What? No Warranty?

When each of our children were born, the hospital gave us a booklet titled, “Caring for Your Newborn”. It was about the same size, shape, and weight as our car manual. The chapters were similar, too. The car manual has a section on fluids and amounts, so does the baby manual. The car manual has a section on its sound system; the baby manual details what infants should be able to hear at different developmental levels and how they should be responding to noises. They both have a maintenance schedule included.

It reminds me of a congratulations card I received from one of my students. On the front it says, “Congratulations on your baby boy!” and on the inside it reads, “What are you going to do with it?” When I read that to my dad, he wryly replied, “Good question.” That, of course, reminded me of the Sunday School series we attended a while ago about raising boys to have an identity in Christ, to be masculine, to treat women well, and to be holy.

The baby manual didn’t address any of that.

One thing I try to teach my third graders is to have a healthy others-esteem. I started this several years ago after learning that the strongest self-esteems in history belonged to Hitler, Stalin, and the like. When you think about it, it makes sense. I stress to my students the importance of valuing and respecting other people. So I have two class rules. The first is “Respect”. The second is “Remember Rule Number 1.” Of course we spend hours throughout the year talking about what respect looks like, feels like, and sounds like. We parse the littlest situations with respect lenses.

When I taught at a Christian school, I had two rules posted. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. The second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.”

I like this version better. It is easy for us to love God with our heart and soul, but I think we sometimes forget to love God with our mind. Also, loving your neighbor as yourself implies that you have a healthy (if not overly strong) self-respect.

It all boils down to humility and grace, really. If your definitions on those two are a little rusty, let me offer you these. Grace is basically treating other people better than they deserve. Think about exercising grace in the grocery store or on the freeway. Humility is not thinking poorly of yourself. It’s not being falsely bashful when given compliments. Humility is simply not thinking of yourself, but thinking of others first.

Some people think being gracious with humility means being a doormat. That’s not true. It’s a way of treating people and a way of behaving. It’s an imitation of Christ. It’s easier to do if you know Christ personally and then know who you are in Christ.

So, my wife and I will do our best to change the baby every 3 hours, log the developmental benchmarks, make the appropriate doctor visits, teach literacy skills, feed them healthy food, and give them the right kind of milk. But, I hope to teach through daily example how to live with grace and humility and respect.

Jer. 9:23-24
This is what the LORD says:
"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,

but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,"
declares the LORD.