This is the third and last post in my series, Faith, Trust, and Vaccination. Two common hesitations that I hear about vaccinations come from a moral perspective. A desire to uphold a high moral ethic is admirable, and most people consider themselves moral. Even when people disagree about particular questions, they usually think their position is the morally responsible one. When it comes to vaccines, most parents incorporate their moral perspective into their decisions.

Some of these moral perspectives drive people to be skeptical of vaccines. Some parents express concerns about the use of fetal cell lines developed from abortions performed decades ago. Other parents worry that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine could inadvertently give their children permission to push moral sexual boundaries. At first, they seem to be very different concerns, but they both come from a desire to maintain a high standard of morality. Neither of these concerns should be dismissed lightly. They both come from parents who aim to uphold high moral standards in their family.

I also encounter parents who want to vaccinate their children based on moral concerns. They recognize that morality extends beyond individual and family concerns and that decisions they make may affect others and the overall health of the community and world. They naturally want the best for their own children, but they are also concerned about the health of others in their communities, countries, and the world.

Moral decisions are complicated, just as our world is complicated. Sometimes, we are tempted to separate ourselves from the world and try to live on a morally “perfect” island. But morality is not measured by separation from the world into isolated towers of purity, apart from the rest of the complicated world. Instead, it is measured by how wisely and lovingly we act in a world complicated by relationships that extend far beyond our families.

Moral Complicity and Fetal Cell Lines

Many Christians consider abortion morally wrong. If someone with that perspective hears a message like “vaccines are made from aborted babies,” they naturally conclude that they should oppose vaccines. This statement is exaggerated. Decisions about abortion are complicated and depend on details that are not often publicly available. The history of vaccination and the use of fetal tissue is also complicated.

Many vaccines require living cells for their development and production. These living cells must come from a sustainable cell line. When vaccines were first being developed, animal-derived cell lines were used. There were concerns about using animal cell lines, including the risk of contamination with other viruses in the vaccines. This led to interest in using human cell lines instead of other animals for further research.

Eventually, the scientist Leonard Hayflick developed a stable cell line (WI-38) in collaboration with Sven Gard using fetal lung tissue in the early 1960s. These cells contributed to the development of polio, rubella, and rabies vaccines. They were also used to develop diagnostic tests for detecting diseases in hospitalized patients across four continents.

Later, researchers in the UK developed another cell line in 1966 (MRC-5) from another aborted fetus. Vaccines against Hepatitis A, Chickenpox, and Shingles were developed using these cells.1

Many vaccines were developed using these two cell lines. Some vaccines’ production continues through them. This doesn’t mean that fetal tissue is an “ingredient” of these vaccines. These cells are far removed from the original and function more like a biological growth medium. Current vaccines do not contain fetal cells or fetal tissue. But they do have a historical and meaningful connection to them.

Both individual and group beliefs about abortion vary widely and sometimes change over time. We do not need to resolve the myriad questions surrounding abortion to examine this as a reason some are skeptical of vaccinating their children. We also do not need to judge the morality of the two abortions or of their use to create these cell lines. The question now is: What moral responsibility falls on someone who receives a vaccine that exists because of these cell lines, sixty years after they were created?

Giving a vaccine that was developed using one of these cell lines does not cause or give an incentive for one of the original abortions. It doesn’t require more abortions or show approval for a specific abortion or abortions in general. This question ultimately raises a broader ethical question: Are we morally responsible for wrongs that occurred in the distant past, even though we now benefit from them?

The United States’ early wealth, infrastructure, and institutional development were in some way connected to slavery. We continue to benefit from institutions and economic systems that developed from that history, even though we recognize that slavery was morally evil.

Similarly, much of the land we call home was acquired through treaties that resulted from coercion, forced removal, war, or seizure. Our cities, businesses, infrastructure, and homes exist on this land. We live where we do because of moral wrongs even though we didn’t participate in them.

Medicine itself has a checkered history, and some of our knowledge stems from unethical research. Studies conducted on unknowing or vulnerable populations have been appropriately criticized for their unethical methods. When students learn from these old studies, they neither participate in nor approve of the immoral methods they utilized.

In her book, The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology, Marjorie Suchocki defines sin as unnecessary violence against creation. She observes that we naturally participate in and benefit from systems shaped by actions that occurred before us and over which we had no control. We cannot escape the fact that by benefiting from these actions, we, at least in some way, participate in them. We cannot change what happened in the past. The important moral question for us is what we will do with what we have inherited. How can our choices help move the world toward greater well-being?

Applying her ideas to the question of fetal cell lines and vaccines, we must ask ourselves whether it is better to distance ourselves and avoid these vaccines or to use them to prevent illness, suffering, and death.

Prevention of Consequence and Encouraging Behavior

Similarly, most Christians have concerns about morals and sexuality, particularly regarding teenagers. Some fear that giving their young teen the HPV vaccine somehow condones or encourages sexual activity. Others think their children will not need protection from a virus that is sexually transmitted, since they teach them that the only place for sex is within marriage.

HPV is a common infection. In 2013-2014, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that 25.1% of men and 20.4% of women aged 18-59 in the United States were infected with an HPV strain known to cause cancer in some people.2 The CDC estimates that there are 47,984 cases of HPV-associated cancer each year. Of these, 54% occur in women and 46% in men. Undeniably, HPV is common and causes many cases of cancer each year in our country.3

Vaccination against HPV could potentially prevent over 90% of cancers caused by HPV. It has been proven to be safe, effective, and long-lasting.45

There are many good reasons Christian parents encourage their children to explore sexuality within marriage. Sexual activity can complicate relationships. The concepts of consent, power, and abuse are not easy for teens to understand or address. The risks of disease and unwanted pregnancy are real. Despite parental encouragement, teens and young adults commonly explore their sexuality more broadly than their parents might hope.

A 2019 study from the Institute for Family Studies found that, among sexually active Christian evangelical Protestant young adults, 70% of women and 74% of men had two or more sex partners. Of that same group, 43% of women and 52% of men had four or more partners.6 Christian teens and young adults’ sexual activity is certainly not limited to a single partner in a lifetime, despite a parental ideal.

Taking all of this data into account, Christian young adults frequently have had more than one sexual partner, and HPV exposure is extremely common. So a person who has only one lifetime partner may still acquire HPV from that partner. Even Christian teens whose only partner is their spouse may be exposed to HPV and should be protected from much of this risk with the HPV vaccine.

Christian parents also worry that vaccination against HPV somehow permits their young teens to become sexually active. This is far from the truth.

Throughout life, we regularly vaccinate people against tetanus, a life-threatening bacterial infection that can result from wounds caused by objects contaminated with dirt or animal bites. Even though we vaccinate a five-year-old against tetanus, we don’t encourage him to go outside and play with rusty nails from the garden. Vaccinating against tetanus does not give permission to play with potentially contaminated items.

The same is true of the HPV vaccine. When we give it to our young teens, we are not saying, “go have sex.” We are saying, “we care about you and want you to carefully consider the risks of sex.” Providing protection is not giving permission.

For some families, this means having a complicated conversation that they would rather keep simple. It’s easy to say, “Don’t have sex with anyone except your spouse.” It’s harder to talk about deep emotions, risks, complications, and fears that come with relationships complicated by sexual involvement.

Suchocki’s idea holds here as well. We inherit a morally complex and compromised world. The question is what we do with that inheritance to promote overall well-being. We can assume sexual risk will not affect our children, or we can protect them from the likelihood that it will while teaching them a healthy sexual ethic.

Faithfulness and Morality

Moral purity and moral responsibility are not the same. Sometimes we are tempted to retreat to an island of moral purity and distance ourselves from the world. By doing so, we make ourselves “pure” while ignoring our responsibility to protect others. Jesus gave us a very different example. He embraced others whose lives were morally, socially, or politically complicated, seeing, touching, healing, and loving them rather than retreating to a moral high ground separate from them.

Refusing to act also has consequences and deserves moral scrutiny. Sometimes we may be slow to act, or even avoid actions like vaccination, because we fear making the wrong moral choice. But a decision not to act is still a decision and carries moral consequences. Another way to say this is that inaction is not morally neutral if it can result in preventable harm.

Christian morality should ask not only “How do I avoid association with wrongdoing?” but also “What action most promotes love, protection, and flourishing now?” In the case of vaccines with historical ties to fetal cell lines, the question is not “How do I take a stance against abortion?” It is “How do I respond most fully to the moral complexities of the past while using what has been inherited to protect my children and their world from disease and suffering?” Regarding the HPV vaccine, the question is not “How do I reinforce my message of sexual purity to my child?” It is “How can I protect my child from disease that may arise if they or a future partner have sexual histories that differ from the ethic I hope for them?”

Conclusion

Most parents want to make moral decisions about all aspects of their parenting, including vaccination. Decisions about using cell lines derived from aborted tissue are based on moral concerns. Parents concerned about cell lines derived from aborted tissue are acting on a moral position. Those who fear that giving the HPV vaccine to their teens encourages sexual promiscuity are also acting on a moral position. Parents not only want to make good moral decisions but also to model morality for their children. When facing a specific issue, the moral question is sometimes larger than it first appears.

When a parent vaccinates their children with vaccines that are historically tied to fetal cell lines, they are not expressing approval of abortion. They are using what we inherited to help prevent disease, suffering, and death. When they vaccinate their teens against HPV, they are not negating what they teach their children about sexual morality. They are protecting them from a risk that arises when their children engage in sex that differs from the ethic their parents hope for them.

Considering the broader moral question is complex, but it helps us avoid oversimplifying the issue and missing an opportunity to protect our children.

This is the final essay in this series, “Faith, Trust, and Vaccination.” Throughout this series, I have emphasized the importance of making loving decisions toward our family and extending that love into the world around us. I define love as a faithful presence and responsive action that guides and empowers toward overall flourishing. When making decisions about vaccination, we should use faithful discernment as we consider the larger questions and seek to act with wisdom and faithful love.

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I will be giving a presentation along with my friend John Pohl about vaccines, theology, and love at the Theology Beer Camp Pre-Event on October 8th.

I hope you can join us!

For almost thirty years, I have talked with parents about vaccines. Most of those conversations have not been arguments. They have been conversations with moms and dads who are trying to do what they believe is best for their children. Sometimes they are confident about vaccines. Sometimes they have questions. Sometimes they are worried about side effects or about giving several vaccines at once. Sometimes they have read something online or heard a story from a friend that frightened them.

Usually, underneath all of those questions is something pretty simple: they love their children. They want to protect them, and they do not want to make a decision that might harm them. I understand that. In fact, I think that is exactly how parents ought to approach important medical decisions. They should ask questions. They should understand what is being recommended, as well as the potential benefits and risks.

That is part of why President Trump’s comments about vaccines on Monday bothered me so much.1 On August 10, he signed a new executive order establishing what his administration is calling “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations.”2 The order makes some significant changes in federal vaccine policy. It divides childhood vaccines into categories, encourages states to reconsider certain school vaccine requirements, and calls for more research on vaccine timing, safety, adjuvants, and the use of separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines.

There is plenty in the order itself worth discussing. I agree that vaccine safety monitoring is important and that parents should have reliable information that addresses their questions. I have concerns about other parts of the order. Taken as a whole, it risks creating unwarranted fear by repeatedly suggesting that long-established vaccine practices may be unsafe without first demonstrating that they are. Without providing supporting data, it recommends administering vaccines that are currently combined as separate components. It also removes universal recommendations for several vaccines that prevent potentially life-threatening diseases.

But after reading the order and listening to the president discuss it, I was primarily struck by how different the two were. The order mostly says that we should study these questions further. The president often spoke as though we already knew the answers. That difference matters.

What Parents May Have Heard About Autism

One of the clearest examples was autism. President Trump repeatedly connected the increase in childhood vaccines with the increase in autism diagnoses. He talked about a time when children received fewer vaccines and autism was much less commonly diagnosed. Later, when describing his preference for spreading vaccines out over several visits, he said he thought doing that would have “a huge impact on autism.”
The executive order does not say that; in fact, autism is not mentioned in the order at all. That is not a minor distinction. There are still important questions about autism. We do not fully understand why autism develops, and we do not completely understand all of the reasons that its diagnosed prevalence has increased so much over the past several decades. I am glad that scientists continue to study those questions.

But vaccines and autism are not some unexplored connection that researchers have been unwilling to consider. They have been studied over and over again. Large studies in different countries and different populations have looked for a relationship between vaccination and autism and have not found evidence that vaccines cause autism. The World Health Organization reviewed the evidence again in 2025 and reached the same conclusion.3

That does not mean science knows everything about autism. It means we have learned something about this particular question. Regarding autism, we can remain curious about what we do not yet know without pretending that decades of research have told us nothing.

“Vats of Vaccine”

The president also used some language about vaccines that, as a pediatrician, was especially hard for me to hear. He talked about children receiving what looked like a “bottle of soda” full of vaccine. Later he described “vats of vaccine” being pumped into children and said that spreading vaccines over several visits would give the body more time to handle the “massive amount of fluid.”

That is a powerful image, but it is not very accurate. Vaccines are given in very small amounts, usually fractions of a milliliter at a time. More importantly, giving several recommended vaccines during the same visit is not a practice that pediatricians adopted without studying it. Not only are individual vaccines studied for safety and effectiveness, but vaccines administered together during the same visit have also been studied. We have decades of experience with the current schedule, and there is good evidence that children can safely receive multiple vaccines at the same visit.4

Should we continue asking whether the timing of some vaccines might be improved? Of course. Could there be circumstances where spacing things differently makes sense? Certainly, but that is very different from telling parents that their child’s body is being overwhelmed by a huge volume of vaccine. I worry about what a parent hears when the president of the United States uses that kind of language.

I also worry about what parents heard when he talked about the MMR vaccine. The new executive order encourages making separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines available rather than using only the combined MMR vaccine. That is what the order says. During the signing event, however, President Trump suggested that the combined vaccine could possibly be “quite lethal.” When a reporter asked him whether there was evidence for that, he said it was something he had heard and suggested that even if there were only a small chance it was true, separating the vaccines would be worthwhile. He also described the combined vaccine as potentially “explosive.”

Again, that is not what the executive order says. There is a big difference between saying, “Let’s study whether offering these vaccines separately has advantages,” and telling parents that a vaccine their children have been receiving for decades might be lethal. If I said something like that to a parent in my office, I would have a responsibility to have very strong evidence to back it up.

The individual measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, followed by the mumps vaccine in 1967, and the rubella vaccine in 1969. They were combined into the MMR vaccine in 1971.5 The combined vaccine allows children to develop immunity to all three diseases with fewer injections and visits while maintaining safety and effectiveness. Vaccinating against measles, mumps, and rubella together has been the standard for 55 years.

Children’s immune systems can respond to many exposures at once. From birth, they continually encounter viruses, bacteria, foods, and other substances that trigger an immune response. There is no evidence that routinely recommended combination vaccines overwhelm a child’s immune system. Studies and decades of experience support the idea that children’s immune systems can safely and effectively respond to multiple vaccines given at the same visit.6

How We Talk to Parents Matters

That is where, for me, this moves beyond a disagreement about vaccine policy. It becomes a question about how we talk to parents. I have written a lot about the idea that love does not control. Good parenting is not about overpowering children or forcing them into submission. Loving parents listen. They respond. They guide. They gradually help their children develop wisdom and agency of their own.

I think medicine ought to work in much the same way. Parents should not feel that their pediatrician is simply telling them what to do and expecting them to obey without question. They should be able to ask why. They should be able to talk about what worries them. They should expect their doctor to explain not only what we recommend but why we recommend it.

Guiding without controlling does not mean refusing to guide. Respecting a parent’s decision is different from suggesting that all options are equally backed by evidence. I define love as faithful presence and responsive action that guides and empowers toward overall well-being. I keep coming back to the word empowers when I think about this.

