The December issue of the RP Witness included a review article by RP Pastor Bill Edgar that complimented Tedd Tripp’s popular book on parenting, Shepherding a Child’s Heart*, but also took issue with some of its central points. The following is a response from Tedd Tripp, and a reply from Bill Edgar.

I am thankful for the opportunity to respond to three objections from Bill Edgar’s review of Shepherding a Child’s Heart. The first two objections represent misunderstandings or misrepresentations rather than substantive disagreements. The final objection is a challenge to the central thesis of Shepherding a Child’s Heart.

The first objection is to the discussion of the inherent goodness of sports, music, and scholarship. In the context in chapter 5, the emphasis is not on the goodness of such activities but on their limitation as a final definition for success. Denial that these things define success for a child is not a denial of their inherent goodness. The Redeemer of mankind, embodied in flesh, demonstrates and validates all lawful human activity as intrinsically valuable and God glorifying. The issue under discussion is not the validity or goodness of “the arts, sport, and all the graces of human life,” but their value as ultimate goals. Final success is found in knowing God. The “graces of human life” are excellent and should be appreciated as a gift from God; chapter 5 is not designed to challenge that truth, but rather to warn against making those things the final goal of parenting or a definition of human success.

The second objection is from a sentence in the Introduction. The child is pictured as examining the gospel and choosing to accept it or reject it. Pastor Edgar concludes that I consider children spiritually neutral. First, the sentence being quoted is not in any way an assertion that I consider children spiritually neutral, but simply an observation that as children grow in maturity and cognitive sophistication they reach a point of self-conscious acceptance or rejection of the gospel. The child is always either keeping or breaking covenant with God, but a very small child does not have the cognitive skills to examine the syllogistic claims of the gospel and say, “I affirm” or “I deny” that truth. My words are not a denial of the covenantal relationship each child has with God. The material in chapter 3, pages 19-22, of Shepherding makes this clear, saying:

The figure below represents the child as a covenantal being. I use that expression to remind us that all human beings have a Godward orientation. Everyone is essentially religious. Children are worshipers. Either they worship Jehovah or idols. They are never neutral.

The continual, covenantal, non-neutrality of all human beings is explicitly stated again 11 more times between pages 20 and 23. The central point of this section is that children are never morally neutral.

The third objection challenges the concept that the Bible expects or requires parents to shepherd their children’s hearts at all. This issue is substantive and is central to the thesis of Shepherding. Pastor Edgar takes exception to the example of the children who are fighting over the same toy, pointing out that the parent who addresses the heart issues behind the fighting in both children is ignoring justice. He likens it to a policeman who deals with the hearts of a thief and the one from whom the thief has stolen.

Policemen, though, do not have the same role as parents. A parent who understands his role in childrearing as essentially the same as the job of a policeman does not have a biblical understanding of parenting. Similarly, a policeman who understands his role as essentially parental toward civilians does not have a biblical understanding of his role.

The role of a policeman is fundamentally different from that of a parent, and cannot be understood as analogous. A policeman does not have the responsibility or authority to nurture citizens in the fear and admonition of the Lord. His primary concern is law enforcement. A parent has the role of establishing equity in a household, and should judge fairly between his children. If a child is stealing, the parent needs to address that issue. The emphasis in the example, however, is not on justice. This does not mean that justice has no place in parenting; this is simply not the emphasis of the example. One of the responsibilities a parent has in interacting with children who are fighting is to help them see the selfishness that often lies behind such episodes. The point is not that stealing is fine, or that justice does not matter. The point is that one of the responsibilities of a parent is to address the heart issues behind the fighting.

This leads us to the more general question: Are parents called to discern the issues of the heart, and address those issues with their children? Pastor Edgar’s answer is no. Two reasons are given: First, God alone can know the heart. Second, parents who try to discern what they cannot (the intents of the heart) will likely exasperate their children. It is better to discipline, instruct, and love children, and leave their hearts to God.

At the outset, these are valuable cautions. Issues of the heart are very difficult to discern. Proverbs says that the issues of a man’s heart are deep waters (20:5). God knows our hearts perfectly; we do not. Parents can be overbearing, especially if they are not careful and humble in their interaction with their children. In the end, we have to recognize that we cannot change the hearts of our children.

