How Not to Raise a Robot

Kids are not robots.

After my son was born, I was struggling through an infinite loop of feed-pump-sleep. I slowly came to the realization that maybe some of those strong traits of mine weren’t all that wonderful. My type-A self was driving me down the rabbit holes of internet expertise—books, blogs, videos, programs, all advertising the keys to nurturing a straight-A newborn. I would worry myself silly when my son didn’t fall within these arbitrary ranges.

But wouldn’t you know it—kids aren’t robots. My beloved friend, a pediatrician, said that to me after one of my nervous rants, which usually ended with the question “Is that OK?” And it’s what I needed to hear, because the statement wasn’t about kids as much as it was about how parents thought about their kids. Parenting is not a technician’s job; you can’t phone it in. There are some things no expert can tell you. You have to figure out your own kid. And that takes time, not a push of a button or a flick of a switch.

It’s About Time

My son is now a toddler, and the question I am faced with daily is: How do I get my son, for his own safety, for his own good, to desire to obey me? I don’t want to wage a war of attrition against him; I don’t want to strongarm him or guilt-trip him. I don’t want him to grow up to be a robot.

I think the answer is poignantly illustrated in just a few chapters of Exodus. First, consider the one-on-one time God spent with Moses, even, on two occasions, for 40 straight days and nights (Ex. 24:18; 34:28). In so doing, God met Moses’ needs. The children of Israel had sinned, worshipping the golden calf at the very moment God was ratifying His covenant with them. It must have been unnerving, mortifying. If I were Moses, I, as representative of these wayward people, would at least have had some doubts. Did God still love His children, even though they had done wrong? Would He still keep His promises to them?

“See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. . . . Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way,” Moses pleaded (Ex. 33:12, 13).[1] Moses was reaching out. He was, in effect, asking for God’s reassurance. Don’t children, sorry for some misdeed, seek the same approval from their parents? And God responded, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest” (verse 14). God made sure His children knew He was not going to abandon them. Yet Moses wanted more.

When my son is teething or not feeling well, he tends to want extra care. God had already given His word, but Moses needed something extra. “I beseech thee, shew me thy glory,” came his next request (verse 18). A lesser parent might have become exasperated. God already said He’d go with you; how much more do you want? A lesser parent might have missed the cry for help. There was certainly reason enough to deny the petition. “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live,” God explained (verse 20). It was dangerous; it was difficult. But God didn’t deny Moses. Instead, He carefully shielded him “in a clift of the rock, . . . [covering him] with [His] hand” (verse 22) until just the right moment when He “[took] away [His] hand” so that Moses could “see [His] back parts” alone (verse 23).

When our children ask for attention from us, do we ignore, dismiss, or shame them for much less inconvenience? There are no shortcuts with time. Author and educator Kay Kuzma puts it this way: “T-I-M-E is the way you spell love.”[2]

What does that do to our hearts, knowing that a never-changing God is intentionally and persistently working for our salvation? It makes me want what God wants.

The Real Rainbow Connection

But that’s not all. According to Scripture, God’s glory is His name (Ex. 33:18, 19), and His name is His character: “The Lord . . . proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation” (Ex. 34:5-7).
How does this translate into action?

Let’s look at a particular vision given to the prophet Ezekiel: “As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (Eze. 1:28). The apostle John also defined God in this way: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

A rainbow is formed when sunlight hits a water droplet. Sunlight is composed of white light, a mixture of all visible colors. Refraction is the bending of light; reflection is the return of light after bouncing off a surface. Both occur when sunlight hits the spherical droplet, resulting in the separation of the colors in the white light to form a rainbow.

God created the rainbow after the Flood as “a token of” (Gen. 9:13) “the everlasting covenant between” (verse 16) Him and all creatures on earth that He would never again send water to destroy our world (verses 12-16). The book of Revelation tells us that “there [is] a rainbow round about the throne” of God in heaven (Rev. 4:3). And Jesus said, “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matt. 24:37). The rainbow takes us from the Flood, a type of the final judgment, to the antitypical day of judgment, when each individual will stand before that throne of glory and receive their reward of either eternal life or eternal death (2 Cor. 5:10; Rev. 20:11, 12).

Ellen White explains, “As the bow in the cloud is formed by the union of the sunlight and the shower, so the rainbow encircling the throne represents the combined power of mercy and justice,”[3] the power of that “merciful” and “forgiving” God who will never “clear the guilty.” The rainbow is a visual representation of God’s spoken proclamation to Moses. God’s character never changes (Mal. 3:6). His glory shown to Moses is the same as that to be demonstrated at the end of the world. He isn’t a parent who punishes or withholds based on feelings or extraneous circumstances. He is steadfast; He is trustworthy.

God declares that the rainbow is also a token of remembrance for Him (Gen. 9:14-16). As Ellen White states: “When man by his great wickedness invites the divine judgments, the Saviour, interceding with the Father in his behalf, points to the bow in the clouds, to the rainbow around the throne and above His own head, as a token of the mercy of God toward the repentant sinner.”[4] God is ever bringing to His mind our ultimate good on that final day of judgment; His attentions ever center on being reunited with us. What does that do to our hearts, knowing that a never-changing God is intentionally and persistently working for our salvation? It makes me want what God wants.

How far-reaching are our thoughts for our children? How often do we get stuck wearing blinders in the daily grind, never rising beyond meeting their basic needs?

