Most parents I know could do with a bit of good news. Though parenting brings many joys, it also brings its share of struggles and sorrows. Though parenting is a fulfilling task, it is often also an exasperating one. And often the source of the exasperation is the parents themselves—their flaws, their sins, their failures. Parents have a near-infinite capacity to feel lousy about their parenting and to limp along under the crushing weight of feelings of failure.
Adam Griffin has written a book for parents, but Good News for Parents is not the kind that is meant to offer a plan or strategy to help get kids from infancy to functioning adults. It’s not that Griffin sees no need for a how-to, or that he couldn’t write one. Rather, it’s that he sees the need for a different kind of book—a “how God” book. It’s a book about “How God sets you free. How God relieves your burdens. How God grows your faith. How God offers you peace. How God casts off what so easily entangles. How God made a way for you to be fully forgiven for your shortcomings and empowers you for what he has called you to do in your home. You don’t need just a list of more recommendations. I want to offer you some relief.”
This book is for parents who know they are flawed and who deal with the inevitable consequences of their imperfections. It is for parents who don’t always know what to do, parents who mess up, parents who are oppressed by self-torment and racked with guilt. In other words, it’s for all parents.
There are a lot of books that offer us advice. That’s great. We need it. But when you keep pumping your mind full of suggestions and yet keep messing up, it can be demoralizing. In addition to more counsel, we could all use some more comfort. I can testify that as a father, I need the thrill of grace as much as I need the benefit of guidance. I could teach you some parenting tips, but what good are they if your heart is not secure in Christ? We could teach your kids to obey, but what good is it ultimately if your heart and their heart don’t belong to God? With Jesus and because of Jesus, I want you to be able to hear parenting wisdom and have your confidence reinforced, not shattered. In short, I am writing to you about the grace of God in the gospel so that you can experience how Jesus sets parents free.
Thus, this is a gospel book as much as it is a parenting book. It’s a book that explores the promises of the gospel as they pertain to parenting. It is organized around the fruit of the Spirit—the very characteristics that so often go missing from our lives as we parent our children. Griffin writes of love and the relief it offers from stress, joy and the relief it offers from despair, peace and the relief it offers from anxiety, and so on. In all of it, his purpose is not first to offer parents instructions on how to raise their children but rather to address their hearts as they do so. It is especially to help parents walk by the Spirit—to take hold of the benefits Christ has secured for them through the gospel. I suppose it’s a book about shepherding a parent’s heart even as that parent shepherds a child’s heart.
Because so many parents feel like failures and because so few know what to do with that sense of failure, and because so many parents attempt to apply law to their parenting rather than gospel, I think Griffin’s book can prove especially helpful. Just like its title says, it does indeed offer good news for parents. I think all Christian parents can benefit from reading it and enjoying the sweet freedom it offers them.
