“Being a good parent is everything to me.” And that’s where the problems begin.

It was the early 2000s. Warm, summer night in the city, post rain shower, smelling like what the Herbal Essence people try to capture in their shampoos. Christian coffee houses are all the rage. Nicole and I take a break from the crowded café and walk around the block with no intentions except those of any normal Christian young adult “friends.” 

She asks me, “What do you want to do with your life? Who do you want to be?” I tell her, sincerely and unknowingly, that I want to be a husband and a father. The 2026 version of myself is retroactively cringing at this. I had just become a Christian, and God as Father was taking up much of my heart along with the imagery of Christ as Bridegroom and the Church as His bride. So my answer makes sense, mixed motives aside.

A couple of decades later, I’m now in my twentieth year of marriage (with Naomi, not Nicole) and raising four daughters. There are a lot of things as a local pastor and a regional church connector to receive prayer over. But the past few years, as our oldest entered teenage years, how and why I parent has been a common refrain for intercession. What I do in parenting, yes—but also the deep untangling of my heart from being a self-centered try-hard that needs to rely on and respond from a place of God’s love through Christ’s Gospel.

Hate Your Kids

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:25–27, NIV).

We tend to receive hyperbolic language shockingly at first and then turn down the heat: “It’s okay… Jesus didn’t literally mean ‘hate your kids.’” That’s true, but that doesn’t make the call any less serious. The challenge to “love less” those key relationships when compared to God really hits deep. And if it doesn’t, we’re not hearing what Jesus is saying. 

In the broader scope of God’s upside-down kingdom, Christ’s ways not only orient our hearts toward the supremacy of the Divine but also shift our love for others into a healthier posture. There is goodness in wanting to care for children, especially in a world that devalues their significance and possibility. And yet the hidden landmine waiting in the weeds can come, as pastor Tim Keller often said, when we “[make] a good thing into an ultimate thing.¹” Because there is so much significance attached to parenting in both our doing and our identity, it’s easy to overlook the way it can be twisted into idolatry. And when something becomes an idol, it becomes destructive to us, our connection with God, and our relationships with others. More times than I want to admit, I love my kids for the wrong reasons.

The Need To Be Needed

In C.S. Lewis’s fictional work of the interplay between heaven and hell, The Great Divorce, an obsessed mother won’t exchange the love of her son for the love of God. It’s primarily a parable on how un-surrendered grief can overtake us, but it also speaks significantly to the idolization of close human relationships. 

Pam, the mother, makes her way from hell to heaven, but a guide tells her that she won’t be able to be seen by her son as long as she holds on to her idolatrous love for him. She denies, adamantly, that her love for her son is bad, even turning a blind eye to the gnashing of teeth between mothers and sons together in hell. She proposes that they were bad mothers, unlike her, a good mother. (In my fan fiction version, I envision the rich young ruler² on a stump eavesdropping saying: There’s none good but God.)

It’s a hard thought for us Christians, the real possibility of eternity without the ones we love. I believe in covenant community and that salvation is bigger than the individual, but as my former pastor used to say, God has children, not grandchildren, and there is no guarantee of our kids being with Jesus simply because we are going to be. 

Pam, in one of the more heated exchanges in the story, reveals (unknowingly?) her possessive nature:

I don't believe in a God who keeps mother and son apart. I believe in a God of Love. No one has a right to come between me and my son. Not even God. Tell Him that to His face. I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever.³

The ironic thing, calling back to Luke 14, is that by holding so tight to her son, Pam ends up losing the thing she loves most.

Identity Crisis

I relate—a little too well at times—to the controlling nature of Pam regarding my daughters. There is a God-created and biologically normative connection with our kids that is so significant, and yet our core identity cannot be derived in being a parent.

As a pastor, I see and sit with others who struggle in their own unique ways. The sensitivity to being an imperfect parent, which we all are, is palpable at times. Some won’t address their children’s mental or social disorders. Others whose kids are struggling with sexual identity are hiding what’s weighing on them even from their closest and safest friends. Some skirt around how much influence they have in their kids’ lives as a defense mechanism, saying, “Well, there was nothing I could do,” when things inevitably go sideways.

There’s no one-size-fits-all reason for why we do this. But a common thread I witness in myself and others is a wrestling identity: What will others think of me and what do I think of myself if my kid or my parenting is messed up? Trying to be a perfect parent just makes things worse. 

Who God says we are in Christ must define and sustain us above all. No other identity, including that of being a parent, has the first and final say. Lord, have mercy.

Abiding in Grace

Is any of this uncomfortably cutting your heart? If so, what can we do?

Foremost, we receive the gospel, again and again. 

In our blemished sacrifices for others, Christ is the perfect Sacrifice covering sin (1 John 2:2). In our complicated parenting identity, there is a good God with a fathering generosity (Matthew 7:7–11) and a mothering nurture (Psalm 22:9–10). In our isolation of shame and guilt, there is a household, a community, the Church of God (Ephesians 1:22–23) that gives us everlasting belonging that is even deeper than our biological kindred.

As we breathe in what Christ has done for us, what might He now want to do in us? We can start with some spiritual disciplines. A good way to picture spiritual disciplines in general is as a door to liberation.⁴ Rather than a way to earn righteousness, these are a way of placing ourselves before God for transformation. Consider the following:

• Discerning Prayer:

• • With the Holy Spirit and spiritual friends, ask God to reveal where your identity is misplaced, where your good work is subtly selfish, and where you are loving your children more than loving Jesus.

• History Pilgrimage:

• • Jesus might be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones;⁵ gently research how your family dynamics growing up affect your current ideas and practices of parenting. A genogram family tree can be a helpful tool.

• Confession:

• • As things come up, name and repent from them before the Lord (1 John 1:9) and with others (James 5:16). Don’t just do the mind (history) and heart (discernment) work; do the restorative work. When appropriate, apologize to your kids in a way they can understand.

• Celebration:

• • Honor God and your kids for who they are; rejoice in any parenting wins, whether big or small, momentary or long lasting.

May Your Hate Faith Increase

When I was eight years old, I remember crying one night after going to bed. My grandmother typically took me to church, and the Sunday school lesson that day was on the Luke 14 passage mentioned above. I was distraught, to no blame of the Bible teachers, about the word from Christ to hate my parents. The hallway light flicked on, and both my parents shuffled into my room to find out what was going on. I told them, and they comforted me, sincerely, about how they wanted me to love God more than them. Looking back, this was huge, as they were non-churchgoers and lapsed Christians at best.

Now, as a pastor and committed Christian and father, I’m crying out at night again but this time for my kids and for my faith to increase. In what specifically? In the reality that whatever the outcomes of their lives or mine, God pursues, God loves, God cares about my kids more than I ever will.

Do I believe that Good News? Will you?

May we lose our parenting life for Jesus’s sake so that we may find it.

Notes:

1. Keller, Counterfeit Gods, xvii.

2. Matthew 19:16–26.

3. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 11.

4. Foster, Celebration of Discipline, Chapter 1.

5. Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Chapter 3.

Author Bio:

Justin Ryan Boyer is a husband, father, and pastor in southeastern Pennsylvania. He co-hosts a podcast from Netzer.org called The Quiet Reformation, which seeks to strengthen and unify the regional Church.

Additional Resources:

Thirty-One Days of Prayer for My Children		More Than Anything | Bible Study on Idolatry		Flourishing in Motherhood Bible Study		Gospel-Centered Fatherhood
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