We do not empower parents simply by giving them more options. We empower parents by helping them make good decisions. That means giving them information they can trust. It means being honest when there are uncertainties. It means being honest about side effects. It means updating our recommendations when better evidence emerges. But it also means not creating uncertainty where the evidence is actually fairly strong.

Parents cannot give meaningful informed consent or refusal if they are being frightened by dangers that have not been demonstrated. There are real risks associated with vaccines, and I do not tell parents that vaccines are completely risk-free, because they are not. Children can have fever or soreness. Allergic reactions can occur. Some vaccines have rare but well-described complications. That is part of an honest conversation about vaccines.

But an honest conversation must also include the risks of the diseases we are trying to prevent. For example, measles can cause serious illness and, occasionally, death. Pertussis can be particularly dangerous for young infants, causing severe coughing spells, apnea, hospitalization, and even death. Pneumococcal disease can cause meningitis and serious bloodstream infections. Human papillomavirus causes cancer. Hepatitis B can lead to chronic liver disease and liver cancer.

For me, the decision has never been between “risk” and “no risk,” because medicine rarely gives us that choice. The question is almost always which path gives a child the better chance of doing well.

Parental Choice and Flourishing

That is where I think the language of parental choice can become too narrow. Parental authority matters, and parents should have an important voice in decisions about their children. But I do not think the goal of parenting is to maximize parental choice. Love is directed toward overall well-being, toward the flourishing of our children, our families, and ultimately the communities we are part of.

Parents often make choices for their children that the child would not choose in that moment. We buckle a protesting toddler into a car seat, hold a child still long enough for a cut to be stitched, or give medicine we know they will not like. We do those things because loving a child sometimes means seeing beyond the discomfort of the moment and acting for their long-term well-being.

Vaccination often works that way too. A child may cry for a few seconds because a parent is thinking much farther ahead. That parent is thinking about meningitis, measles, whooping cough, liver disease, cervical cancer, or some other illness that may never happen because the child was protected against it.

We also make these decisions as members of communities. Our children share classrooms with children who may be receiving chemotherapy. They sit next to babies at church who are still too young to receive certain vaccines. They visit grandparents with weaker immune systems. They play with children who have immune deficiencies or other chronic illnesses.

So while vaccine decisions are deeply personal, they are never entirely private. What we do affects other people too. That means what our family does affects other families. It does not settle every question about mandates or exemptions. Those are legitimate policy discussions, and reasonable people can disagree about where those lines should be drawn. But I do think it reminds us that love is wider than individual choice.

Humility Works Both Ways

One of the things I actually appreciate in the new executive order is its emphasis on continuing to study vaccine safety. We should do that. We should have strong safety monitoring systems. Researchers should investigate possible adverse effects. We should keep studying vaccine schedules, formulations, and timing. Doctors and public health officials should be willing to say when we were wrong or when new evidence changes the balance of risks and benefits.

Science calls for humility, which involves recognizing our limits and valuing what we’ve learned. We shouldn’t claim that all questions are permanently answered, nor should we behave as if every question is entirely unresolved.

President Trump said during the event that “nothing bad can happen” from the changes being made and that there was essentially nothing to lose. I do not think that is true either. There are real consequences when vaccines are unnecessarily delayed. Children remain vulnerable to disease for longer periods. Additional visits mean additional chances for families to miss appointments. They mean more time away from work, more transportation, more inconvenience, and more risk for errors. Some children who begin a delayed schedule remain incompletely vaccinated.7

There is a reason we try to take advantage of opportunities to vaccinate children when they are in the office. Every additional barrier matters.

Parents Deserve Better

I do not think parents who are hesitant about vaccines are stupid, and I do not think they are bad parents. Most of the vaccine-hesitant parents I have known over the years are trying very hard to protect their children. That is exactly why I think public officials and physicians have such an important responsibility in the way we talk about these things.

Parents deserve more than “Trust me” and more than “Do what I say.” They deserve an explanation. They deserve to understand the evidence. And they certainly deserve more than frightening speculation.

If someone tells parents that routine vaccines might be causing autism, that we are pumping “vats” of vaccine into their children, or that the MMR vaccine might be lethal, their words will shape their decisions. Some parents will become afraid. Some will delay vaccines. Some children will remain unprotected longer, and some of those children will get sick from diseases we know how to prevent.

That is why I decided to write about this, even though I usually avoid writing about politics. For me, this is not primarily about Donald Trump. It is about children. It is about parents who are trying to love their children well, and about the responsibility of those of us entrusted to guide them.

In the end, most vaccine decisions are not made in the Oval Office or in a hearing room. They are made in exam rooms, where parents look at a child they love and try to decide what will best protect them. In those moments, parents deserve neither pressure nor fear. They deserve someone who will listen to their questions, share what we know, admit what we do not know, and help them make a decision that prioritizes their child’s well-being. That is the kind of guidance parents need from their doctors and the kind of honesty they should expect from public officials who speak about children’s health. They should not have to sort through unwarranted fear created by the people they should be able to trust.

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I will be giving a presentation along with my friend John Pohl about vaccines, theology, and love at the Theology Beer Camp Pre-Event on October 8th.

I hope you can join us!

Many people believe that God is omnipotent and controls everything that happens. This understanding of God can have significant implications for our lives, especially when it comes to medical decisions such as vaccinating our children. It leads some families to avoid vaccinations because they see God as singlehandedly in control of everything, including their children’s health.

This view can lead parents to think that vaccinating their children is an admission that they do not trust God to protect them. Others may choose not to vaccinate because trusting God to protect their children feels safer than the risk of feeling guilty if their child experiences a side effect from the vaccine.

The desire to trust God

Parents who believe in God naturally want to trust God. By the time a newborn arrives, her parents have already endured the trials of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Through that journey, they may have experienced fear, uncertainty, and moments when they felt they could only pray for help. When their little girl arrived, their faith in a God who provides grew stronger. It is understandable that they now want to lean into their faith and trust that the God who gave them this beautiful child will protect her.

This desire to trust God can lead some people to believe that vaccinating their children somehow shows a lack of faith in God. For some parents, this may mean that their faith community may doubt their reliance on God if they choose to vaccinate their children.

Some parents who strongly trust God to protect their children from illness fear that their decision to vaccinate may cause side effects for which they would be to blame. In their minds, if their child experiences a side effect from vaccination, they are at least partially to blame. If their child develops an illness because they weren’t vaccinated, it was God’s will.

Doing nothing is still a decision.

Avoiding vaccines is a medical decision. Sometimes parents feel pressure to “decide” how and when to vaccinate their children. This pressure naturally builds during two-, four-, and six-month checkup visits, when vaccinations are recommended. It is important for them to remember that not vaccinating their children is not a default. It is still a decision.

In medical practice, patients must give “informed consent” for surgeries and procedures. It is increasingly common for pediatricians to ask parents to give an “informed refusal” when they want to deviate from the standard vaccination schedule. This reminds us that choosing not to vaccinate is still a decision.

What do we mean when we say “God is in control”?

The idea that God is in control is common. We see it in slogans like “God Has a Plan,” “His Will, His Way, My Faith,” and “God’s Got This.” Thinking that God takes care of all of our difficulties and struggles is reassuring. The problem with this line of thinking is that sometimes things don’t go well.

Consider a child who develops leukemia. Her parents and community naturally ask, “Why?” Saying “God is in control” can lead us to wonder whether God intentionally allowed this child to get cancer, raising difficult questions about God’s nature. Why would a loving God choose for a child to suffer or for her parents to endure such fear and grief?

I do not believe God chooses cancer for anyone. Cancer develops when cells grow out of control and genes fail to function as they should. I do think that God is present, calling doctors, parents, communities, and even the body itself toward healing. When these work together, healing can happen.

The same line of thinking applies to vaccine-preventable illnesses. If God controls every outcome and chooses for a child to die from measles, leaving a family to grieve, that picture of God is difficult to reconcile with love.

But I don’t think God controls everything. Love doesn’t coerce or control. I think God is love and loves everyone and everything, calling all creation toward truth, beauty, goodness, flourishing, and overall well-being. God’s goal is healing and life, not suffering and death.

Popular religious thinking often says we should “Let Go and Let God.” This phrase implies that God is in control and that we’re best off standing back and letting God handle things. But Scripture and our experiences tell a different story. They tell us that God calls or draws us toward the good and that we can choose to cooperate with God in working toward that goal.

Sometimes, our bodies, genes, and cells act in ways that undermine health and flourishing. Other times, doctors, medications, immune systems, families, communities, and God work together to promote healing. Vaccination is one way parents can work with their children’s bodies to help prevent disease before it causes suffering.

God works with us, not instead of us.

God always responds in love. Since God is essentially love, God cannot choose to do anything other than love, and love doesn’t control or coerce others.

In one of his most beautiful and famous passages, Paul describes love as patient, kind, and free from envy, boasting, arrogance, and rudeness. He says love is not irritable, keeps no record of wrongs, and does not “insist on its own way” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5, NRSV). Although Paul wrote about love more broadly, this passage is often read at weddings, where we imagine idealized interactions between spouses who do not insist on their own way but instead cooperate with rather than control their partner. Paul’s description of love is not limited to human love. It also applies to God’s love, which is patient, kind, and humble and does not insist on its own way. Love does not insist on its own way by controlling others.

Sometimes Scripture seems to portray God as controlling. At other times, Scripture presents God as a loving guide. When Scripture offers us different images of God, we are left with the task of interpreting it, which requires humility, wisdom, discernment, and faith.

When I look at Scripture as a whole, I see God guiding rather than controlling. Several of Israel’s most prominent leaders hesitated when they received God’s call. Moses offered many reasons for God to send someone else. Gideon questioned his readiness to lead and God’s commitment to Israel, asking for many signs to validate his selection. Jeremiah hesitated when God called him to be a prophet because of his youth and lack of speaking experience. God responded to each of them with reassurance, persuading them rather than coercing them to lead.

For Christians, Jesus’ life offers deep insight into God’s character. He said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9 NIV), and his interactions with people offer many examples of guidance without control. He invited his disciples to follow him. He showed kindness and acceptance toward Zacchaeus, inspiring Zacchaeus to make amends for what he had taken. He gently guided Peter back into their relationship after Peter’s stark denials. Sometimes his guidance wasn’t followed, as when he engaged with the rich young ruler, who left without taking Jesus’ lead.

Jesus recounts God’s patient efforts to guide the people of Judea through the prophets. With sadness in his voice, he said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). For centuries, God called the people, yet they didn’t follow.

God’s guidance is persistent and loving, continually calling all parts of creation to work together toward flourishing, including doctors, nurses, medications, and vaccines.

Medicine is neither God nor God’s rival.

One way God has guided our world is through exploration, the growth of knowledge, and the development of new technologies. Across many fields, technological advances have created new possibilities for flourishing. Technology is not inherently good, but when guided by wisdom and love, it can become an instrument of healing, protection, connection, and shared well-being.

Human creativity is one way creation responds to God’s call to greater well-being. While not replacing God’s work, scientific and technological advances can become part of our cooperation with God as we seek to reduce suffering and help life flourish.

In modern medicine, vaccines are a technology that has substantially contributed to health and well-being. It is impossible to calculate the full impact of vaccination since the first smallpox vaccine was developed over two hundred years ago. However, a recent World Health Organization study estimates that vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives between 1974 and 2024. Because so many of those lives were saved in infancy and childhood, researchers estimate that vaccination saved about 1.2 billion years of life.1

Vaccines are one way human knowledge and medical care can participate in God’s work toward health and well-being.

Vaccination as responsible love

Vaccinating our children shows love most directly by protecting them from illness, suffering, and death. Parents commonly take preventive measures to protect their children from harm. We use car seats, insist on bicycle helmets, install smoke detectors, and place newborns on their backs to sleep. Vaccines are one way we anticipate and reduce the risks our children may face.

Vaccination also helps protect others, including children too young for certain vaccines, people with medical vulnerabilities, and unvaccinated children in the community. Love looks beyond our immediate family and considers our neighbor’s well-being.

When we vaccinate our children, we are not placing our faith in medicine instead of God. We vaccinate them because we love them, want to protect them and our neighbors, and promote overall well-being. Vaccinating our children can be a faithful response to God’s call to love our children and our neighbors.

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I will be giving a presentation along with my friend John Pohl about vaccines, theology, and love at the Theology Beer Camp Pre-Event on October 8th.

I hope you can join us!

I have had many conversations with parents about vaccines. Most of those discussions are straightforward. Parents often ask which vaccines their child needs, which illnesses they prevent, what side effects may occur, and whether multiple vaccines can be safely given during the same visit.

Other conversations are more complicated. Sometimes the concern is primarily medical. A parent may have read or heard that a vaccine may cause autism, infertility, immune problems, or other harm. Parents may distrust pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, or the medical profession. And sometimes, parents are skeptical of vaccines for reasons related to their religious beliefs.

I have spoken with parents who have faith-based reasons for being hesitant about vaccines. They have various concerns. One parent may worry that vaccination shows a lack of faith in God. Another may have ethical concerns about how a vaccine was developed. Another may have been taught that introducing certain substances into the body violates its sacredness. Still another may see vaccines as part of a larger spiritual or political deception. They may reach the same decision but for different reasons.

Categorizing Religious Vaccine Skepticism

A helpful article by Hanne Amanda Trangerud groups these reasons into five categories of religious vaccine skepticism.1 Her categories are not exhaustive or meant to suggest that religion generally opposes vaccination. She emphasizes that vaccine beliefs vary widely within religious traditions and that the major faith traditions do not generally prohibit vaccination. Her categories help us understand the different kinds of reasoning that can make vaccines religiously troubling for some people.

Although earlier research had identified various religious concerns about vaccines, Trangerud’s article offers a helpful framework for distinguishing among them. Religious vaccine skepticism is not a single belief. It takes several forms. Her article recognizes that religious concerns about vaccinations are complex. Here is my summary of her five categories of religious vaccine skepticism.

1. Vaccines do not fit the person’s understanding of illness and healing

The first kind of skepticism comes from a fundamental conflict between vaccination and a person’s worldview.

Modern medicine understands that infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. Vaccines help prevent infections by preparing the immune system to recognize and resist these organisms.

Not everyone understands health and disease in those terms. Some religious communities believe that illness is primarily spiritual. Disease may be understood as an illusion, the work of evil spiritual forces, the consequence of fear or unbelief, or something that should be addressed only through prayer and faith. Other spiritual or alternative health systems may explain illness as blocked energy, bodily imbalance, or other forces that leave little room for the usual scientific account of infection and immunity. Within such a worldview, vaccines may not merely seem unnecessary. They may seem misguided or spiritually harmful.

More facts about vaccine effectiveness may not resolve a disagreement rooted in two very different accounts of reality.

2. Vaccines seem to interfere with God’s will

A second form of skepticism begins with trust in divine providence. A parent may believe that God alone determines whether a child becomes sick, remains healthy, recovers, or dies. Vaccination can then seem like an attempt to prevent what God has chosen or to control an outcome that should be left in God’s hands.

For some, the issue is trust. Receiving a vaccine may feel like admitting they do not trust God to protect them.

For others, doing nothing feels morally safer. If their children get sick, they may regard the illness as God’s will. But if a vaccine causes a side effect, they may feel personally responsible because they chose the intervention.

This is a deterministic way of understanding God. It leads people to accept negative outcomes as divinely ordained and to view human efforts to change them as unnecessary or wrong. Belief in providence does not always take this form or lead to vaccine refusal. Many religious people believe deeply in God’s guidance while also seeing medicine as one way God provides care.

The real theological question is not whether God is involved in our health. It is how divine action and human responsibility fit together.

3. Some vaccines seem morally compromised

A third concern is ethical. People whose concerns fall into this category do not necessarily oppose vaccination in general. They object to specific vaccines because of concerns about how vaccines are developed, or because they fear vaccination may encourage behavior they believe is wrong.

