The Law of Sowing and Reaping

We enjoyed some time together as a family today. We went to IKEA to return our Christmas tree (and getting a voucher for the price of the tree less one euro). We spent this voucher getting some organizer boxes and a few other items for the apartment.

While eating lunch there, I flashed back to when we took our son there when he was just barely a week or two old. My wife's parents were with us on that trip. As our son gets ready to turn 4 in several weeks and continues to grow in all ways, trips to this same IKEA store remind me of how quickly he is developing. This also is a challenge to me as a father as I desire for him to be and act in certain ways.

After getting home, I looked at chapter 4 ("What Will Happen If I Do This? the Law of Sowing and Reaping")in Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend's Boundaries with Kids: When to Say YES, When to Say NO, to Help Your Children Gain Control of Their Lives (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1998). I have already found their other books on life boundaries to be very helpful. They write:

Parents run into a big problem when they do not distinguish between psychological and negative relational consequences versus reality consequences. Life works on reality consequences. Psychological and negative relational consequences, such as getting angry, sending guilt messages, nagging, and withdrawing love, usually do not motivate people to change. If they do, the change is short-lived, directed ontly at getting the person to lighten up on the psychological pressure. True change usually comes only when someone's behavior causes him to encounter reality consequences like pain or losses of time, money, possessions, things he enjoys, and people he values. (p. 58)

Consider what God says. "A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life" (Galatians 6:7-8.) (pp. 58-59)

The positive side of the Law of Sowing and Reaping gives us a reasonable sense of power and control over our lives. This is what God intended, and he is pleased when we invest our talents and lives to reap good fruit (Matthew 25:14-30). Both the Bible and life experience show that effort, dligence, and responsibility pay off. (p. 60)

The negative side of the Law of Sowing and Reaping gives us a healthy fear of bad things. A healthy respect for consequences keeps us living in reality and moving in a good direction. Though the consequences of relational failures, for example, we learn to loe in a way that succeeds. (p. 60)

But if we never learn the Law of Sowing and Reaping, we lose on both the positive and negative sides of life. We do not have tehe motivation to do good work and be diligent, and at the same time we do not fear laziness, irresponsibility, and other character problems. Both conditions result in suffering: the loss of good realities and the encountering of bad ones. (pp. 60-1)

The goal is not to control the children to make them do what you want. The goal is to give them the choice to do what they want, and make it so painful to do the wrong thing that they will not want to. Who wants to be grounded all day? This way, you are not making them do anything. You are letting them choose, but making the Law of Sowing and Reaping have reality. If they sow to irresponsibility, they will reap pain. And if they sow to responsible behavior, they will reap the benefits and want to chose that path. (p. 63)