest of us, our children. Please consider that if life comes from life, and God is the source of life, and if God is good, that life is in your child.
Some may argue that while God is good, the human body is what makes us sinful. That might be comparable to saying that a car runs according to it’s appearance, and that is not true. I’ve seen immaculate looking cars sitting in junk yards because they don’t run, and I’ve seen beat up body cars run just fine on the roads, though they are not pretty to look at. Our body is a vehicle, nothing more or less. Our value lies “under the hood”, in our divinity!
Developmental psychology has shown us that the brain goes through many stages of growth. What might appear two parents like bad or evil behavior, may in fact simply be a brain developmental stage, not evil intent. Usually, the interpretation of “evil” comes from parents who themselves may have assigned to their child their own negative heart motivations, but can’t admit it. That is a defense mechanism called projection. It is a topic for later in our parenting puzzle series.
Bottom line, believing your child has a spark of the divine in them can change how you respond to their developmental milestones and experimentation of this new and interesting world they are exploring.
This leads us to our next Parenting Puzzle piece “Story”.
(I found this video by 60 minutes couple of years ago, and I thought it was helpful in demonstrating that our children have a sense of morality or at least recognition of pleasure and pain very early in life when it comes to relationships. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/FRvVFW85IcU)