Having said that, should parents interact in heart-oriented ways with their children? The second half of Proverbs 20:5 above reads, “but a man of understanding draws them [the deep waters of the heart] out.” God gives parents wisdom and understanding for parenting, and we have the responsibility to understand and draw out the issues of the heart in our children.

In fact, the author of Proverbs continually exhorts his son in terms of the heart issues behind behavior. The father exhorts his son repeatedly to keep his commands in his heart, not to let his heart envy sinners, not to lust after the adulteress in his heart, not to despise discipline in his heart, not to be proud in his heart, to keep wisdom in his heart, not to have a deceitful heart, to trust in the Lord with all his heart, not to fret against the Lord in his heart, to apply his heart to understanding, just to name a few. The father in Proverbs exhorts his son in terms of the heart.

This is not surprising. The Bible teaches that the heart is the wellspring of life, the treasury from which men bring forth good or bad treasure. Children need to be taught to understand their behavior in terms of the issues of the heart that drive that behavior. Naturally, this must be done with care, humility, reliance on God, and recognition that God alone knows men’s hearts perfectly. Using the wisdom that God gives, parents need to teach their children the truth of Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for out of it flow all the issues of life.” Children need to be taught to diagnose their hearts, and in that context they need to be taught to lay hold of God, who alone can make hearts new.

—Tedd Tripp

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Reviewer Bill Edgar Responds

I thank Tedd Tripp for responding to my critique. I am glad that he thinks music and sports are innately good. Unfortunately, his book did not say so. In chapter 6, “Reworking Your Goals,” he praised them only for their utility in furthering good things like family solidarity and health.

Tripp does not teach that children are spiritually neutral. I apologize for suggesting that he did. I relied too much on his illustration. Nonetheless, the picture of a child holding the gospel at arm’s length, pondering whether to accept it, dramatically fails to capture the spiritual position of a baptized child in a Christian family. Such children are “holy” (1 Cor. 7:14). Trusting in God’s promises, we expect them to love their heavenly Father long before—and long after—they “have the cognitive skills to examine the syllogistic claims of the Gospel.” Some ungrateful covenant children rebel, but many cannot recall a time when they held Christ at arm’s length.

Parent and policeman. Every parent has felt like a policeman. Rightly so. Father and mother in the family, like police in civil society, hold a position of authority that requires them to uphold law and order. The Westminster Larger Catechism (Q. 124) derives rulers’ authority from the fifth commandment. Yes, parents have further duties: to feed, educate, pray with and for, and play with our children. But when confronting stealing, the main parental response should be justice. What kid wants his heart examined when his crayon was swiped? Such a response would exasperate me at any age. Are there any children it would not exasperate?

The father in Proverbs exhorts his son in terms of his heart. So should we! We should aim to understand what is going on inside him as well as we can. The issue is not mainly, as Tripp writes in his reply, whether “parents are called to discern the issues of the heart and address those issues with their children.” The issue is how to deal with our children on a regular basis. The father in Proverbs does not ply his child with searching questions to teach him “to diagnose” his heart. “What were you feeling when you hit your sister?…Help me understand how hitting her seemed to make things better.…How do you think your response reflected trust …in God’s ability to provide for you?” (Tripp, chap. 8). Such an approach—as opposed to the general pattern of 1) rule broken, 2) punishment imposed, 3) go and sin no more—brings the counselor’s office into the home. Children lack the mental maturity of an adult coming for counseling, but the child of an earnest parent resolved to shepherd the heart is liable to such questioning every waking hour.

A further danger in Tripp’s approach: The sin can get lost in the shuffle. Parents can end up dealing with the malefactor not primarily in terms of his wrongdoing, but only in terms of his sick heart. (See C.S. Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” God in the Dock.)

The Bible has no examples of extended parent–child interactions, but it does reveal how our heavenly Father deals with His children through human agency: primarily by the foolishness of preaching. God’s Spirit searches the heart. If a parent probes the heart more than occasionally, he will overreach and provoke. We need to respect our children as those who also deal directly with their heavenly Father, raise them in the fear of God, and love them.