I often hear this concern when parents express worry about fetal cell lines originally derived from abortions performed decades ago. Some vaccines have been developed or tested using descendants of these cell lines. Christians who strongly oppose abortion may believe that allowing their children to receive these vaccines would make them morally connected to the techniques used to develop these cell lines.

Parents from different religious backgrounds might be concerned about the use of animal products in vaccines, especially if an animal is deemed sacred or harming it is morally wrong.

Other parents may worry that vaccinations could inadvertently give their children permission to push their moral boundaries. The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, for example, protects against a virus commonly transmitted through sexual contact. Some parents fear that administering the vaccine signals approval of premarital sexual activity or may encourage adolescents to become sexually active.

This objection is not primarily rooted in fear of side effects. It comes from a desire to remain faithful to a moral conviction. Helping people overcome these types of concerns requires addressing the underlying ethical or moral issue. A medical explanation alone may miss the actual concern.

4. Vaccines seem to contaminate a sacred body

A fourth form of skepticism focuses on purity. Many religions teach that the body has sacred significance and restrict items that are considered unclean or forbidden.

In those situations, concerns about vaccine ingredients can come up. People from some backgrounds may want to avoid vaccines that contain products derived from pork or beef. Others may prioritize the biblical idea of the body as a temple and worry about vaccines introducing toxins, chemicals, or other impurities into it.

This category is similar to the one regarding ethical concerns, but the emphasis is different. The question is not primarily whether an animal was treated wrongly. The concern is that receiving a prohibited or impure substance may defile the person’s body or violate a religious obligation.

Addressing these concerns may require help from religious authorities who can clarify the tradition’s beliefs about restrictions and the value of preserving life.

5. Vaccines are seen as part of a plot against the faithful

The final category concerns conspiracy beliefs. In this form of skepticism, vaccines are not merely viewed as unsafe or unnecessary. They are seen as potential attacks on a religious community.

The alleged purpose of vaccination may be infertility, population control, infection, surveillance, genetic alteration, or spiritual corruption. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, some Christians linked vaccines to the “mark of the beast” in Revelation. Sometimes, religious minorities have feared that governments or foreign powers have used vaccination campaigns to weaken or eliminate their communities.

Sometimes, these beliefs develop in communities where trust has already been broken. There may be a background of discrimination, medical mistreatment, political exploitation, or neglect. Rumors built on top of a deep-seated sense of betrayal can appear believable.

Addressing concerns rooted in potential conspiracies against particular religious groups is complex. The real challenge is rebuilding trust, and that can be a slow process.

Religious skepticism is rarely only about religion

Parents who raise religious objections to vaccines often do not fit into a single category. A parent’s concerns may reflect several of these categories. Religion may be the reason for the concern, or it may be the way people express concerns that originate elsewhere.

Two people from the same church may reach opposite conclusions about vaccination while appealing to the same beliefs.

One may say, “I trust God, so I do not vaccinate.”

Another may say, “I trust God, and vaccines are one way God helps us protect our children and love our neighbors.”

One may say, “Our bodies are temples, so I will not put vaccines into my children’s bodies.”

Another may say, “Our bodies are temples, so I will protect my children’s bodies from preventable disease.”

Even people with common religious backgrounds do not always reach the same conclusions about vaccines. Individuals’ beliefs can be deeply personal and must be addressed carefully.

Understanding before answering

I strongly support vaccination. Throughout my career, I have seen vaccines prevent illness and death, and I strongly encourage all of my patients’ parents to vaccinate their children. I have also learned that addressing vaccine hesitancy sometimes requires more than presenting medical data.

This is especially true when parents connect vaccine hesitation to faith. Understanding parents’ specific concerns and where they came from is essential.

Each type of concern requires a different conversation. Offering more safety data will not change a theological belief about providence. Discussing scientific data about cervical cancer may not connect with a parent who cannot imagine their sweet twelve-year-old ever being exposed to HPV.

Helping someone move beyond vaccine skepticism is not always possible. Even after careful, respectful conversation, some parents remain unconvinced. They may not be ready to vaccinate their children.

Change is more likely when we listen closely enough to understand the concern underlying the conclusion. Then we can identify shared values and offer explanations with humility. If we try to bully or coerce people into agreement, we are more likely to deepen the resistance we hope to overcome.

Conversations about vaccines can be difficult and do not always result in agreement. We love best when we begin by seeking to understand before we answer. That kind of faithful presence can build trust and open possibilities for greater well-being.

In the next two posts, I will address the two categories of concern I hear parents express most frequently. Some parents are concerned about God’s sovereignty and believe that since God is in control, vaccinating their children shows a lack of trust in God. Others worry about moral issues surrounding vaccine development or think vaccines may permit sexual behavior they believe is wrong. Both concerns deserve careful theological and ethical attention.

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I will be giving a presentation along with my friend about vaccines, theology, and love at the Theology Beer Camp Pre-Event on October 8th.

I hope you can join us!

I recently had the pleasure of joining on his podcast, Tracks for the Journey, for a conversation about open and relational parenting.

We talked about how our understanding of God shapes the way we raise our children, what it means to balance loving connection with wise guidance, and how parents can nurture their children without trying to control them. We also explored how these ideas can apply across the parenting journey, from the preschool years through adolescence and young adulthood.

The conversation offers an introduction to the central ideas in my book, Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God. For those who have not read the book, this episode provides a concise overview of its vision of parenting and the loving, responsive God who inspires it.

I am grateful to Larry for inviting me and for the thoughtful conversation.

You can watch the episode on YouTube or listen through Apple Podcasts.

You can also explore other episodes of Tracks for the Journey.

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After publishing my first book in August, I received requests for an audio version for those who prefer to read with their ears. After a few months of work, I’m happy to announce that the audiobook version of Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God is now available on Spotify and several other outlets.

Creating the audiobook was an interesting process, so I’ll provide a bit of “behind the scenes” information. I began by reading the book and editing the audio myself. I play bass for a band and recorded, mixed, and mastered one of our albums, so I thought this process would be easy.

But I learned that reading one’s own book is different. For me, verbal mistakes were common, and editing was tedious.

Here’s where I appreciate AI. With the help of ElevenLabs, I was able to clone my voice by reading a chapter from one of my books. ElevenLabs created audio tracks for the book, and I meticulously reviewed and edited them along the way.

I subscribed to ElevenLabs’ “Creator” plan for three months. During the first month, I received a 50% discount, so I paid $55 plus tax to create the audiobook. I distributed it through Voices by inAudio, which submits it to audiobook platforms, including Spotify.

The result is excellent. It mostly sounds like me, reading my book.

The primary exception is the pronunciation of the Hebrew word hesed, which this ElevenLabs model doesn’t handle well. I apologize to my Hebrew-speaking friends for the inadequate pronunciation. Beyond that, this audiobook sounds like me reading my book.

The audiobook is available on Spotify, Everand, and Kobo, and will soon be available on Audiobooks.com and Barnes & Noble (Nook). It is not available on Audible because they do not yet allow AI-trained author voices on their platform.

I hope the audiobook version of my book is helpful to many people!

Here’s a sample from the book’s introduction:

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One of the mistakes parents make is thinking we must choose between acceptance and guidance. We think it’s a choice between simply accepting our children, which can sound like letting everything go, and only guiding them, which can easily become correction, control, or pressure. But loving parents don’t have to choose between the two. They receive their children deeply enough to guide wisely, and they guide them lovingly enough that acceptance is never lost.

Sarah had been relieved when her sixteen-year-old daughter, Ella, started spending time with her new friend, Ava.

Ella had seemed lonely for months. She came home quiet, answered questions with shrugs, and spent most evenings in her room. Then Ava appeared. Suddenly, Ella was laughing again. She had someone to sit with at lunch, someone to text after school, someone who seemed to make her feel less alone.

At first, Sarah was grateful. Then she began to worry.

Ella became more secretive with her phone. She was vague about where they had been. She came home from Ava’s house energized, but also sharper and more defensive. A few stories did not quite add up.

So when Ella said, “Ava wants me to come over Saturday,” Sarah felt the speech rise in her chest.

I don’t trust her.

I don’t like this friendship.

You’re not going.

But she paused before she spoke.

If she began there, Ella would only hear control. She would not hear the love underneath it.

So instead, Sarah said, “Tell me what you like about being with Ava.”

Ella looked guarded. “I don’t know. She gets me. I don’t feel weird around her.”

Sarah nodded. That was it. This was not rebellion first. It was Ella reaching for belonging.

“That makes sense,” she said. “You’ve been wanting someone who really sees you. I can understand why this friendship matters.”

That was not approval. It was alignment.

Then she continued, “Because I love you, I want to help you pay attention to something. When you’re with Ava, do you feel more like yourself or less like yourself?”

Ella looked down.

“A good friendship does not have to be perfect,” Sarah said. “But it should make it easier to be honest, not harder. It should help you become freer, not more hidden.”

Sarah still set limits: No riding with Ava’s older sister. No being somewhere without an adult knowing. Call if things get uncomfortable.

But the limits came after Ella knew she was understood.

Her mom was saying, “I see why this matters to you. I get what you are looking for. And I love you too much to ignore what it may be costing you.”

That is responsive love.

It meets the child where they are. And it calls them toward what they may yet become.

God’s Responsive Love

Process theology has deeply shaped the way I think about parenting. Although I most often use the language of “open and relational” theology, process theology is constantly in the background.

I’ve been thinking about responsive love lately, and I’ve realized it has two distinct components. First, responsive love meets us where we are. It celebrates victories, walks with us when life is mundane, and sits with us when we suffer. And after receiving what we’ve gone through, responsive love draws us toward the future and what we may yet become.

Alfred North Whitehead, a central figure in process thought, uses the term “nature” to describe aspects of God’s relationship to creation. I do not think God has three competing natures. God’s essential nature is love. Once we set aside possible confusion over the word “nature,” Whitehead’s threefold description helps us see how divine love relates to creation: God holds possibility, receives the world, and offers guidance toward what may yet become.

Whitehead calls one aspect of God’s relation to the world God’s “primordial nature.” This phrase sounds technical, but the idea is beautiful. It is the side of God that always knows there is a faithful next step, a next movement toward healing, a better possibility still available. God eternally holds and values all possibilities for beauty, healing, wisdom, courage, tenderness, honesty, and flourishing. This is not yet God’s specific guidance for a specific moment. It is the deeper source from which such guidance can come.1

God also relates to the world through the divine “consequent nature.” This is the side of God that is affected by the world. God is not only the source of possibility. God feels what actually happens. The joys, griefs, failures, sufferings, beauties, losses, and achievements of the world become part of God’s own life. Here God becomes the “feeler of feelings”2 and the “fellow sufferer who understands.”3 Because of the divine consequent nature, God truly sits with us in our situations and suffering.4

Finally, God relates to the world through what Whitehead calls God’s “superjective nature.” This is an even more awkward term, but here, divine love comes full circle. This is the side of God that moves from divine reception toward divine guidance. God does not merely receive the world into the divine life. God receives the world, integrates it with the fullness of divine possibility, and then offers back a fresh possibility shaped for the concrete situation. God doesn’t simply feel with the world. God also calls the world toward healing, beauty, wisdom, and flourishing. Divine love suffers with, but it also leads forward.5

As God relates to us in these ways, God effectively says:

I understand what has happened and can sit with you here.
I know what is still possible and can guide you forward.
I won’t coerce or force you, but I will offer you the best possibility love can offer.

How this Shapes Nurturant Parenting

This way of thinking about God’s love does not give parents a formula. It gives us a pattern.

This pattern begins with possibility. Parents do not know all that their children can become, and should let their children script their own future. Yet loving parents hold a vision of what makes for life. We keep before our children possibilities for honesty, courage, kindness, wisdom, responsibility, repair, freedom, and flourishing. In that sense, parents help shape a child’s world of possibilities. We do not choose a child’s future, but we help make the most life-giving possibilities visible.

But loving parents do more than hold possibilities open before their children. They also receive and guide. If God’s love receives and guides, then nurturant parenting should do the same.

Nurturant parenting is sometimes misunderstood as soft parenting, permissive parenting, or parenting that lets children’s feelings run the house. But that is not what nurturance means. Nurturant parenting combines warmth and guidance. It is deeply responsive and lovingly directive. It takes the child seriously without making the child the center of all authority. That is why the two aspects of responsive love matter so much.

The first aspect teaches us to receive the child before we react to the behavior.

Before we correct, we try to understand. Before we set a limit, we try to see what is really happening. Is the child angry, ashamed, afraid, lonely, overwhelmed, embarrassed, tired, or longing to belong? What are they reaching for, even if they are stepping out unwisely?

This does not mean every behavior is acceptable. It means every child remains receivable.

A parent can say, “I understand why you were angry,” and still say, “I will not let you hit.” A parent can say, “I see why this friendship matters,” and “I am not comfortable with that situation.” A parent can say, “You were scared to tell the truth,” and “Now we need to fix the lie.”

That is loving acceptance. It is not approval. Not passivity. Not surrender. It is the parents’ willingness to meet the child where they are.

The second aspect teaches us to guide the child toward what they may yet become.

Children need not only to be understood. They need to be formed. They need help learning to tell the truth, repair harm, regulate their emotions, respect boundaries, make wise choices, and move toward their flourishing. A love that only receives but never guides may leave children alone with feelings, desires, and fears they don’t yet have the skills to manage.

But guidance is most loving when it grows out of reception.

When a parent has first listened, understood, and aligned with the good desire behind the difficult behavior, guidance becomes less like control and more like an invitation. It becomes less about forcing compliance and more about helping the child recognize the next faithful step.

This is what Sarah was doing with Ella. She did not begin by attacking the friendship. She began by receiving Ella’s longing for belonging. Then, from that place of understanding, she guided Ella toward discernment.

“Does this friendship help you become more yourself or less yourself?”

That is nurturant parenting. It is not controlling. It is not permissiveness. It is love that receives deeply enough to guide wisely.

This is where theology can reshape the instincts we bring into parenting.

If we imagine God primarily as controlling, we may assume love means getting the outcome we want. We may parent with more pressure than presence.

If we imagine God as distant or uninvolved, we may think that love means stepping back and letting children figure things out on their own.

But if we imagine God as responsively loving, we begin to see God differently. God becomes neither controlling nor detached. God receives the world in love and offers each moment the possibility of what may yet become.

That image of God can form us as parents.

It invites us to ask, in the difficult moments:

What is my child experiencing and feeling right now?

What longing, fear, hurt, or need is behind this behavior?

How can I receive my child without approving what is harmful?

What life-giving possibility might still be available here?

What is the next wise, loving, and possible step from here?

Those questions slow us down. They help us parent with less panic and more presence. They remind us that the goal is not merely to stop a behavior, win a power struggle, or force a child to comply. Instead, the goal is to help our child grow in wisdom, love, freedom, responsibility, and flourishing.

Nurturant parenting lives in that space.

It says, “I am with you here.”

And it says, “Let’s move toward what is better.”

Like God’s own love, nurturant parenting says:

I am with you here.
And I will help you move toward what is better.

It receives.
And it guides.

Special thanks to and for their help with this post, and my references to Whitehead.

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A Frightening Moment in the Exam Room

Josiah was six months old. His six-month-old checkup visit had gone well. He was sitting up longer than expected, laughed, even at me, and was eating purées like a champ. I walked out of the exam room and started toward the next room when a sudden outburst called me back.

Josiah had been crying loudly when he suddenly stopped. Not only had he stopped crying, but he also wasn’t breathing. His skin turned purple, then blue. His mom’s eyes widened in alarm. The room fell quiet, and then he breathed. He cried again. His color returned. His mom held him close, and within a few minutes, he was fine. She still wasn’t.

This was Josiah’s first breath-holding spell. Oddly, his spells occurred only in response to vaccinations. He repeated the performance at his 12- and 15-month visits. When the 18-month visit came around, his mom asked whether she could delay his single vaccination by a week or two because she “couldn’t handle passing out today.”

