Who Is to Blame When a Child Goes Astray?

It’s been a few months since I’ve run excerpts from my book in progress, When Christian Parents Hurt (that may not be the final title). With my dad’s passing and all the Lent devotionals, this work got put to the side. But I’m going to be running more posts on this in the future, though not every week, as I know not every paid subscriber has pain over their adult children. But man, the stories won’t leave me.

I recently touched based with a long-time friend whose life is going great vocationally and maritally, but things got to the point with one of his adult children that there hasn’t been any contact at all as of late. He’s a godly man with a gigantic heart, and this is ripping that heart in two.

It’s a rare week when I don’t hear a similar story, convincing me we need a book addressing this, not from a how-to perspective (I’m not a licensed counselor or parenting expert), but from a pastoral one. How can we help Christian parents come to grips with their own failings and feelings of guilt, and discern what is false guilt and what is just grief?

One of the things I’ve noticed from my ongoing love of reading the Christian classics is our modern emphasis on blaming the parents whenever a child goes astray. The classics—and Scripture, as we’ll see—exhort parents to fulfill their job as a parent so that their child does not suffer, but also contain the nuance that ultimately, the adult child’s choices reflect primarily on the adult child’s character, not their history. I’m still working on this section, but here’s where I’m at right now.