Accountability reminds us of truth. Control tries to make us to accept it.

My kiddos make a lot of preventable mistakes. I can see them coming from a mile away, and my initial reaction is almost always to try and fix it. Just yesterday I heard my sons bickering in the other room. One brother was clearly in the right–I could easily pop into the room, set the record straight, and restore peace to the house. The problem, however, is instead of learning to apply what they’re taught about conflict my sons will learn to rely on me to solve their problems. When they cross a line of safety or anger I intervene, but I’ve already taught them what is right in this situation. Now they need to practice listening and obeying.

Our job as parents is to raise our children in the way they should go, not simply deter them from the way they shouldn’t. This is the place of accountability in our digital lives—It reminds us of the truth, but it doesn’t make us to choose it. 

As a teacher I learned the same is true in the classroom: I can help students see their potential, but I can’t make them reach it. 

The Boy Who Wouldn’t Learn

Early in my career I had a young man who had learned he couldn’t learn. He was the type of student other teachers warned you about before the first day of semester. He was unkempt, unruly, and unmotivated.

My initial approach was to get him to respect my authority. I figured this was a battle of wills and I was bound and determined to care more about his success than he did. I figured I’d show him my incredible care for his success by flawlessly enforcing every rule I had. I saw that he lacked self-control, so I decided to provide external support. If he so much as sneezed wrong I was on him: talking to neighbors, having his hood up, putting his head down, if something even minuscule was out of line I put it right. I called it running a tight ship, but really I was just running him ragged. The harder I pushed the worse things got: melt-downs, shut-downs, and an increasingly toxic classroom to go with it.

See I wasn’t holding this young man accountable — I was holding him in contempt. I wasn’t helping him see his potential, I was daily exposing his flaws and weaknesses. He showed up to learn English but all he really learned was his failures — he was more convinced of his inabilities than ever before.

Fortunately we didn’t end there. I had veteran teachers who helped me realize this young man wasn’t a problem to fix. My opportunity as a teacher wasn’t to control him so he’d owe me something, it was to encourage and inspire him so he’d see he was worth fighting for. 

The Turning Point

Things began to change when I quit placing barriers to his bad decisions and started removing barriers from the good ones. Now instead of pointing to the hall and saying “Do you want this punishment” I was able to point to his choices and ask “Is this who you want to become?” Not surprisingly almost al young people, when given a real choice, will choose the adventure of their potential over the shame of their failings. 

For this young man the change was immediate. He started asking questions instead of falling asleep. He turned in work even when it wasn’t perfect and received feedback with a smile instead of a smirk. He started to actually learn and realize not only that he could learn but that he was pretty good at it. A decade later I was in a coffee shop and a bearded man walked up to me and asked if my name was Mr. Sutherland (Pro-Tip: The use of an honorific for your first name tells you the man-child across from you may be a former student). It turns out our young man was gainfully employed, married, and expecting his first child. 

Accountability > Control

This is the power of accountability. Control attempts to push children to success by placing obstacles between them and bad decisions. Accountability instead reminds children of their purpose and removes obstacles between them and their full potential. 

This is key to healthy technology in our lives and homes. Technology allows us a lot of control—it can be tempting as parents to use tech to track and monitor every thought, action, and intention that goes through a device. But this isn’t how God operates and neither should we. 

Biblical Accountability

Let’s go back to Gen. 2 in the Garden. Now let’s say, just for a moment, that you or I made the Garden of Eden and we chose to put a tree of the knowledge of good and evil in it. Don’t you think we’d take some preventative measures with that? I know I would. I’d put a moat around it, probably some dragons, a bunch of fences, and that flaming sword-thingy that showed up later. I’d do all that up front. In fact, I’d have someone follow Adam and Eve around and as soon as they so much as turn their head to LOOK at the tree that guardian angel would mean-mug ‘em like the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live. 

But this isn’t what God does. Why? Because God respects the human will. Hebrews tells us: 

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

(Hebrews 3:8-10).

Do not harden your hearts, it says. Do not resist God’s goodness. 

We see what heart-hardening looks like in the third chapter of Genesis. Eve chose her will over God’s for three reasons:

1. She believed the fruit was good for her

2. It was lovely

3. She wanted it 

Eve wasn’t confused. She didn’t pick the fruit out of ignorance or because she believed patently false information. The fruit was pretty, it was nutritious, and she wanted it. All of that was true, but it was true in the face of God’s truth: Don’t eat the fruit. And just like that Relativism was born. Eve decided right and wrong for herself. This is her “truth”: God is fine, but I’m much better.

This doesn’t happen with just Eve. We see it with Pharaoh, Pilate, Judas and numerous other individuals God reaches out to repeatedly with the offer of hope and salvation who knowingly reject the offer and opt for their own plan. Pharaoh does it repeatedly in the face of miraculous plagues and punishments (Exodus 9). Pilate does it with his conscience, and his wife, weighing heavily on him to let a clearly innocent man go (Matthew 27:19-26). Judas does it even while Jesus is washing his feet as the servant of all (John 13:1-30). It is entirely possible that, like the perfume poured out on Jesus’ feet, Judas saw the impending death of Jesus as a waste. This was not the Messiah he came to serve. He had a plan, and he was going to make that plan happen, even over Jesus’ dead body. 

What do we learn from all of this? God’s accountability, what we call God’s sovereign will, is never circumvented. At no point is God’s plan of salvation derailed because of one individual’s stubbornness or sinfulness. 

How did God handle Eve’s act of treason? He makes a promise to fix it (Genesis 3:15), and to do so sovereignly despite the defiant will of broken people (Genesis 15). Now that doesn’t mean every rebellious individual will hear “well done my good and faithful servant”. The author of Hebrews warns that it is much worse for those who knew God’s goodness and knowingly rejected it (Hebrews 10:26). But for those who repent and believe, he gives the right to be called children of God (John 1:12). 

This is the Gospel

We are reminded that while we were still sinners, still refusing to bend our knee to the goodness and glory of God, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). 

As parents our job is not to catch our children doing bad things and shame them into pretending to be better. It’s not to crush them into submission to God, somehow putting the “fear of God” into them as though that were our role or even within our power to do. As we saw with my student, simply double-down on acting right only crushes their spirits and convinces them they can’t do this. Instead our job is to hold them accountable, to shine a light in the dark places, and remind them that there is hope, renewal and life in Christ. 

So go ahead, lovingly put in parental controls, install accountability software, just don’t believe the lie that you’re making anyone good. Only God changes hearts and it only comes when we bend our knee, acknowledge our need, and put our hope in him. Instead have a conversation with your child about why this program is going in place, and use that app or program to facilitate loving, intentional conversations that help you point your child back to their purpose in Christ. 

In this way we can model how to have broken hearts, how to be the meek Jesus speaks of in Matthew 5, and how to run to God’s goodness, receive forgiveness, and live out of the new identity He has provided for all who call on His name. 

pc: Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash