I HATE SPINACH! When I was a boy the world was having a love affair with spinach. The cartoon character, Popeye, facing certain doom at the hands of Bluto, would down a can of it and promptly knock Bluto into the middle of next week. I’ve always suspected that some social planner did most of his research in the comic section of the Sunday paper, and then converted America to a nation of spinachphiles. The school that I attended served a hot lunch. Wednesday’s lunch always included three things that I couldn’t abide. Liver, spinach, and tossed salad with mayonnaise. I could wrestle the liver down if I wasn’t already having a bad hair day. Most of the time I didn’t have to...Alan Duffany sat next to me and Alan loved liver. And cigars! When we were nine years old Alan introduced me to the joys of smoking and, for three years, kept me supplied with cigars which he ‘borrowed’ from his uncle. I kept him supplied with liver. The tossed salad I enjoyed, all but that giant gob of mayo. The problem was solved by spreading the mayo over the entire surface of the salad bowl and of the dinner plate. Worked every time. That left the spinach. Alan didn’t like spinach. I could slip him my piece of liver in a Chicago second, but he drew the line at spinach. No one at my table liked the stuff, but all were cowed into eating it by the school dietician who believed that the survival of the race depended on the regular intake of steaming piles of green goo. She patrolled the lunchroom looking for criminal activities like lateral passes of liver or hiding mayonnaise under a potato skin.

So I had to bite the bullet and down the goo. That’s when things always got magnificently worse. If there is one thing less inviting than spinach entering the mouth of a spinachphobe it’s spinach exiting the mouth, nose, and ears when it has been rejected by the stomach. I could never keep the stuff down. Still can’t. When I was a baby my mother tried disguising it with generous additions of mashed potato, mashed pineapple, mashed banana, mashed anything, but it never worked. With me spinach has always had a round trip ticket. My mother tired of experimenting and surrendered to the inevitable. All of her dresses had developed green bodices. That gets old fast! But from third grade through fifth grade the school cafeteria never gave up. Every Wednesday the dietician and two teachers acting as thugs showed up at my table and ordered me to eat my spinach on pain of some unknown penalty. Something told me that they had planned for me a fate worse than death. I didn’t know the unknown and didn’t want to know it. There was always the same speech on nutrition. There was an easel in the lunchroom with pictures of the four food groups reminding us that, whatever reasons adults might have, children were to eat for health. For three years the easel was parked beside my table. At first it was only a few feet away, but they moved it when the four food groups began to turn a familiar green. Every Wednesday the school district tried to improve the quality of my life by investing me with what looked for all the world like primordial ooze, and every Wednesday I returned the favor with gusto. To this day I’m convinced that most teachers belong in the slow group.

But the point to make is this: Sometimes we forget that the role of the adult in the life of the child is one of coaxing the child upward and onward to adulthood. It is very easy to forget this and allow the relationship to degenerate into a war. A war that nobody really wins and everybody surely loses. Have you ever known of a woman who habitually cooks meals that she herself can’t stomach? Not too often. How many times does a woman serve foods that her husband simply can’t stand? Seldom. But the children must eat everything that is set before them in many a home. If Dad and Mom can escape eating the foods that they can’t or won’t tolerate, why is there no latitude for the kids? Now I know that a kid who doesn’t like any vegetables or one who only likes deserts presents a special problem. But shouldn’t every child in a free country be allowed to pass up a few disgusting choices? If Dad’s dislikes and Mom’s are honored, why not Junior’s? The home, especially when it’s Christian ought to be a fun place. Not all fun, mind you, but much fun at least!

Will children be won to Christ more readily in a climate of war, or understanding and cooperation? And is anything more important than winning the child to Him?

Often we parents settle for far too little ‘profit’ from our years of child-rearing. I remember a psychologist saying that he breathed a sigh of relief when the last of his kids went off to college. I appreciate the humor of that, but let’s remember too that the privilege and responsibility of parenting never ends, though the parameters change! We are given the joy and the duty of raising them in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord." ‘Nurturing’ (child-training, lit.), should end somewhere around the age of eighteen, but ‘admonition’ (sense-placing, lit.) never. Because love and ministry never end. The responsibility to discipline, or train, the child ends when the child is no longer a child. The privilege of counseling goes on for a lifetime. We cease to mind the child’s business when it ceases to be our business, but we are to be always available for mutual help.

There may be that sigh of relief when we pass out of the initial stage of our relationship which is frequently taxing. Hopefully, we have thoroughly enjoyed our children during that stage, though we have not always enjoyed the stage itself.

And, just as hopefully, we continue to enjoy them when they are adults. A woman once told me that she ceased to be concerned for her son when he was four years old, because at that time he knelt and ‘asked Jesus into his heart.’ The son was now sixteen and showed absolutely no interest in God, Christ, the Bible, or God’s people. His only interest was in the things of the flesh. His having prayed a prayer at age four and her belief that he had Heaven in the bank satisfied her. Setting aside the fact that the Bible does not tell us to ‘ask Jesus into our hearts,’ nor offer salvation for so doing; and ignoring, for the moment, the truth that Hell is full of people who have ‘asked Jesus into their hearts,’ but never trusted His finished work on Calvary, and that alone, for their salvation: should she have been so easily satisfied? Assuming, for the moment, that all children who pray such prayers are saved (which I do not believe), is the goal only ‘My child in Heaven,’ or is it ‘My son or daughter serving Christ and enjoying Him on earth?’ Is God’s will for my child his justification (right standing with God) only, or is it not also his sanctification (separation to God in loving service)?

Does the grace believer’s interest in his child end with the blessing of the child by his Creator, or does it begin and end with the honoring of his Creator by the child? When we put God’s glory first, our offspring's benefit may well follow. When we put our offspring first, God’s glory is usually left out. Beside every child’s needs are best served when the parent’s primary goal is God’s well-deserved glory. It is easy to provide ‘spinach’ and think that we have done our all.

‘Spinach’ is no substitute for love!