Understanding Breath-Holding Spells

Initially, breath-holding spells sound and look dangerous, but most are not. They are dramatic and frightening, but for most kids, they are brief and self-limited. They are fairly common, affecting up to 5% of healthy children, typically between 6 months and 5 years of age. Although they are usually triggered by pain, frustration, or anger, they are involuntary and are not temper tantrums or deliberate attempts at manipulation. Some children might turn blue during breath-holding spells, while others become pale, and some may even progress from pallor to a bluish color. Most children who have breath-holding spells outgrow them by age 3-4.

Although these types of spells are common, children should be evaluated if episodes are prolonged, occur without an obvious trigger, cause lingering drowsiness or confusion, or are accompanied by movements or symptoms that raise concern for a seizure or another medical problem.

What Parents Can Do in the Moment

When facing frightening situations like this, it’s helpful for parents to gently remind themselves of what’s happening, reassure themselves that it will pass quickly, and do their best to stay calm and centered. For many, it helps to have a short action plan, such as placing the child somewhere safe on the floor or in a lap and holding them until the episode passes.

This is good pediatric advice and can apply generally to all kids with breath-holding spells. But it’s not quite specific enough. Like my 6-month-old patient, who held his breath after vaccination, these kids aren’t “being difficult” or trying to manipulate. Their bodies respond to specific triggers, which can differ quite a bit from one child to another.

The Child Behind the Spell

This patient’s spell was probably his body’s response to surprise and physical pain. Another child may hold their breath because they were unexpectedly left alone, another due to strong emotions like fear, frustration, or anger. For some children, spells may be more likely when they are already stretched thin by hunger, fatigue, or overstimulation.

Beyond the general advice about how to handle these spells when they happen, parents who try to understand what’s behind their child’s breath-holding may be able to do something to help prevent them.

If painful procedures like vaccinations are the trigger, parents could try holding the child differently and perhaps more reassuringly during the shot. Other children may need careful preparation for sudden transitions. Some parents may be able to prevent these spells by learning to recognize their children’s strong emotions early, so they can comfort them before their feelings escalate. Others may find that sticking closely to a schedule for snacks or naps makes breath-holding less likely.

Parenting the Child You Actually Have

While managing breath-holding spells is just a small part of parenting, it offers a chance to learn more about the overall parenting journey.

Good parenting is not simply applying the same rule to every child. It usually only takes parents a few days to realize this when they have a second child. The little sister quickly declares that she’s not like the first and that what worked for the first child won’t work for her.

Children need their parents to help them learn who they are and what they uniquely need. One child may need verbal reassurance, while another needs less talk and more hugs. One needs firm boundaries, while another needs a bit more freedom. One may need more help calming a nervous system that disintegrates quickly, while another may self-regulate easily.

Parents gain wisdom when they move from asking, “What do children need?” in the abstract to asking, “What does this child need, here and now?”

God’s Love Is Not Generic

I think this is one way parenting can teach us something about God. A loving parent doesn’t respond to every child the same way. Love can be consistent without being mechanical. It can have a steady aim without taking the same form in every moment. It always points to overall flourishing, but the form love takes in a moment depends on the child, their feelings, capacities, and the available possibilities.

Just as loving parents guide and respond to their children individually, God’s love is not generic. God responds uniquely to each of us and to all of creation here and now.

God relates to us as individuals, not as interchangeable replicas. God knows who we are and, in every moment, sees our history, fears, hesitations, aspirations, and capacity, guiding us toward the best possibilities for flourishing. How God guides and responds to me in one moment will not be the same as how God interacts with you. Not because God is inconsistent, but because love is attentive and responsive.

Love Learns, Watches, and Adapts

I agreed to Josiah’s mom’s request to return another day for the vaccination. When they returned, Josiah didn’t hold his breath. I don’t know whether he had outgrown his breath-holding spells or whether his mom had learned new ways to calm him that prevented one that day. In either case, he didn’t hold his breath that day and hasn’t since.

That’s how a parent’s love works. It learns, watches, and adapts. It provides safety when needed, reassurance when fear takes over, guidance when the path is unclear, and response in each new moment.

I think God’s love is like that also. Rather than being a distant rule applied from “above,” God’s love is a dynamic presence that knows us deeply, meets us individually, and keeps inviting us toward flourishing every moment.

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image: ChatGPT

Last Sunday at Walden Pond, I found myself thinking about love.

Not romantic love, and not even primarily the love of friendship. I found myself thinking about the kind of love that begins with simple attention: the love that notices, delights in, and cherishes because of what is there.

Linda and I were near Concord for a parenting workshop and had a little extra time to explore. When I realized we could visit Walden Pond, I jumped at the chance.

During high school, my senior “term paper” examined Thoreau’s reasons for going to Walden Pond. I’m pretty sure I don’t still have a copy of that paper, and I’m also pretty sure that it wasn’t a stellar example of writing. Yet, I’ve remained intrigued by Thoreau’s experiment.

Arriving at the pond, we parked, crossed the street, and headed down a gentle slope to the edge of Walden. It was an unusually warm spring day, and several other people were enjoying the surroundings. Some were hiking, others fishing, and some simply sat and watched the pond and trees. Walden Pond has likely changed in many ways since Thoreau was there 180 years ago, but it still seems to draw people, perhaps for many of the same reasons.

We strolled around the pond, arrived where Thoreau’s cabin once stood, and took in the view from there.

As we walked from the site of his cabin back to the car, we found placards featuring Robert Burleigh’s children’s book, “If You Spent a Day with Thoreau at Walden Pond.”1 Each page imagined what a child might experience with Thoreau at Walden Pond, watching fish swim, ants build, and clouds pass by. Those pages reminded me that part of Thoreau’s experiment was to experience nature and the world in each moment and to love it “because of” what it is.

In his book “Walden,” Thoreau gives detailed descriptions of Walden Pond, including its water, surface, bottom, inhabitants, and winter ice. He describes how he watched snakes, birds, woodchucks, ducks, owls, foxes, and ants. In each moment and in each interaction, he loved them all because of what they are.

Because-of Love

When we love something because it is valuable, we are practicing because-of love.2 As parents, we naturally use this type of love when we experience and appreciate our children’s inherent value. We see their first smiles, bites of food, words, and steps. We treasure plaster handprints, watercolor sunsets, and dinosaurs crafted from clay. We love our children because of who they are.

As I walked beside Walden Pond and read the pages of the children’s book, I realized that because-of love exists in a moment. Thoreau loved Walden Pond for its clarity and reflections in the summer, and for its solid ice coating in the winter. He loved the pond’s fish and the beans he grew because of the sustenance they provided. He loved the ants, foxes, and woodchucks as neighbors. He was happy to pause and experience nature moment by moment, loving it along the way.

Later, Thoreau said, “Love must be as much a light as a flame.”3 Love, then, is not only warmth or attraction. It also illuminates, helping us see more clearly. Because-of love may begin in delight, but it doesn’t have to remain there. The warmth of love becomes a light that points to the future, to something beyond the now.

Overall Well-Being

That kind of attention matters in parenting, too. We begin by loving our children because of who they are: their smile, their curiosity, their energy, their uniqueness, their sheer presence in our lives. But parenting asks more of us than admiration. It asks us to let love mature, guiding us toward overall well-being. We do not simply enjoy the child before us; we seek the flourishing of the child who is growing and changing, always in relationship to the well-being of the whole family and the world around us.

Overall well-being includes flourishing, wellness, shalom, health, and happiness. It is not always easy to recognize, and it often requires discernment and wisdom. In parenting, it means considering the needs of each family member and the family as a whole. It will not look the same in every home, because every family is made up of different people with different needs.

As parents, we can let our because-of love point us toward that wider flourishing. From the very beginning, we can attend to a child’s needs and wants while also holding them alongside the needs of the rest of the family. For a newborn, that might mean picking her up, laying her down, or asking someone else to hold her so you can tend to a sibling, prepare a meal, or sit and enjoy much-needed rest. For older children, this may mean actively seeking input on the family’s plans and intentionally explaining the reasons for decisions you make.

We can also teach our children to seek this kind of well-being for others. We can help them learn to consider others around them and the broader world as they make their own choices. That sounds a bit like a wise statement from Jesus, “…do to others as you would have them do to you.”4

Back at Walden Pond

Maybe that is what Walden Pond gave me that afternoon: a reminder that love begins in attention. It begins as we notice the worth of what is before us. And perhaps it grows from there, becoming a light that guides us toward the good still lying ahead.

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Special thanks to Pastor Willie and my other new friends at Great Road Church in Acton, MA. They were gracious hosts, and I had a wonderful time discussing ways we can reflect God’s love to our children.

But what if judgment isn’t a final verdict at all?
What if it’s something that happens every moment, guiding us toward a better future?

Judgment. For many people, simply hearing that word triggers a flood of thoughts, memories, and feelings. You may remember a parent’s disappointed look when a report card came home, being compared to another child who always seemed “better,” or having your wardrobe second-guessed. At school, you may have felt judged by your teacher when your paper came back covered in red ink, or by your classmates when you didn’t quite fit in or said the wrong thing at the wrong time. And you may remember going to church and hearing about a God who will someday judge your whole life, with dire consequences in the balance.

My book, Open and Relational Parenting, presents God from the perspective of open and relational theology and proposes that parents can mirror God’s loving nature to their children. In it, I discuss many divine characteristics, including God’s judgment. Several of my readers who are well-versed in open and relational theology have told me that the idea of divine judgment still raises many questions and emotions for them.

If we rethink the idea of divine judgment, it can shift from being scary to a loving response that gives us direction. When we examine it carefully, divine judgment turns out to be three unexpected things: it is momentary rather than final, aspirational rather than condemning, and deeply felt rather than emotionally detached. When we look closely at Scripture, theology, and our own experiences, divine judgment begins to look less like a final courtroom verdict and more like an aspirational, moment-by-moment response guiding creation toward a better future. We, as parents, can mirror that nurturant judgment as we guide our children into the future.

Momentary Judgment and Final Judgment

Scripture certainly points to the idea of a judgment after death. Speaking of an apocalyptic future, Daniel says that after death, some will arise to everlasting life, while others will be brought to shame.1 The writer of Hebrews says, “… people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”2

On the other hand, many scriptures about judgment say that God will judge our actions, but do not say when. For example, the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”3 Scriptures like this tell us that God will judge, but don’t point to a future, final judgment. Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”4 If divine judgment helps the blind see, it suggests that judgment happens now, not just at the end of time.

Regardless of our view of a final judgment, I think God’s primary judgment is momentary and serves to point us toward better decisions in the future. In process theology, God always lures creation toward the best possibilities available in a given moment. When we act, God responds to what actually happened. This response is divine judgment, not condemnation. It is a loving evaluation that preserves what is good and guides the next moment toward something better.

From a parenting perspective, God regularly says, “We’ll do better next time,” pointing to opportunities for improvement.

Aspirational Judgment and Condemning Judgment

Scripture also presents different pictures of the nature of divine judgment. Sometimes it portrays God as an angry, vindictive, Zeus-like deity who smites people if they don’t perfectly comply with God’s direction. Examples include:

• Most of humanity’s destruction through the flood

• The annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah

• The Israelites’ punishment for creating the golden calf

• Uzzah’s immediate execution for touching the ark of God

• Jonah’s confinement in the belly of a fish

Scripture sometimes paints a picture of God displaying divine condemnation and even retribution.

I am a pediatrician and theologian, not a Hebrew Scripture expert, so I look to scholars like Pete Enns ( ) for help. He recognizes these portrayals of God and says, “[I do not] believe God passes out violent retribution like he’s sowing grass seed. I do believe that the Israelites believed these things about God. They imagined God in the only way that God would make sense to them - through the language and concepts of their time and place.”5 He summarizes this idea by saying, “God lets his children tell the story.”6 Ancient people often imagined God’s judgment as vindictive and condemning because that was how they understood the divine within their cultural world.

Alternatively, we can see God’s judgment as aspirational, pointing toward possibilities for a better future. Divine aspirational judgment is primarily concerned with helping creation move toward a better future. It offers an unbiased assessment of what we have done and points us toward what we can do better in the future. In this view, we can see God’s judgment as Alfred North Whitehead did, a “judgment of tenderness.” It doesn’t come from a cosmic prosecutor tallying sins, but rather from a loving parent who turns to a new page and says, “Here’s a better way forward.”

Jesus frequently exemplified aspirational judgment. His interaction with a Jewish tax collector who colluded with Rome against his own people convinced him to repay his debts and change his ways. He told stories, such as his parable about a son who took his inheritance early, ran away, and wasted it before returning home empty-handed, pleading for mercy. His father’s judgment was not condemning but aspirational, restoring the relationship and opening the future.

Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery

One of my favorite stories that demonstrates God’s aspirational love and judgment comes from John’s story of Jesus.

Early in the morning, he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once again, he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”7

Here, Jesus shows us what God is like. He doesn’t defer to a divine judgment at the “end of time,” but instead shows what momentary aspirational judgment looks like. He clearly understands what the woman has done, yet protects her from the angry crowd by deflecting their anger. When the crowd has gone, Jesus sees the woman, shows loving mercy, and points her toward a better future. His statement isn’t a legalistic command to never do anything wrong again. It is an invitation to imagine a future that doesn’t repeat her past mistakes.

Jesus doesn’t condemn the woman. He sees her, makes a connection with her, and saves her from the crowd’s wrath. Yet he is not permissive. He doesn’t “look the other way” regarding her actions. Instead, he points to the possibility of better decisions in the future, saying, “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” He anticipates a better future and points her in that direction.

Realistically, this woman probably didn’t live a perfect life from that point onward. Even though she would likely fail, Jesus pointed her toward a flourishing life. When she failed again, God reminded her of divine love and said again, “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

Judgment That Feels

I was reminded of another aspect of divine judgment to consider during the Open and Relational Theology Online (ORTLine) conference last weekend. My dissertation advisor, Dr. Tom Oord ( ), noted that when he sees injustices in our world, he wants God to be angry. He was careful to distinguish this from a desire for God to punish. I agree. It seems that if God truly understands the world’s situations and sees injustice, God should sometimes be angry. The opposite of this idea also seems reasonable. If God sees moments when the world achieves truth, beauty, and goodness, God should be joyful. The question becomes, “Does divine judgment have feeling?”

After hearing Tom’s ideas, I considered them in the back of my mind overnight. The next morning, the issue hit me again during worship at Christ City Church. As my friend, Josh Cosby, led us in a musical prayer to God, we sang the lyric, “May the works of my hands bring you joy.”8 I stopped singing and thought about how we naturally expect God to respond to our actions with feeling. If I want God to be joyful when people do good things, it is only natural that I expect God to be angry, sad, and frustrated when people’s actions bring injustice and harm.

The idea that God’s judgment is not simply factual but also affective doesn’t come only from experience. It has a philosophical and theological basis. The philosopher and theologian, Charles Hartshorne, expands on Whitehead’s idea that God feels feelings and calls God the ultimate “feeler of feelings” of others.9 In this role of incarnation, God feels what we feel every moment.

Let’s explore this idea through the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which happened less than a mile from where I am writing. When Dr. King died, many people were affected and felt strong feelings. His family, friends, empathizers, and supporters undoubtedly felt sadness, grief, anger, outrage, fear, and anxiety. God saw what they were going through and felt their feelings. God didn’t simply know that Dr. King was dead or that his supporters were sad and angry. God felt these feelings and was sad and angry with them.

The complication that comes with this example is that God would have also “felt the feelings” of white supremacists who celebrated Dr. King’s death. Here, it becomes important to recognize that God’s “feeling of feelings” relates to divine judgment. God feels the mourners’ and supremacists’ feelings and weighs them with the assassination’s impact on the world. Responding to Dr. King’s death, I think God was sad and angry, empathizing with the mourners and recognizing that a path to flourishing had been thwarted.

