Children are insignificant, despite the parental instincts that tell us otherwise. Children are also and weak and incompetent, so they need protection. Except for their potential to become adults, a child has little significance. But if a child never matures, even their potential significance is never realized, and the result is something we call an Infantile.

The Infantile offers little contribution to others. Nobody really likes an Infantile for very long. An adult who acts like a child is a most loathsome and boring creature. Like leeches or children in a schoolyard, Infantiles seize and take and demand from others.

Read more about Infantiles in the new Love Ethics Section.Emotionally, Infantiles offer very little love. Yes, they can feel love, but like children they don’t understand what love really is, and they certainly have no idea how it works. Parents get confused about this as well, believing their child is loving when actually the child only reflects the parent’s love.

One of the most heartbreaking experiences of parenthood is to love a child who leaves and rarely cares about the parents. Parents with young children can hardly conceive that one day this child may in fact hate them, and it’s a mystery how that could possibly happen, but it’s simple: it happens because the child never understood love in the first place!

Infantiles can be Princes and Princesses who come from loving Tribes (tribal homes), full of idealistic zeal and high expectations in life. Not surprisingly, they soon run afoul of the opposition and disappointment in the real world. At first they demand love and respect from their brave, new world away from home, then they come running back to their Tribe where their Love Demands have a more sympathetic audience.

Parental Concerns

Parents are broken-hearted by the suffering of their poor, abused Princes and Princesses, so they surrender to those Love Demands at home. Is it weakness on the parent’s part, or a God-given, natural desire?

As loving parents our hearts ache to provide shelter and placate our distressed children. We’ve been doing that since birth, after all, and how painful it is to give up those tender mercies, especially when the child suffers…

But until we teach kids thankfulness, their Love Demands are perpetuated. As caring parents we inadvertently set them up for more painful defeats. Princes and Princesses walk out of the house thinking what hot stuff they are. Without thankfulness, they think love feelings come on-demand.

Instead, parents should stop their kids from demanding love. In a sense,

“Children should be afraid of their parents, to an extent - this is a sane view of the world. It is a scary world, where stronger people exist.” Ankenman-Interview

Parents can always rebuild their kid’s shattered lives, but only in a superficial and temporary way. What parents can’t do forever is build significance into their kid’s lives.

Earlier we studied how Tribal Christian homes become castles of retreat, because Christian parents know how frightening the world is. So the Christian Tribe furiously builds and expands its small domain through career-paths, house-building, car-care, kids’ education (and a mountain of bills), but then, sadly, these highly-loved kids are fleeing their Christian Tribes in unprecedented numbers.

Tribal Christians are actually retreating into the enemy’s arms! Christian parents may denounce secular values but still miss the actual menace thriving in their own living rooms: materialism. The unadvertised side-effect of a plush and materialistic culture is an emerging generation that never understands how to “act like men.” Maturity should bring competency, strength, and a welcome contribution to the family’s future, but the Millennial Generation emerging from prosperity is so immature that social scientists are pushing “the age of adulthood” into the mid-20′s and even older.¹

Baby Boomer Infantiles

Consider the drift of modern history: Baby Boomers marked the first generation in America which could afford to cast aside the fear of poverty and the horrible wars known by their parents and ancestors. The Great Depression Generation knew poverty. The World War II Generation knew wartime sacrifice. The Baby Boomers knew neither, and they passed neither on to their progeny.

Boomers could afford the luxury to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” as Dr. Leery once declared. The mud-wrestling scenes from Woodstock depict an ocean of Infantiles wallowing in self-indulgence.

Woodstock Infantiles playing in mud-puddles

Contrast the rich kids at Woodstock against the sacrificial character prevalent in the WWII generation:

“Each week I took my paycheck, bought the food I needed, and bought War Bonds with the rest. It was my duty. Everyone knew it and did the same.”

As a historian, Ken Burns produced his WWII documentary precisely because he knew the maturity and sacrifice so prevalent in that age was fading from memory.²

Just a few of the many ways the WWII generation practiced unhesitating sacrifice. Would these posters work on the Millennial Generation? Pictures from the Library of Congress and PBS.org.

The Child-Centered Home

happy soccor moms

Boomers fell prey to the poison of revolving the household around their kids. The American family is dominated by the fast-paced hustle and bustle of clubs, sports, arts and many other activities designed to promote the child’s talents. All of these activities are splendid endeavors, but something is dreadfully wrong: where do the children learn sacrificial love for others? More to the point, how do children develop the character to love? When parents measure their kids’ progress by academics and other  achievements, they teach kids that they are, in fact, the great Princes and Princesses they know themselves to be!

