The Sin Gene

Our daughter learned the first verse to “Amazing Grace” a couple of months before she turned two years old. It was odd at first to hear a sweet little girl still in diapers and wearing Winnie the Pooh pajamas refer to herself as a “wretch,” but we still knew it was true. There comes a point where the cute, cuddly newborn learns the word, “No,” or starts up the back arches and tears when having to get a diaper change. Not you, too, we think, as the ache in our chests reopens our eyes to the reality of the fallen world we live in.

Living in a culture that has overall abandoned a biblical worldview, we will be faced with excuses and ways of working around a child’s sin that are actually promoting passive parenting, disobedient children, and behavior modification at best. But I think we can expect the world to act like the world. What I am more concerned about is a tendency in my own heart to be led astray by the deception. I can be tempted to look the other way and hope she really didn’t mean to snatch that toy out of her brother’s hand, or maybe the baby was joking when he whacked his sister with the spoon. I can forget that ignoring the discipline and instruction that is so needed in child rearing is something we will be held accountable for one day.

Recently, I saw a video of a mom confessing she had “missed all the signs” in her toddler: irrational meltdowns, throwing tantrums, poor sleep, and dark circles under the eyes. By the end of the video, they wanted you to purchase their natural herbal dewormer because the mom had diagnosed her kid with parasites. Parasites! And if I didn’t know any better, I might have clicked the link. 

The problem with the video is that the woman basically described every child aged one to five. If only we could better manage our children’s behavior with herbal dewormers, magnesium creams, or heavy metal detox kits. It sounds like a lot less work on my own part as a parent. But there is something wrong with our children, and a dewormer is not the remedy.

As Christians, we know what sin looks like and misdiagnosing it and suppressing the truth won’t resolve the fact that they each need a new heart. When I look at those tiny little fingers and toes, admiring eyes, and hear the little giggles, the biblical concept of total depravity can be far from my mind, or not a reality I want to think about. We can joke around or point fingers at which sin came from which parent. But they really do have our genetics, and there’s a dominant gene that has never ceased to express itself since the first Adam: the sin gene. And like a parasite, it will eat them from the inside out. 

As a parent, I do not really have to work at being concerned over our children’s physical health. It is something that comes naturally. We baby-proof our homes, study nutritional labels, use discernment when it comes to medicines, and try to make sure they get enough exercise. But Scripture reminds us that our primary problem is not what we ate for lunch and that it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person.

The flesh and our adversary like to distract us and steer us in a different direction. Focus over here on their diet, they probably need more sensory input before bedtime, or maybe they have a leaky gut from that last antibiotic cycle. But there’s another hat trick happening underneath the surface and the remedy will not be purely physical.

 Christ didn’t give Himself up to die because we were all “good kids.” We can know this in our heads and still look for alternatives because regeneration of the heart is out of our control. Give me a product I can buy or a parenting method that doesn’t make me the bad guy. I want to be admired and not say or do the hard things. Sometimes it seems easier to just let them go their own way. But faith looks into the future and recognizes a defiant attitude in adolescence is not as cute as it might seem at age two. And His word is clear on the matters of the heart and the importance of training them up in the way they should go, which is too often in direct competition with the way they want to go.

Sin is a sad thing, but it is an inevitable reality. Someone once said that what matters in parenting is not the fact that there is sin. We can’t get around that. What matters is how we deal with it. Some seasons it can feel like we aren’t really getting anywhere with all of this. But this is our calling. Therefore, it is a holy work. Disciplining and instructing our children is an act of obedience we offer to God, when done properly and not out of anger. It is not a distraction from my duties; it is my duty. Oftentimes I think I can forget who they, and we, are ultimately offending.

One of the greatest enemies they will face in life is the enemy within, the same enemy I myself have to face each day. And how often I can look for a physical remedy for my own heart, too, in an unhealthy proportion to the spiritual. When I’m sad and would benefit much from pouring my heart out to the Lord, I want to research which vitamin I could be deficient in instead. If I’m more prone to anger than usual, I want to blame my gut microbiome rather than trust God with everything taking up space in my head. I cannot be held accountable for an irritable spirit today because I didn’t get enough sleep last night. But deep down I know a probiotic or new multivitamin is not a sufficient remedy to atone for my sin.

Before God I will not be called to account for an unknown, subtle illness I can frequently look for in my children or whether I failed to meet an omega-3 dietary need. But what did I do with what I know? How did I discipline and instruct my own children in faithfulness to God, and how did I do the same with my own heart? How did Mommy steward this gift of a child and point her in the way she should go?

Sin expression, both in them and us, gives us the opportunity to point to the second Adam in whom we find hope, the sweetness of forgiveness, and unmerited favor. He was tempted as we are, yet without sin. He gave up His life while we were still dead in our sins. Like the bronze serpent in the wilderness, we must continually point to Christ- “Look to Him and be saved.” For didn’t He teach us that the forgiveness of sins was the greater miracle than helping the lame to walk again? 

The hope we have for our children is not that they would one day grow out of this phase, but that they, too, would find the amazing grace we sing about and abundant mercy in the arms of Christ. Understanding humanity’s sin nature is the only reality where grace and pardon make sense, and the blood of Christ is the only physical remedy that is sufficient to wash away our sins against a thrice holy God.