Christ-centered Parenting
Raising Confident Kids in a Confusing World: A Parent’s Guide to Grounding Identity in Christ, Ed Drew. Charlotte: The Good Book Company, 2023. Softcover, 171 pages.
If you’re of the same vintage as me, you’ll probably remember certain parenting courses making the rounds back in the 1990s. As I look back at those courses now, I can see a great many flaws with them, even though they insisted they were offering “God’s Way.” One of the flaws was a real lack of understanding of gospel grace in Jesus Christ and how that applies to raising our kids. That’s a problem you definitely don’t find in this book by Ed Drew and for that reason alone I really like it.
The author is the ministry director of a UK organization, Faith in Kids. Drew says this book is about two questions: “What does it look like to raise our kids to be confident in who they are, because they know whose they are? How do we parent in a way that points them to how God sees them as the fundamental basis of everything they are and do?” (p.22). The central theme of the book, therefore, is identity. Drew’s approach to that theme is a biblical one, especially focussing on who our children are by nature as image-bearers, and who we pray they become in Jesus Christ. I especially appreciate the emphasis on the need for the children of Christians to personally believe in Christ for themselves – in this way, our children will see not only how they’re precious to God, but also forgiven through Christ and enabled to change by the Holy Spirit.
Raising Confident Kids is a practical book that takes on all the big issues confronting us in our parenting today. Drew discusses gender dysphoria, sexual attraction, marriage, and pornography. He writes, “Leaving our children to discern their identity from their inner selves is to leave them in a situation that is unstable, uncertain and even arbitrary. We need instead to show them who God says they are, how God has made them, and who God calls them to become” (p.158). Quite right.
I do have one qualm, but it’s more about what’s missing than what’s included. From what I can tell, Ed Drew comes from the Reformed evangelical side of Anglicanism (the church he recently worked for is part of the conservative GAFCON movement). Sadly, even Anglicanism at its best isn’t usually known today for its robust covenant theology. It’s missing in this book too. Recognizing the covenantal dimension of the identity of our children would strengthen the argument of this book. I understand the intended audience for this book is broader than us Reformed folks and to make the case for the inclusion of children in the covenant of grace might have taken the author considerable time and space. So if you’re reading this, you’ll have to fill in the gaps for yourself – remember that our children also have an identity as members of the covenant of grace. As such, they’re urgently called to find their identity in Jesus Christ too.
When our kids were little, I once heard a fellow pastor preach while I was on vacation. Most of what he said I’ve long since forgotten. But I do remember how he said the most important thing that Christian parents can do for their children is pray for them. We have to pray for their regeneration so they’ll believe in Jesus Christ themselves. In a similar vein, Ed Drew writes: “I trust Jesus. He offers them freedom. When they are asked, ‘Who are you?’ before all else, I want them to stand tall, to puff out their chests and to say in a clear, confident voice, ‘I am a disciple of Jesus. This is me’” (p.20). If that’s your desire for your kids too, this book is for you.
Originally published in Clarion 73.9 (June 28, 2024)