Today the family is faced with unprecedented threats. Single-parent homes, multiple-marriage homes, same-sex-parent homes and other radical upheavals means the concept of “family” is completely severed from its historical roots.

But the Child-Centered Yuppie Home is the greatest novelty. Parents believe that enough loving attention will launch children into adulthood, but the opposite is true. All the coddling and fussing produces Infantiles struggling with their own insignificance and making unrealistic demands on the world around them:

Zaslow says that the coddling virus continues to eat away even when junior goes off to college. “I heard from several professors who said, a student will come up after class and say, ‘I don’t like my grade, and my mom wants to talk to you, here’s the phone,’” he says. “And the students think it’s like a service. ‘I deserve an A because I’m paying for it. What are you giving me a C for?’” - Safer-Millennials

The Loss of Significance

The great confusion is the changed role for children in the family. Children once assumed a helpful role and were vital contributors with chores and the family welfare. Fights erupted and jealousies flared, but still the older kids by necessity cared for the younger ones.

These kids were important to the family, and they were significant. They cooked and fed and led someone other than themselves, and they expected the same from their siblings. Of course, families were larger and required greater cooperation. The 2.5 kids of the modern family pursue more personal priorities with little use for each other. In the Yuppie household, siblings are obstacles.

Where does the modern child learn that significance comes from serving others? Child-centered homes produce Princes and Princesses because they never learned to serve anyone.

Infantiles are incapable of building their own significance, so they demand it from others. They learned this pattern at home. Without significant roles in the family, where do kids fit? All the income is generated somewhere outside the home. Kids are left idle and bored and turn to Gameboys or television. Some families keep the children busy with self-improvement activities in sports, arts, hobbies and academic achievement.

What emerges is the Millennials, and they are a pampered royalty in search of a kingdom to rule.

Demanding Significance

It is entirely possible for parents to destroy a kid for a lifetime by continually doting and investing and heaping love on a child, who then grows into an adult Infantile prowling for love, “because I’m me!” Whenever someone treats love as something to take and grasp and hold and shelter and covet, love is perverted into self-indulgence. This is poisoned love.

Millenials reshape the workplace. CBS News

Boomer parents are the greatest culprits in breeding a generation of unreasonable, demanding Infantiles unfit for the real world. Parents instinctively wish to avoid disciplining. It might be alienating, it won’t work, it feels so unloving, and so the fears go and grow. These become Infantile adults unable to conform, as documented recently by 60 Minutes:

Stand back all bosses! A new breed of American worker is about to attack everything you hold sacred: from giving orders, to your starched white shirt and tie. They are called, among other things, “millennials.” There are about 80 million of them…’You now have a generation coming into the workplace that has grown up with the expectation that they will automatically win, and they’ll always be rewarded, even for just showing up,’ Crane says.³

“I deserve to be rewarded, because I’m me” is such a farce! There was only one place and time where such a ludicrous thought was entertained: at birth. But even then the kid was loved because God’s hand kindled a flame in the parent’s heart, and not because a poopy, stinky, crying infant deserved it.

For the child, a parent’s love feels like adulation and worship. Without correction the kid becomes an adult Infantile in search of the same adulation and worship. This takes the form of Love Demands.

Loving parents produce demanding Infantiles. But the antidote is not to become mean, nasty parents. Parents need to teach kids authentic significance.

The Significance of Hatred

Christian parents need more than good instincts in order to raise kids in a culture so confused and unhealthy. Parents operate in a dangerous atmosphere, despite how secure our households may feel. Hatred is so pervasive it penetrates the most insulated and loving homes. The real threat is not “the terrible things out there” as Christians imagine. The threat is not confined to evil behaviors like drugs, sexual immorality or superficial issues like clothing or music, as some think.

The real threat is actually carried inside the child. Born in a world infested with hatred, not love, a child is simply another depraved mind planted at childbirth, and the depravity blossoms into adulthood.

Long ago it was discovered that hatred thrives within the sanctity of the family:

This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. So don’t be surprised, dear brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. - 1 John 3:11–13 (NLT)

John raised a good question: why did Cain kill Abel? It was jealousy, pure and simple: “the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry…” (Gen. 4:4,5). Jealousy is the twisted quest for significance we read about earlier.

Jealousy twisted Cain’s mind and whipped him into a bloodbath of revenge—he was covered with blood, and the ground was soaked in it.