God not only “feels our feelings” but also sees the possibilities in each moment that could have led toward overall well-being. I think God synthesizes judgment and feeling into affective judgment, understanding how each of us feels while leading us all toward overall flourishing. God can be angry when injustices occur and joyful when the world moves toward truth, goodness, and beauty.

We Can Reflect this Type of Judgment Toward our Children.

Parents can use this view of divine judgment as a model for their relationships with their children. For some parents, the idea of “judging” their children seems distasteful. Other parents take to it so naturally that they are almost always in “judge-mode.”

In reality, we all necessarily judge our children. In any situation, we have aspirations for what they can choose to do that would be “best.” They may or may not follow our guidance. Regardless, we see their choices and actions and inevitably compare them to our aspirations and evaluate the outcome. This comparison is an example of momentary judgment. We don’t save up all of these momentary judgments for a monthly “report card” or an end-of-childhood assessment. Instead, we respond to our children each moment.

Similar to divine judgment, parental judgment involves feeling. In addition to seeing the cold facts of what happened, we experience our own feelings and perceive our children’s feelings. We may feel excited, joyful, sad, disappointed, or angry. We may sense that they experience happiness, pride, shame, fear, or anxiety.

We combine our aspirations, the child’s decision, and everyone’s feelings into a response that is aspirational rather than condemning. We avoid arbitrary punishments, instead relying on natural or logical consequences and developmentally sensitive communication to help them evaluate what they did and see the best options for similar future situations.

Putting this all together, imagine a child who hits a sibling during an argument. A condemning judgment might sound like, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you always do this?” An aspirational judgment sounds different: “I can see you’re really angry. Hitting hurts people. Let’s figure out what you could do next time when you feel this mad.”

When many people hear the word “judgment,” they imagine a courtroom. A judge sits behind the bench, a verdict is delivered, and the case is closed. If the judge is divine, everything is bigger, scarier, and riskier.

When we carefully look at stories from Scripture and ideas from open and relational theology, we see something different. Divine judgment is not primarily a final verdict waiting at the end of time. It is God’s loving response to each moment of our lives.

· It is momentary rather than final.

· It is aspirational rather than condemning.

· And it is deeply felt rather than cold and detached.

God sees what we do, understands our feelings with a “judgment of tenderness,” and preserves what is good while guiding us toward something better in the next moment of our lives.

Good parents practice this kind of judgment every day. When our children make mistakes, we do not declare a final verdict on who they are. Instead, we see what happened, feel the emotions involved, and point them toward a better possibility for the next time.

Many people assume judgment and love are opposites. Judgment condemns, while love forgives. Judgment closes the case, while love offers mercy.

But the story Scripture tells is different. Judgment is not the opposite of love. It is one way love works. It is a judgment of tenderness that refuses to give up on the future.

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I’ll be in Boston on April 11 at Great Road Church and would love for you to join me!

I’ve gone to Methodist Germantown Hospital’s Women’s Pavilion thousands of times. I typically park in the same area of the garage, come in the same door, climb the same two flights of stairs, greet the same nurses as I pass them, and sit at the same computer before seeing my newborn patients. I review their charts in the same order, and print my rounding list on a piece of paper that I carry with me during my rounds and back to the office. And every day, I fold this piece of paper the same way – first crosswise, then in half, and finally in half again before tucking it in my back pocket.

This has always been my routine. Until today.

I obviously like order and predictability, especially in my workday. All the details I described to you about my morning rounds work well, except for the fold. When I fold my rounding list as I described, I can only see the first half of the page without unfolding it. I guess I was thinking about this inefficiency as I walked from the printer to my first patient’s room. Suddenly, an idea hit me! What if I fold the page differently? What if my first fold is longwise? Then, I only have to undo one fold to see all of the information about my patients. I paused at the nurse’s station, refolded my rounding list, and eureka, I was right! This tiny change, this tiny epiphany, rocked my rounding world.

Such a Tiny Change?

Ok, I’ll admit it, “rocked my rounding world” may be an overstatement. Changing the way that I fold my rounding list isn’t that big of a deal. Or is it?

After I refolded the list, I walked to the nurses’ station closest to my first patient’s room. I washed my hands and found myself smiling as I thought about the simple change that made my work easier. I told the nurses working there about my epiphany, and they smiled, at least sharing my joy, even if they didn’t completely get it. I saw my patients and left the hospital through my usual staircase. Halfway down, I passed a woman walking up. In my possibly inappropriate euphoria over my newfound folding technique, I smiled and said, “Have a good day!” We passed, and she continued upward until she had almost reached the next landing. She paused, looked back, and said, “Thank you. I really needed that smile because I had something heavy on my mind, and now I’m smiling.”

I wished her well, finished my climb down the stairs, and walked to my car, thinking about how my novel idea had developed, bringing me joy, which in turn lightened someone else’s load, at least briefly.

The philosopher and theologian Alfred North Whitehead sometimes imagined thought as an airplane’s flight. The aircraft starts on the ground with an observation of your own experience. It takes flight, and you can imagine how your grounded experience applies to more general situations. Finally, the plane lands, allowing you to apply those broader ideas to your real life.

As I drove away from the hospital, my grounded experience led me to “take flight” and think about two big ideas: novelty and interconnectedness.

Novelty

If you think about it carefully, we (and everything) are constantly changing. Each moment is unique and unfolds from past events and patterns, as well as from potential possibilities. Before today, I have printed rounding lists hundreds, if not thousands, of times. And every time, I folded them the same way. It was simply my habit. On all those occasions, past events and patterns influenced how I folded my page more than anything else. Today, a new possibility occurred to me. Following that lead, I folded the page differently and discovered a novel way to do something I had practiced the same way for many years.

The novelty isn’t that no one has ever folded a page like this before. It’s that I had never folded my rounding list that way. This tiny idea is not patentable. I won’t write a book or appear on the Today show to teach people how to fold a page differently. It’s simply a new way of doing something that is just a bit better than how I’ve done it before.

Thinking about it a bit more, I realized that this little example gives us insight into other moments. Maybe every moment develops not only from past events and patterns, but also from new possibilities. That thought raises the question of where these possibilities come from.

Whitehead proposed that God sees all available possibilities in each moment and guides us toward those that best lead to truth, goodness, and beauty. This divine guidance isn’t a prewritten script that is coercive or insistent, but rather empowering and responsive.

If reality includes a force that guides us into a novel future aimed at overall well-being, I align with Whitehead and like to think of that guiding force coming from a God who is love.

So, this novelty of folding the page differently doesn’t come from God as a predetermined coercive move. It also isn’t because I’m so smart that I created the best, most efficient method for handling rounding lists. No, my decision to fold the page differently was an example of what everyone faces every moment: the possibility of co-creation. That’s how I see each moment in our lives unfolding. We make decisions about what we will do from a range of possibilities while God leads us toward the options that promote flourishing most, sometimes revealing new options we haven’t seen before.

Interconnectedness

As it turns out, co-creation isn’t only between God and us. As we live and observe reality, we see more clearly that we are all connected. God relates to everyone and everything else, as do each of us. We’re all connected.

My interaction with the woman in the stairwell reminded me of this universal interconnection. I must admit that when I greeted her, I wasn’t thinking about how I could potentially make her day better. I was mindlessly quoting one of the phrases we southerners say when we pass people. Somehow, my preoccupation with my newfound way of folding my page led me to smile. And in my smile, she saw hope and connection that revealed new possibilities.

Bringing it Back to the Ground

So, my tiny epiphany about folding the page differently gave me deeper insight into God’s empowering guidance and the complex interconnections of reality. Now, we can bring these big ideas back to the ground and apply them to other situations.

As someone who helps people navigate the complex path of parenting, I find it natural to consider how we mirror divine empowerment and guidance to our children. Kids regularly need their parents to help them see new possibilities.

Sometimes that comes in the form of scaffolding a new skill by offering them significant help and guidance at first, then stepping back over time as they develop confidence and mastery. This approach is helpful throughout our kids’ development, from learning to get dressed, tie their shoes, make a sandwich, drive, and wash clothes. It still helps as we help our “grown kids” learn about this thing they call “adulting.”

As we reflect God’s guidance to our children, we value persuasion over coercion. Sometimes, that seems easy, but at other times reality hits, our children seem stubborn, and we find ourselves insisting on our own way. It’s then that we must remember the lesson of interconnectedness. Parenting isn’t a one-way street. It involves response in addition to guidance. Over time, we can create and curate a framework of responsiveness and trust, offering choices and guidance while listening to their preferences and desires.

A Tiny Epiphany

If you are part of a faith tradition that follows the Christian liturgical calendar, you recognize that I’m writing about an almost insignificant epiphany in the season of Epiphany. During this season, many Christians reflect on God’s revelation of the divine in Jesus. We recognize that creation reveals God, and that we can see the divine in seemingly trivial things like folding a piece of paper.

My tiny epiphany led to a flight into big philosophical and theological ideas and back to the ground to find ways these ideas may help in the reality of everyday life. The challenge is to find ways we can each fold pages differently.

It might be in how you respond to your child’s frustration, how you engage a familiar conflict, or how you move through a routine we’ve repeated a thousand times. You don’t need a dramatic breakthrough. You only need openness to a new possibility, to a more responsive posture, to the gentle guidance that invites flourishing rather than demands compliance.

In a deeply interconnected world, even a tiny epiphany can become a gift that is received, shared, and passed along.

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I want to invite you all to ORTLine 26, an online conference focused on new books in open and relational theology. My book, Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God, will be featured and discussed on February 14th at 12:00 p.m. Central Time.

You can register on Eventbrite.

image: ChatGPT 5.2

Yesterday was “four-year-old” day in the office. This term isn’t an official designation. It’s just that, for no apparent reason, several families scheduled their four-year-olds for annual checkup visits. Thankfully, I really enjoy kids at this age. They’re confident, full of energy, and usually willing to have interesting conversations with me. For many families, parenting children at this stage presents fewer challenges than in earlier stages, but some families face new difficulties. If you’re parenting a four-year-old who digs in their heels, argues every transition, melts down over small things, or seems constitutionally opposed to being managed, you’re not alone. I regularly hear parents say things like:

“He’s so strong-willed.”
“Everything is a power struggle.”
“We don’t know whether to be firmer or back off.”
“Nothing seems to work.”

Behind those comments, parents often wonder what they’re doing wrong, what will happen next, and how they can reduce the stress the entire family feels.

If you have a strong-willed four-year-old, they are not a failed child, and you aren’t a bad parent.

Strong-Willed Doesn’t Mean Broken

At four years old, children have real agency. They have opinions, desires, preferences, and a growing sense of self. Their developing form of agency centers on what they want now. What they don’t yet have is mature emotional regulation, impulse control, or the ability to see beyond this moment. The gap between their developing agency and the lack of regulation is where loud outbursts, big feelings, and stress happen.

When parents use labels like “difficult” or “strong-willed” to describe their child, they often really mean that they are difficult to control. When parents see this in their children, they frequently respond in one of two directions.

Two Apparent Options: Be Tough or Give Up

Some parents react to “difficult” preschoolers by becoming more authoritarian, saying things like:

“He needs to learn who’s in charge.”
“We can’t let her get away with this.” or
“If we don’t break this now, it’ll only get worse.”

This approach typically escalates power struggles and frustrates the child and the parents.

Other parents may take the opposite path and become more permissive, saying things like:

“He’s just expressing himself.”
“We don’t want to crush his spirit.” or
“It’s not worth the fight.”

This response is exhausting for different reasons and quietly allows the preschooler to assume the family leadership.

Neither approach actually helps the child learn what they need most: how to live with their agency, develop regulation, and live in relationship with others.

A Third Option: Guidance with Responsiveness

Open and Relational parenting points us toward a third way that avoids coercive authoritarianism and directionless permissiveness. It begins by assuming that your child is not a problem to be managed but rather a person who is becoming.

This shift in perspective changes everything. Instead of asking “How do I make this stop?”, we start asking “What does the child need from me in this moment to develop best?” Answering this question requires both responsiveness and guidance.

Neither domination nor withdrawal is the answer. Instead, helping your child grow requires listening, presence, limits, and guidance.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

Here are some practical tips:

During the Meltdown

When a four-year-old “melts down,” they are not making a strategic choice. They are overwhelmed. Open and Relational parenting doesn’t mean removing limits, but it does affect the way we hold them.

• Stay physically and emotionally present with your child. This response may involve a hug, or if they aren’t ready for that, you can sit near them.

• Keep your voice calm, even if theirs isn’t.

• Identify and name feelings without validating harmful behavior. Phrases like “It seems you’re really mad” or “I can see this is hard for you” help identify feelings. You can reinforce limits by saying something like, “I understand that you are upset, but I won’t let you hit.”

• Hold onto your limit without negotiating during the meltdown.

With these steps, you’re showing your child that you hear them and that you’re not abandoning them or overpowering them. They are not alone, even when their emotions feel unmanageable.

After the Storm

Once everyone is calmer, learning can happen. The child doesn’t need a lecture or a sermon at this point. Strong-willed children don’t need long talks after a meltdown. They need relational repair. You can reconnect with phrases like:

“That was really hard.”
“Next time, we’ll work on using words.” or
“I love you, we’ll keep practicing.”

Offering another hug can be beneficial, followed by straightforward suggestions for next steps, such as inviting them to assist with a task or suggesting a quiet activity. Importantly, your response is not punishment or isolation.

Between Conflicts

You can make progress by helping them develop new regulation and relational skills between times of conflict or meltdown. You can help them build frameworks or scaffolds during teaching moments when everyone is calm, so that they will have structure to fall back on during heated moments.

• It is helpful to practice transitions before they matter. For example, your child will be able to transition from the playground with a two-minute warning better if you have practiced similar “two-minute warnings” ahead of time. As you practice together, you can use a consistent phrase like “Two more minutes, then we switch.” And then ask your child, “What happens after two minutes?”

• Similarly, you can rehearse difficult moments ahead of time. For example, you can ask your child what is difficult about bedtime for them and what may make it better. These questions can lead to a conversation about ways to change the process while keeping some boundaries, such as the actual bedtime, in place. During these conversations, you can role-play bedtime routines, switching between who plays the roles of parent and child.

• In meltdown moments, parents sometimes say, “Use your words,” to encourage their child to express their feelings. The problem is that most preschoolers don’t yet know which words go with their feelings. You can help by naming emotions, such as “You seem disappointed” or “That was frustrating.” You can also model the way you describe and process your feelings by saying things like “I’m getting overwhelmed. I’m going to take a deep breath.”

• Instead of offering choices only during times of conflict, you can regularly provide small, inconsequential decisions throughout the day. You can present two or three options for which plate they will use at dinner, which shoes they will wear, or which book they will read. Avoid praising a particular choice. Instead, celebrate that they were able to make a choice, knowing that this process builds agency without putting them completely in charge.

• Four-year-olds can’t typically calm themselves down during a heated moment. However, you can teach these skills during calm moments by practicing taking slow breaths together or squeezing their hands or a pillow when they are frustrated. As you practice together, you can help them learn how it helps by saying something like “This helps our body slow down.” Later, during a more emotional moment, you can remind them of the skill by saying, “Let’s try the breathing we practiced.”

Shifting the Goal

Sometimes, a slight shift in our goal changes our perspective immensely. If we change the goal from forcing compliance in a preschooler to raising a healthy adult, we can see the bigger picture. Strong-willed children, when guided well, often become leaders, advocates, and creative thinkers who don’t collapse under pressure.

Remember, neither our children nor we are static “beings.” We are all always becoming.

Finally, a Word to Worn-Out Parents

If this all sounds good, but you’re thinking, “I’m exhausted, and I don’t always do this well,” you’re in good company. Open and relational parenting does not require perfection. It assumes growth—for parents too.

Remember:

You will lose your patience sometimes.

