THERAPISTS WILL TELL you that many of the problems clients bring with them into therapy are rooted in childhood experiences and how they were treated by their parents. In more severe cases, people may suffer from what’s known as complex trauma, due to their constant exposure to frightening and emotionally destabilizing stressors in their homes.

But even in the safest and most stable of homes, no parent is perfect, nor should anyone expect them to be. Parents are fallible human beings who bring their own, often troubled emotional histories to the task of raising kids who will necessarily be emotionally dependent on them. Mistakes will be made at various times and in varying degrees, some innocent, many not. I can easily remember, even decades after the fact, interactions that I had with my kids for which I wish I could get a do-over. I have to take comfort in the idea that as a dad I was what therapists call “good enough” — again, not perfect, but getting it right more often than getting it wrong, and in a way that left us with good and loving relationships today.

Parenting experts have long warned against what they call an authoritarian style of parenting, one in which parents exert a heavy hand of control over their children in a way that lacks emotional warmth. Experts advocate instead for an authoritative style, in which there’s plenty of warm hugs to go around without parents abdicating their authority. While authoritarian parents tend to lay down the law, authoritative parents set limits that are calmly, not angrily enforced. They talk to their children about limits and reason with them in an age-appropriate way. And indeed, a well-established body of research suggests that authoritative parenting leads to better results for kids in the long run.

All of this, however, may have sounded a bit strange to the families of Paul’s day. No one, I suspect, was doing parenting seminars teaching things like “positive discipline” and “active listening.”

For most of human history, children have not been understood the way we understand them today, as beings who need to be nurtured and protected, not just fed and sheltered. In the United States, for example, parents can be charged with child abuse or neglect even if the abuse isn’t physical. Contrast that with the laws of the Roman Empire, which allowed the paterfamilias or male head of the household to decide a newborn’s fate. It was legal for him to abandon an unwanted baby someplace outdoors to die from cold or starvation, to be eaten by wild animals, or to be taken and sold by slave traders.

It’s against that historical background that we need to read what Paul says next in Colossians. In his instructions for Christian households, he began with the relationship between wives and husbands. Then he turns to the children and their parents:

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. (Col 3:20-21, NIV)

In our cultural context, we might read these words warily, with reservations similar to the ones we have when hearing Paul tell wives to submit to their husbands. And again, that’s understandable, given the ways verses like these have been misused. One can easily imagine an authoritarian parent repeatedly pointing to verse 20 and demanding obedience from their children in everything, as if their every whim was to be treated as the command of God.

It isn’t.

It’s true that what Paul tells children is nothing new; of course children were expected to obey their parents. But even to address them directly, to treat them as people deserving of that respect, is already countercultural. And the instructions given to fathers are even more so. Paul might have said, “Don’t sell them into slavery,” or “Don’t leave them out in the cold to die.” We might want him to say, “Don’t abuse them physically or verbally.” And surely all of that would fit with his expectations for Christian families.

But Paul goes deeper. He doesn’t just set outside-in limits on behavior; he gets to the heart of the parent-child relationship. The New International Version reads, “Do not embitter your children.” The word, which is only used twice in the New Testament, suggests some kind of provocation. In 2 Corinthians 9:2, it’s a positive provocation to follow someone else’s good example. Here in Colossians, however, it suggests being provoked to some negative reaction like anger or exasperation. In particular, Paul warns that if fathers (and by extension, mothers as well) continue to provoke their children, the children will become “discouraged” — a word used only this one time in the New Testament. It suggests being broken in spirit or disheartened. To me, it’s a picture of the hopelessness and helplessness that often accompany a history of emotional abuse or complex trauma.

For Paul to speak to fathers in this way is to push back against the taken-for-granted and often authoritarian role of the paterfamilias. The Christian paterfamilias was now under the authority of a new Lord and a new Father, and was called to put on a life of newness, as exemplified by compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and above all, love. Any parent could use more of these virtues, and their children would benefit if they did.

. . .

THUS, AT THE risk of alienating or angering some of my readers, let me say it straight out. In my opinion, if you’re using what Paul says in Colossians to emotionally bully your wife into submission or intimidate your children into obedience, you’re missing the point of what Paul wants to say to you, and not being faithful to the vision he has for all believers and for Christian households.

That’s not to say that the other members of the family are sinless or can do whatever they want. Nor does it mean that God has nothing to say to them by way of their own attitudes and behavior. But by the grace of God and with the help of the Holy Spirit, you are first and foremost responsible for your own obedience to what God commands. Put on the new nature that’s been made possible in Christ; be a person of love; be transformed from the inside out.

And give yourself a chance to marvel at what God may do in your family through your own faithful obedience.