The ground is still soaked in blood today. Hatred is axiomatic here: one person’s advantage means another’s disadvantage. One grows stronger, another grows weaker. Just as in Cain’s day, everywhere the struggle rages between one subjugating another, demanding significance.

This is why John, above, calls this blood-soaked ground the work of the “evil one.” Cain was gripped by jealousy, but never understood he “belonged to the evil one.” The “evil one” is an accomplished manipulator of the compunctions that seize an ungrateful, Infantile heart. The bitterness he breeds become chains of imprisonment around the human heart. Cain was a mere pawn trapped in the hatred that governs this realm.

The Poison Beneath It All

The hatred here is the perversion of that sweet spark of significance planted by God in our hearts. To feel significant is the heartbeat of existence. But it was perverted by the evil one. He fueled the drive for significance into a furnace for hate long ago, and it poisoned the universe:

“How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! …You who have weakened the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” - Isaiah 14:13–14 (NASB)

The heart of rebellion against God is the mistaken belief that significance can be seized by sheer force of will. “I will ascend!” and “I will raise my throne!” the evil one said. What splendor and glory he lusted for! Yet what tremendous cost others must pay for his quest for significance - even the Creator God! His drive to seize significance is a hate-filled, vicious struggle, soaked in jealousy. It is significance soaked in blood, as we saw Cain unleash his jealousy against Able, followed by ages of repetition.

It’s all a terrible deception: significance is not self-determined. Significance lies within the domain of others to grant. Only by the free choice of others will anyone become significant, or feel significant.

Truthfully, the Infantile only wants to feel significant, which we all need, but the Infantile pursues a false approach to significance as discussed earlier. Significance is actually determined by others, free-willingly, and not self-determined.

What a tragedy it is when Christian homes produce kids in hot pursuit of professional success! Those kids are launched on a lifetime struggle that produces a most hideous prize: so much achievement, so little significance! Who listens to grandpa’s stories of lofty promotions and raises? The old geezer lived a dreary life of enslavement, despite the excitement he felt about his career path. Nobody wants to hear about it.

Where is the significance in all this very tiring and fast-paced American dream? It is in fact just a dream. The reality is a realm of slavish insignificance, permeated by jealousy.

T. S. Elliot nailed it:

“For our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and an evasion of the visible and sensible world. But to say all this is only to say what you know already, if you have felt poetry and thought about your feelings.” - T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

A Different Approach

Which way will your child turn out?

The difference between the WWII and Millennial generations is a shift in building significance. Millennials demand significance, but the WWII generation knew it was earned. God’s Word says the WWII generation was closer to the truth: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24) Giving one’s life to Christ inevitably leads back to serving the lost, hurting and disenfranchised people (Matthew 25:31ff).

What magnificent significance, what emotional reward, what great honor, what love is returned when we discover such a role!

God’s Significance

God builds His significance quite differently. Contrary to the accusations of His enemies, God does not acquire His significance through heavy-handed demands and subjugation. It is fair to say that the tragedy of the universe is how very insignificant the Creator God is in the minds and lifestyles of the teeming masses. Everywhere people are raising complaints against the Creator and concluding with certainty He is essentially irrelevant.

Taking the approach of the evil one, God would of course smash anyone who dares to disregard His omnipotence. But He never does, and never has. His patience and kindness in the face of the vast storm of unfair criticism and ingratitude proves that “God is love,” as the Bible claims.

But the so-called enlightenment of the modern ungrateful heart is not the final verdict on God’s significance. He knows about a different conclusion already underway, and it culminates with great significance:

The number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” An every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.” - Revelation 5:11–13 (NASB)

God’s approach is resulting in the greatest significance ever known in the universe, and unlike the evil one, His will be authentic significance, the most eternal significance, and it will be acknowledged by all. Some, perhaps grudgingly, yet undeniably it will and must be acknowledged as the only pathway to significance. How is He doing it? As “the Lamb that was slain” he sacrificed all His rights and power completely, unreservedly, without pre-conditions. His love and kindness will be left standing long after the false significance of the evil one crumbles and falls.

The clash of significance is between the “I-Will” approach that dominates this realm, and the “I-Give” approach that rules in the next.

Next: Reality Parenting.

1. From bibtex:Safer-Millenials: “Sociologists tell us most Americans believe adulthood begins at 26 or older and that having witnessed so many sacrifices by their parents to achieve middle class security has had a huge impact. [⇑]
2. Burns-Civic Center speech in Cleveland. [⇑]
3. See Safer-Millennials [⇑]