masking & unveiling

The email that our children's director sent out to parents this week contained this harmless little quote in the P.S.:

"The child who is given too much is actually cheated out of the experience of pleasure. By allowing a child to intensely want something by temporarily depriving or preventing him or her from having it immediately (delayed gratification), the parent enables the child to experience the pleasure that occurs when an intense need is satisfied."

I saw the opposite of this lived out at WalMart today, where one more mom shoved one more cheap toy in the hands of a lonely, aching, greedy child. And while I can't claim to be an expert on parenting — my kids are still in the experimental phase — watching some godly families I admire has made me sure of a few things:

The child who believes that his agenda is the family's agenda; the child whose parents have abandoned their schedules and dreams and missions to pursue his alone; the child who receives endless treasures and trinkets as guilty love offerings; the child who gratifies his every interest and whim under the guise of life experience and good parenting —

That child is not being fit for righteous, selfless adulthood.

That child is being fit for hell, where the god is self-gratification and the end is self-consumption.