A visitor to the modern West would have good reason to believe that the goal we are striving for in life is happiness. Our guiding principle seems to be: ‘Do whatever makes you happy; follow your heart’. We are on a constant quest to find our ‘happily ever after’ with the perfect partner, the perfect body, the perfect job, and the perfect house.

This filters down to our parenting, too. If you ask modern parents what we want for our children, we reply in unison: ‘We just want them to be happy!’ We end up doing everything we can to give our kids a perfect childhood of perpetual delight.

My first years of motherhood were like that—I was completely preoccupied with our son’s emotions.

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If observers are right, modern parenthood is in crisis. The titles of some recent books say it all: The Collapse of Parenting, Toxic Childhood, and Spoonfed Generation, to name a few. In spite of our all-consuming desire to give our children the perfect childhood, we seem to be raising a generation that is, in many respects, ill-equipped for life in the real world.

The problem isn’t that we lack information. No, the problem for parents today is that we’ve lost sight of the big picture. We could happily tell you our views on bottle-feeding, childcare, spanking, screen time, or sugar. But few of us could tell you exactly what we’re aiming for or how we plan to get there.

At a time when I was a particularly anxious, aimless parent, I turned to the Bible. Its ancient wisdom turned out to be the perfect antidote to the problems that plague modern parents like me. The Bible contains good news for parents, but it also confronts us with some hard truths.

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Modern parents like me live in a swirling sea of advice and information. We’re desperately trying to keep up with the 10 Things Every Parent Must Know, the 12 Mistakes New Parents Make, and the 17 Habits of Highly Happy Families. But we end up feeling confused by conflicting advice, guilty about our imperfections, and afraid of damaging our children.

Modern parents are desperate for good news. Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, writes:

Most parents are frantically doing their best in a world where the goal posts are not just moving—they’ve actually disappeared. . . . In a world of tumultuous change, confidence is thin on the ground. The moral and social certainties [of previous generations] have disintegrated, and there seems to be nothing to put in their place.

About five years ago, those disappearing goal posts were really getting to me. I was craving some unchanging, timeless truths for parenting. So I reached out to the ancient wisdom of my spiritual ancestors. I opened my Bible.

I went looking for little pieces of advice, but the Bible lifted my gaze to see the bigger picture that puts life and parenthood into perspective.

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I first came to Jesus with my parenting dilemmas about four years ago, when we were struggling to manage an emotional two-and-a-half year old and a newborn. I was an anxious, sleep-deprived mess, desperate for guidance. But as I turned the pages of the gospels, my day-to-day questions became overshadowed by the bigger, more searching questions that Jesus was asking me. I wanted to know about my parenting, but Jesus wanted to know about my discipleship.

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There’s no quicker way to ignite an emotional debate than to raise the issue of discipline. At one end of the spectrum are those who say, “The problem with today’s children is that they aren’t disciplined enough—our generation was smacked and it taught us to be respectful.” At the other end of the spectrum are those who warn about how discipline can be abused and result in negative consequences for children.

So, what does the Bible say? How can Christians chart a course through the murky waters of the discipline debate?

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Whenever I sit down to read Proverbs, a giant shadow falls across the page and darkens my view. It’s her – the “wife of noble character” from chapter 31. You know the one? She’s the biblical version of that “picture perfect” mother from your social media feed. Glowing with godliness, she is in equal parts my inspiration and my condemnation.

But if we really want to hear what the whole book of Proverbs has to say about mothers, we’ll have to step out from under her shadow for a moment and keep reading.

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The account of Jacob and his family occupies almost half of the book of Genesis. It’s a captivating story about how God’s holy, eternal promises have coursed through the veins of very weak and finite human beings; it’s about how God can work through the mess and grime of family life to achieve his glorious purposes.

And God knows that I need to hear that story today. My family life seems weak—often it feels like we’re just skating on the thin ice of civility, with chaos lying in wait just under the surface.

How could God possibly be at work in this very human family?

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