Before our daughter was born, I was blissfully unaware of the blizzard of resources at my fingertips designed to enhance parenting skills. Because I believe serious subjects need to be handled with a dose of humor, one of my favorite titles was Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children. More seriously, resources I accessed were personal insights from family and friends, books, videos, anecdotes, and, of course, scripture. I’m unsure how to rate or categorize my parenting style – but I tried to avoid utilizing fear. 

Although firm parenting is still needed, systems like The Gentle Parenting Book attract considerable interest because conscientious parents fear alienating their offspring or doing harm. Here’s the parenting approach God Our Father displayed after Cain murdered his brother.  

 But the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! So now you are banished from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you try to cultivate the ground it will no longer yield its best for you. You will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.” Genesis 4:10-12 NET


God’s subsequent mercy to Cain is described in Genesis 4:15 – but not before Cain responded in fear to God’s punishment. 

Then Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is too great to endure! Look, you are driving me off the land today, and I must hide from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth; whoever finds me will kill me!” Genesis 4:13-14 NET [Emphasis added.]


Notice that God didn’t banish Cain from his presence. It was Cain who determined to hide from God as a reaction to discipline. Did Cain block God’s redemptive work in his life by overreacting to God’s intervention? Perhaps so. The book of Proverbs, quoted below in the book of Hebrews, offers insight into the dynamics of God’s discipline. 

You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin. And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons?  

“My son, do not scorn the Lord’s discipline or give up when he corrects you.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son he accepts.” (Prov. 3:11,12 NET)

Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? But if you do not experience discipline, something all sons have shared in, then you are illegitimate and are not sons. Hebrews 12:4-8 NET


When God, in His grace, provides correction for destructive behavior or attitudes, one path to choose is reactive fear like Cain’s, which distances us from God’s mercy. Cain’s self-parenting (which assumed God’s discipline was too harsh), failed to curtail his inclinations to indulge in further destruction and thus intensified his punishment.

Have you spent time as a runaway from God? Have you tried subsequent self-parenting and ended up miserable? Perhaps one of your friends or a family member has taken on the fearful task of self-parenting in an attempt to escape God’s influence. Although this 1960s teenybopper song was composed as a love song, listen to it (ignore the singer’s inappropriate grin), as you thank God for being your true, merciful parent. And perhaps, pray for someone dear to you who has run away from God’s merciful care. 


by Kathleen Petersen