Loving Our Kids on Purpose
The reason that many of us have an Old Testament parenting model is that we are still living in an Old Testament paradigm that builds an external structure to protect us from the powers of sin and death, instead of activating the power of God within us to do so. We still believe that sin is more powerful than we are. When children grow up in an environment where their parents are scared of sin, they learn to fear failure. All the methods by which they deal with their kids seem to build fear instead of love. As they work to eliminate opportunities for sin, parents develop an expectation that their children live a mistake-free life, and the goal of parenting becomes teaching obedience and compliance. As a result, their children miss the whole lesson about freedom.