You will escalate when you wish you hadn’t.

You will occasionally give in to survive the evening.

Repair matters more than consistency.

Relationship matters more than technique.

And the future is still open.

That’s true for your child.

And it’s true for you.

Thank you for reading my posts. Because I am interested in integrating parenting and theology in a healthy way, some of my posts lean more toward parenting, while others lean more toward theology. This post emphasizes practical aspects of a parenting issue I encounter regularly in my practice. Hopefully, it is helpful.

If you know parents who may benefit from this post, please share it with them!

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Our family’s Christmas traditions start early in the season. For most of the last nine years, we have hosted my wife’s family for an early Christmas celebration. Each year, some things change, but many things stay the same; they are traditions that need to be maintained.

The photo above depicts one of our favorite Christmas traditions. I’m rolling out sugar cookie dough, Linda (my wife) is waiting in the background to bake the cookies, while Carrie (my daughter, on the left), Alex, Ava, and Lolo (my “great” nieces) are ready to cut the cookies out from the dough. Over the weekend, we decorated the cookies, shared Christmas gifts after our traditional appetizer dinner, and opened “magic Christmas bags” before our family headed back home. We ate Chex mix, peanut brittle, “magic Christmas bars”, and lots of other great food. We also played card games and shared stories about life from each person’s perspective. For Linda’s family, tradition is important.

The church calendar is also a cherished tradition for many Christians. I didn’t grow up in a denomination that followed the liturgical calendar. I was introduced to Advent in early adulthood and have been part of a church that fully embraces the Christian calendar for several years. This week marks the first week of Advent and, therefore, the beginning of the year.

Advent is a season for many Christians to practice waiting, preparation, and anticipation of the coming of Christ. It recalls the events surrounding Jesus’ birth and looks forward to the eventual coming of Christ.

I view Advent through the lens of open and relational theology, which thinks God experiences time with us and relates to us in love, guiding us toward overall well-being. Since God guides creation without coercion, the idea of waiting and anticipation is familiar.

Waiting for the World to Develop

Open and relational theologians see God as a loving, patient co-creator. We look at the first chapter of Scripture and see God depicted as hovering over the chaotic primordial waters of the deep, drawing them into an ongoing co-creative dance. This dance has been going on for a long, long time.

Researchers, including biologists, astronomers, chemists, and astrophysicists, currently estimate that the universe has been developing for about 13.8 billion years. Science illustrator Pablo Carlow Budassi depicts this history as a cosmic time-spiral that beautifully demonstrates the slow development of our universe and our species’ very recent emergence about 300,000 years ago. That means we humans have only been around for 0.002% of the universe’s history.

Throughout all of this time, God has continually loved all of creation, patiently guiding it to future possibilities. God understands waiting patiently.

Waiting for the World to Change

When I look at Budassi’s portrayal of the cosmic spiral of history, I first see beauty. But before long, I also notice all of the calamity that happened even before humans arrived. Certainly, we humans haven’t healed the universe of its suffering. In many cases, we’ve made them worse.

John Mayer wasn’t the first person to recognize that the world is full of problems, feeling helpless while “waiting for the world to change.” The prophet, Isaiah, looked forward to a time when people would “beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” (Isaiah 2:4 NRSV)

Jesus frequently spoke about the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God, which he described as a reversal of power structures, requiring humble, childlike attitudes, and focusing on inclusion, justice, peacemaking, and reconciliation. He sometimes described it as already present and at other times said it was still coming. This idea of a “Kingdom of God” can be difficult for us to understand. John Cobb proposed that we might better understand it as the “Commonwealth of God,” while uses the phrase, the “kin-dom of God.”

Much like with cosmic development, God is constantly drawing or guiding us toward this developing commonwealth, continually pointing us toward possibilities that lead to truth, beauty, goodness, shalom, flourishing, and overall well-being. When it seems like we’re endlessly waiting, we can hold hope for the future and pay attention to God’s guidance.

Waiting in Advent

While we’re waiting on the world to change, Christ to come, and God’s commonwealth to develop, what do we do?

We should remember that God is active and involved in every moment of our lives. The divine presence didn’t leave the earth 2000 years ago to sit outside our world until it’s time to return and judge us for what we did in the meantime. No, God is present with us and all of creation every minute, guiding us and leading us toward the good.

There are many ways we see God’s guidance, starting with practices like prayer and meditation. Beyond that, we see God in action whenever we see the world or people drawn toward truth, beauty, and goodness. Since God is present to everyone, we can see the divine reflected in them and their lives. As we build relationships, we see others more clearly and understand them better, opening up possibilities for working together toward good. As it turns out, we’re not just waiting on the world to change. We can and should be involved in making the world a better place and developing the commonwealth of God.

Waiting with our Children

Leading our children through Advent isn’t just about telling the nativity stories from the Gospels. It’s also about teaching them that waiting is active and that, while we wait, we can find ways to make the world better. This season offers many opportunities to help children expand God’s commonwealth. For example, you might collect gifts for children who otherwise wouldn’t have warm coats or toys. You could find ways to help those in your community who need a meal or shelter. Or, encourage them to visit older relatives or others who are lonely, bringing joy by singing, playing, or creating art for them. You can remind them that, through all these acts of charity and love, we are helping make our world more like God wants it to be.

No matter how you celebrate Advent this year, may you feel divine love and practice reflecting that love to your children, family, community, and the world.

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photo: Chrystal Cannon

My last post began with a scene that depicted a conflict between a fourth-grader, Alex, and his mom over homework. The conflict represented a power struggle between the parent and the child, both trying to exert control over the afternoon schedule. I reviewed parenting styles and noted that the primary contrast between authoritarian and nurturant parents lies in their responsiveness, their ability to change in response to their children.

Using Bernard Loomer’s essay, “Two Conceptions of Power,” I highlighted two models of power: unilateral and relational. Unilateral power seeks to control another without being influenced by the other. On the other hand, relational power seeks to be influenced by the other and to grow mutually dependent relationships.

In this post, I will explore ways that Loomer’s view of power affects our relationships with God and our children.

What Does This Say About Our Relationship with God?

For centuries, classical theism has portrayed God in unilateral terms:

• Omnipotent – God is singlehandedly all-powerful.

• Eternal – God lives outside of our experience of time.

• Omniscient – God knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen.

• Immutable – God is unchanging, even in response to us or our situations.

• Impassible – God also doesn’t experience emotion in response to us.

When I first think about the core principles of classical theism related to power, I naturally think of omnipotence. However, when I consider the difference between unilateral and relational power, my focus shifts to divine immutability—the idea that God cannot change.

Recall the parenting typology grid, concentrating on the authoritarian and nurturant categories. Notice that their position on the vertical axis is identical. It is their placement on the horizontal axis—reflecting responsiveness or the ability to change—that sets them apart.

Authoritarian parents think they know what’s best. When asked, “Why?” They respond by saying, “Because I said so.” They are not open to the children’s input because they know what’s right. In contrast, nurturant parents have their aspirations, but seek the children’s input. They see power as the ability to guide their children and be influenced by them.

A view of God based on unilateral power imagines a God who exerts a change on others without experiencing change.

However, when we look at scripture, we encounter a God who changes. We see God:

• Regretting the flood.

• Listening to Abraham’s plea for Sodom.

• Relenting when Nineveh repents.

• Grieving through Hosea’s lament.

• Empathizing with the world through Jesus’ incarnation.

Each of those examples reveals divine responsiveness—a willingness to be moved by human experience.

The inevitable question that arises is, “But what about scriptures that say God never changes?” To explain this better, I refer to Tom Oord’s idea of the “essence-experience binate,” which holds that God’s essence is love and never changes, while God’s experience of love in relation to specific creatures varies over time.1 In other words, God always loves; however, the way God loves a particular person in a specific moment changes according to that person and that moment.

God always loves, but never in the same way twice.

The Divine Parallel to Parenting

Authoritarian parents correspond to the unilateral God—unchanging, unquestioned, acting “because I said so.” Nurturant parents, in contrast, mirror the relational God—responsive, guiding, and willing to be influenced by their children.

The God of classical theism is authoritarian, using unilateral power.
The God of open and relational theology is nurturant, using relational power.

That difference changes everything—especially how we see our own roles as parents.

Empowerment, Not Control

Parents can demonstrate God’s relational power to their children by focusing on empowering rather than controlling them. Empowerment does not mean parents always give in to their children’s wishes. It is a deliberate process of helping children gain power and build strong relationships. Empowering parents aim for the good of the child and the entire family and actively seek input from everyone. To parent with relational power means to mirror how God loves—empowering rather than dominating. Empowering parents work toward the good of both the child and the family. They listen, invite input, and share decision-making appropriate to the child’s maturity.

Empowerment looks different at every stage of development.

Newborns don’t know or particularly care about the options they have for the clothes they wear. However, they almost always feel that a full stomach is good and are generally very vocal when expressing that theirs is not.

In contrast, teenagers frequently have definite preferences about their wardrobe. An empowering parent is open to hearing those preferences and discussing them in a way that helps both understand the best options for well-being. In this type of discussion, a teen may learn that their parents want them to have the freedom to wear a hoodie with shorts year-round, but that potentially offensive phrases on their clothing can hurt others.

The idea of empowerment is not only valuable in the moment-by-moment short term, but also over time as children move through stages of increased autonomy and freedom. As parents, we want our children to gain independence gradually. This process starts with sleeping alone, then feeding themselves, using the bathroom on their own, walking into kindergarten, driving, and eventually heading off to college, while having the ability to do their own laundry.

Each of these steps of empowerment builds on previous ones. Empowering children early lays a foundation we can build on as they become teens to help them become independent adults.

We also want our children to learn to develop healthy relationships with others. They learn from us when they see us use relational power to give and receive in our relationships with them and others.

Relational power isn’t a loss of authority; it’s a deeper form of it. It’s guiding from within the relationship rather than ruling over it.

The Alex Story, Revisited

Remember Alex and his mom from the last post?

Their afternoon struggle over homework turned into a standoff when both tried to change the other without being changed themselves. It seems that fights over homework and free time are a regular occurrence in their relationship. Alex’s mom was approaching the problem with unilateral power, trying to force Alex to change without being changed herself. As our story turned out, both got frustrated, no homework got done, and the relationship grew further apart. Even if Alex had done his homework, he still wouldn’t have been better equipped to handle it without a fuss in the future, and their relationship would have suffered.

Let’s imagine a different approach. Later that evening, when things are calm, Alex’s mom says, “Alex, I know afternoons are tough. How do you usually feel when you get home? What helps you unwind before homework?”

Together they explore what he needs—some downtime, a snack, maybe a short break—and agree on a plan that balances rest and responsibility.

The difference is subtle but profound: power shared instead of imposed. Connection replaces control.

Parenting That Mirrors Divine Love

Empowering love means seeing every interaction as an opportunity to sustain a relationship that influences and is influenced. It is the same kind of love God shows toward us—a love that listens, adapts, and seeks the good of the other without coercion.

When our children see us practicing relational power—giving and receiving, leading and learning—they also learn how to relate to others and to God.

And that, I believe, is what parenting at its best reflects: the ongoing creation of relationship itself.

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It’s 3:45 on a weekday afternoon. The backpack hits the kitchen floor with a thud that somehow carries the sound of the whole day’s exhaustion. Alex, a fourth grader, kicks off his shoes and heads straight for the pantry.

“Snack first, then homework, right?” his mom calls, trying to sound casual but already aware of the storm that might be brewing.

Alex grabs a bag of chips, plops onto the couch, and flips on the TV. His mom takes a deep breath—the kind every parent knows—and waits a few minutes. “Alright, bud,” she says gently, “time to get started on that math homework.”

Alex doesn’t even glance up. “I just got home. I need a break.”

“I know,” she replies, “but the sooner you start, the sooner you’re done.”

He groans, mutes the TV, and mutters, “That’s not fair. You get breaks when you work.”

What started as a conversation about homework is now a tug-of-war about control. She steps closer and takes the remote. “Alex, I’m serious. Turn it off. Homework first.”

“Why do you always have to boss me around?” he fires back.

And suddenly the living room transforms into a courtroom: she as the enforcer of order, he as the defender of freedom. No one’s learning math anymore. Both are trying to prove who gets to decide what happens next.

By dinnertime, nothing’s been solved. Alex’s homework is still untouched, and his mom is replaying the argument—wondering how something so ordinary turned into a battle.

Power, but for what?

Moments like these can make our homes feel like small battlegrounds where love and authority, freedom and structure clash. But what if power struggles aren’t really about who wins? What if they’re invitations to see power differently, to shift from control to connection?

That’s the idea I want to explore: the difference between unilateral power and relational power. This distinction has changed not only how I think about parenting but also how I understand God.

The Groundwork: Parenting Styles

Diana Baumrind’s classic research gave us a framework for parenting styles that still shapes developmental psychology today. She described them along two axes: responsiveness (how emotionally attuned we are to our children) and demandingness (how much structure and guidance we provide).

That grid gives us four main styles:

Authoritarian: These parents are highly demanding with less responsiveness. They have high expectations for their children’s performance and adherence to rules. Their children have little input, including family decisions. When their children ask, “Why?” The answer is typically, “Because I said so.”

Permissive: Permissive parents are highly responsive but are less demanding. They highly value their children’s input to the point that the children set the goals rather than the parents. They come across more as friends than parents.

Disengaged: These parents are neither demanding nor responsive because they are not present due to factors like death, divorce, or severe disinterest.

Nurturant: Nurturant parents are very attentive and have high hopes that they steer their children toward. They provide their children with tools to help them adjust and grow as they gradually assume new responsibilities and freedoms. They are interested in providing tools, not just rules, and their children regularly contribute to family life because they feel loved and know their contributions make a difference.

Study after study shows that the nurturant style leads to healthier, more compassionate, and more capable adults.

Baumrind’s original classification used the term “authoritative.” I prefer the term “nurturant” to “authoritative” because it is less confusing and conveys warmth, aspiration, and guidance without implying dominance. These parents still lead and direct—but they do so in relationship, not through demands.

She thought of the vertical axis as a representation of parental “demandingness.” The word “demand” implies an authoritarian approach and represents less responsiveness than is characteristic of the nurturant style. I like to think of nurturant parents as aspiring for their children and guiding them toward those aspirations.

A key difference between insisting on compliance with parental expectations and providing supportive guidance toward parental aspirations is responsiveness. Authoritarian parents who lack responsiveness expect obedience, while nurturant parents who are highly responsive are empowering by default.

If nurturant parenting leads to thriving children, what makes it so different from authoritarian control? The answer lies in how each understands “power.” That’s where Bernard Loomer’s insight offers a new perspective.

Two Conceptions of Power

Loomer, a theologian writing in the mid-1970s, proposed that there are two basic ways people think about power: unilateral and relational.1

Unilateral Power

This is the dominant view in our culture—and in much of theology. Loomer described it as “the ability to produce intended or desired effects in our relationships to nature or to other people.” It aims “to influence, guide, adjust, manipulate, shape, control, or transform the human or natural environment to achieve one’s purposes.” It is one-directional and seeks to influence without being influenced in return. It assumes that the one in power knows what’s best and acts to accomplish that end.

Unilateral power isn’t limited to using coercion; it can also use persuasion. Open and relational theologians sometimes describe divine power as persuasive and never coercive. I think that’s true. However, we should be careful, as persuasion can be used in a unilateral, non-relational way. I think God is always relational and doesn’t use unilateral power either coercively or persuasively.

In this model, power becomes a zero-sum game: one person gains only when another loses. Those who are best at influencing without being influenced can feel a sense of superiority or importance. The result is hierarchy, growing inequality, and divisions.

Relational Power

Loomer provided an alternative. It is bidirectional, meaning “the ability both to produce and to undergo an effect.” It’s a power that recognizes the importance of being influenced by others. In this model, the ability to be influenced by others is seen as a sign of strength and enables influencing others.

