How do you make your child be good?

Jesus said, “if you don't understand this first parable about seed, how will you understand anything I teach?”

We need to understand how everything is created. We need to understand SEED.

Where did your child come from? From you. And where did you come from? Your parents. And where did your parents come from? And so on…

Our first parents (according to the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament) were Adam and Eve. About half of the world’s population—including Jews, Christians and Muslims—knows this story.

Adam and Eve had it all in the perfect garden until they ingested the seed of Satan (the devil, God's enemy). When they were plugged into God's good program, they knew only good. But they ingested the seed of Satan by eating forbidden fruit. They ingested a new program (seed) and were plugged in by default to Satan's program to “steal, kill, destroy” (lie, cheat, murder, etc).

After ingesting the fallen seed, humanity could not help but sin. Connected to Satan's program, everyone HAD to sin.

The Slippery Seed Program

Think of an apple tree. An apple tree comes from an apple seed and grows up, up, up into an apple tree. And when it bears fruit, what do you get? Apples.

You could wish with all your heart and hope with everything you've got for that apple tree to grow pears. But you would be deceived. We all know that if you start with an apple seed, what you are going to end up with is an apple tree that grows apples.

You can be as sincere as possible, but it simply is not possible to have the fruit of a different seed if don’t have the right seed to start with.

Jesus also said, “Don't be astonished that I say, ‘You must be born again [also translated born anew, born from above, born from the beginning]… No one will see or enter the Kingdom without having been born again of God.”

Adam and Eve started out plugged into a good seed. But by distrusting God’s words of warning, they got hooked into a bad seed. That bad seed is sometimes called original sin. We are all born into it. That’s why another ancient scripture says, “All have fallen short of the glory of God”.

How to Parent a Seed…

Everyone is plugged into the sin seed to some degree (by lying, stealing, envying, cursing, etc). Ancient wisdom also says, “Sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.”

Think of a 4-year-old child who steals. If that seed is not replaced with a better seed, that child will keep stealing when they are 8, 16, 32, 64 years old... Their thefts will grow in size, get more elaborate along the way, until eventually they are caught and judged guilty.

Jesus said, “No one is good outside of God alone.” That may sound harsh to a parent who is trying to raise good kids… but it's actually refreshing when you realize you no longer have to try to make your kids (or yourself) good.

We know that it’s impossible on our own to do everything right all the time. But with God's grace and the amazing free gift of His righteousness (detailed in the Letter of Paul to the Romans 5:15-17), we can get closer to that goal.

When we receive the free gift of His love and SONSHIP as a child born of God, we get plugged in to a good seed-program again!

God set the standard so high that to even hate someone in your heart makes you a murderer. Your thought-life will inevitably produce tangible things that resemble your thoughts. Jesus said, “if you look at woman with just, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart”.

“The wages of sin is death.” We are all going to die, and we have all sinned against God (and fallen short of His glory), and therefore deserve the death penalty. But God loved us so much that He sent His beloved Son Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins. Whoever would believe in Jesus would no longer die, but would be given (as a gift) Eternal Life.

What does this have to do with sibling abuse?

Every person was born with and connected to the chaos-seed, programmed to bear the fruit of selfishness to some degree in their life. (Watch a toddler for 10 minutes and you’ll know this is true. And remember you were a toddler once, too!)

When Adam and Eve were confronted about their sin, what did they do? Lie, deny, blame-shift, hide, cover-up. Your child is automatically growing up as some version of “hypocrite, liar, thief, murderer, adulterer” by default because of the chaos-seed. They will manifest the urge to bully, blame or lie about or hurt someone or something at some point in their life.

But when a person believes and receives, God gives power to become a child of God. You are reborn into the family of God, with brand-new DNA, and you become a New Creation plugged back in to God's good seed.

You can repent (turn from) your programmed desire to sin and put on the identity of godliness, purity, selflessness, and love. You can let the old seed die in baptism.

You no longer put your trust in yourself or your own “goodness” to keep you from the chaos-seed. That's called self-righteousness. It’s exhausting and impossible to maintain on your own.

So in order for your children to manifest the fruit of righteousness on their own, they do need to be plugged into God's good, righteous SEED.

And who is the one that will be modeling this brand-new life for your kids?

Yep, it's you.

Remember, Jesus said, “You must be born all over again, but this time born of God,” essentially. That wasn't a Pope or a Theologian or a Bishop who said that. It was Jesus.

And this isn't about religion. It's about reality. You cannot get a pear from an apple tree.

What seed do you want to plug into?