| OK – I haven’t seen a Christ-centered response yet to Amy Chua’s incendiary article in The Wall Street Journal, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html#articleTabs%3Darticle), so I thought I’d add to the digital noise out there and pen yet another response. I’m going to make an attempt to answer from a Christian perspective, but I’m not saying that there aren’t other Christian perspectives out there.
I understand what Chua is responding to in terms of the Western culture. It seems that we have a generation of children who have been over-coddled by their parents. The March 2010 Atlantic Monthly issue had an article on “The Recession’s Long Shadow” by Don Peck which observed that “today’s young adults seem temperamentally unprepared for the circumstances in which they now find themselves.” Peck quotes Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who has studied attitudes of today’s generation relative to previous generations and wrote a book, Generation Me. She commented that, for Generation Y, “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want…. It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special.’” [qtd. by Peck] The article documents trends in survey data showing that self-esteem in children rising from 1980 onwards, which Twenge attributes to shifts in parenting and teaching methods to accommodate “the growing belief that children should always feel good about themselves, no matter what.” “By 1999, according to one survey, 91 percent of teens described themselves as responsible, 74 percent as physically attractive, and 79 percent as very intelligent.” (It’s just not mathematically possible for 79 percent of people to have above average intelligence, but anyways…)
So self-esteem in Western culture is being decoupled from performance – in direct contrast to Asian culture, which is trying its best to nail, bind and crazy-glue self-esteem to performance. And certainly there are deleterious effects of groundless over-confidence and entitlement: “Twenge writes that ‘self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work,’ and that ‘the ability to persevere and keep going’ is ‘a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem.’” [qtd. by Peck] This recession is going to teach Generation Y some very hard lessons that they may not have been raised to overcome.
So there is some truth to Amy Chua’s article (although I have to say that, as I was reading it, I kept wanting to ask her, “Are you serious? Are you joking or do you really mean that?”). There is something to the idea of encouraging your children to persevere and overcome their initial distaste or dislike of something because, yea, maybe they will find that they like it once they master it and get over the beginner’s hump. Also, it is healthy to see your children’s potential and want them to reach it. But is it worth making your children feel like “garbage” until they perform to standard? Is beating someone down a good motivator?
What the two parenting approaches, let’s call them loosely Western and Asian, have in common is that they both have success metrics. It’s just that the metrics of success are different. For Western parenting methods, success is intrinsic, geared towards having strong self-esteem and confidence. For Asian parenting methods, success is measured extrinsically, i.e., academic and professional achievement, financial performance and stability, etc. So it seems like your parenting style will mold your children into what you consider successful, i.e., what will help your children survive and thrive in life, and oh, let’s not forget, what will help you feel good about yourself as a parent.
Inherently nothing is wrong with any of these metrics of success, but it’s amazing how good things can be twisted and corrupted. What if surviving and thriving in this world is more about looking to God Himself, who forms our foundation for our self-esteem and gives us our gifts, talents, abilities and resources to achieve?
So what does Jesus think about success?
God does decouple our self-esteem from our performance. However, He links our self-esteem to HIS performance, i.e., what Jesus did for us through His death on the Cross and His Resurrection. Our self-esteem is not groundless – it’s not based on nothing, it’s not just some weird headgame where we all convince ourselves we’re brilliant, beautiful, articulate, etc. But our self-esteem is based entirely on Someone else. It turns our view of success on its head – it’s not about what we DO, but more about what He does, who He is, what He thinks of us. That’s the great news of the gospel. It’s about God’s grace towards us – that He loves us completely and unconditionally because He created us as we are. Success is about His success, His glory, Himself. Success has nothing to do with us – not even how aware we are of God’s grace or whether we accept it.
This view frees us up to accept ourselves for exactly who we are – nothing more or less – because God accepts us exactly for who we are. He doesn’t lie to us and tell us that we are the prettiest, or the smartest, or the most athletic. He tells us the truth about ourselves. But at the same time, nothing about us will change the depth of His love for us; the truth is cushioned by grace. However, He still wants more for us – He wants us to grow in freedom, wholeness, spiritual and emotional health, godliness, and holiness, to experience His abundance and fullness, and also to develop the gifts He has given us to bring Him glory. But God doesn’t kick the crap out of us and motivate us by fear so that we will perform. He is patiently at our side, walking with us, helping us, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He doesn’t lower the bar for us, but Jesus himself fills in that space between where we are and that bar. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)
Please read the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. It’s an absolutely lovely depiction of the God’s heart for us. The younger, prodigal son takes his share of the inheritance, runs away from home, squanders it all on prostitutes and fast living. He comes to his senses, and returns home, sheepish and ready to grovel and beg for forgiveness from his father. The father runs out to meet him, gives him a ring and a robe, and throws a lavish feast for him, never once asking for any excuses or apologies – just re-affirming the sonship of the prodigal. The elder son, who has always obeyed the father, is put off by his father’s gracious response to the flagrant behavior of his younger brother and angrily refuses to go into the party. The father comes out to him, and instead of rebuking him for his behavior, affirms his sonship as well: “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” (Luke 15:31-32) So the emphasis in this story is the amazing, lavish, overflowing, abundant love and compassion of the father – neither son’s behavior is exemplary (one overtly breaks every rule, and the other coldly follows every rule to the letter, while missing out on who the father really is), but it doesn’t affect their father’s love for them or their identities as his sons.
So my view is that we need to transcend the values of Western and Asian parenting. I value having a strong self-esteem and self-identity based on Christ, and that frees us up to follow God’s cultural mandate in Genesis to steward the earth’s resources - “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) But we always keep in mind that all of our achievements here on earth are for God’s glory and are not about building up our self-esteem. It’s about focusing our eyes on Him and not ourselves.
Bottom line – so what do I think Jesus would say to Amy Chua? – “Amy, you are my Beloved daughter. I died for you. I love you. I’m crazy about you.” |