Relational power doesn’t assume it already knows the good of the other. It seeks that good together, through mutual understanding and compassion. It seeks the other’s perspective and develops an idea of the true good from “deeply mutual relationships.”

With this idea of mutual relationships in mind, power is not merely the ability to produce an effect or to undergo an effect. Instead, it is the power to sustain a relationship that both influences and is influenced by those involved. The goal is for both parties to grow in their capacity to give and receive within the relationship. Neither seeks to control, manage, or dominate.

Loomer notes that practicing this type of power is difficult and requires patience, stamina, strength, and the possibility of suffering. This sounds a lot like parenting and other relationships worth committing to, such as marriage.

Kathlyn Breazeale gets practical with Loomer’s idea of relational power and applies it to marriage, calling it “mutual empowerment.”2 This idea also fits in other relationships. In my next post, I will examine our relationships with God and with our children.

2

Kathlyn Breazeale, Mutual Empowerment: A Theology of Marriage, Intimacy, and Redemption (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2008).

image: ChatGPT

This series of two posts comes from a presentation I gave two weeks ago at the Open and Relational Theology pre-session at Theology Beer Camp. Thanks to and for arranging these events!

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This is my contribution to the book. I hope you find it meaningful.

Jesus called God “Abba,” or “Father.” Most Christians picture God as an old, white man with a long, white beard and hair, sitting on a heavenly throne surrounded by clouds, often depicted as scowling. He has strict rules, is quick to judge, and slow to respond with empathy. This image of God is an authoritarian figure, very different from the nurturant, loving parent Jesus prayed to. I find Jesus’s view of God as “Abba” more aligned with healthy models of human parenting. To truly reflect the image of God as “Abba” that Jesus described, we need to renew our understanding of God as a parent.

Current research in child psychiatry strongly indicates that a nurturing parenting style leads to healthier children with better relationships and fewer psychological issues than an authoritarian style. Nurturant parents guide and empower their children while responding to their experiences and input. In contrast, authoritarian parents expect strict obedience to rules and respect for their authority while giving little room for children’s input.

We catch only a glimpse of the white-haired image of God in the sky in Scripture, primarily in Daniel’s symbolic and apocalyptic visions. This image of God and its related traits mainly came from Greek philosophical influences, which were filtered through the thoughts of Jewish and Christian theologians. The ideas of these thinkers, including Philo of Alexandria, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, among others, influenced artists like Michelangelo, who reinforced this imagery in their work during the Renaissance.

This conception of God is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, and impassible. An omnipotent God has complete unilateral power over the world and everything that happens, leaving little room for human free will. An omniscient God possesses complete knowledge of the past, present, and future, with a pre-written script, which further limits human freedom. An immutable God never changes and therefore cannot alter divine plans, thoughts, or actions in response to our actions. Similarly, an impassible God cannot experience emotions in response to us or our situations. The white-haired image of God in the sky is an authoritarian parent who demands strict obedience to divine authority and doesn’t respond to our feelings or desires.

In contrast, Jesus viewed God as a loving, responsive parent whom he called “Abba.” This Aramaic term for father suggests a close, affectionate relationship between parent and child. Jesus used this term for God to emphasize their intimacy, not to imply that God is male. On several occasions, he also used feminine symbols for God. Jesus’ use of “Abba” expressed a view of God that is quite different from “father.” The writers of the Gospels and several epistles kept this distinction by using it in its original Aramaic form to highlight the difference.

The intimacy of Jesus’ view of God as a loving parent is likely best shown through his prayers. He understood that God was listening and would respond to him. He made requests and fully expected God to hear them. He shared some of his deepest feelings with God in prayer, anticipating divine empathy and understanding. He also often spent time alone in prayer to focus or find peace. Jesus saw God as a nurturant parent who listens, responds, and shows intimate love.

Drawing from open and relational theology, I have come to understand God as a nurturant parent who relates rather than rules. Below, I offer a brief exploration of some of these ideas.

God’s nature is love. This idea is stated most simply in 1 John 4:16: “God is love.” This is a much stronger statement than “God loves,” as it implies that God’s essence is love. Jewish Scripture uses the Hebrew word hesed not as a contractual covenant, but as one that comes from God’s empathetic and loving response to human need. In Christian Scripture, Paul uses the concept of kenosis to describe Jesus’ self-giving love, which was evident throughout his ministry and reflected the nature of God’s love. Love doesn’t control others unilaterally, so God empowers through empathetic, relational, self-giving love. God’s true power, then, is the power of love.

Jesus defines God as spirit in John 4:24, using the Greek word pneuma, which can also be translated as “wind,” “breath,” or “air.” The idea of “spirit” as “wind” may seem intangible. Yet, it can be understood as descriptive of God as a presence that is everywhere, contains everything, and exists within the natural world. Paul helps us understand God as spirit when he quotes the Athenian poet’s line, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Contrary to the image of a transcendent God looking down on us from above, this idea highlights divine immanence, so close that it surrounds our bodies and fills our lungs.

This intimate God, who shares our physical space, also walks through time with us. In the scriptural account, God is consistently portrayed as being actively present throughout history. God is shown remembering the past, experiencing the present, and anticipating the future. God’s memory of the past differs from ours because it is perfect, preserving not only all past events but also the feelings associated with them. At every moment, God observes our actions, thoughts, and feelings, guiding us toward an unwritten future. This view contrasts with the idea that God has pre-written a script containing all future events, and creation simply acts out that story. Walking through time with us, God is the ultimate companion who feels our feelings.

Much like human parents aspire for their children, God also aspires for us and continually guides us toward those divine aspirations. Every moment, we encounter many possibilities. God aspires for us to choose those that promote truth, beauty, goodness, and overall well-being. In this process, God is always persuasive and never coercive. We receive this divine guidance through our senses and non-sensory perceptions, and we can attune to it through activities like prayer and contemplation.

In addition to guiding us toward divine aspirations at every moment, God also responds to each of our decisions, actions, and feelings, understanding our joys and adversities. God shares in individuals’ experiences somewhat like a parent enjoys their child’s success in learning to ride a bicycle and suffers with them when they fall off the bike and scrape their knee. Besides empathizing with us, God’s response requires a judgment that weighs our actions against divine goals. Tripp Fuller describes this by saying, “God feels with the world, judges and redeems what the world has become, and then gives to the world the gift and grace of new possibilities.” God judges every decision, not as a judgment of condemnation, but with love and acceptance for what is, graciously offering new possibilities for the next moment. God moves with us through time in a creative process involving divine aspirations, our decisions and actions, and God’s empathetic response, which circles back to divine aspirations for the next moment.

When we see God through the lens of open and relational theology, we see God as a parent who lovingly guides and empowers us toward divine aspirations of overall well-being. As we make decisions, God receives them, loves and accepts us, and then guides us toward the divine aspirations for the next moment. This is a description of a parent who guides and empowers their children while responding to their experiences and input. When we imagine God this way, we see a divine, nurturant parent that Jesus can call “Abba.”

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Here on Substack, I have two different reader groups that often overlap. On one hand, there are patients’ families, friends, and people I’ve met through parenting connections who are here to read about and discuss ideas about raising healthy children. On the other hand, there are friends, mentors, and people I’ve met through my theological connections to open and relational theology. Several of you have an interest in both areas. I try to direct my posts at both groups, yet each tends to focus a bit more on parenting or theology. This post leans heavily toward theology. For those who read to the end, I’ll tie it into parenting.

You Can’t Unsee It

Lately, I’ve heard the phrase, “once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” in many contexts. Sometimes people use it referring to horrific, violent images. Arundhati Roy is widely credited for using it regarding politics, saying, “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence.” Lately, I’ve found myself unable to “unsee” essential kenosis as a divine characteristic. The idea of God being “essentially kenotic” was not an easy concept for me to grasp. Yet, once I saw it and understood it, I now see it in many places, including Scripture.

My doctoral advisor, mentor, and friend, Tom Oord, describes essential kenosis, saying, “God must self-give and others-empower because it’s God’s nature to do so.” The word, kenosis, comes up when the apostle Paul quotes an early Christian hymn in his letter to the church in Philippi that would have been familiar to them:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:5-8, NRSV)

Paul used the Greek word kenosis, which translates here as “emptied himself.” Another way to phrase it is “self-giving.” Jesus’ act of self-emptying is not an act of rejecting divinity. It is meaningful as an act of humility and a demonstration of solidarity. Jesus was self-giving throughout his life. He cared for the sick, the dying, the lonely, and the outcast, and he gave of himself to help them. He spent long hours teaching, mentoring, and demonstrating love. Ultimately, his death on the cross showed his self-emptying character by sharing in the depths of human suffering. Throughout it all, Jesus consistently showed divine love to a world in need. As Oord says, “Jesus’ life of love reveals that God always loves.” Because a loving God doesn’t control others, God’s love is “necessarily self-giving, others-empowering, and therefore, uncontrolling.”

Here’s my summary. Jesus reflected God’s love as self-giving in his life and death. His ministry demonstrates that God also aligns with the sick, the dying, the lonely, and the outcast, providing empathy, love, and guidance.

Divine kenosis is God pouring into our lives in a way that understands us, empathizes with us, and guides us toward flourishing. Once I saw this, I couldn’t help but see it in other places.

Psalm 113

Our faith community is one of many that follow the lectionary as a guide through Scripture. Each week, it suggests passages from Hebrew and Christian Scripture that may be meaningful when read or discussed together. This week’s lectionary passages included Psalm 113.

        Hallelujah!
        Give praise, you servants of the Lord; 
        praise the Name of the Lord.

        Let the Name of the Lord be blessed, 
        from this time forth for evermore.

        From the rising of the sun to its going down 
        let the Name of the Lord be praised.

        The Lord is high above all nations, 
        and his glory above the heavens.

        Who is like the Lord our God, who sits enthroned on high 
        but stoops to behold the heavens and the earth?

        He takes up the weak out of the dust 
        and lifts up the poor from the ashes.

        He sets them with the princes, 
        with the princes of his people.

        He makes the woman of a childless house 
        to be a joyful mother of children.
        
        Psalm 113 (NRSV)

Here, the psalmist begins by giving praise to God. This first section declares God’s transcendence, or the way God is “high above the nations,” using poetic praise language. The psalmist calls for praises to God all day, every day, from now to eternity because God sits on high with divine glory above the heavens. These words are certainly lofty and celebrate God’s transcendence. However, midway through the psalm, the writer changes abruptly, saying God “stoops to behold the heavens and the earth.” God is not only transcendent. God also stoops to see our situations. This language implies that God is immanent, meaning near, intimate, accessible, embodied, experiential, and sustaining. God empathizes with the weak and the poor, seeing them as princes, lifting them out of the dust and ashes. God considers the plight of the childless woman, giving her joy.

When I read this psalm, I think of divine kenosis. The transcendent God stoops to behold the plight of creation, empathizes with it, and responds with loving guidance.

Parenting and Other Relationships

I think these ideas point to a God who isn’t simply transcendent, but is immanent, living among us, experiencing life with us, empathizing with us, and guiding us toward a future of flourishing. Beyond believing “in” such a God, we can reflect these divine attributes to our children and others in our lives.

It’s easy for parents to be “transcendent” to their children, responding to them with a quick “no” or other rebuke. Alternatively, parents can look at their children with empathy and try to understand their position before judging their actions. Parents can reflect the divine by stooping down to their child’s level and offering a hug, accompanied by the reassurance of unconditional love. In this way, they are immanent. They are near, intimate, accessible, embodied, experiential, and sustaining. They are present and seek to understand their children’s plight and motivation. Once they know why their children acted in a certain way, they can guide them toward the best possibilities for their overall future well-being.

We can do the same in other relationships. Employers should try to see things from their employees’ perspectives to understand how policies impact them and how they can help everyone succeed. Although it is much harder, political rivals can humble themselves (at least a little) and open their minds to the idea that empathizing with others can lead to solutions that benefit everyone, not just those who are similar to themselves.

The idea of “stooping down” applies to all relationships. It doesn’t mean we arrogantly assume we are better than someone else. Quite the opposite: when we reflect divine kenosis, we realize that all of us are made in the divine image and are children of God. When we “pour out” ourselves, we focus on others and build meaningful and supportive relationships.

It may not be intuitive for many Christians to think of God as “self-emptying and others-empowering.” Jesus’ life demonstrates his continual reflection of this as an ideal about the divine. Beyond that, other Scriptures, such as Psalm 113, support the idea that God is both transcendent and immanent, empathizing with our suffering and guiding us toward a future of overall well-being.

I had a great conversation with Josh Patterson ( @RETHINKINGFAITH ) on the (Re)thinking Faith Podcast episode that he released yesterday. We discussed many of the topics from my book, Open and Relational Parenting, and had a lot of fun along the way. Check it out!

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A few weeks ago, Dr. James Dobson passed away. He is considered the father of modern parenting advice based on traditional Christian theism and has been its primary influencer for over 50 years. Dobson received a Ph.D. in Child Psychology from the University of Southern California in 1967 and rose to national prominence in 1970 after publishing his first book, Dare to Discipline. He then founded Focus on the Family and wrote over two dozen books to spread his ideas about families and parenting. Dobson’s ideas formed the foundation of modern “Christian Parenting.”

Dobson’s approach to parenting is based on his theology, which views God primarily as a figure of authority. His techniques create an authoritarian style of parenting, which can produce compliance, yet can also lead to fractured relationships, anxiety, insecurity, and shame.

Chapter Four of my book, Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God, explores the ideas and techniques that Dobson and later authors teach and recommend. One of the most common comments my readers make is that they were somehow harmed by these teachings, either as children or as parents. I don’t question that Dobson intended to help parents and children. However, I disagree with his view of God and how he applied it to parenting.

Dobson and his followers emphasize several key themes in their parenting advice. I explore this in much more detail in my book, and I will briefly summarize two of these themes and respond to them here.

View of Authority

One of Dobson’s primary beliefs about parenting is that God is the ultimate authority in the universe and appoints human ambassadors to act on God’s behalf and represent “Him” to their children. In this parenting vision, “authority” is paramount and can be defined as “the power to give orders or make decisions: the power or right to direct or control someone or something.” Aligning with a traditional view of God, Dobson and his followers think God has power over all and is the ultimate authority. There are several implications to their view of authority. Here I will briefly address two.

First, since they view God as the ultimate authority, they advise parents to use moments of everyday life as opportunities to teach children that God controls the world. They believe that daily observations, such as how water boils or how plants grow, point to God as the singular designer of the universe who ensures everything conforms to the divine plan.

I, too, see opportunities to point our children to God in our everyday encounters with the world. Instead of seeing God as having coercive power over humans and the rest of creation, I think God uses relational power to guide everyone and everything toward divine aspirations of well-being. In this view, we see God’s glory in a plant’s beautiful shape that results from influences from the plant itself, sun, wind, and rain as they respond to divine guidance.

I think that God is fundamentally love. A truly loving God cannot coercively control creation because that type of control violates free will. A God who plans everything and coerces the world to obey divine will does not permit any freedom in creation. A God who controls nature or manipulates human history becomes responsible for suffering caused by natural forces and human events. This kind of God either causes or allows hurricanes, floods, crime, and war. In contrast, seeing God as a co-creative partner who guides a freely responding creation shifts the blame away from God when children and families suffer.

Additionally, since Dobson and his followers see parents as ambassadors of God’s authority, they think parents must teach their children to submit to authority so that they will someday submit to God’s authority. They read scriptures that instruct parents to teach their children to “keep the way of the Lord” and “follow the discipline and instruction of the Lord” as mandates that require parents to act on behalf of God.

I agree that Scripture guides parents to teach their children to look for and follow God’s guidance. However, these scriptures don’t assume God is a controlling authority figure. Since I view God as the God of love rather than a controlling authority, I believe parents are true to these passages when they reflect divine love to their children, rather than forcing submission to authority.

