Provoke Not Your Children to Wrath

A few years back I wrote about the great trial scene in The Brothers Karamazov when the lawyer Fetyukovitch argued in defense of Dmitri who was wrongly accused of murdering his father. That father had not been good or kind or shown any love to his son, and Fetyukovitch suggested that a father is not a true father that does not fulfill the responsibilities associated with that title. He urged, “I cry aloud to all fathers: ‘Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.’ Yes, let us first fulfill Christ’s injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves. ‘What measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you again’—it’s not I who say that, it’s the Gospel precept, measure to others according as they measure to you. How can we blame children if they measure us according to our measure?” He said further on in his speech, “Let the son stand before his father and ask him, ‘Father, tell me, why must I love you? Father, show me that I must love you,’ and if that father is able to answer him and show him good reason, we have a real, normal, parental relation, not resting on mystical prejudice, but on a rational, responsible and strictly humanitarian basis. But if he does not, there’s an end to the family tie. He is not a father to him, and the son has a right to look upon him as a stranger, and even an enemy.” As parents we should raise and treat our children so that there is no ambiguity regarding the answer to that question, “Father, tell me, why must I love you?” We should, as the Prophet Joseph wrote from Liberty Jail, have our “bowels be full of charity” towards our children, taking “the Holy Ghost [as our] constant companion” in our interactions with them and with “righteousness and truth” as the source of our authority. Then I believe, their love for us “will flow unto [us]” and do so and “without compulsory means” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:45-46).

                The attorney’s statement above quoted the apostle Paul who said this: “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). We should teach and encourage and discipline our children with nurture and admonition, but never in an attempt to get even with them or provoke them to wrath when they have done wrong. He similarly gave powerful counsel to families: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged” (Colossians 3:18-21). As parents we know our children’s strengths and weaknesses, and we know what kind of discipline or consequences or treatment will indeed provoke them to wrath. We might reason with ourselves, “Well, they shouldn’t act this way, so I am justified in giving them this consequence which they deserve which will drive them to anger and bitterness.” But such action, Paul seems to suggest, will only drive them from us instead of to the Lord in His nurture and admonition. I remember a mother in my ward once recounting to me how as a consequence for one of her sons for some bad behavior, they took away from him the possession he most treasured. She told of how this threw him into a complete state of depression for days, and it became so bad that they eventually realized the only solution to help him was to give back that item and instead give him a consequence that he could reasonably handle. Yes, he perhaps shouldn’t have been so attached to that possession. But he was and they had to realize that and meet him where he was at as they sought to admonish him in the Lord.  

Ultimately what is most important in our parenting and our family life is that the Savior Jesus Christ is at the center. Paul preceded those verses above with this statement: “And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him” (Colossians 3:17). Whatever we do with our children, and in particular however we must teach and correct them, we must be able to do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. The spirit of our efforts to nurture and teach our children should be like that of the master of vineyard who lamented in these words: “But what could I have done more in my vineyard? Have I slackened mine hand, that I have not nourished it? Nay, I have nourished it, and I have digged about it, and I have pruned it, and I have dunged it; and I have stretched forth mine hand almost all the day long” (Jacob 5:47). Our children may, in the end, still choose contrary to what we hope for them, but we must never slacken our hand to nourish and love and admonish them in the Lord.