THOUGHTS

April 25, 2020

Another reprint from 2014

Does anyone else use child psychology on themselves?

I mean, if I have to do a chore, I want a reward.  So, I give myself one.  It isn't always ice cream, okay?  Sometimes it is a trip to the thrift store to find more clean, cheap books (now I use my kindle) to fill up my down time, which can be quite a bit of my time.  You would think by this simple trick all my chores would be done all the time.  I found a way around it: I give myself the reward first, and then I might do my chores, or not.  Sometimes I outsmart myself.

The goal of raising children is not just to teach them how to stay out from under the strong arm of the law, but that they internalize self-control.  Self-control, a fruit of the Spirit, is not  naturally cultivated.  If it were, we could reduce our police force considerably.  I would even have to let go of my positive reinforcement techniques, heaven help me, because the joy of a job well done would be enough, like that is going to happen with ice cream in my freezer.  Just writing this has developed a deep craving: I'll be right back.

God had a reward.  He promised in the Old Testament, like carrots in front of horses, that if His people would obey and follow Him, they would have good crops, long lives, and lots of children.  Generation after generation blew it.  It all pointed to the need of a Savior.  How quickly men degenerated into sin, even with murderous intention: Cain & Able, Noah in a world of evil so bad that God repented of making mankind, Joseph & his brothers involving a deep well in the wilderness, David & Bathsheba and her dead husband, Moses' anger which kept him out of the  Promised Land, or Abraham pushing his wife off on a king in order to save his own skin, Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, Jacob & Esau's sibling rivalry, Judas betraying Jesus, Peter denying Christ three times.  However, after Pentecost it happened: God made it possible through the Holy Spirit to write His law of love on our hearts, Christ in us, the hope of glory  At least maybe now my ice-cream will get a little freezer burn.

"I will put My law within them,

and on their heart I will write it."

Jeremiah 31:33

By the way, the best ice cream cones are at the Lake City Drug Store (which my sister and her husband used to own), now San Juan Soda, in Lake City, Colorado.  Nothing like roughing it camping and coming in to swivel in the stools licking the deliciously cold cones.