View of Discipline

Dobson’s view of discipline stems from his emphasis on authority. He proposes that spanking is a primary form of discipline. He believed that parents could most effectively teach their children respect for authority when punishment involved one or two swats on the bottom of children aged eighteen months to six years.

Insisting on the use of corporal punishment is often justified by scriptures like “Folly is bound up in the heart of a boy, but the rod of discipline drives it far away.” (Proverbs 22:15 NRSV) The primary message of this proverb is that parental guidance and instruction are essential. If we read the “rod of discipline” as literally prescribing the type of discipline that parents should use, how do we interpret other passages that prescribe much more severe forms of corporal punishment, designed to leave marks? My point here is that applying specific aspects of ancient Jewish Scripture to our current lives is challenging, and that we should be cautious about finding proof texts that justify our positions.

Although a debate about the use of corporal punishment persisted among psychologists and pediatricians for many years, the latest data and opinions from both of these areas of science strongly oppose its use. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a policy statement that says, “Parents, other caregivers, and adults interacting with children and adolescents should not use corporal punishment (including hitting and spanking), either in anger or as a punishment for or consequence of misbehavior, nor should they use any disciplinary strategy, including verbal abuse, that causes shame or humiliation.”1 This statement arises from a 2016 meta-analysis that found “no evidence that spanking is associated with improved child behavior and rather found spanking to be associated with increased risk of 13 detrimental outcomes,” including more aggression, antisocial behavior, mental health problems, and negative relationships with parents.2 Data from 2016 indicates that only 2.5% of US pediatricians expect positive outcomes from spanking.3 The AAP statement recognizes that pediatricians and others who advise parents should provide training on effective discipline strategies that do not rely on corporal punishment.4

Dobson proposes strict discipline to teach children subjection to authority. He and his followers’ interpretation of Scripture often leads to an insistence on using corporal punishment. In contrast, an open and relational perspective sees discipline as a dynamic interaction between God, parents, and children that guides them toward self-transcendence and overall well-being while avoiding discipline techniques that are neither scripturally mandated nor scientifically validated.

The most effective and healthy discipline techniques involve natural or logical consequences that a caring parent explains clearly. For example, a natural consequence of running too fast inside might be falling and hurting your knee. A logical consequence of taking a toy from your brother could be having to return it, followed by losing playtime with him for a few minutes. These kinds of consequences make sense to children and help them make better choices in the future.

James Dobson devoted his career to trying to help parents. From my perspective, he was motivated by a genuine desire to teach parents how to raise their children to serve God. Unfortunately, he based his advice almost exclusively on his theological perspective while ignoring rapidly developing scientific data that points to better, healthier approaches to parenting.

I think alignment of our view of God and our view of the world around us (science) is best. Viewing God as a nurturant parent rather than an authoritarian one helps my view of God align with my view of parenting.

You can read much more about Dobson, what science says about parenting, God as a nurturant parent, and my approach to parenting in my book, Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God.

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I’m excited to share that my book, Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God, is now available for purchase.

This book is mainly based on the doctoral dissertation I defended in February. It reviews essential research on effective parenting styles and offers ways to approach parenting through the lens of open and relational theology. I believe the best way to give you an idea of what to expect is to share the book's introduction here.

Over the past year, my Substack posts have hinted at some of the ideas I discuss in the book. Future posts will explore these and other topics in more detail.

I hope you get a copy of the book! As you read, please feel free to send me comments and questions via message or by replying to any of my posts.

Introduction

Parenting is a daunting task. Expectant parents spend many hours preparing to step into their new role of raising a tiny human. Despite attempts to prepare, they inevitably find themselves facing something unexpected. The baby may not cry, sleep, or eat as expected. Babies grow into toddlers, children, teens, and young adults. Along the way, parents continue to face the unexpected. As the current crisis passes, it leads to another: toilet training, school drop-off, driver’s education, or college move-in.

After their first day of parenting, most new parents feel like the new dad I met in the hospital a few years ago. He was a large man who dwarfed the small newborn he easily held in his right arm like a football. In any other circumstance, he would have seemed confident and perhaps intimidating, but that day, he appeared lost as he asked, “Doc, where’s the instruction book for this thing?”

Looking for the elusive “instruction book,” parents turn to friends, family, church communities, books, podcasts, the internet, pastors, and pediatricians. These potential advisors may have little, if any, formal training in child development or parenting. Some of the advice parents receive aligns with approaches validated by current research. Much of it does not.

A brief glance at history reveals that people have been parenting since humans first appeared on Earth. Over time, parenting methods emerged that better supported the next generation’s survival. Those methods persisted and were passed down from one generation to the next. Beyond the simple principle of survival of the fittest, people asked questions about the best ways to raise and parent children. Many cultures sought divine guidance for answers to these questions. With the increasing influence of scientific inquiry in recent decades, we have incorporated a layer of science into cultural and religious ideas about optimal parenting practices. As a result, parents increasingly turn to psychologists, counselors, and pediatricians like me for guidance on raising their children.

Modern scientific methods enable psychologists to investigate various approaches to parenting. Parenting styles that emphasize parental responsiveness and direction have been shown to help children become adults who contribute to society with higher self-confidence and psychological stability. I refer to these approaches to parenting as nurturant and contrast them to authoritarian approaches, which emphasize parental control and minimize parental responsiveness.

Recent psychological research identifies a nurturant style as the most beneficial approach to parenting. However, religious-based parenting advice often comes from a background in classical theism, which envisions God as an authoritarian parent figure. This approach encourages parents to follow that pattern of authoritarianism with their children.

Some parents hear differing advice from the scientific community and their religious community. This difference can leave them confused. Their options are to live with this apparent tension, disregard scientific research, or adopt an alternate theology or atheism.

My wife, Linda, and I faced this dilemma in our parenting journey. When our two daughters were young, our faith community focused on an authoritarian approach to parenting that was based on the ideas of classical theism. The parenting style they advocated didn’t align with the parenting principles I had been taught during my pediatric training or the ones I was teaching my patients’ parents. I didn’t realize there were other ways to view God, and I couldn’t ignore sound science. So, I lived in that tension for years.

As time passed, I found that each horizon brought new possibilities. I asked questions and learned about other theological perspectives of God. They portrayed God as an authority who must be obeyed, a transcendence that can only be known through nature and reason, an unending graciousness, or a loving companion. As I learned more, I found that open and relational theology helps answer many of my questions by seeing God as a spirit of love who co-creates with us every moment, guiding creation toward overall flourishing.

Like many others, I have found that open and relational theology helps to reconcile apparent differences between science and religion. I realized that it also provides ways to align scientifically sound parenting practices with theology. It allows me to see God as a nurturant parent, and to follow that divine example as a parent and pediatrician.

My journey led to an opportunity to pursue a doctorate under the guidance of my dissertation advisor, Thomas Jay Oord, where I delved deeply into open and relational theology and applied its principles to parenting. This book is the result of that work. In it, I will argue that open and relational theology principles create a view of God as a loving, nurturant parent and are consistent with a nurturant parenting model. Although I rely heavily on open and relational theology, other theological approaches, including atheism, can be consistent with a nurturant approach to parenting.

Chapter Overview

In Chapter One, I will provide background by reviewing some influential psychological research on parenting from the past sixty years, with a focus on Diana Baumrind’s work. I will examine her classifications of parenting styles and outcome measures for each style. Delving deeper, I will explore how Baumrind’s classifications relate to child developmental theories and how they apply to atypical parent-child relationships and across ethnic boundaries.

In Chapters Two and Three, I will turn to theology, arguing that parents’ image of God affects their parenting style. In them, I will evaluate the divine parenting style when God is seen as a parent through the eyes of four different theologies. In Chapter Two, I will look at theologies that imagine God as an authoritarian, permissive, and disengaged parent. In Chapter Three, I will focus on open and relational theology, arguing that God is a nurturant parent when viewed from the perspective of open and relational theology. In these chapters, I will demonstrate that while some theologies lend themselves to parenting styles associated with adverse outcomes, an open and relational theology supports healthy parent-child relationships and more positive outcomes.

In Chapter Four, I will explore some of the information and resources that parents typically find when seeking Christian-based parenting advice. Much of this advice comes from the theological background of classical theism. James Dobson is renowned for his parenting books, seminars, and broadcasts that support this approach. This chapter will examine common parenting advice he and his followers advocate. I will argue that this approach lacks a strong foundation in Scripture, is inconsistent with open and relational theology, and results in more negative outcomes.

In Chapter Five, I will apply open and relational theology to parenting and propose a model for open and relational parenting. This model provides parents with general guidelines that can be applied to various specific parenting situations. I will argue that an open and relational parenting model enables parents to adopt a nurturant parenting style compatible with healthy theology. I will also identify several characteristics of God described by open and relational theology and demonstrate how parents can benefit from and imitate these attributes in their parenting.

These first five chapters started as parts of my doctoral dissertation. They outline the fundamental concepts of open and relational parenting, which can be applied to various specific parenting situations. In Chapter Six, I present three examples of how to implement open and relational parenting in particular scenarios. Open and relational parenting does not offer step-by-step guidelines for parents to navigate these or other situations. Instead, it emphasizes general principles that must be applied wisely and individually.

My primary focus in this book is on applying open and relational theology to parenting. Along the way, I also construct a case for open and relational theology as an approach to understanding God that aligns with science, Scripture, and experience. Open and relational theology presents God as a spirit of love who is in a moment-by-moment relationship with all creation. This concept of God fosters healthier relationships between parents and children, as well as with all creation, promoting overall well-being.

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Last week was the end of back-to-school checkup season. Most of the kids in our area are back in school and already have homework assignments. As a pediatrician, my career is highly seasonal. After checkup season comes a brief “honeymoon,” which quickly gives way to fall allergies, flu shot season, winter illnesses, spring allergies, and the pre-summer camp physical season.

Summer checkup season is both fun and challenging. The challenge is not in the busy schedule, but rather in watching my patients grow older and grow up. During each teenager’s annual visit, we inevitably discuss how tall they are and how tall they will be. My mind goes back to how small they were when I first met them, and how much they’ve changed since then! Some parents even pull up old photos of me holding their fifteen-year-old when she was a newborn. These memories and pictures remind me of the thing no one warned me about during my pediatric training: my career constantly makes me feel old.

On the other hand, this same part of checkup season is enjoyable and uplifting. I get to hear about my patients’ excitement and worries as they start middle school, learn to drive, and head off to college. It’s truly exciting to hear how the newborn I met eighteen years ago has plans to change the world and make it better!

Reflecting on my experiences with patients over the years, it is clear that everything constantly changes. For my patients considering a career in medicine, the process is quite different from what I experienced when I was in their shoes. The application and acceptance process is tougher, requiring more students to spend time in research or gaining clinical experience between college and medical school. The subjects in the “basic science” years have changed to keep up with new insights into human biology. Their focus and schedules for clinical experience are quite different, reflecting newer approaches to healthcare delivery. Sometimes I hear another physician reminisce and wonder why medical school can’t be “like it was in our day.” It’s probably human nature to look back on the “old days” fondly and wish they remained unchanged. Yet, like medical science, medical education has advanced since 1993. Thanks to these advances, I see people survive many diseases that were once far beyond reach.

Everything is Always New

While watching the sunrise recently, I was struck by the idea that each new day is truly that: new. The day before, the sun rose a few minutes earlier and from a slightly more northern point on the horizon. That morning, the clouds lined up along the sun, creating a wash of pink and purple across the horizon. The exact way the colors and shadows lined up was unique to that day and had never been experienced exactly like that before. As I pondered the uniqueness of that moment, my mind drifted to the rest of the day and the possibilities that lay ahead. They, too, were unique to that moment and that day.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is credited with saying, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” We live in Memphis near the Mississippi River, which is almost half a mile wide as it passes our city. No one would dare test Heraclitus’ idea by stepping into the Mississippi, but by simply observing it, you realize the truth of the statement. Watching its swirling waters, you can see swirling paths and eddies pushing up from its mysterious depths. They are like the river’s momentary fingerprints. They don’t identify it as a river, but rather, they uniquely identify each moment of its existence.

Change is perhaps the only constant that we experience.

Our Children Always Change

As parents, we constantly notice changes in our children. On one hand, they grow physically, which means we need to buy new clothes, replace car seats, upgrade beds, and provide more food. They also experience neurodevelopmental and psychological changes that occur right before our eyes.

Newborns rapidly produce new neurons until they reach two years of age, when their brain reaches its adult size. After that, until adolescence, they form new synapses, which are connections in the brain. More synapses develop each time the child interacts with and engages with the world and others around them. As they move past puberty into young adulthood, their brains prune or disconnect the connections they no longer use.

This summer, my patient Noah came in for his annual physical. When he was just a few years old, Noah showed an interest in theater. He performed in several local theatrical productions during his early childhood and middle school years. During his visit, I asked him about his usual participation in “A Christmas Carol.” I was a bit surprised when he said he’s not that interested this year. As I thought about his answer, it makes sense. Noah’s brain is pruning neurons and changing. As he gets older, he’s directing that process more and more. He’s changing, growing, and becoming empowered to lead the process that is and will become Noah.

Fortunately, Noah’s parents are very supportive. While they encourage his interest in theater, they also support his desire to explore other options, like soccer. Whether he chooses to become a college soccer player, a professional actor, or pursue something entirely different, they will stand by him. They understand that he is constantly changing and are there for him through every transition.

God is Right There with Us

Despite the uncertainty of constant change, I believe that God is right there with us in the middle of the flux. There is a debate among theologians about God’s relationship with time. Some think that God exists in a “place” that is outside of time. Others believe God exists in time, with us, experiencing each moment as it arrives. I resonate with this view and think that God exists in the present moment with us.

Scripture presents God experiencing time with the world, planning, acting, and reacting moment by moment. One example is the story of Jonah, which depicts God as acting, reacting, listening, and changing. God sent Jonah to warn the Ninevites that they would be overthrown in forty days. All the people, including the king, repented. In response to their change and plea for mercy, God relented and responded to them dynamically, in time.

Scripture also describes God as love. If God’s essence is love, then God responds to us, our decisions, and our actions in real time. This God of love also feels our feelings, rejoices with us, and suffers with us, moment by moment. These responsive aspects of God’s love require God to experience each moment with us rather than from a position outside of time, experiencing our moments as if reading a script with a predetermined ending.

While experiencing the inevitable changes of each new moment, God, too, changes. At first, that statement seems a bit scary. If God changes, what do we trust as a “firm foundation?” By saying that God changes, I don’t mean that God’s essential nature changes. God’s essence is love. That never changes and serves as the bedrock foundation on which we can stand. However, how God lovingly responds in each moment and situation changes because individual moments and situations are unique.

The reassurance that comes here is that when we face change, uncertainty, anxiety, excitement, pride, and failure, God sees and understands us, lovingly guiding us into a future that we will build together.

Moving Forward

At the beginning of every year of school, principals across the country stand up in front of their students and proclaim that this coming school year will be the BEST YEAR EVER. By the time I was in high school, I had heard this speech many times and realized that it couldn’t be true every single year. Although many years brought various improvements, some were clearly duds. That’s true with all of life. Not every change is toward the good. Sometimes we take a step backward. Sometimes many. However, I stand with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that the arc of change throughout time bends toward truth, goodness, beauty, and overall well-being.

As we move into the future, we can embrace the moment-by-moment changes that naturally occur. As parents, we can cherish our children as they are now, understanding that they are different from what they were yesterday and will be different tomorrow. Through all their changes, they need our attentive responses and our aspirational guidance toward a future with an arc of changes that bends toward overall flourishing.

Special Announcement!

Open and Relational Parenting: Loving Parents Reflecting a Loving God will be available on Amazon next week! It is now available for pre-order in Kindle format and will be released in paperback on August 19th.

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The patient’s stories in this post are real. Their names are not.

image: ChatGPT and flux-forge