Upon the Breastplate of Judgment

While the golden calf apostasy was occurring below, God, above in the mount with Moses, was spelling out the system of worship for His people to follow, including detailed instructions concerning the garments of the high priest. On the high priest’s breastplate of judgment were to be 12 stones (Ex. 28:15-20). According to scholars, the actual varieties of the 12 stones are inconclusive. But what we can most likely presume is that the stones were manifold in color, perhaps in view reminiscent of a rainbow.

Resting on either shoulder were the Urim and Thummim, two stones that relayed God’s judgments (Ex. 28:22-25; 1 Sam. 30:7, 8). If God approved, the Urim, meaning “light” or “revelation,” shone with “a halo of light and glory”; if He did not, the Thummim, meaning “perfection” or “truth,” was darkened with a cloud.[5]

Interestingly, The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary concludes the following: “The breastplate was to the garments of the high priest what the mercy seat was to the sanctuary itself. On both, God revealed His glory and made known His will.”[6] The mercy seat was the seat from which God governed (Ex. 25:22). Beneath the mercy seat was the ark of the covenant, inside of which was God’s law, the Ten Commandments (verse 21). This single article of furniture within the most holy place of the earthly sanctuary was a representation of God’s actual throne in heaven (Heb. 8:1-5). And above God’s throne in heaven is, as we’ve seen, a rainbow. God’s law covered by God’s mercy produces the rainbow, the synthesis of God’s mercy and justice, His glory.

Jesus Christ is the game-changer. His self-sacrificial devotion to us—to you personally—is the pith of God’s glory.

God’s law is also to be written on the hearts of His children (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10). The part of the body that the breastplate covers is the heart. Just as the mercy seat covers the law of God, the breastplate of judgment covers the heart. Just as the rainbow shines above the throne of God, so did the rainbow of stones shine atop the breastplate of judgment. The scene of the final judgment was encapsulated in the breastplate of judgment. And when the Urim shone forth, in what a blaze the high priest must have been engulfed. The high priest was, in essence, a depiction of God’s heavenly throne, a walking reminder of God’s eternal mercy and justice, that is, His glory. Indeed, Jesus Christ, the High Priest of which every earthly high priest was to be a type (Heb. 7:11-8:6), “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Heb. 1:3, KJV): “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The Game Changer

My husband and I are currently going through a parenting program recommended by some good friends. Right off the bat you’re introduced to a highly effective tool. It’s a variation on quality time but with one game changer, a very important rule that must be followed: You and your kid spend uninterrupted one-on-one time together—but your kid, within reason, chooses the activity. You, in a sense, spend time walking in your kid’s shoes. What is the result? The way your kid responds to you, the way he sees you, is entirely transformed. The child himself is transformed.

Isn’t that what Jesus Christ did for us? He came down to our level; He walked our path. He lived as a man, “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” and “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). I’ve seen what a difference it makes when I kneel down to talk to my son face-to-face, at his height, at his level. He responds so much more openly, so much more warmly. He literally sees me differently, better, more fully. When Christ knelt down to our level, He did so that we could see God more accurately, more clearly, that we might be more receptive to His love. It was only by walking in our shoes that Christ was able to bring us back up to His level (John 1:51; Eph. 2:4-6).

Exodus 34:29 tells us, “Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him,” or as the New Revised Standard Version puts it, “because he had been talking with God.” Second Corinthians 3:7 reveals that Moses’ shining face was but a reflection of seeing God’s glory. As Ellen White tells us: “While Moses was in the mount, God presented to him, not only the tables of the law, but also the plan of salvation. . . . It was the heavenly light streaming from Calvary, no less than the glory of the law of God, that shed such a radiance upon the face of Moses.”[7] Jesus Christ is the game changer. His self-sacrificial devotion to us—to you personally—is the pith of God’s glory.

Face-to-Face

To all believers comes the exhortation: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. . . . Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:12-14). Like Moses, “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). We are literally transformed by God’s glory, not only because Christ died for us but because He lived and “ever liveth” (Heb. 7:25) for us too. Now I not only desire to obey Him; I know I am able to. Christ made it possible by walking before me and makes it possible by working in me.

That rainbow assortment of stones upon the “foursquare” (Ex. 28:16) breastplate of judgment was engraved with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel (verse 21); the polychromatic stones of the 12 foundations of the “foursquare” (Rev. 21:16) New Jerusalem are similarly imprinted with the names of Christ’s 12 apostles (verses 14, 19, 20). We, the spiritual children of Israel, “as lively stones . . . built up [as] a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5), are to reflect God’s glory, the rainbow of salvation from “the Sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2), to the world. And only by walking in Christ’sshoes are we able to (Col. 2:6).

Kids are not robots. God’s desire is that we each individually come to the point where, like Moses, we desire to behold His glory. Colossians 1:27 says, “God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of . . . Christ in you, the hope of glory” (NKJV). Said Jesus: “This is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life” (John 6:40). God desires that we become “a pillar in the temple” (Rev. 3:12, KJV) of that radiant city on a hill (Matt. 5:14; Rev. 21:2). God desires that we will let it be known that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

What greater desire could parents have for their children?

[1] Unless otherwise noted, Bible texts are from the King James Version.

[2] Kay Kuzma and Kari St. Clair, The First 7 Years: Parenting With Strong Values and a Gentle Touch (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 2006), p. 54.

[3] Ellen G. White, “Let the Trumpet Give a Certain Sound,” Review and Herald, Dec. 13, 1892.

[4] Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1890, 1908), p. 107.

[5] Flavius Josephus The Antiquities of the Jews 3.8.9; Ellen G. White, The Story of Redemption (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1947), p. 183.

[6] The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, ed. Francis D. Nichol (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1953, 1978), vol. 1, p. 649.

[7] E. G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 330.