In my church’s Bible study last Sunday, a quote from G. K. Chesterton gave us focus. It was,
“There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.”
As I was a fan of Chesterton’s Father Brown Mysteries, just for fun I went to the good old reference book, the Internet, to read others of his quotes. The one below particularly grabbed my attention.
“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”
God had a reason for every one of his ten commandments. He knew what his fallen were capable of doing, and he wanted to prevent us from harm. If your toddler stands at the top of the stairs and shakes the gate in an effort to take it down, you may call out, “Stop that!” You know your toddler is not ready to navigate all those steps alone. It’s a fall waiting to happen. Your toddler only sees the gate as an impediment to a desire.
As a doting parent, if you can’t bear to see your child unhappy, you might be tempted to take the gate down. But you wouldn’t! You would rather hear the fussing about the gate than the cries after a fall down the steps.
The same goes for your children as they get older. What parent hasn’t heard the moan at some point, “But all my friends’ parents let them do it!” Little by little your resolve wears down, and you agree with, “But just this once.”
Parents have to give their children room to grow, to spread their wings and fly a short distance from the nest. But G. K. Chesterton’s next quote is good to keep in mind:
“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
Now, I’ll add in again the first.
“There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.”
Your children are exposed to a huge variety of ways to fall: through a teacher who does not stick to educating but indoctrinates, in social media, in books on “suggested reading” lists . . . and on and on. You can read more about them in my book, Who’s Got Dibs on Your Kids?.
Let me present you with another of Chesterton’s quotes just to get you thinking.
“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the
gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.”
Focus on the many things your children are not only permitted to do but encouraged to do. Maybe you can interest them in creating a poster for their room that says, “There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands,” and remind them, “To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
Or as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:12:
“All things are permitted for me”—but not all things are beneficial. “All things are permitted for me”—but I will not allow anything to control me.”